Plots Examples
The plot should be developed in such a way to interest the readers and to keep them guessing at the next points. A good plot is one that has well-developed characters who are engaging in several conflicts. Plot Examples in Literature. When an author writes a text, he wants to create interest for his readers. A Scatter (XY) Plot has points that show the relationship between two sets of data. In this example, each dot shows one person's weight versus their height. (The data is plotted on the graph as 'Cartesian (x,y) Coordinates') Example. Among the examples of plot in modern literature, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is probably the most familiar to both readers and moviegoers. The plot of the story begins when Harry learns that Professor Snape is after the Sorcerer’s Stone. The Professor lets loose a troll, who nearly kills Harry and his friends. Collection of examples and recipes for Plots.jl. Contribute to JuliaPlots/ExamplePlots.jl development by creating an account on GitHub.
Disciplines > Storytelling > Plots > Tobias' 20 Plots
The 20 Plots See also
Ronald Tobias, in his popular and practical book, 20 Master Plots, and how to build them, describes 20 common story plots and gives lots of detail on how to construct complete stories around them.
The 20 Plots
1. Quest
The hero searches for something, someone, or somewhere. In reality, they may be searching for themselves, with the outer journey mirrored internally. They may be joined by a companion, who takes care of minor detail and whose limitations contrast with the hero's greater qualities.
2. Adventure
The protagonist goes on an adventure, much like a quest, but with less of a focus on the end goal or the personal development of hero hero. In the adventure, there is more action for action's sake.
3. Pursuit
In this plot, the focus is on chase, with one person chasing another (and perhaps with multiple and alternating chase). The pursued person may be often cornered and somehow escape, so that the pursuit can continue. Depending on the story, the pursued person may be caught or may escape.
4. Rescue
In the rescue, somebody is captured, who must be released by the hero or heroic party. A triangle may form between the protagonist, the antagonist and the victim. There may be a grand duel between the protagonist and antagonist, after which the victim is freed.
5. Escape
In a kind of reversal of the rescue, a person must escape, perhaps with little help from others. In this, there may well be elements of capture and unjust imprisonment. There may also be a pursuit after the escape.
6. Revenge
In the revenge plot, a wronged person seeks retribution against the person or organization which has betrayed or otherwise harmed them or loved ones, physically or emotionally. This plot depends on moral outrage for gaining sympathy from the audience.
7. The Riddle
The riddle plot entertains the audience and challenges them to find the solution before the hero, who steadily and carefully uncovers clues and hence the final solution. The story may also be spiced up with terrible consequences if the riddle is not solved in time.
8. Rivalry
In rivalry, two people or groups are set as competitors that may be good hearted or as bitter enemies. Rivals often face a zero-sum game, in which there can only be one winner, for example where they compete for a scarce resource or the heart of a single other person.
9. Underdog
The underdog plot is similar to rivalry, but where one person (usually the hero) has less advantage and might normally be expected to lose. The underdog usually wins through greater tenacity and determination (and perhaps with the help of friendly others).
10. Temptation
In the temptation plot, a person is tempted by something that, if taken, would somehow diminish them, often morally. Their battle is thus internal, fighting against their inner voices which tell them to succumb.
11. Metamorphosis
In this fantastic plot, the protagonist is physically transformed, perhaps into beast or perhaps into some spiritual or alien form. The story may then continue with the changed person struggling to be released or to use their new form for some particular purpose. Eventually, the hero is released, perhaps through some great act of love.
12. Transformation
The transformation plot leads to change of a person in some way, often driven by unexpected circumstance or event. After setbacks, the person learns and usually becomes something better.
13. Maturation
The maturation plot is a special form of transformation, in which a person grows up. The veils of younger times are lost as they learn and grow. Thus the rudderless youth finds meaning or perhaps an older person re-finds their purpose.
14. Love
The love story is a perennial tale of lovers finding one another, perhaps through a background of danger and woe. Along the way, they become separated in some way, but eventually come together in a final joyous reunion.
15. Forbidden Love
The story of forbidden love happens when lovers are breaking some social rules, such as in an adulterous relationship or worse. The story may thus turn around their inner conflicts and the effects of others discovering their tryst.
16. Sacrifice
In sacrifice, the nobler elements of the human sprit are extolled as someone gives much more than most people would give. The person may not start with the intent of personal sacrifice and may thus be an unintentional hero, thus emphasizing the heroic nature of the choice and act.
17. Discovery
The discovery plot is strongly focused on the character of the hero who discovers something great or terrible and hence must make a difficult choice. The importance of the discovery might not be known at first and the process of revelation be important to the story.
Box And Whisker Plot Examples
18. Wretched Excess
In stories of wretched excess, the protagonist goes beyond normally accepted behavior as the world looks on, horrified, perhaps in realization that 'there before the grace of God go I' and that the veneer of civilization is indeed thin.
19. Ascension
In the ascension plot, the protagonist starts in the virtual gutter, as a sinner of some kind. The plot then shows their ascension to becoming a better person, often in response to stress that would defeat a normal person. Thus they achieve deserved heroic status.
20. Descension
In the opposite to ascension, a person of initially high standing descends to the gutter and moral turpitude, perhaps sympathetically as they are unable to handle stress and perhaps just giving in to baser vices.
See also
Ronald B. Tobias, 20 Master Plots, and how to build them, Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1993
| Author | Christopher Booker |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Published | 2004 |
| Pages | 736 |
| Preceded by | The Great Deception |
| Followed by | Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming |
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories is a 2004 book by Christopher Booker containing a Jung-influenced analysis of stories and their psychological meaning. Booker worked on the book for thirty-four years.[1]
Summary[edit]
The meta-plot[edit]
The meta-plot begins with the anticipation stage, in which the hero is called to the adventure to come. This is followed by a dream stage, in which the adventure begins, the hero has some success, and has an illusion of invincibility. However, this is then followed by a frustration stage, in which the hero has his first confrontation with the enemy, and the illusion of invincibility is lost. This worsens in the nightmare stage, which is the climax of the plot, where hope is apparently lost. Finally, in the resolution, the hero overcomes his burden against the odds.
The key thesis of the book: 'However many characters may appear in a story, its real concern is with just one: its hero. It is the one whose fate we identify with, as we see them gradually developing towards that state of self-realization which marks the end of the story. Ultimately it is in relation to this central figure that all other characters in a story take on their significance. What each of the other characters represents is really only some aspect of the inner state of the hero himself.'
The plots[edit]
Overcoming the Monster[edit]
Definition: The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force (often evil) which threatens the protagonist and/or protagonist's homeland.
Examples: Perseus, Theseus, Beowulf, Dracula, The War of the Worlds, Nicholas Nickleby, The Guns of Navarone, Seven Samurai (The Magnificent Seven), James Bond, Jaws, Star Wars, Attack on Titan.
Rags to Riches[edit]
Definition: The poor protagonist acquires power, wealth, and/or a mate, loses it all and gains it back, growing as a person as a result.
Examples: Cinderella, Aladdin, Jane Eyre, A Little Princess, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, The Prince and the Pauper, Brewster's Millions. The Jerk.
The Quest[edit]
Definition: The protagonist and companions set out to acquire an important object or to get to a location. They face temptations and other obstacles along the way.
Examples: The Iliad, The Pilgrim's Progress, The Lord Of The Rings, King Solomon's Mines, Six of Crows, Watership Down, Lightning Thief, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Voyage and Return[edit]
Definition: The protagonist goes to a strange land and, after overcoming the threats it poses or learning important lessons unique to that location, they return with experience.
Examples: Ramayana, Odyssey, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Orpheus, The Time Machine, Peter Rabbit, The Hobbit, Brideshead Revisited, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Gone with the Wind, The Third Man, The Lion King, Back to the Future, The Midnight Gospel.
Comedy[edit]
Definition: Light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion.[2]Booker stresses that comedy is more than humor. It refers to a pattern where the conflict becomes more and more confusing, but is at last made plain in a single clarifying event. The majority of romance films fall into this category.
Plots Examples
Examples: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Bridget Jones's Diary, Music and Lyrics, Sliding Doors, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Big Lebowski.
Tragedy[edit]
Definition: The protagonist is a hero with a major character flaw or great mistake which is ultimately their undoing. Their unfortunate end evokes pity at their folly and the fall of a fundamentally good character.
Examples: Anna Karenina, Bonnie and Clyde, Carmen, Citizen Kane, John Dillinger, Jules et Jim, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Madame Bovary, Oedipus Rex, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Romeo and Juliet.
Rebirth[edit]
What Is A Plot
Definition: An event forces the main character to change their ways and often become a better individual.
Examples: Pride and Prejudice, The Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast, The Snow Queen, A Christmas Carol, The Secret Garden, Peer Gynt, Groundhog Day.
The Rule of Three[edit]
'Again and again, things appear in threes . . .' There is rising tension and the third event becomes 'the final trigger for something important to happen'. We are accustomed to this pattern from childhood stories such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood. In adult stories, three can convey the gradual working out of a process that leads to transformation. This transformation can be downwards as well as upwards.Booker asserts that the Rule of Three is expressed in four ways:
- The simple, or cumulative three, for example, Cinderella's three visits to the ball.
- The ascending three, where each event is of more significance than the preceding, for example, the hero must win first bronze, then silver, then gold objects.
- The contrasting three, where only the third has positive value, for example, The Three Little Pigs, two of whose houses are blown down by the Big Bad Wolf.
- The final or dialectical form of three, where, as with Goldilocks and her bowls of porridge, the first is wrong in one way, the second in an opposite way, and the third is 'just right'. [3]
Precursors[edit]
- William Foster-Harris' The Basic Patterns of Plot sets out a theory of three basic patterns of plot.[4]
- Ronald B. Tobias set out a twenty-plot theory in his 20 Master Plots.[4]
- Georges Polti's The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.[4]
- Several of these plots can also be seen as reworkings of Joseph Campbell's work on the quest and return in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Reception[edit]
Scholars and journalists have had mixed responses to The Seven Basic Plots. Some have celebrated the book's audacity and breadth. The author and essayist Fay Weldon, for example, wrote the following (which is quoted on the front cover of the book): 'This is the most extraordinary, exhilarating book. It always seemed to me that 'the story' was God's way of giving meaning to crude creation. Booker now interprets the mind of God, and analyses not just the novel – which will never to me be quite the same again – but puts the narrative of contemporary human affairs into a new perspective. If it took its author a lifetime to write, one can only feel gratitude that he did it.'[5]Beryl Bainbridge, Richard Adams, Ronald Harwood, and John Bayley also spoke positively of the work, while philosopher Roger Scruton described it as a 'brilliant summary of story-telling'.[6]
Others have dismissed the book, criticizing especially Booker's normative conclusions. Novelist and literary critic Adam Mars-Jones, for instance, wrote, 'He sets up criteria for art, and ends up condemning Rigoletto, The Cherry Orchard, Wagner, Proust, Joyce, Kafka and Lawrence—the list goes on—while praising Crocodile Dundee, E.T. and Terminator 2'.[7] Similarly, Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times writes, 'Mr. Booker evaluates works of art on the basis of how closely they adhere to the archetypes he has so laboriously described; the ones that deviate from those classic patterns are dismissed as flawed or perverse – symptoms of what has gone wrong with modern art and the modern world.'[8]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
R Plots Examples
- ^'Terminator 2 good, The Odyssey bad'. The Guardian. 2004-11-21. Retrieved 2019-05-22.
- ^'the definition of comedy'. Dictionary.com.
- ^Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots, Continuum 2006, p 229-233
- ^ abc'The 'Basic' Plots in Literature'. Archived from the original on 2015-08-21. Retrieved 2013-09-11.
- ^'The Seven Basic Plots'. Bloomsbury. Retrieved 2013-03-19.
- ^Scruton, Roger (February 2005). 'Wagner: moralist or monster?'. The New Criterion. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
- ^Adam Mars-Jones 'Terminator 2 Good, The Odyssey Bad', The Observer, November 21, 2004, retrieved September 1, 2011.
- ^Kakutani, Michiko (2005-04-15). 'The Plot Thins, or Are No Stories New?'. The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-09-11.