Plans Gone Bad are Good

We like it when characters’ plans go wrong

Why Tell Us About Plans?

Men in tales make plans even as men do in their lives. Men in tales do many things that their talesmen don’t tell us. And when a talesman tells us about a character’s plans, he better have a reason. What reasons could he have? Take for example this:

John said, ‘Today I think I’ll cut down the elm tree and chop it up for firewood.’

Ezra smiled. ‘Well, if you do that, then I’ll get the cart and haul the wood to the shed and stack it there out of the rain.’

That morning John cut down the elm tree. He cut it to lengths and split it for firewood.

In the afternoon Ezra brought the cart around and took the cut wood to the shed, where he stacked it.

If I heard a talesman spin me this, I’d wonder, Why is he telling me this twice? It’s redundant. He wasted my time, once would’ve been enough, just tell me what they did, not what they meant to do and then what they did.

In fact there might be a reason why a talesman would do it this way. If John or Ezra never did what they said, here is one time they did, so it tells us something has changed. Or if the talesman meant by this for us to learn how John and Ezra do what they say, so that later on in the tale, when it comes about that they don’t do what they say, we will be surprised and know something must have changed.

John and Ezra is an example of when the plan gets carried out right after it gets made. But it could happen later:

John said, ‘When spring comes, I think I’ll cut down the elm and chop it up for firewood.’

That winter was dark and cold. There had never been so many storms. The snow piled up to the roof along the north wall of the house. The woodshed was buried under it. But at last the sun wheeled higher in the sky and the snow melted. The birds came back and it was spring...

John went out that morning and cut down the elm tree and chopped it into firewood.

Here the plan gets carried out long after John made it. Now when I hear the talesman tell this, I feel a connection between what went on in the fall when John laid his plan, and what went on in the spring when he carried through with it. The talesman has made me expect something to come. He tells me of other events in the meanwhile, but all the time I expect that I’ll hear how John went to cut up the elm tree once spring comes.

This is just as redundant, but I have the pleasure of anticipating and expecting the tree-cutting, and when it comes my anticipation is fulfilled.

My example doesn’t thrill me much, because I haven’t made the act of cutting the tree exciting, and I haven’t made us care about it. But say the tree is a cursed and evil influence over John’s life, and cutting it means future happiness? But others have tried to fell that elm, and something bad happened to them each time before they could do it. Will John be able to cut it down? And will things be any better if he does? Or say John fell in love with Debra under that tree, and cut their names on it, but later Debra died and John has mourned her for seven years, not to look at another woman, only at the tree, in grief. Then when he says he’ll cut it, we can imagine that maybe his heart is healing. But will he really bring himself to cut the elm? We must wait until spring comes — then he cuts down the elm and we know it means a fresh start for John.

Or if the planned-for event were one that, in and of itself, would please us. John tells Ezra, ‘When spring comes, I’ll propose marriage to Debra.’ We know Debra is secretly pining for John, and we want to see these two get together. So when we hear John tell Ezra his plan, we gain an expectation the proposal, acceptance, and engagement are on the way. We wait for this, anticipate it, desire it all the more because the talesman, in telling us of the plan for the event, has promised us the event will come. When it does come, we are doubly pleased to hear of it at last.

Wrong All Wrong

We get even more delight, though — a perverse and much-delayed delight, in spite of ourselves — when plans go wrong:

‘Come spring, I’ll cut down that elm for firewood,’ said John.

‘I’ll stack it in the shed if you do,’ said Ezra.

The winter was dark and bitter... At last spring came...

Ezra came round late in the spring with the cart, and found the elm still standing. The farmhouse was quiet, too, and no smoke showed at the chimney.

Ezra went soft to the door and tapped. ‘John?’ he called. ‘You in there all right?’

Here the talesman has to tell us about John’s plan, or else we’ll fell no trouble when Ezra finds the elm still standing in the spring. We looked for something to happen. When he told us about John making his plan, the talesman promised us that it would take place. But it didn’t. Now we want to know why. More (and this is above all true if the plan promises us an event that will please us in and of itself) because the talesman promised us that event, and we didn’t find it when he told us it would come, we feel cheated, and we won’t forgive him until we see the event come true.

Master of Plans Gone Bad

Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master at telling tales that make you want to read on, and one of his tricks was to strew his tales with characters’ plans. And they went bad almost every time.

Because the plans go bad so often in his tales, Burroughs gets us feeling uneasy every time a character makes a plan. ‘Oh, no,’ we think, ‘this can’t go right. What will go wrong this time?’

When a talesman gets us to feel like this, he's really got us hooked. Instead of a plan helping to anticipate what's going to take place, it only tells us what most likely won't take place. And Burroughs made sure that the events planned for were ones we wanted to see — an escape from captivity, or a reunion of two lovers. He promises us, and yet we know he won't keep the promise; so he tempts us with a foretaste of what we fear we won't be getting.

And yet Burroughs, crowd pleaser that he was, always gave us the pleasure and the essence of the event, by the time he closed his tale. The hero would escape captivity, the lovers would meet again. It just wouldn’t happen in the promised way, and it would come later than he promised.

Breaking promises and making plans go bad is a prime way to build up suspense in the audience. Eventually fulfilling the promises lets us forgive the talesman for the cheat.

(Composed with pen on paper on 24 January 2008)