Happy Thursday, squiders! It’s time to be pedantic and weird, i.e., my favorite time.
So, what is a master plot? Also called a story or plot archetype, it’s the idea that all the stories ever conceived of, and all the ones yet to be conceived, fall into certain categories of stories.
How many categories? Well, there’s three main schools of thoughts, corresponding to three major books on the topic. According to Christopher Booker’s The 7 Basic Plots (2006) there are–you guessed it–seven plot archetypes. (Though really he lists 9, he just doesn’t approve of two of them.)
Ronald B. Tobias’s 1993 book, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them, lists twenty. (Fun fact: this was one of the very first writing books I ever read, back as a teenager.)
And, finally, we have The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations from 1895 (published in English in 1916) by Georges Polti.
Now, there’s a big difference between seven and thirty-six archetypes, I think we can all agree on that.
What the difference really comes down to is specificity. While not every one of each of the lists connects to items on the other lists, many are related. Now, I would argue that the lists with more options are actually better, because by the time you get down to seven archetypes, they’re pretty sweeping. From a writing standpoint–or a reading one–a little more specificity is probably preferred.
Here’s how the upcoming weeks are going to work. I will pick one of the seven (nine) more general archetypes, and then I’ll connect some of the 20/36 lists to those, and talk about characteristics and give examples.
For completeness, here is each list:
7 Archetypes:
- Overcoming the Monster
- Rags to Riches
- The Quest
- Voyage and Return
- Comedy
- Tragedy
- Rebirth
See what I mean about them being fairly sweeping? Tragedy, seriously.
And then the two other archetypes that he doesn’t like are:
8. Mystery
9. Rebellion Against ‘The One’
Moving on.
20 Archetypes:
- Quest
- Adventure
- Pursuit
- Rescue
- Escape
- Revenge
- The Riddle
- Rivalry
- Underdog
- Temptation
- Metamorphosis
- Transformation
- Maturation
- Love
- Forbidden Love
- Sacrifice
- Discovery
- Wretched Excess
- Ascension
- Descencion
Not going to lie, I like this list better. I feel like you can think of a story that fits each category just by looking at the name.
36 Archetypes:
- Supplication
- Deliverance
- Crime pursued by vengence
- Vengence taken for kin upon kin
- Pursuit
- Disaster
- Falling prey to cruelty/misfortune
- Revolt
- Daring enterprise
- Abduction
- The enigma
- Obtaining
- Enmity of kin
- Rivalry of kin
- Murderous adultery
- Madness
- Fatal imprudence
- Involuntary crimes of love
- Slaying of kin unrecognized
- Self-sacrifice for an ideal
- Self-sacrifice for kin
- All sacrificed for passion
- Necessity of sacrificing loved ones
- Rivalry of superior vs inferior
- Adultery
- Crimes of love
- Discovery of the dishonor of a loved one
- Obstacles to love
- An enemy loved
- Ambition
- Conflict with a god
- Mistaken jealousy
- Erroneous judgment
- Remorse
- Recovery of a lost one
- Loss of loved ones
I got tired just typing that out. I kind of feel like some of these can be combined. But that’s the thing about archetypes–they don’t seem to be as universal as they’re supposed to be. As with our look at character archetypes, no one agrees on how many there are, and what the delineations should be. And these three lists are just the major ones. There are other lists out there, with different numbers and titles, but we’re going to do the best with what we have.
See you next week, squiders!
