Seven Plots

According to Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, only seven plotlines exist in our universe (albeit in infinite variation):

• tragedy
• voyage and return
• comedy
• overcoming monsters
• rebirth
• rags to riches
• the quest

Moreover, Booker suggests that five of the seven can all be considered comedy because they all have happy endings. That leaves tragedy standing alone, like The Cheese in the childhood ditty The Farmer in the Dell. Poor cheese, in the center of the circle with all the others pointing, laughing, waving about their pleasent endings. Hmm. Where was I? Oh, yes: this makes perfect sense from the consummate reductionistic psychologist's viewpoint, because all life is motivated toward pleasure (which can be as simple as the avoidance of tragic pain). Only stimulous and response exist. Pain generates an avoidance. Pleasure attracts. So, it must be quite simple to write a story or a novel. The devil of it is in the details, those infinite variations necessary to make stories unique.[fiction]

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