Duplicate Trope: Porn Without Plot

@Dun Dun: Your definition of "actual plot" is much too narrow.

That isn't my definition. It's from The Best American Short Stories 2011 (the foreword by Heidi Pitlor).

Like I said earlier, there's a temptation to call stories where there's little going on or not much progression "no plot." But that's nowhere in the same league and Porn Without Plot or Pac Man where there's literally no plot.

edited 20th May '13 7:55:12 PM by AmyGdala

That sounds like a good name for a supertrope (if these need one): Literally No Plot.

Edit: What I was saying was that, in comparison to there literally being no plot and there being no emphasis on what little plot there actually is, the audience is left with similar impressions regardless (i.e. that nothing happened). Like, there's barely any plot whatsoever but there's even less emphasis on that plot... and the audience is left with the impression that there really was no plot because of how little emphasis there was on it.

I can see now that that's not what this is about; this being about games or films that literally have no plot progression. I think the "no emphasis on what little plot there actually is" might need to be mentioned in the supertrope if these tropes need one to avoid misuse (people do confuse the word "literately" for "literally" after all).

edited 20th May '13 8:15:25 PM by DunDun

I don't know. I think Prfnoff's comment is still relevant. I haven't read the Tell-Tale Heart, but for what I've heard that story is about the main character's internal conflict, and thus the "talking to himself" is itself part of the plot. Certainly very, very few people would claim that "nothing happened" in the same sense as PWP or NPNP, or even Excuse Plot.

edited 20th May '13 11:08:34 PM by MorganWick

The definition of plot that I was using was physical things happening to the the characters and the characters doing physical actions. On Merriam-Webster's (first noun definition 3), it's defined as "the plan or the main story," which leads one to look for story. Their first defined noun definition 3a makes it a bit round about. Their first defined noun definition 3b can be interpreted to mean "the intrigue of a narrative or dramatic work."

"The Tell-Tale Heart" does have an intrigue to the narrative, so one could say that, yes, it has a story—which implies it has a main story, which also implies that it has a plot. I'm not saying that anything with intrigue has a plot; I'm saying that anything with intrigue in the narrative or drama, which means that there needs to be a narrative or some form of drama. Thus, most pornos would not, in this definition, have plot (they tend to skip the narrative to just, y'know, go at it, and games like Pac Man don't have a narrative either).

There's only so many ways I know of to discuss the meanings of words. One is to use an expert's opinion, which I did (given that Pitlor has worked with short stories for years); the other is using the dictionary. So, if this is still too narrow or something, I can't y'know expand it; I'd feel like we'd be making up definitions.

The discussion here has stagnated after drifting away from its original topic. I think it's time to lock this.

Seconding the motion.

Adding another vote in favour of lockage.

yup, nothing to see here.(ditto for lock)

edited 4th Jun '13 12:18:37 AM by tryrar