ClancyBoy

And if you come up with an eighth, the literaty experts will twist it just enough to make it fit one of their seven.
As any good engineer knows, the only real numbers are zero, one, and infinity. It's not possible for there to be only seven of anything.

Also you forgot "man vs. cyborgs" and "earth vs. soup." So there's nine already.

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Rob

Nonsense: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Cheers,
Rob

Mike C

most excellent demonstration of my theory. Snow White is all about Sex and Death. Perfect.

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Joe Moore

Mike, as always, you're killing me!

OK, here's a few definitions to add to the the discussion:

Plot: the sequence of events in a story. Harry meets Sally. Harry falls in love with Sally. Sally has an affair with Bob. Harry kills Sally. Bob kills Harry. Bob goes to prison. Bob meets Bill.

Theme: the controlling idea or central insight of a story. Good always wins over evil. Love is blind. You are what you eat. The love you take is equal to the love you make.

Premise: the fundamental concept that drives the plot. A small New England seaside town is terrorized by a great white shark. A small boy sees dead people. A mild mannered newspaper reporter is really a super hero.

Story question: the question planted in the mind of the reader at the beginning of a story that must be answered by the end. Will Frodo overcome the destructive power of the Ring and defeat the Dark Lord? Will Clarice Starling rise up from her doubt-prone simple background to match wits with Hannibal Lecter and track down a serial killer?

Conflict: the element that must be present in all stories. If it’s not, the reader’s reaction will probably be: Who cares.

Hook: the compelling element of a story that draws the reader in.

I hope these help.

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S1E9A8N5

That pretty much answers my confusion. Movie remakes also do this as well. Although, sometimes they change a thing or two to make it different from the original but it's still pretty much the same plot. Instead of Sally having an affair with Bob, it could be Harry having an affair with Bob. etc. I guess that's almost every novel. Every story follows a plot but it's the events in between that makes it different. It's so sad it's taken me this long to realize that. I always was confused with story and plot but now I get it.

Thanks for the help.

lin

Really. Or add ten more because THEIR book says there are 18 basic plots.

S1E9A8N5

That's one of the things I'm worried about. If I were to publish my story/novel, I wouldn't mind advice and suggestions but I would want to be the last say in what changes and what doesn't. I probably would self publish If they wanted things changed and I disagreed.

lin

I agree one hundred per cent. It's a principle that has cost me heavily over years of pro writing. If my name goes on it, it doesn't have anything in it that makes me sick.

Standard wisdom is that you have not choice and they will bend you over. My guess is it depends a lot on me.

ClancyBoy

I just finished The Old Man and the Sea, and I'd like to add "old man vs. cramp" to the list of plots.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

ClancyBoy

Actually I think I can reduce all stories to one plot.

Since everything, men, nature, society, the self, etc. exists as the natural world, "nature vs. nature" is the only real plot.

Continuing in that vein, if we cancel the word "nature" on both sides of that expression, it comes out to "nothing vs nothing." Which equals zero.

So correction, there are no plots.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

lin

Au contraire...it's ALL a plot.