All language subtitles for MasterClass Walter Mosley Teaches Fiction and Storytelling - 04. Story vs. Plot

Boy meets girl.

Boy loses girl.

Boy goes out with
girl's brother.

I mean, that's a story.

You have three characters.

They have potential for
growth and for change,

and they experience each other.

They have conflict--
they're torn apart,

they're brought back together.

That's a story.

There's not a whole bunch
of different stories,

but how that story
occurs, that's the plot.

Where did the boy meet the girl?

What did the girl
think about the boy?

Where was the brother?

Where was he at the time
and what was he thinking?

What's going on in boy's life?

What's going on in girl's life?

All these things we slowly
begin to understand,

and we understand the tensions
and the conflicts between them

that cause the changes
and the revelations.

Story is what happens.

Plot is when the
reason it happens

or the reasons that it happens
are revealed to the reader.

The story is a
cloud-like definition

of the novel you're
going to write.

If it's a nice, calm
day with no wind,

the cloud is going
to look the same way.

As you write your novel, if
the winds kick up a little bit,

it may alter quite
a bit, and you

have to be able to
move with that story.

But the story alone
is not a novel.

It's just a story.

This happened.

That happened.

This happened.

The end.

A story-- you can't have
a novel without a story,

but a story is not a novel.

I think it's easy to start
with something simple

when you're crafting a
story, because I promise you

it's going to become
extremely complex before you

get to the end.

You'll start saying all kinds of
things about the girl or about

the second boy.

There's all kinds
of stuff that's

going to be going
on in the story.

And so if you could start
it as easy as possible,

that's good because it
leaves a lot of room

for complexity, which
is going to come

in when you start plotting.

The story.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The simplest way
to describe plot

is that it is the
structure of revelation.

I like that term because
it works on two levels.

One, it's a pedestrian level.

Well, when do I find out what
the girl's mother is like?

When do I find out that
her brother is gay?

When do I find out that the boy
who's been going out with her

is only going out with her so
he can find a place to sleep,

because he needs
a place to sleep

because it came
from Salt Lake City

and he doesn't have any money?

When do I find out these things?

That's very pedestrian thing.

But the other
reveal that happens

is you find out who the person
is through why they're there,

what they've done, why they've
done what they've done.

You want to be surprised.

You want your assumptions
to be a question.

You want the novel to tell
you something about the world

that you didn't know about when
you started reading this book.

And so as elements and
character traits and situations

reveal themselves, we
become more and more engaged

in what is happening and
we worry more or more

about what will happen.

And so that structure,
the bones of your novel,

make it so the reader
is involved in a story

that, you know, they may
already know that story.

But now as they
are reading it, it

gets a very specific tenor,
a very specific character,

and we're worried about
this situation which

couldn't be anywhere else.

Which is just like our lives.

You know, you meet somebody,
they become your best friend.

You know, and you don't
find out for three years

that they've been
killing people, you know,

every weekend.

You're having a regular
relationship with somebody,

and that might have its
own issues and problems.

But when you find out that this
person is also killing people,

it's a whole new world
of the novel opening up.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Pretty late in the book of
"Devil in a Blue Dress,"

Mouse, Raymond Alexander, is
talking to the white woman

that Easy's been looking for.

And he says, "Now, am I
going to lie to you, Ruben?

Your brother is dead.

I'd only been in
an earthquake once,

but the feeling was the same.

The ground under
me seemed to shift.

I looked at her to see the
truth, but it wasn't there.

Her nose, her cheeks, her
skin color, they were white.

Daphne was a white woman."

Now, Daphne is
not a white woman.

She looks like a white
woman, whatever that is.

But in truth, she's, in
American terms, a Black woman,

or you know, in new terms,
a multiracial woman.

She has a Creole mother
and a Black father.

Easy has spent the whole novel
looking for this white woman.

We have spent the
whole novel with him

looking for this white woman.

And now when he finds her,
she's not a white woman.

She's something
else, somebody else.

We understand,
begin to understand,

what the underlying
motive is in the story.

We understand her problem and
why she's been acting the way

she's acting, or we
begin to understand that.

That's a plot move.

It's using the story.

Story is easy--
looking for Daphne--

but it changes because
the plot reveals

that she is indeed not
what she said she was.

And so now Easy knows
that the woman he thought

was a white woman is
actually a Black woman.

The woman that he fell in
love with as a white woman

is actually a Black woman.

Easy has to make a choice.

Easy says, I don't care, I don't
care that she's a black woman.

And we believe she's
been hiding this

because she's ashamed of it.

And so when Easy comes to
her later on in the novel

and says, listen, it doesn't
matter to me what race you are.

I fell in love with
you, who you are.

I want to be with you.

And she says to
him, I can never be

with a man who does not
know me as a white woman,

because that is the
identity I've chosen,

now that's another plot twist.

It's not that she's
ashamed of being Black,

but she can only be white.

What you do once you have
a big plot twists like who

she is, what she
is, then you can

have all kinds of like little
tremors of different kinds

of changes through the novel.

And this is the reason
that people read novels--

to understand character,
to understand character

transition, to understand why
what I want I can never have,

or what I'm trying to
escape from is myself.

These are big issues
in any kind of novel,

and without plot you
can never get there

because you just know
everything from the beginning.

It's just a story.

But it's not just a story.

It's a story about
characters, and the characters

are deep and complex
and always changing.