"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

The Seven Basic Plots

I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept that “there are only seven notes in music”, often used and misused when a melody sounds a little too familiar to the ear. Well, there’s a similar thing in fiction, and I thought I could elaborate a little on this for people who are interested in writing tips (that would be the people willing to offer me a beer).
A book I’ve owned for ages, till the times when I was writing essays on Tolkien and fantastic architecture, is The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker, subtitled Why We Tell Stories. I originally bought it because it provided a fresh breath of air in the midst of instrumental criticism that aimed to drag Tolkien by the jacket and make him a preacher (either social or political, or both): Booker analyzes the stories of… well, pretty much everything in Western literature, and identifies the seven basic kinds of stories of the title:
  • Overcoming the Monster;
  • Rags to Riches;
  • The Quest;
  • Voyage and Return;
  • Comedy;
  • Tragedy;
  • Rebirth.
Guess what? The Lord of the Rings include all seven of the plots.
What I would like to do is bring forth some of these plots. My novel doesn’t have all seven. I mean. I don’t think so. My proofreaders would have to tell me. But it would be a neat exercise to try and see through narrative devices and gain a little more understanding of what it is that we do when we tell stories.
First post of the series in a few hours.
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1 Comment
  • Pingback:What is a myth? – Shelidon
    Posted at 00:03h, 16 November Reply

    […] on my novel and I wait to undergo what I hope will be the final round of editing. A while ago, we went through some of the Seven Basic Plots from Chrisopher Booker’s acclaimed book on storytelling and […]

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