Doing Write

Alan Moore discusses the difference (back in 1995).

The idea is what the story is about; not the plot of the story, or the unfolding of events within that story, but what the story is essentially about. As an example from my own work (not because it’s a particularly good example but because I can speak with more authority about it than I can about the work of other people) I would cite issue #40 of Swamp Thing, “The Curse.” This story was about the difficulties endured by women in masculine societies, using the common taboo of menstruation as the central motif. This was not the plot of the story – the plot concerned a young married woman moving into a new home built upon the site of an old Indian lodge and finding herself possessed by the dominating spirit that still resided there, turning her into a form of werewolf. I hope the distinction here is clear between idea and plot, because it’s an important one and one ignored by too many writers. Most comic book stories have plots in which the sole concern is the struggle between two or more antagonists. The resolution of the struggle, usually involving some deus ex machina display of a superpower, is the resolution of the plot as well. Beyond the most vague and pointless banality like “Good will always triumph over evil” there is no real central idea in the majority of comics, other than the iea of conflict as interesting in itself.