**What are the seven basic literary plots?**24-Nov-2000
I’d always heard the 7 plots were named by Aristotle. Although upon reflection that might have been more in the purview of Aristophanes.
Any classical scholars or theatre majors that can back me up on either of those?
::fingers crossed while I go searching myself::
“Seven. The Internet Public Library quotes a list of seven plots (man versus nature, man versus man, etc.) that someone claims to remember from second grade. Not the most authoritative source, but no flakier than any of these other systems.”
From 8th grade literature I seem to remember those as the seven conflicts. man vs man man vs nature man vs self
man vs beast and some others ones (possibly only 6)
“One. One school of thought holds that all stories can be summed up as Exposition/Rising Action/Climax/Falling Action/Denouement or to simplify it even further, Stuff Happens, although even at this level of generality we seem to have left out Proust.”
Also from 8th grade lit I seem to remember this being the plot for all short stories. But not neccesarily for plays, novels etc.
Aristotle has a lot to say about plot in his Poetics, but I don’t recall him enumerating the number of plots. He talks about different types of plots (simple and complex) and different plot devices (reversal of fortune, recognition, suffering). Perhaps some combination of these will yield seven. Or perhaps Aristotle wrote about plots elsewhere.
Maybe this is better suited for GQ, or at least a new topic here that poses it as a specific question, but Cecil’s column reminded me of a magazine article I read a couple of years ago previewing the new t.v. season.
The author had decided that every television show relied on one of about seven premises, although the only one I specifically recall now was the “fish out of water” premise. Each was given it’s own icon, and the article listed each show, a description of the premise and early epsiodes, the author’s comments on the show, and the icon(s) representing the premise(s) for each series.
What struck me about the article, besides the banality of the upcoming t.v. offerings, was how spot on the author was in discerning that every t.v. series really sprang from one of these seven (or so) premises. I really wish I could find that article again.
For some reason, I associate the memory of the article with either a magazine like the New Yorker in 1999, or with a magazine like Spy in 1990 or so. Anybody know what I’m talking about or recall a similar thing?
Extreme WAG. But i like the subject.
[ul][li]man versus man[]man versus nature[]man versus the system[]man versus machine []man versus woman []man versus anarchy/evil []man versus God [/ul][/li]
Is this something that I was supposed to learn in school? :rolleyes:
I’ve seen various variants on this list, but IMO, they don’t really qualify as “plots.” I’d call them “types of conflict” instead.
That’s what we learned them as in school, types of conflicts. On the other hand, there was no “man vs woman”, that fell under “man vs man” (because it was really “vs another person”), and the last one was “man vs self”.
I’m assuming “man vs the system” was what we learned as “man vs society” and “man vs God” was “man vs the supernatural” (which included deities, aliens, magic, etc.).
And now that I think of it, I don’t recall a “man vs evil” but can’t remember what it was instead.
I have done a web search and found several lists of conflicts along the lines of “man vs. X”. “Man vs. Woman” is not one of them. The lists ususally seem to include [ul][li]man vs. nature[/li][li]man vs. society[/li][li]man vs. man[/li][li]man vs. himself[/li]and (more rarely) man vs. the unknown[/ul]I have no idea where these lists come from originally.
When I played D&D, my game master used to say everything boiled down to two plots: Go Get It or Go Kill It. (I found a third: Go Protect It).
I suppose it comes down to how simple you like to consider a “basic plot.”
Yeah i know that the conflict i erroneously labelled as man vs woman had the look and feel of soft cheese. But i was indeed looking at the role of woman in society in the historical context, at least what little i have gleaned remember from hopelessly shallow history book personifications from my youth, and, heaven forbid, her pre-ordained role in modern society today. Besides there is no such conflict known as man vs sex! 
Interesting, I learned that there were only three fundamental conflicts: Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, and Man vs. Fate (of course, “Man” in all of the above examples is intended in the gender-neutral sense). Society or woman would be considered “man”, machine would be considered “nature” or “man”, depending on the machine (HAL, for instance, qualifies as a “man”), and God, self, and the unknown would probably be “fate”. Evil or anarchy doesn’t in itself constitute an adversary, as there has to be somebody or thing doing it.
I’m surprised that, considering the number of science fction fans on this board, no one has mentioned Robert Heinlein’s basic plots. Heinlein maintained that there were only – well, I can’t remember how many, but i was less than seven. The ones I can recall are:
– The Little Tailor
-- the Man Who Learned Better
-- Romeo and Juliet (?)In popular movies, particularly Hollywood,
there are
-the sport movie
‘dumb underachievers get at team together helped by coach and win in an nail biting final game’
starrin fat kid, nerdy kid gawky kid etc
the action/war movie
'maverick underachievers get a team together, (or more commonly “only one man could” )to fight all the bad guys
in a series of ridiculous set piece action scenes
highschool or childhood or university nostalgia
school days ; male underachiever gets girl or prom queen
despite serious acne problem and wins scholarship
or charismatic teacher turns out not to be a pedophile and helps kid get ahead
science fiction
see war movie only with mega expensive effects
love story
see sport movie
George Orwell’s character, Winston Smith, in 1984 mentions that there were only 7 basic plots, or at least 7 sanctioned by the government, and that they had built a machine which cranked out endless variations.
I’d just like to add that the novelist John Gardner (who was also a well respected teacher of writing fiction) stated that all stories in any form boil down to two plot types:
A stranger comes to town and changes the lives of the principle characters (who happen to live in the town.)
The principle character goes on a journey, and is changed by his/her experiences.
Basically, every story boils down to one of the two archetypes.
Those aren’t plots, though. They’re just broad categorizations.
I thought I’d read the same thing, though I’d seen it attributed to Tolstoy. Is Gardner, perhaps, referencing this?
As to the stranger/journey characterization, couldn’t you also have a combination of the two? Stranger comes to town and takes protagonist on a journey. Or for that matter, you can transform the first to the second just by redefining the “stranger” as the “protagonist”.
Elfwreck:
Not bad, except it’s too complicated. Go Protect It is of course a subset of Go Get It.
Hi. I think what the original post was referring to is this:
There are five basic plots. They are:
Boy Meets Girl
Rags to Riches
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Quest
Revenge
All plots are made up of variations or combinations of these five basic plots.
Spenser23