What plot structure schema will you use?

One way to bring familiarity and novelty to your stories is to strategically use or switch up the basic plot structure you’re using. Using a plot structure that is familiar makes the information you’re providing comfortable, but using an unexpected plot for that context makes the story interesting. Christopher Booker identified seven basic plots that many stories follow:

• Overcoming the Monster, in which a group of people work together to overcome a threat to their community or land. We see this one a lot in anti-refugee narratives.
• Rags to Riches (or riches to rags), in which someone who has nothing gains a fortune, loses it, and then regains it once more. These stories are also told in the reverse, and are often used by the humanitarian sector.
• The Quest, in which a group of people seek an object or an event.
• Voyage and Return, in which a character travels to a distant land and is returned transformed.
• Comedy, in which a series of ridiculous and confusing events results in a happy ending.
• Tragedy, in which an otherwise good character has a fatal flaw, which results in their demise or that of others.
• Rebirth, in which a character we dislike experiences something transformative.

We’ve observed that often, particular sectors rely on a single plot structure almost exclusively. For example, academic institutions rely on quest narratives, particularly in their storytelling about scientific inquiry. In the humanitarian sector, we hear a lot of rags-to-riches and riches-to-rags stories about the people we help or a quest or overcoming the monster story about experiences of our colleagues in the field.

PREV Who—or what—is the antagonist?

NEXT Is this different from the plots the stories the ILO usually follow?