Mr. King says that your job as a writer is not to create your story, but to discover it, sort of like an archaeologist digging up a fossil. He goes on to say that plot is a tool for digging up this fossil, but it's like a jackhammer, and you'll break apart more of the fossil than you will dig up. I take this to mean that it's too constricting to the reader, and the author is putting to strong of a grip on their work. They need to step back and release a bit, letting the story take them where it wants to go.
I agree partially: you don't want your work to feel contrived, like a Scooby-Doo episode or something. But I would like to propose an alternate perspective.
What if instead of the fossil being the story, and plot being a tool to uncover it -- what if the fossil was the plot itself, and the writing process was the tool to uncover it, and the story was the computer diagram of the fossil, depicting it while it was flesh and blood.
So you're walking through the desert and you see a little bit of bone, the nose of a dinosaur, sticking out of the ground. This is the idea that sets you off on writing this story. You get out your tools and you begin digging, and you find the tail bone. This is your idea for how the story will end. Eventually you finish digging and you have the entire skeleton; this is the whole plot of the story, but you're not done yet, you still don't know what the actual dinosaur looks like. Now it's time to scan it and input a three dimensional model into the computer, digitally recreating the whole beast. Finally, you've got the entire story.
This is how I think of writing -- it still goes along with the concept of discovery, but plot (the skeleton) is still an essential part.
I agree partially: you don't want your work to feel contrived, like a Scooby-Doo episode or something. But I would like to propose an alternate perspective.
What if instead of the fossil being the story, and plot being a tool to uncover it -- what if the fossil was the plot itself, and the writing process was the tool to uncover it, and the story was the computer diagram of the fossil, depicting it while it was flesh and blood.
So you're walking through the desert and you see a little bit of bone, the nose of a dinosaur, sticking out of the ground. This is the idea that sets you off on writing this story. You get out your tools and you begin digging, and you find the tail bone. This is your idea for how the story will end. Eventually you finish digging and you have the entire skeleton; this is the whole plot of the story, but you're not done yet, you still don't know what the actual dinosaur looks like. Now it's time to scan it and input a three dimensional model into the computer, digitally recreating the whole beast. Finally, you've got the entire story.
This is how I think of writing -- it still goes along with the concept of discovery, but plot (the skeleton) is still an essential part.