The Strength of a Symmetrical Plot
One of my favorite studies of Harry Potter is that of the ring composition found both in the individual novels and overall composition. To me, that very composition is what makes Harry Potter such a satisfying story. In my view, it’s a large part of the reason Harry Potter is destined to become a classic.
And it’s an integral part of the series many people are completely unaware of.
So what is ring composition?
It’s a well-worn, beautiful, and (frankly) very satisfying way of structuring a story. John Granger, known online as The Hogwarts Professor, has written extensively on it.
Ring Composition is also known as “chiastic structure.” Basically, it’s when writing is structured symmetrically, mirroring itself: ABBA or ABCBA.
Poems can be structured this way. Sentences can be structured this way. (Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.) Stories of any length and of any form can be structured this way.
In a novel, the basic structure depends on three key scenes: the catalyst, the crux, and the closing.
The catalyst sets the story into the motion.
The crux is the moment when everything changes. (It is not the climax).
The closing, is both the result of the crux and a return to the catalyst.
In Harry Potter, you might recognise this structure:
Voldemort casts a killing curse on Harry and doesn’t die.
Voldemort attempts to come back to power
Voldemort comes back to power.
Harry learns what it will take to remove Voldemort from power.
Voldemort casts a killing curse on Harry and dies.
But all stories should have this structure. A book’s ending should always reference its beginning. It should always be the result of some major turning point along the way. Otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be a very good story.
What’s most satisfying about chiastic structure is not the basic ABA structure, but the mirroring that happens in between these three major story points.
To illustrate what a more complicated ABCDEFGFEDCBA structure looks like, (but not as complicated as Harry Potter’s, which you can see here and here) Susan Raab has put together a fantastic visual of ring composition in Beauty and the Beast (1991), a movie which most agree is almost perfectly structured.
source: x
What’s so wonderful about ring composition in this story is that it so clearly illustrates how that one crucial decision of Beast changes everything in the world of the story. Everything from the first half of the story comes back in the second half, effected by Beast’s decision. This gives every plot point more weight because it ties them all to the larger story arc. What’s more, because it’s so self-referential, everything feels tidy and complete. Because everything has some level of importance, the world feels more fully realized and fleshed out. No small detail is left unexplored.
How great would Beauty and the Beast be if Gaston hadn’t proposed to Belle in the opening, but was introduced later on as a hunter who simply wanted to kill a big monster? Or if, after the magnificent opening song, the townspeople had nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Or if Maurice’s invention had never been mentioned again after he left the castle?
Humans are nostalgic beings. We love returning to old things. We don’t want the things we love to be forgotten.
This is true of readers, too.
We love seeing story elements return to us. We love to know that no matter how the story is progressing, those events that occurred as we were falling in love with it are still as important to the story itself as they are to us. There is something inside us all that delights in seeing Harry leave Privet Dr. the same way he got there–in the sidecar of Hagrid’s motorbike. There’s a power to it that would make any other exit from Privet Dr. lesser.
On a less poetic note, readers don’t like to feel as though they’ve wasted their time reading about something, investing in something, that doesn’t feel very important to the story. If Gaston proposed to Belle in Act 1 and did nothing in Act 3, readers might ask “Why was he even in the movie then? Why couldn’t we have spent more time talking about x instead?” Many people do ask similar questions of plot points and characters that are important in one half of a movie or book, but don’t feature in the rest of it.
Now, ring composition is odiously difficult to write, but even if you can’t make your story a perfect mirror of itself, don’t let story elements leave quietly. Let things echo where you can–small moments, big moments, decisions, characters, places, jokes.
It’s the simplest way of building a story structure that will satisfy its readers.
If there’s no place for something to echo, if an element drops out of the story half-way through, or appears in the last act, and you simply can’t see any other way around it, you may want to ask yourself if it’s truly important enough to earn its place in your story.
Further reading:
If you’d like to learn more about ring theory, I’d recommend listening to the Mugglenet Academia episode on it: x
You can also read more about symmetry in HP here: x
And more about ring structure in Lolita and Star Wars here: x and x
And about why story endings and beginnings should be linked here: x
