Every story is based on one of six plots

[someoneyouknow]

The BBC has the following article which starts with Vonnegut's thesis that every story imaginable is based on one of six possible plots. He apparently discussed and outlined this in 1995 during a lecture. He also said it's so simple you could feed the shape of a story into a computer. Which has now been done.

Analyzing 1,700 English novels, and using a ton of statistical analysis, they came up with six building blocks, the plot, for any story.

1. Rags to riches – a steady rise from bad to good fortune

2. Riches to rags – a fall from good to bad, a tragedy

3. Icarus – a rise then a fall in fortune

4. Oedipus – a fall, a rise then a fall again

5. Cinderella – rise, fall, rise

6. Man in a hole – fall, rise

The article gives an example of each type of plot and discusses it in more detail.

And yes, I'm certain some or many of you already know this or surmised it. It's still an interesting article.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180525-every-story-in-the-world-has-one-of-these-six-basic-plots

 

[Blind_Justice]

And whatever you may have thought about, the Simpsons did it.

 

[ThatsTheGuy]

#4 Is DEFINITELY NOT in my longest and best novel. And will never be published here.

Also, I'm sure someone will argue about a book they've never read.

 

[SimonDoom]

And whatever you may have thought about, the Simpsons did it.

The Simpsons has been around so long that it's now basically an example of monkeys randomly typing away at typewriters: at this point, it will have covered every possible story type, just by sheer random chance.

 

[Paul_Chance]

I think it's a vast over-simplification of the craft of plotting. Kind of like the way astrology "works". Keep it simple, vague and universal and you can apply it to anything. A good plot can incorporate any or all of the threads Vonnegut outlined. In a good work you have an interwoven plot structure where each major character (and often each minor character) is on their own story arc, moving in many directions all at once.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Paradoxically, hyperbolic statements are never true. I only had to think about this for a few minutes.

The DaVinci Code's protagonist, Langdon, has no real up or downward trend in his fortunes, monetarily or romantically. The thrust of the plot is the puzzles and rhe interpersonal dynamic that results in solving them..

Odd Thomas goes through his journeys neither gaining nor losing. He witnesses surreal metaphysical happenings and influences the events, but not for his own gain or loss.

Ergo, the BBC can pound sand.

 

[SimonDoom]

Paradoxically, hyperbolic statements are never true. I only had to think about this for a few minutes.

The DaVinci Code's protagonist, Langdon, has no real up or downward trend in his fortunes, monetarily or romantically. The thrust of the plot is the puzzles and rhe interpersonal dynamic that results in solving them..

Odd Thomas goes through his journeys neither gaining nor losing. He witnesses surreal metaphysical happenings and influences the events, but not for his own gain or loss.

Ergo, the BBC can pound sand.

I agree generalizations tend to be hyperbole and never fully capture the reality of what they generalize about.

But about DaVince Code: That's a man in a hole story. Langdon quickly falls into a hole, becoming a suspect of the French police, and he has to work his way out of it by running from them, and finding the true solution to the crime and the greater mystery that underlies it. Same plot as The Fugitive or the Count of Monte Christo.

 

[Polyacrylate]

A paraphrased statement generally attributed to John Gardner is that: 'there are two types of stories, that a person goes on a journey, or that a stranger comes to town.'

These aren't literally true, just that stories involve either a person choosing to change, or persons have change thrust upon them.

Of course, you could just as easily change it to the five categories of man vs. nature, man vs man, man vs self, man vs society, or man vs supernatural.

These categories are made broadly enough that they don't, on their own, add much value, other than to perhaps aid storytellers in ways to construct allusions, symbolism, and streamline or complicate a narrative as desired.

 

[Kantarii]

My plots usually center around

1. self preservation

2. self gain

3. self destruction

4. self discovery

5. sacrifice

6. whatever I deem important for the story.

 

[yukonnights]

I question the entire thesis? Plot is simply the story-line, not the underlying building block.

From Wikipedia: Plot refers to the sequence of events inside a story which affect other events through the principle of cause and effect... Plots can vary from simple structures such as in a traditional ballad to complex interwoven structures sometimes referred to as an imbroglio.

From my thesaurus; the plot of her novel: storyline, story, scenario, action, thread; formal diegesis.

Based on these definitions I would say there are innumerable story-lines or "plots". Perhaps the term "theme" might be a closer definition of the list of 8 ???

But then, I'm not Kurt Vonnegut

 

[lovecraft68]

I'll keep my answer simple.

Bullshit.

 

[Hypoxia]

The BBC has the following article which starts with Vonnegut's thesis that every story imaginable is based on one of six possible plots.

Gee, I don't recall seeing this subject here for over a year. Various folks throw out notions of all fiction following three or six or eleven or thirtyfour or seventysix basic plots. I have all those in my notes somewhere. But that's like basic HIPO program design: Initialize, process, terminate. Much can be done with that structure, hey?

 

[Carnevil9]

How many "plots" exist is a matter of detail. If you want to strip it down to the bare minimum level of detail, there is only one possible plot: beginning, middle, end. If you want to get deep in the weeds with detail, there are thousands of different plots. At any level of detail in between, you can come up with as large or as small of a number of plots as you like.

Still, despite being bullshit, these types of analyses can still be fun, and worth ruminating on. You just can't take them too seriously.

 

[GrandTeton]

This type of analysis has been around since Aristotle. In my experience, you can work out what the building blocks were after you've got the plot but it's virtually impossible to build a decent plot using the blocks. So it's a parlour game. Or adopt lovecraft's analysis.

 

[removed9556]

 

[NotWise]

I don't think Vonnegut was talking about plots. He was talking about story arcs.

I remember at some point seeing graphics for Vonnegut's story arcs which I think were supposed to be his own. One of them was labeled Kafka, and it was just a fall, fall, infinite fall.

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

Nobody told Italo Calvino. He has more plots than that in a single Cosmicomics story.

Calvino. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler and Baron in the Trees are another two of my favorites.

 

[Oblimo]

Analysts have loved to devise lists like this for centuries now (millennia if you throw in Aristotle)

One of the most famous is the Thirty Six Dramatic Situations.

And what would we have done without Vladimir Propp

 

[Emirus]

A new film franchise?

And whatever you may have thought about, the Simpsons did it.

I’ve never watched an episode of The Simpson’s; or Game of Thrones; or Pirates of the Caribbean. Just like millions of other people. But, due to all the publicity they generate, I know something about them.

I can’t help but think of what plot line there would be for a franchise combining all three and what category they would be in based on Mr Vonnegut’s theory?

Also the title of the first film? How about The Simpson’s Caribbean Throne? A shitty story bogged down in the Sargasso Sea.

 

[FaeLissa]

I’ve never watched an episode of The Simpson’s; or Game of Thrones; or Pirates of the Caribbean. Just like millions of other people. But, due to all the publicity they generate, I know something about them.

I can’t help but think of what plot line there would be for a franchise combining all three and what category they would be in based on Mr Vonnegut’s theory?

Also the title of the first film? How about The Simpson’s Caribbean Throne? A shitty story bogged down in the Sargasso Sea.

Hm - the gratuitous rape scenes every episode would put me off. There some stuff what shouldn't be seed, and Marge Simpson chastising a rapist by whacking them on the nose and saying "Bad boy! Down! You stop that right now! I'll tell your mother!" is probably some of them

 

[Hypoxia]

The basic erotic plot:

1. Boy meets girl.
2. Boy fantasizes about girl, and masturbates.
3. Girl fantasizes about vampires; masturbates.
4. Boy delivers next pizza.

 

[someoneyouknow]

I don't think Vonnegut was talking about plots. He was talking about story arcs.

I remember at some point seeing graphics for Vonnegut's story arcs which I think were supposed to be his own. One of them was labeled Kafka, and it was just a fall, fall, infinite fall.

That is what is said in the article. Vonnegut was talking about the shapes of stories and their arcs. This is what was written in the article:

The thesis sank without a trace, but Vonnegut continued throughout his life to promote the big idea behind it, which was: “stories have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper”.

In a 1995 lecture, Vonnegut chalked out various story arcs on a blackboard, plotting how the protagonist’s fortunes change over the course of the narrative on an axis stretching from ‘good’ to ‘ill’. The arcs include ‘man in hole’, in which the main character gets into trouble then gets out again (“people love that story, they never get sick of it!”) and ‘boy gets girl’, in which the protagonist finds something wonderful, loses it, then gets it back again at the end. “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers”, he remarked. “They are beautiful shapes.”​

However, since no one bothered to read the article, we get the above.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

To the OP - the BBC no longer retains the powers of the English language, nor those of a developed Western Intellectual Mind, to make any pronouncements or prognostications about anything so sophisticated as what 'every story is based on...'

For example, they conveniently omitted the one about the kind of fairy-tale that goes like this: 'man meets daughter, goes out to deli to buy scratchies and beers, takes daughter to Italian restaurant, slips through time and space to touch closed locked door-knob from the outside, in, the car door-handle, a passerby spraying gas up his nose, chicken salt at restaurant with brand name 'Novichok-r-us' chicken salt; all of the above, none of the above, some of the above, forget we ever said any of the above... ...then awakes in hospital and is released on the day of the wedding of a 'ranga-headed English prince who looks like the tennis player John Mcenroe to his African-American belle with tennis pro Venus Williams as a guest-of-honor, and takes immediate flight to Puerto Banus never to be seen of or heard from again... (Suspension of disbelief effect).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, an astro-turfer troll invents a thread on the Trump-lovin' authors hangout to the effect that for sure, the BBC knows how to write fiction.

Which piece of * simple-minded amateur cant from today's BS OxCam does that fit into?

Louise Mensch - is that still you here and btw, were you the blonde bimbo who provocated George Papadopoulos in the Londonistan 'wine bar' with 'the salmon who jumped onto the hook all by itself,' the cross-dressing Alexander Downer?

Because it's Milo (still) here, and I don't think much of your list. But if that's what you want to, nay, MANAGE TO, sell to the Instagram Rich Kids of Saudi Arabia at your 'Department School of Literature' at Trinity Hall nowadays, as 'how to write gooder literature in the modern English language,' well best of luck to you.

 

[yukonnights]

That is what is said in the article. Vonnegut was talking about the shapes of stories and their arcs.... However, since no one bothered to read the article, we get the above.

Yep, those words about "shapes of stories" instead of "plot" do make all the difference in the world. Bravo...but why did you use the word plot in the post

 

[someoneyouknow]

Yep, those words about "shapes of stories" instead of "plot" do make all the difference in the world. Bravo...but why did you use the word plot in the post

Because that was the title of the article. The article relates those six arcs are the building blocks for the plots so in the grand scheme, they are the plot. The story is how the plot unfolds.