‘Gozzi maintained that there can be but thirty-six tragic situations. Schiller took great pains to find more, but he was unable to find even so many as Gozzi.’ –Goethe
There are only seven plots in all of fiction — in all of human life, really — and chances are you’re living one of them.
Plenty of people have tried to boil things down for ease of interpretation or just to get their screenplay moving. Dr. Johnson was the first to suggest “how small a quantity of real fiction there is in the world; and that the same images have served all the authors who have ever written,” but he wandered off for an ale and left the idea where it lay. (…)
In 2004 journalist Christopher Booker put it in a doorstopper of a book, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, and made an awfully good case that writers are all fiddling with a mere handful of stories, like songwriters with a few tunes in their pocket.
Overcoming the Monster: The Monster is your boss, mother, ex-spouse, the little voice in your head… (…)
Rags to Riches: This plot inhabits our dreams. All reality shows are rags-to-riches tryouts, as are romance novels and junior hockey games. (…)
The Quest: People go on trips, like Homer in The Odyssey and guys in road-trip movies like The Hangover. (…)
Voyage and Return: This plot sends hapless innocents into a strange landscape where they have to cope with oddity, danger and separation from all they know and love. (…)
Comedy: This is the oldest plot of all (see Aristophanes in 425 BC), based on confusion, misunderstanding and lack of self-knowledge. (…)
Tragedy: This is the most complicated plot of all.
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The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is a descriptive list which was created by Georges Polti, a French writer from the mid-19th century, to categorize every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance.
