Losing the plot?

In relation to my previous post, ‘Big books’, I imagine one of the most daunting things about trying to read a ‘big book’ is, for some people, keeping up with the length and complexity of the plot.

You might be left wondering; ‘how on earth will I remember all these characters?’ or ‘who is related to who in this chapter?’ NO FEAR! It is something that has always worried me about starting a ‘big book’. Over the years, I have developed a few little things that keep me from losing the plot….

Weighty issues and chunky paragraphs

Firstly, if you want to tackle one of these fat classics, let’s say for example George Eliot’s Middlemarch, you must first alter the way you approach the text. Eliot, like many other authors, who wrote these weighty books, used their narratives to get across their own opinions and discussions. So don’t expect a nice linear plot with 3-4 easy to remember characters.

Rather Eliot, like many of her contemporaries, enjoy going on seemingly long and unrelated tangents on various topics. Often, in terms of the nineteenth century novel, these were on vast social issues effecting society; a quick background read of the social context is always beneficial when reading a historic novel. For example, Eliot was concerned with women’s position, religion, and industrialisation all things that arise in other Victorian/nineteenth century authors such as Dickens and Trollope!

What is equally important to remember is that these tangents or almost ‘essays’ in the middle of the plot, do come to an end, and Eliot quite happily returns you to the central plot. (Equally as a reader, you are always entitled to skip, or skim read over these parts! – as I always say the book can’t judge you!)

Finding the Plot

A ‘plot’ is understood as simply the sequence of events in a novel. A book with a singular plot will follow the events of one character or set of characters in a particular situation. Therefore,  a book with multiple plots often has a greater number of characters, and therefore a greater number of events! Interestingly, Eliot’s Middlemarch wasn’t originally supposed to be one novel, and the two central plots were originally destined to be two individual books! (Seems a bit mean she put them together, but she had her reasons…)

An easy way to understand multi-plot books is to imagine each plot as a different colour thread; each thread is separate but every so often is woven over another colour thread. In a similar way that’s how books with multiple plots can be understood! By identifying the different plots or 'threads' you will be in a better position to track each plot and eventually understand how it relates and interacts with the other plots. 

This can be done visually by tracking plot beginnings with little sticky tabs - colour coded (of course) or drawing out of plot flow-charts. Equally, for many famous novels, you can get downloadable plot and chapter summaries online (be careful to avoid spoilers though!)

Who’s who ?

Keeping track of plots is one thing, but keeping up with all the characters is an entirely different challenge!

Tolstoy's War and Peace, while guilty of a huge plot also has an extensive character list. It follows the lives of several high-class families in St Petersburg, Russia around the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

As you can imagine with huge families comes a huge amount of characters to remember! (Also with the formation of Russian names comes multiple ways different characters are referred to, depending on who they are with and talking too. (I will do a post on Reading Russian Literature in the future!)

To help with this you can often purchase an edition with character lists and family trees included. If you happen not to have a copy like this you can always, again, do a quick google.

However, for me what was most beneficial is making your own cheeky notes on characters. It may sound silly, and you may wonder how can I enjoy reading if I’m thinking this hard? But trust me. If you treat one of these books as you would a confusing TV period drama or crime thriller, it will begin to play like that in your head as you become more and more familiar with the characters.

Similar to keeping track of the plot, I find it helps to make a note of when a character first appears. Whether they are described by the narrator or introduced in a conversation always mark this first description out, so you can easily return to it later. By doing this too, you can more easily track, if you wish, character development and better understand the complexities of a plot.

Mapping out character lists and plot lines can be fun. Although not as weighty a book, I recently did this with Bernadine Evaristo’s 2019 prize winner novel, Girl, Woman, Other. Without giving away the whole story, the structure of the plot was based on the individual stories of 12 women and how, as the novel progresses, their lives all inter-weaved with one another. After each individual’s story, I made sure to note down who they were connected too and in what way. As you do this with the novels you read, you will notice that these 'character lists' you create become webs of relationships which make up the plot of the novel!

Have Confidence !

Undoubtedly I see the irony of writing a long article for such a topic but I just wanted to get across and explain little things that have helped me take on the classics and big books. I hope that if people wish to read these books, they are not put off by thinking it is too high-brow or intellectual for them.

They are for EVERYONE and you are free to enjoy them and tackle them in your own way!