14

I read The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker (yes, it was so heavy that I had to cut into two books just to be able to carry it around) and I just can't believe that the number of plots we have available to us has been set in stone and never the more shall be added to.

Please - is there some hope for us? What new plots have been dreamed up in recent times?

robertcday
  • 7,743
  • 25
  • 75
  • 1
    http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html – Totumus Maximus May 16 '18 at 13:42
  • 8
    Nah, there are two: A stranger comes to town and The hero takes a journey. – MissMonicaE May 16 '18 at 18:46
  • 4
    What's wrong with the standard plots? They've served us well since the beginning of the species, and are broad enough to have produced every oral and written story. – RonJohn May 16 '18 at 19:02
  • 9
    "...and there is no new thing under the sun." – Mark May 16 '18 at 20:45
  • 1
    It's worth pointing out that plenty of people have criticized Booker for being prescriptive with his list. It's one thing to point out that over 90% of all fiction fits into a small number of broad categories. It's quite another to dismiss all fiction that doesn't fit into those categories as defective. –  May 16 '18 at 21:06
  • 9
    Based on some of this "hip hop" music I've been listening to recently, there is one underrepresented plot that goes something like "Life's a bitch and then you die." – JacobIRR May 16 '18 at 22:27
  • 1
    It's worth making a distinction between "an academic can reduce it to the same reduced form as another story" and "We're exploring new ground in some way" – AJFaraday May 17 '18 at 09:38
  • @RonJohn: That's not an argument for not bothering to innovate. As per Henry Ford's (alleged?) quote, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." – Flater May 17 '18 at 12:29
  • @MissMonicaE More like one: Resolving a conflict, either minor or major. – AntiDrondert May 17 '18 at 12:32
  • 1
    @Flater what's you're point? Both the horse and the horseless carriage are "transportation devices", "fun devices", and "things you can love and take care of". – RonJohn May 17 '18 at 13:14
  • 1
    @RonJohn "What's wrong with the standard plots? They've served us well" is not a valid argument to counter someone who tries to innovate. Horses have served humans well too, but that doesn't mean that the car wasn't a welcome innovation. Similarly, an entire new plot type would be a welcome innovation. Not necessary, but at the very least welcome. Arguing that the things that exist have served you well does not make any meaningful conclusions about the thing that doesn't exist yet. – Flater May 17 '18 at 13:19
  • 1
    If you think there are just 7 plots you must also think that there are only 7 ways to lead your life. Now that would make me desperate! ;-) – Peter - Reinstate Monica May 17 '18 at 14:26

6 Answers6

36

The only reason we say there are a small number of plots one can list is because they're defined in an extremely vague way. There's still plenty of room for originality; I'll let you decide whether it constitutes "hope". Here's the best analogy I've heard:

The basic plot is like a mannequin. You're pretty limited in the number of shapes you can come up with -- curvy or straight, thin or fat. The rest of the movie -- the subplots, the personalities, the atmosphere, the pace, the number of explosions you add -- that's like the costume you put on the mannequin. Someone pointing out that a plot is "basically the same" is pointing out that two designers are using the same fat mannequin. One could be wearing a bloodied Viking costume and one could be wearing a flowery muumuu, but they're both size 40, so they're "basically the same."

So what are the details of this costume? TV Tropes lists tens of thousands of tropes, as well as many ways to use them. When you crunch the numbers, stories can be as unique as human genomes.

The real danger isn't unoriginality; it's trying to be original with the most obvious deviation possible from the mainstream, because every budding writer is trying that. That's as liable to make your work like others' as any follow-the-leader mentality.

J.G.
  • 9,557
  • 1
  • 24
  • 44
  • I like the way you think, JG. If what you say is true (and I fully intend to live the reality of it) then there really are no obstacles to my plotting other than those that huge technical volumes on writing (try to) impose on me. Fly and be free, Robert. :) – robertcday May 16 '18 at 14:09
  • 9
    @robertcday How NOT to Write a Novel puts rules into perspective: "We do not propose any rules; we offer observations. 'No right on red' is a rule. 'Driving at high speed toward a brick wall usually ends badly' is an observation." – J.G. May 16 '18 at 14:14
  • How Not to Write a Novel by David Armstrong? – robertcday May 16 '18 at 14:23
  • @robertcday No, Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. – J.G. May 16 '18 at 14:40
  • Ah, got you. How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. Read it in Dec 2014 and found it to be very useful, not to mention very funny and full of sex. :) – robertcday May 16 '18 at 15:04
  • 19
    @robertcday There are also only 7 basic titles for books about writing novels. – J.G. May 16 '18 at 15:32
  • Just to prove the point of how vague descriptions can suggest that things are always one of a small set of cases; I put to you that there are only two types of plot that are ever used: (1) Those that take place in the present (at least partially), and (2) those that do not. Substitute (1) for whatever discriminator you like, and it will always remain correct. – Flater May 17 '18 at 12:42
  • @Flater The trick to making the vague look specific is to have 7 options rather than 2. – J.G. May 17 '18 at 13:18
  • 1
    @robertcday It sounds like you've been reading a lot on the theory of writing. How much time have you spent studying the practice of writing, both studying the published works of authors and practicing yourself? While I'm not a story teller, I do know from experience with technical writing and writing code that the more experience and mastery you develop in such subjective fields, the less the theory influences your decisions directly. You instead begin to develop an intuition for what works well and what doesn't. Thus, while theory is useful, the practice is vastly more important. – jpmc26 May 17 '18 at 22:54
  • @jpmc26 A wise person once said "don't get tricked into believing that what's complicated is clever." Just because I've read a complicated book, that doesn't make me a clever-clogs. But yeah - I started writing in June 2013 (I wanted to give back to the world rather than endlessly consume books and films) and since then have written a couple of novels, a book on how to write, a whole slew of poetry and a couple of thousand articles on my blogs. In-between that I've read every book in the library on Creative Writing, shied away from books on Literary Theory and started a Masters in CW. You? :) – robertcday May 18 '18 at 07:40
25

There's really only one plot: Somebody has a problem, and must deal with it.

If that isn't true, there isn't really a story, just some descriptions of things.

You might subdivide that into [happy, mixed, sad] endings. You might subdivide by the problem, [political, romantic, business, science, ...]. You might subdivide by the protagonist, or antagonist: Heck the antagonist can be "space" as in "Gravity", or a hurricane or flood or meteor or forest fire. e.g. "The Perfect Storm" has a nature-antagonist. The antagonist can be oneself, i.e. emotional, a man fighting addiction for example: Nobody is striving to prevent him, they don't care, only he cares and he can't effing BREAK IT.

All the "X plots" you see are categorizing stories by types of problems you see, and their similarities in how successful books/films/plays focused on that kind of problem structured the story. Those structures can be surprisingly common: In a love story, a simple progression from meeting to happy marriage just doesn't sell. It is boring if the MC solves their problem too easily.

More generally you can have a story about somebody dealing with a problem, but if it lacks conflict, it doesn't sell, because it is boring. There must be resistance to be a story people want to read.

Ignore all the plots, just pick your problem, and try to put conflict on every page, be it small or large, with another person or with the environment or within the character. Don't make it easy. Keep it plausible. Keep an ending in mind at all times (even if in the course of writing you decide to change it). Chances are if you write a good story, it will (from 10,000 feet, as they say) bear some similarity to other stories. Don't worry about it, your problem is unique because (unless you plagiarize) your characters are new and the specifics of what happens to them are new, because you have an imagination that can write about something other than what you have already read/seen.

Just write a story, let other people categorize it.

Amadeus
  • 101,174
  • 8
  • 132
  • 330
  • 3
    Indeed... And sometimes, "Somebody has a problem" is actually "a bunch of people have one or more problems each" – Pedro A May 16 '18 at 23:56
  • Ah, @Amadeus - now would be a really good time to tell me where I can get hold of the books you have written. :) – robertcday May 17 '18 at 07:59
  • You haven't experienced a lot of children's stories. Plenty of those are pretty much just telling about someones day -- no problems involved at all, but interesting stories can still arise. – Clearer May 17 '18 at 09:35
  • 1
    @Clearer even in those simple stories, there is usually a 'problem' of sorts, in the form of a challenge or an experience, even if it's just the basic trials and tribulations of daily life. – Cronax May 17 '18 at 11:38
  • 1
    @Clearer I guess it depends on your view. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after. That is conflict (with the hill) and drama. But true, books for very small children have no conflict, and are no longer a story, just a description to aid the imagination. "Interesting things happening" make us wonder what will happen: That uncertainty is conflict. Events that evoke non-neutral emotion (i.e. not pacification) either begin or end conflicts in the story. – Amadeus May 17 '18 at 11:40
  • To use a very broad definition of conflict, yes.. There's a reason stories are generally described in "Arcs", they start at a median, the activity rises in complexity or stake, then drops back down to something like the starting level for the finale. describing a literal arc shape if you somehow graphed it. Jack and Jill is a lot more literal about it than most I suspect. – Ruadhan2300 May 17 '18 at 15:00
  • 2
    @Clearer The conflict is in the reader: a young child struggling to understand him- or herself and the world and people around them and to develop into someone who can survive without constant care from others. The book challenges their understanding of that world by introducing them to new ideas they've never encountered or by reinforcing ideas they have. Perhaps young children simply have not conquered enough of their own problems yet and don't need to experience someone else's fictional or historical conflict from a book. =) – jpmc26 May 17 '18 at 23:04
  • @Cronax No, really, there are plenty of stories which is just about someone having a nice day. No conflicts or any sort. – Clearer May 18 '18 at 07:27
  • See the wiki article for slice of life. It's fairly common in anime, but also many American sitcoms. Turns out consumers like the "put some characters in a room together and see what happens" setup. No real problems, frequently there isn't even interpersonal conflict, just people living their lives to catchy music. – Tacroy May 18 '18 at 15:35
  • 1
    @Tacroy Again, I don't consider that a "story". It is a description of things happening. A party, or friends getting together, or "slice of life", or fun facts, can be "writing" or entertaining, but is not IMO a *story.* To me a story requires a plot, which demands conflict that is met and resolved. Anything else is just descriptive writing. – Amadeus May 18 '18 at 16:04
7

There haven't been any "new" plots in centuries. That's because people have always had the same problems, and a plot is a problem, more or less.

Science fiction has explored the plots we already know, centuries into the future, and found that if your story is going to be readable by people now, it can't include too much that doesn't exist yet -- especially in terms of the way people feel, what they need, and what problems they have. It's possible that in a century or two there may be new plots, but there certainly aren't any new ones since that book was written.

Zeiss Ikon
  • 5,282
  • 2
  • 14
  • 34
  • You know, that's really interesting, Zeiss because what you're basically saying is that problems are finite - and that's a good thing. If we need to have new problems to have new plots then long may it remain as it is. We have quite enough to contend with already, right? :) – robertcday May 16 '18 at 13:50
  • 1
    What we have now are quite enough, no argument. Enough to make life hard and unpleasant, even with humanity in general better off than it's ever been. – Zeiss Ikon May 16 '18 at 14:07
  • 1
    Humans are finite. – Beanluc May 16 '18 at 18:18
  • @Beanluc That is a serious and fundamental misconception. If I were religious I'd say you ignore the divine spark in man. Since I'm not I'd say that the number of possible states of the atoms in my body is ridiculously high enough to be infinite for all practical purposes, including being immortal to the end of times. – Peter - Reinstate Monica May 17 '18 at 14:30
5

You've heard it said that there are only 7 basic types of plot. I say to you there are only 4 types of plots. I mean there are actually only 3 types of plots. I mean there are 9 because Booker missed 2. Did I say there was only 9? Wait, I want to go back to my first answer, there are 4 types, but with different names than in the first link.

As you can see, there are many people who have claimed to found the "x types of stories/plots". Instead of thinking of these as formulas that must be followed, take the advice of Mary Robinette Kowal. She implores us to think of all these different list types as diagnostic tools. If you're trying to be creative without being constricted, just write your story. Then, if you run into problems with keeping the reader engaged, grab one of these lists and try to map your story to one of the listed categories. See what you might be missing.

If you're trying to be truly new and creative, try to understand why the missing element is needed for your story. Then, once you know why that element is needed, try to substitute that element with something different.

Thunderforge
  • 447
  • 4
  • 10
Dustin
  • 301
  • 1
  • 3
1

The problem I see in this and many similar questions on this and other similar sites is the attempt to approach writing from the perspective of literary scholarship.

Literary theory tries to understand the basic principles of literature. And science is obsessed with simplification, because grasping the true complexity of reality is beyond our limited minds. That does not mean that there are only five dimensions of personality or only seven plots. It just means that scholars have found this self-limitation useful for their goals.

But writers aren't scholars. It is not our aim to write a clever treatise on how few plots we can reduce the huge variety of literature to. Our aim is to write literature. And in writing, each book is unique and there are as many plots as there are stories.

Do not believe the idiocy of how-to-write books.

Paul Hummel
  • 11
  • 1
  • 1
    I would be inclined to agree with you, @Paul Hummel except for this small matter: the scholar and the writer in me have become lovers. They are entwined in (whisper it) lustful abandon. Their sensitive fingers linger sensuously on each other's skin. Their tongues explore each other as we might a ripe mango. They are tightly moored into all the good places. If I were to try to separate them, then there would be blood! – robertcday May 17 '18 at 07:51
0

I believe it's less about finding a new plot and more about finding a new, or at least interesting, take on an old one. We've been writing for so long, that every plot has been written. That doesn't matter though because there's an infinite different ways to write each plot, which means there's always room for more stories to tell.

Jonathan Kuhl
  • 151
  • 2
  • I believe that you're right to believe what you believe, @Jonathan Kuhl but I also believe that someday someone (maybe even me) will turn over a rock and find a new, shiny plot just waiting to be used. I might be wrongheaded, but if I don't keep believing then I'll not even look and will have no chance of finding. ;) – robertcday May 17 '18 at 07:42
  • 1
    Well, the old Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl always seems to work well. Or the Game of Thrones variation: King screws wife, wife's brother screws wife, kings right-hand man is killed, all hell breaks lose ... – CrossRoads May 17 '18 at 18:01