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Original post by sunandshadow
Actually plotting is widely regarded as one of the most difficult aspects of writing. Nobody cared about it the past couple thousand years because nobody cared about any kind of theory of how to produce art because there was a lot less cultural emphasis on introspection and analysis and, yes, likelihood of commercial success of art. But then in the past hundred years somebody came up with the idea "form follows function". People realized that a house is a machine for living, a story is a machine for conveying memes, and averything should be designed to most effeciently and effectively carry out its purpose. This philosophy has almost been lost again in the sea of bullshit which is postmodernism, but there are still serious scholars in every field who want to truly understand their medium and craft.
So my personal motive for wanting a rigid definition of plot is that I believe I would be a better writer if I understood the form and function of plot better. Relatedly, I believe that clear definitions are essential for clear thinking and writing and wish-washy definitions cripple the person who is trying to use them to think and communicate. Would a programmer have any business using classes and structs if he couldn't even tell you what they were? No, and no one has any business calling themself a prefessional writer if they don't understand the plots, characters, and stories they are creating.
Your analogies puzzle me; by your reasoning, a programmer shouldn't use a construct if he doesn't possess a rigid definition of it. Most people programming on this site couldn't actually define an iterator, but sure can use one. I guess they're in violation.
Programming, at the end of the day, is a craft, not a science. Scientists need very precise definitions, because they are interested in the investigation of truth and relationships between truths. Programmers are interested in the application of principles to solve problems. Their careers inscribe a growing familiarity with an ever-increasing number of design patterns - tested and proven methods for solving various types of problems (the term comes from architecture, so don't think of it as a "programmer thing").
I think writing is the same way. I think that the more that you write, the more you observe situations with the intention to write about them, the more you investigate and burrow deeply in search of connections, the more you find yourself taking advantage of devices that you find to have common properties. In essence, you discover and/or familiarize yourself with "design patterns" for the construction and delivery of plot.
In his early days, Foucault identified with modernism, but as he matured he rejected the label and sought to avoid classification. It's an interesting argument. Rigid definitions of fluid concepts promote stagnation: you begin to think you know all there is to know about the concept, you distill it to a set of precepts and leave the real thinking to obscure academic theorists.
You stated that writing is a craft. No craft is perfected by mere theory. No amount of physics and "woodwork technology" will supplant the experience gained by repeatedly carving different types of objects from different types of wood. No amount of computer science - theory of computation, computability, predicate logic, software architecture and design - replaces actual experience writing, deploying, debugging, maintaining and cursing frantically ([smile])at systems, and learning from all the preceding what is not a good idea for the second iteration.
In similar vein, no amount of introspective theorizing about the nature of plot will replace writing stories and learning, in the process, the keys to plotting. For all his theorizing, Aristotle (and Plato, and Socrates, while we're at it) never wrote a
story worth reading. And Homer (or the Bard) never set forth a categorical analysis of his art. Truffaut and Godard may have been critics and theorists, but their films don't exactly reverberate with the public, either.
