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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37956
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37956
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

By and large, yes. thought it does depend on what you mean by story. Every story is unique. It is a particular set of words that tell a particular tale about particular characters, and it is the total immersive experience of the reading that make it great, not some particular twist of plot or eccentricity of character.

At the same time, there are only a few basic story shapes. Man vs man, man vs nature, boy meets girl, Pinocchio, maturation, the quest, crime and punishment, etc. We tell these same basic stories over and over again. People never get tired of them because they are somehow wired into our psyches. These basic stories seem to afirm basic thing we need to believe about the world in order to stay sane and happy.

These basic forms exist in endless variation, but they are easy to perceive in stories the world over. What really differentiates the great versions of these stories from the mediocre, therefore, is not the tale but the telling.

It is not about inventing a brand new story shape, therefore. It is about having a vision of life that can be expressed through a particular telling of one of the classic story shapes, the ones we want to hear over and over again. It is the quality of your vision and your ability to execute on that vision that will determine the success of your story.

But this is not quite to say that the writer does not need to focus on finding a great story idea. All stories adhere to one of the basic types, but to be successful, you have to enflesh one of those basic types with characters and incidents and language that will draw people in and enthrall them. You have to give particular life to the classic story shape and that most certainly requires a set of very specific story ideas that put very specific, consistent, and attractive flesh on the standard story bones.

Original score: 2