As my honors section of 8th-grade English prepares for the beginning of National Novel Writing Month in November, some have been fretting over what their stories will contain. How will they come up with a good idea? Will it be original?
The answer to the second question is simple: it won’t. There are really only seven original plots ever conceived. Every story you’ve ever read or seen performed fits into one of these categories. Let’s take a look; I bet you’ll figure out examples of each pretty quickly.
The first type of story is Overcoming the Monster. This can be very obvious if you have a story with literal monsters such as Dracula or Bigfoot. But it can also involve more metaphorical monsters such as drug addiction or severe illness. You’ll see plenty of both on shelves and screens these days. The Avengers overcame Thanos in the (current) best movie of the year. That’s a very literal example. A student of mine just finished a book called Bottled Up that dealt with alcoholism and how that affected a family. That was a different type of monster to overcome.
The second archetype for stories is Rags to Riches. The main character starts out with close to nothing and finds a way to success through various means, mostly nose-to-the-grindstone determination. There is usually some sort of intervention from a benevolent source as well; just think of any fairy tale. Cinderella is certainly a prime example of this. Other times, you might see a sports team rise from the bottom of the league to a championship. My favorite example of this is the movie Hoosiers, probably my favorite sports movie of all time, with the basketball team from little Hickory, Indiana, winning the state title.
The third type of story is The Quest. A hero must search for something priceless. There are usually copious obstacles to overcome and, quite often, sidekicks to help with the journey and also to provide some humor. If you want to go classic stories with this, reading The Odyssey by Homer is a pure example of a quest, one lasting 10 years for Odysseus in trying to find his way home. No, they didn’t have GPS in ancient Greek times!
A fourth example of a story is called Journey and Return. This differs from a quest because the protagonist is usually put into a situation without any warning and without much knowledge of where he or she has ended up. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is an example, as is the Tom Hanks movie Castaway. Any time you end up somewhere unfamiliar and have to scratch your way back to what you know as civilization, you fall into this category.
The fifth type of story is called a Comedy. If you’ve studied Shakespeare, you know this isn’t like a sit-com at all; not many laughs in a comedy. Instead, it has some major confusion and misunderstanding that has to be resolved. By the end, the main characters have then fallen in love. Even if a sit-com has lots of laughs, many of them use the device of a misunderstanding to get those laughs. However, those shows don’t usually end with the two main characters in love, at least until the end of the series.
The sixth archetype for stories is also known mainly through Shakespeare, a Tragedy. This is where characters think they can accomplish more than is possible and have a big ego about it, thus resulting in their ultimate downfall. There are no happy endings in tragedies. This is where Romeo and Juliet belongs, along with my favorite of the Bard’s writing, Hamlet.
The seventh and final kind of story is Rebirth. This type of story has something bad that looks like it’s ready to doom the world/main character until a series of events changes things around at the last minute and brings back a happier world/main character. The best example of this is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge appears destined to be miserly and spiteful until his dying day until three spirits change his worldview. These stories seem to involve miracles more often than not.
I’m sure you can come up with many other examples of each of these kinds of stories. We see stories all around us, and maybe even some of our personal stories fit into these descriptions.
With so many reboots of movies and television shows, it seems like originality has gone out the window. Even a book I’ve been reading, This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, evokes the legendary classic Huckleberry Finn. It has young people escaping down a river, being captured at times, and meeting up with scoundrels who use people’s innocence and trusting natures to gain money, all like in the Mark Twain novel. Krueger’s book is well written and has interesting characters and settings, but it’s a clear homage to previous works.
It seems very likely that when my 24 students have finished their 10,000-or-more-word stories by November 30, I might see all seven of these types of stories. I won’t mind that the kids don’t have a truly “original” story. I’m betting they’ll produce some amazing writing and create situations that, while they fit an archetype, are still stories that are original in settings and situations. I can’t wait to start reading them, but first it’s time to get writing!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is indefeasible, which means not subject to being revised or defeated, as in, “Though the story’s antagonist seemed indefeasible, the hero found a way to persevere and win the day.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!