The plotting of plots about people plotting plots.

Sapheron

Making no sense.
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Given that I haven’t posted anything meaningful for a while, or anything useful for an age, I thought I’d throw together some ramblings in my lunch break today. I’d like to start a discussion about plotting. Specifically, about the sort of plots which are ridiculously complex, span vast amounts of time, and account for variables and complications that most of us would be hard pressed to ever predict, let alone counter.

Obviously, a well written plot is satisfying to read. The antics of Locke Lamora and co. are a more recent example of such a thing, pulling Italian Job style schemes of dazzling complexity. They aren’t quite what I’m discussing though (sometimes they border on it), because Locke and co. are shown to mess it up. Their plans don’t really survive contact with the real world, and by the end of any particular gambit things become increasingly pants on fire improvisation. I think, personally, that such a system works well, and its prevalence in books, films and so on seems to support my opinion. The grand plan which works up till near the end, then the bad guy pulls ahead before finally being outwitted after all. Excellent.

The other form of plotter (and by that I mean successful plotter, so all the amateurs and failures out there don’t count), is more the epic sort. To borrow examples probably familiar to most of us, I mean the sort of plotting done by people like Varys or Petyr Baelish from ASoIaF, or a multitude of characters in the Dune series. Here we have people who make ridiculous plots (I don’t necessarily mean ridiculous in a bad way), stretching into days, months, all the way up to decades ahead, which seem to rely on so many things being done by so many people uninvolved in the actual plot. The people involved in them seem often to be human supercomputers (I suppose in Dune some of them actually are…) capable of processing amounts of data far in excess of that of mere humans.

When done well, such a thing can work well, giving the impression of a masterful web weaver (reminding me of a real life example, the good King Louis of France, The Universal Spider). Done badly, it seems farfetched and unbelievable, far beyond the level of complexity and real scheme could achieve (which some doubtless are, but then this is sff).

I’ve just begun a piece of work which involves long term, highly complex plans, so I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it. Where would you draw the line? How complicated, with how many variables accounted for, can a plan be while maintaining believability? What, for that matter, examples of excellent or favourite plotters do you have? What about ones which made your eyes roll?
 
I think all the examples you gave (Locke Lamora and the ASoIaF characters) are great ones; their plotting is fun to read and not at all eye-roll-worthy. I quite like a long, drawn-out evil plot in a story, as long as it's not of the 'we've-been-plotting-your-future-since-you-were-a-baby-so-now-dance-puppet-dance' variety. You know, the kind I mean? Although even that can work if exceptionally well written.

I'm horribly bad at remembering examples. If I think of any, I'll get back to you. But hopefully someone else will come along in the meantime. :)
 
This TV Tropes page, and its branches, is a good kicking off point for this kind of discussion.

A lot of these mentally complex plans seem to occur in games and manga. The main background plot of the PlayStation game Xenogears was draw-dropping. It was too big for any one person to work out if it made sense, so no one could say it didn't. Fullmetal Alchemist had one almost as vast. I tend to like them. For better or worse, I also tend to write them.

as long as it's not of the 'we've-been-plotting-your-future-since-you-were-a-baby-so-now-dance-puppet-dance' variety

Ah ... oops ...
 
Hi,

It's about believability. And for me one character mastermind that has always stood out for me as unbelievable is Lex Luthor - at least in the movies. The writers always make a point of saying how smart he is, but then use that as a way of saying he knows things about Superman that he couldn't possibly know. It doesn't matter how smart you are you can't actually know facts that haven't yet been in evidence. And how could he possibly know about kryptonite etc if nothing about Superman's origins are known? How could he know that it would weaken him?

And then there's his diabolical plots which are always clever, but also always fail to address the basic superness of Superman. If I knew about kryptonite and wanted to kill the old man of steel, I'd do it. It's be easy enough to arrange. But the one thing I would absolutely never do is reveal myself to an enemy with such power. It's just incredibly stupid. Yet Lex always manages that - I assume because it makes good cinema.

Another mastermind who annoyed me was the Joker from the Christian Bale Batman. Note how at one point in the movie he proudly proclaims that he never plans. He hates planning. And yet everything he's done in the entire movie to bring down bats is microsecond perfect, micromanaged planning. Completely annoying.

But to finish with a fun one, think Dr Evil from Austin Powers, and his son there intending to shoot Austin in the head and him objecting. It's not the way it's done! You have to go through some elaborate and completely pointless plan to kill the hero in some bizarre way which will of course allow him to escape. That cracks me up every time. It so shows up the James Bond villains, who seem completely incapable of doing the simple thing and killing him.

Cheers, Greg.
 
Sorry if I get this wrong. Am only new to the site. First post, being made pretty much just to see how this works. Perhaps my comment is to banal but I love the plotting of the Harry Potter series :-(
 

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