Significant Events in a Plot: Study Guide (English Literature 3.4)

Events are the working parts of a plot

In Topic 1.3 you studied plot as a chain of connected events. In a longer work the chain is long, and not every link has the same weight. A story is delivered through a series of events that relate to a conflict. Events include:

• episodes: incidents that can stand somewhat on their own within the larger story,
• encounters: meetings between characters, and
• scenes: continuous units of action in one place and time.

Some events only fill out the world. Significant events move the story: they raise or change the conflict, alter a character, or turn the narrative in a new direction.

What makes an event significant

The significance of an event depends on its relationship to three things.

1. The narrative: what it causes, and what depends on it later.
2. The conflict: whether it intensifies, complicates, reverses or resolves it.
3. The development of characters: whether it forces a choice, reveals a motive or changes a relationship.

A practical test is to remove the event in your mind and ask: What would later events lose? If the answer is “their cause” or “their meaning”, the event is significant.

Types of function

An event may:

• introduce a conflict or a character,
• develop a conflict by adding a complication or raising the stakes,
• reveal a motive, a secret or a relationship,
• turn the narrative (a reversal or decision after which things cannot return to how they were),
• resolve or settle some part of the conflict, or
• mirror or contrast with another event.

Writing about an event

A strong sentence about an event has four parts: the event named briefly, its cause or link to earlier events, its effect on the conflict or a character, and its function. For example: “Mercutio’s death, which results from the feud, turns Romeo from a man trying to stop the fight into the man who kills Tybalt, so it is the event that makes banishment, and everything after it, inevitable.”

Worked example 1: a turning point in a public-domain play

In Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Romeo has just married Juliet in secret and Tybalt, her cousin, has challenged him. Romeo refuses to fight, trying to keep the peace (he calls to the fighters, “Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!”). His friend Mercutio fights Tybalt instead and is wounded. Mercutio says:

I am hurt.
A plague o’ both your houses. I am sped.

Romeo then speaks of his own part in the death:

This gentleman, the Prince’s near ally,
My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt
In my behalf …
O sweet Juliet,
Thy beauty hath made me effeminate
And in my temper soften’d valour’s steel.

When Tybalt returns, Romeo says “fire-ey’d fury be my conduct now”, fights and kills him. Benvolio tells Romeo to flee, because “The Prince will doom thee death”. Romeo’s own reaction is “O, I am fortune’s fool!”

Step 1: Describe the event briefly. Mercutio is killed by Tybalt; Romeo kills Tybalt.

Step 2: Cause. The feud between the houses, in which Tybalt and Mercutio are drawn into a fight. Romeo’s attempt to keep the peace fails.

Step 3: What does it change in the conflict? Until now the feud has been mostly words and brawls; now there are two deaths, and the Prince has already forbidden public fighting. The killing of Tybalt makes Romeo liable to the sentence of death, so the feud now directly threatens the lovers.

Step 4: What does it change in the character? Romeo has been seeking peace (“Hold, Tybalt!”). Having blamed his love for making him “effeminate”, he chooses “fire-ey’d fury”. He kills Tybalt in a rush of anger, and his own words afterwards, “fortune’s fool”, show that he now sees himself as the victim of events.

Step 5: Function in the narrative. It is a turning point. After this scene the lovers cannot return to their earlier secret happiness, and the decisions that follow (banishment, the plan to avoid Juliet’s second marriage) come from it. The significance depends on the conflict (the feud), the characters (Romeo’s change) and the narrative (the direction of the rest of the play).

Model paragraph opening: “The deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt in Act 3, Scene 1 turn the play from a story of a secret marriage into one of exile and loss. Romeo, who begins the scene by calling ‘Hold, Tybalt!’, ends it as the man who answers Mercutio’s death with ‘fire-ey’d fury’, and his cry ‘I am fortune’s fool’ marks the moment when the feud’s violence can no longer be kept apart from the lovers.”

Worked example 2: choosing significant events (an original plot, written by Marlbridge)

Here is an outline of an invented novel, The Long Table.

1. Ines returns to her family’s vineyard, intending to sell it, and finds that her brother Mateo has kept it running.
2. Ines signs a preliminary agreement with a buyer, Mr. Kessler.
3. A storm destroys a third of the harvest; Ines and Mateo work through the night side by side.
4. Ines finds their late father’s notebook in Mateo’s desk. It says he meant to leave the vineyard to both of them, and Mateo has known this.
5. Ines tells Mateo what she has found; they quarrel.
6. Kessler offers a higher price. Ines tells him the sale is off, for now.
7. Ines stays for the picking of what is left of the harvest.

Step 1: Name the conflict. Sell or keep the vineyard (external: Ines against Kessler’s offer and against Mateo; internal: Ines between leaving and belonging).

Step 2: Apply the removal test.

Event	If it were removed	Significant?
1	The reader would not know the situation or Mateo’s role	Yes, as exposition for the conflict
2	The sale would not be a real threat	Yes, it commits her and raises the stakes
3	The brother and sister would not have a shared experience to set against the quarrel	Yes, it develops their relationship
4	There would be no revelation, no reason for the quarrel and no change in Ines’s view of Mateo	Very significant: it complicates and turns the conflict
5	The discovery would have no consequence between the siblings	Yes: the consequence of the discovery
6	The decision would have no external pressure	Significant: the test of her choice
7	The ending would not show her choice	Significant: the resolution, which is left open

Step 3: Identify the turning point. Event 4. Before it, Ines’s reasons for selling are about the past and about money. After it, she has a reason to question both her brother and the sale. It changes the conflict from “sell or keep” to “trust or distrust”.

Step 4: Write about it.

The discovery of the notebook in Mateo’s desk is the turning point of The Long Table. It changes the sale from a practical decision into a question of trust, because Ines learns both that her father meant the vineyard for both of them and that Mateo kept this from her. The quarrel in Event 5 and her decision to call off the sale in Event 6 both follow from it, so the notebook turns a plot about selling into one about what the siblings owe each other.

Step 5: Check. The paragraph names the event, its effect on the conflict and on the relationship, and the events that depend on it. It does not retell the other events.

Strong and weak statements about events

Weak	Why it is weak	Stronger
“The storm happens.”	Retelling; no function	“The storm forces Ines and Mateo to work together, which sets a shared experience against the later quarrel.”
“The killing of Tybalt is exciting.”	Evaluates	“The killing of Tybalt exposes Romeo to exile, so the feud now threatens the lovers directly.”
“Event 4 is important.”	Asserts; no reason	“Event 4 is important because it changes the conflict from sell-or-keep to trust-or-distrust.”

Checking your inference

1. Have you named the conflict? The significance of an event is always relative to a conflict.
2. Have you traced cause and effect? What leads to it, what follows.
3. Have you said what changes? In the conflict, a character or the direction of the story.
4. Have you avoided retelling? Give the minimum needed to identify the event.

Common misconceptions

• “The most dramatic event is the most significant.” A quiet discovery can change the story more than a battle.
• “The climax is the only important event.” Earlier events cause the climax, and later events show its consequences.
• “Every event is equally important.” Some only establish the world. Judge by what the event changes.
• “I should list the events in order.” Selecting and explaining a few is stronger than a list.
• “An event’s significance is the same for every reader.” Judgement may differ, but it must be supported by the text’s conflict and characters.
• “A significant event must be an action.” A refusal, a silence or a decision not to act can be a significant event.

Where this leads

Try the practice questions, then use the checklist and revision notes. The next topic, Conflict, looks at the tension that gives events their significance. For plot basics, see Plot: how events are ordered and why.