A break down of the seven plots that you can use right now, and which plots work best for memoir (and why)
Welcome back, and let’s continue with our recipe for that secret sauce that turns a good book into a great one.
I wrote about structure last week and gave you a lot to study/think about/practice.
This next ingredient, plot, makes all you’ll study about structure come alive. What is plot anyway?
The plot of a story is that which leads its hero or heroine either to a “catastrophe’ or an “unknotting,”; either to frustration or liberation; either to death or to a renewal of life. And it might be thought that there are almost as many ways of describing these downward and upward paths as there are individual stories in the world. Yet the more carefully we look at the vast range of stories thrown up by the human imagination through the ages, the more clearly we may discern that there are certain continually reoccurring general shapes to stories, dictating the nature of the road which the hero or heroine may take to their ultimate destination.
~ Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots
If there were one book I’d take to a desert island, it would be this one. It is intelligent, comprehensive, and, frankly, one of the most challenging and baffling books I’ve ever read. I know nearly everything Booker writes is dead on, but I sometimes fear my brain will explode from the magnitude of what he offers. It’s like looking inside consciousness and evolution itself. And reading this book is beginning a lifetime of study that will change everything about the way you think about story. You will…I can almost guarantee…never be the same once you’ve absorbed a fraction of what Booker reveals about the undergirding of story—from the ones you tell yourselves about your own life to the ones you binge-watch on Netflix.
To put it bluntly: Get this book. Read the first seven chapters. And while you do, ask: Which plot is the one I’m writing about?
Are you overcoming a monster who looms far off in the distance, not yet threatening but moving closer? Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Dr. No, Beowulf, Frankenstein, Dracula, many Westerns, horror, and war movies, The Magnificent Seven, Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Star Wars.
Are you a little orphan who has been cast out and mistreated by dark forces and adults, only to find yourself rising to a dazzling splendor thanks to the life-saving power of love? King Arthur, Ugly Duckling, Superman, Popeye, Cinderella, My Fair Lady, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Aladdin, The Gold Rush.
Are you on a quest to a distant land to find a great treasure that only that particular journey can attain? Watership Down, Holy Grail, Odyssey, Lord of the Rings, the Exodus, Pilgrim’s Progress, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Underground Railroad.
Are you a bored, restless, clueless heroine who tumbles down a rabbit hole and confronts an upside-down world of freaks and marvels, one you must escape or else you will die? Alice in Wonderland, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Peter Rabbit, Prodigal Son, Gone with the Wind, Brideshead Revisited, and The Wizard of Oz. Peter Pan, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Lost Horizon, Candide.
Are you part of a community of people taking themselves far too seriously, where everything becomes a tangled mess until this state of confusion is unraveled and set right? Lysistrata, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pride and Prejudice, You’ve Got Mail, South Pacific, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Philadelphia Story, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Stranger than Fiction.
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