What new plots are available to writers?

The only reason we say there are a small number of plots one can list is because they're defined in an extremely vague way. There's still plenty of room for originality; I'll let you decide whether it constitutes "hope". Here's the best analogy I've heard:

The basic plot is like a mannequin. You're pretty limited in the number of shapes you can come up with -- curvy or straight, thin or fat. The rest of the movie -- the subplots, the personalities, the atmosphere, the pace, the number of explosions you add -- that's like the costume you put on the mannequin. Someone pointing out that a plot is "basically the same" is pointing out that two designers are using the same fat mannequin. One could be wearing a bloodied Viking costume and one could be wearing a flowery muumuu, but they're both size 40, so they're "basically the same."

So what are the details of this costume? TV Tropes lists tens of thousands of tropes, as well as many ways to use them. When you crunch the numbers, stories can be as unique as human genomes.

The real danger isn't unoriginality; it's trying to be original with the most obvious deviation possible from the mainstream, because every budding writer is trying that. That's as liable to make your work like others' as any follow-the-leader mentality.

posted over 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

J.G.‭

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There's really only one plot: Somebody has a problem, and must deal with it.

If that isn't true, there isn't really a story, just some descriptions of things.

You might subdivide that into [happy, mixed, sad] endings. You might subdivide by the problem, [political, romantic, business, science, ...]. You might subdivide by the protagonist, or antagonist: Heck the antagonist can be "space" as in "Gravity", or a hurricane or flood or meteor or forest fire. e.g. "The Perfect Storm" has a nature-antagonist. The antagonist can be oneself, i.e. emotional, a man fighting addiction for example: Nobody is striving to prevent him, they don't care, only he cares and he can't effing BREAK IT.

All the "X plots" you see are categorizing stories by types of problems you see, and their similarities in how successful books/films/plays focused on that kind of problem structured the story. Those structures can be surprisingly common: In a love story, a simple progression from meeting to happy marriage just doesn't sell. It is boring if the MC solves their problem too easily.

More generally you can have a story about somebody dealing with a problem, but if it lacks conflict, it doesn't sell, because it is boring. There must be resistance to be a story people want to read.

Ignore all the plots, just pick your problem, and try to put conflict on every page, be it small or large, with another person or with the environment or within the character. Don't make it easy. Keep it plausible. Keep an ending in mind at all times (even if in the course of writing you decide to change it). Chances are if you write a good story, it will (from 10,000 feet, as they say) bear some similarity to other stories. Don't worry about it, your problem is unique because (unless you plagiarize) your characters are new and the specifics of what happens to them are new, because you have an imagination that can write about something other than what you have already read/seen.

Just write a story, let other people categorize it.

posted over 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Amadeus‭

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