How many stories are there?

Brands tell stories. But how many different stories actually are there? Are there really only so many ways to construct a narrative? And if so, how many?

This is the question answered by Christopher Booker in his book ‘The Seven Basic Plots – Why We Tell Stories’. Booker’s theory is that all stories, whether it’s Cinderella or Lord of the Rings can essentially be boiled down to seven basic elements:

1. Overcoming the monster

2. Rags to Riches

3. The Quest

4. Voyage and Return

5. Comedy

6. Tragedy

7. Rebirth

Some stories are simple. 'The Queen's Knickers' for example (see left sidebar) is a story about a quest (with a sprinkling of comedy). But plots can overlap, says Booker, and more complex stories can often incorporate multiple elements. Lord of the Rings, for example, probably includes all seven.

For fans of the minimalist, some argue that all stories stem from a very few basic plots or that they all essentially stem from conflict. Foster-Harris (The Basic Patterns of Plot) posited three basic plots: ‘Happy ending’, ‘unhappy ending’ and what they called ‘The Literary plot’, one that hinges on fate rather than decision and may start with the critical event, and then unwind in an inevitable, often tragic way.

Seven is also a number that the Internet Public Library has come up with. Following the conflict theory, they are:

1. [wo]man vs. nature

2. [wo]man vs. man

3. [wo]man vs. the environment

4. [wo]man vs. machines/technology

5. [wo]man vs. the supernatural

6. [wo]man vs. self

7. [wo]man vs. god/religion

According to Ronald Tobias, 20  seems about right. (‘Twenty basic plots and how to build them’). In fairness, he doesn’t suggest that these are the only twenty, but his list is somewhat generic nonetheless: quest, adventure, pursuit, rescue, escape, revenge, riddle, rivalry, underdog, temptation, metamorphosis, transformation, maturation, love, forbidden love, sacrifice, discovery, wretched excess, ascension, and decision.

And there’s even one theory which has 36 as it’s number (George Polti, The Thrity Six Drammatic Situations). I'm not going to list all 36 here, but it seems inevitable that with so many potential story types, the degree of overlap perhaps lessens the meaning of differentiating them in the first place. An 'Ask Yahoo' question I saw touches on this subject:

'"Rocky" is a story of the "underdog," who goes through a "transformation" and falls in "love" while on a "quest." We're not sure, but we think "Dude, Where's My Car?" touches on at least 16.'

So are there really a limited number of stories? My preference is for the economy of Booker’s list, but I can't help feeling that this is trying to classify the unclassifiable. If all life can be captured in seven basic stories, where’s the magic in that?

Image courtesy

Comments

[Marcus]

Cool - you've done some nice rummaging around here!

Another fairly exhaustive narrative typology by a guy called Valdimir Propp has been quite a popular theory of choice, but ultimately they're all rooted in structuralist thinking - linear, fixed, identifiable etc. etc.

In my opinion meaning is too complex and unstable for this kind of shoe-horning treatment, but at least it gives us some kind of representation/classification system to go by I suppose - which can be useful for marketing purposes.

That said, with a lot of the clever stuff we're now seeing the narrative sequence splintering - think of films like Crash for example. So, what's quite interesting is if you subvert, combine or disorder the existing structuralist narratives to reach new creative outcomes. Plus it's nice to remain open ways to ways that one can weave different layers of narrative meaning together. Ads could make so much more use of this...

[neilperkin]

Thanks Marcus. I think the theories above (particularly Booker's) do allow for a degree of what you call narrative sequence splintering but yes, meaning is too complex and yes, agree it's definitely good to be open to new combinations of narrative meaning.

[Vicky - Anticelebrity]

Brilliant article, links in perfectly with some thoughts I was having about pop culture.
Thank you!

[E Reed]

im a school student doing a persuasive oral, arguing that 'there are no original stories left to tell.
this article helps alot, but i was wondering if anyone could narrow it down a bit more, translate it to something more specific.

[Kaa]

A friend of mine and I got into a conversation about how many stories there actually are (they're remaking Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which is itself a remake of something, etc....)

Found this post, which I now have bookmarked for future reference. Thanks for bringing all the various parts together. :)

[Ryan Bennaton]

I call bull. One of those is a genre!

[gray man]

im a school student doing a persuasive oral, arguing that 'there are no original stories left to tell.
this article helps alot, but i was wondering if anyone could narrow it down a bit more, translate it to something more specific.

do your own work