The norm nowadays (and since decades) is : plot, and some genres can not do without it, example : thrillers, detectives stories ...etc.
Now, if we look in literature history, can we say that Tristram Shandy really has a plot ? Or Don Quixote ? Or, less formerly Proust's In search of lost time !
French have many theories about that, a literary movement was even created, named Nouveau Roman, and led by french writer and theorist Alain Robbe-Grillet (Beckett was one of them)
Briefly they claimed that the true story wasn't in the narrative, but in the langage, wich was also the goal (they have gone even farther, invalidating the concepts of charachter and depth / symbolism).Their leitmotiv was "A novels is no more the writing of an adventure, but the adventure of a writing."
Altough some members of this movement have been considered great writers (as Claude Simon, who won the Nobel Prize, and of course, Beckett) it is considered now as a literary experience that has almost failed.
Still, you can find writers, or maybe just some novels of some writers, that tend to this concept of "no plot" or "no goal", you can say that of The Naked Lunch, or more recently The Rings of Saturn by german writer W.G. Sebald, and lately Open City from Teju Cole.
Most of these novels are filled with charachter's toughts and digressions about various subjects, but you can note that they always have a sort of path or rail they follow (a perambulation in Suffolk for Sebald, a walk around in Manhattan for Cole)
All I can add, from my own experience, is that you can experiment in that way, but a plot gives you structure, it gives you as a writer an aim that can help you moves forward and regain motivation, when you're close to giving up !
If you write a story with no goal it has no path, which is the whole point of narrative. You have to engage the reader, believe in the characters and care about their fate otherwise you lose them. If you compare to film making, the classic Hollyward narrative runs as such:
Equilibruim
Disequilibrium
Equilibrium
In other words, things start off okay as we learn who is who and then go wrong. We then spend the rest of the film resolving the problem to get it back on track. French new wave tried to do it differently as the new young critics who thought they could do better buckled against the norm. And whilst they may have won support and some admiration, have you ever sat through a few of them? 2 hours of wondering who is who and why they are talking about love and fine wine and then it just stops, adding the word "Fin" so that you know it has ended. Boring and unengaging in my opinion.
Of course, you can just write and see what happens, you never know where it might take you, but you would have to tie up the loose ends somewhere
If you have an idea, and you start to write from it, I would then then imagine a goal and plot would grow from it. It would be hard not to
There is nothing to say you have to start with a goal, but can come across it as you manuscript unfolds
It's the question : plot or not plot ?
The norm nowadays (and since decades) is : plot, and some genres can not do without it, example : thrillers, detectives stories ...etc.
Now, if we look in literature history, can we say that Tristram Shandy really has a plot ? Or Don Quixote ? Or, less formerly Proust's In search of lost time !
French have many theories about that, a literary movement was even created, named Nouveau Roman, and led by french writer and theorist Alain Robbe-Grillet (Beckett was one of them)
Briefly they claimed that the true story wasn't in the narrative, but in the langage, wich was also the goal (they have gone even farther, invalidating the concepts of charachter and depth / symbolism).Their leitmotiv was "A novels is no more the writing of an adventure, but the adventure of a writing."
Altough some members of this movement have been considered great writers (as Claude Simon, who won the Nobel Prize, and of course, Beckett) it is considered now as a literary experience that has almost failed.
Still, you can find writers, or maybe just some novels of some writers, that tend to this concept of "no plot" or "no goal", you can say that of The Naked Lunch, or more recently The Rings of Saturn by german writer W.G. Sebald, and lately Open City from Teju Cole.
Most of these novels are filled with charachter's toughts and digressions about various subjects, but you can note that they always have a sort of path or rail they follow (a perambulation in Suffolk for Sebald, a walk around in Manhattan for Cole)
All I can add, from my own experience, is that you can experiment in that way, but a plot gives you structure, it gives you as a writer an aim that can help you moves forward and regain motivation, when you're close to giving up !
If you write a story with no goal it has no path, which is the whole point of narrative. You have to engage the reader, believe in the characters and care about their fate otherwise you lose them. If you compare to film making, the classic Hollyward narrative runs as such:
Equilibruim
Disequilibrium
Equilibrium
In other words, things start off okay as we learn who is who and then go wrong. We then spend the rest of the film resolving the problem to get it back on track. French new wave tried to do it differently as the new young critics who thought they could do better buckled against the norm. And whilst they may have won support and some admiration, have you ever sat through a few of them? 2 hours of wondering who is who and why they are talking about love and fine wine and then it just stops, adding the word "Fin" so that you know it has ended. Boring and unengaging in my opinion.
Of course, you can just write and see what happens, you never know where it might take you, but you would have to tie up the loose ends somewhere