According to popular wisdom there are only seven basic story plots:

  1. Overcoming the monster
  2. Rags to riches
  3. The quest
  4. Voyage and return
  5. Comedy
  6. Tragedy
  7. Rebirth

I’m not sure I totally subscribe to this view – I mean, you can jam anything into a jar marked ‘generalisation’ if you push hard enough.

However, I do seem to see an awful lot of stories, whether on TV, in books or on film, that remind me of my WIP. Admittedly I am making this slightly ‘meta’ by referencing other works of fiction within my own books – but I’m wondering whether I am suffering from pregnant-woman syndrome* or if there really are only a small number of stories in the world.

In the WIP (Between) my characters are primarily ticking archetype number three I guess (as they travel North to find a mythical tribe) – as Charlie did in Few. However, there’s bits of one (the monster being the Cult of Ignorance), four (Stub and Nate are off to the Dangler Lands) and six (certainly there is more tragedy than comedy in this second book – see previous post mentioning Empire).

*You know – if you or your partner are pregnant the world suddenly seems full of other pregnant women. Or perhaps that was just me.