Did
the title get you? Yes, this blog post is about the infamous head-in-a-bag plot
device. But first, a foray into literary theory. (Sorry, I have to find some
kind of use for those college classes. But I promise it will be brief and fun—which
is not a use of irony.)
Anyway,
lit crit folks have an idea that only a handful of stories exist and most
stories, no matter how dissimilar, can be boiled down to one of these “genres.”
Allow me to oversimplify with a couple of examples. Greeks thought stories were
either comedies (ends in a wedding) or tragedy (ends in a death). Hence
Shakespeare’s works are divided into Comedy and Tragedy (and, of course, “histories,”
but if Richard the Third isn’t a
tragedy, what is?) Detective/murder mysteries are viewed as modern versions of
the quest epic.
So
if all stories fit into just a couple of categories, how do we keep it
interesting? That is in the telling. (Enter head-in-a-bag plot device.) Jasper
Fforde writes the Thursday Next “mysteries.” Thursday is a literary
detective/fixer. (According to Thursday, she actually “repaired” Jane Eyre. In the “original” version,
Jane and Mr. Rochester never got together. Thursday almost lost her job over
that fix.) Anyway in Mr. Fforde’s world, characters often try to improve their
novels by buying plot devices. One character, who is afraid that his novel may
be shredded, goes to the plot device store to buy a plot device.
The-head-in-bag device is on sale because, you know, it’s been so overdone, so
there’s not a lot of demand. A couple of months ago, I saw an episode of Castle. Guess what? It had the head-in-bag.
But the writers made it fresh. (It was a mediocre episode, but still it was the
head-in-a-bag. And my kids yelled, “No way, the head-in-bag plot device!”) In
the episode, the dead man had his head stolen and stuffed in “cryogenic head
container.” The “bad guy” claimed it was for cryogenic purposes. But the truth
was that the brain contained evidence of experimental cancer drugs ineffectiveness—which
is a totally overdone plot device—the writers need to go back to the plot
device store.
All
that to say, even if there aren’t any new stories, all you need to do is find a
fresh way of writing it—and avoid the head-in-bag plot device. After all, you can
only toss the bag through the air and say “Heads up” once or twice before is
gets lame.
