'The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories' By Christopher Booker
What links "David Copperfield", "Jane Eyre" and the legend of King Arthur together with the fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling"?
What story line resurfaces in such disparate works as the Grail quest, "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "The Lord of the Rings" and Richard Adams's bumptious bunny tale "Water ship Down"?
What could Peter Rabbit, Scarlett O'Hara and Alice in Wonderland possibly have in common?
These aren't trick SAT questions or annoying Trivial Pursuit queries. They are questions that lie at the heart of the thesis that the critic Christopher Booker sets out in his gargantuan, sometimes absorbing and often blockheaded book.
According to Mr. Booker, there are only seven basic plots in the whole world - plots that are recycled again and again in novels, movies, plays and operas.
“THE MAIN PLOT LINE IS SIMPLE: GETTING YOUR CHARACTER TO THE FOOT OF THE TREE, GETTING HIM UP ON THE TREE, AND THEN FIGURING OUT HOW TO GET HIM DOWN AGAIN”
- JANE YOLEN
OVERCOMING THE MONSTER - The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force that threatens the protagonist and/or protagonist's homeland. This plot lies behind horror movies and thrillers like "Jaws", as well as many war stories, Hollywood westerns and science fiction tales.
RAGS TO RICHES - In the Rags to Riches story line traced by works like 'Jane Eyre', an immature hero, who is looked down upon by others, has a series of adventures culminating in a terrible crisis, and emerges from those tests a mature person, ready at last to assume his or her place in the world and make a lasting love match.
THE QUEST - The protagonist and companions set out to acquire an important object or to get to a location. They face temptations and other obstacles along the way. Hazardous journeys filled with physical perils provide the structure both for Quest tales like 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' and 'Voyage and Return' and for narratives like 'Alice in Wonderland', while inner journeys form the armature of Rebirth tales like 'Snow White' and 'A Christmas Carol'.
VOYAGE AND RETURN - The protagonist goes to a strange land and after overcoming the threats it poses or learning important lessons unique to that location, they return with experience. The best novel depicting this genre is 'The Chronicles of Narnia', 'Ramayana' and 'The Hobbit'.
REBIRTH - An event forces the main character to change their ways and often become a better individual. 'Beauty and the Beast' depicts this storyline very exquisitely.
COMEDY - Light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending. A dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion. Mr. Booker stresses that comedy is more than humor. It refers to a pattern where the conflict becomes more and more confusing, but is at last made plain in a single clarifying event. The majority of romance novels fall into this category like 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.
TRAGEDY - The protagonist is a hero with a major character flaw or great mistake which is ultimately their undoing. Their unfortunate end evokes pity at their folly and the fall of a fundamentally good character. The all time classic 'Romeo and Juliet' gracefully explains this plot.
Mr. Booker suggests that five of the seven basic plots (Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, and Rebirth) can really be placed under the larger umbrella of Comedy: in their purest form, all have happy endings, all trace a hero's journey from immaturity to self-realization, and all end with the restoration of order or the promise of renewal. Only in the seventh plot type, Tragedy, he observes, is there a deviation from this fundamental pattern.
If every story has already been written, is striving for originality a pointless task? The answer is no; it absolutely is not. While it may indeed be compelling and likely true that storytelling conventions are built on only seven broader foundations, the purpose of categorizing stories into broad types is as a way to understand fiction, not to limit our creativity or the ideas, values, and concepts we can explore. This doesn’t mean you don’t have a worthwhile story to tell. From a framework perspective, it may all have been done before but only the most cynical could use that as a reason not to write.
“THERE IS ONLY ONE PLOT - THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM."
- JIM THOMPSON
Comments