“There’s no plot. It just goes on like that for an hour.” – Videodrome
Why don’t they use thyme as medicine? I hear I heals all wounds.
Last week’s post was about life as a three-act play. It may or may not work, and, like all metaphors, it’s flawed and suspect. Perhaps I should used something better, like a metaphive?
During the post, I also mentioned that a dude named Christopher Booker had written a book called The Seven Basic Plots. In it, he broke down most everything we watch into, well, seven basic plots. I guess he completely blew the suspense with the title. These plots all follow the same three acts discussed last week, though this week I’m using “hero” more as a descriptor than “protagonist”.
But what are the plots?
Overcoming The Monster: Destroying a great evil that threatens good. Examples: my divorce attorney from my first marriage, Star Wars®.
Rags to Riches: Start out poor and drunk, get money, lose money, get more money plus the girl and a private helicopter. Examples: Sonny Bono, Brewster’s Millions.
The Quest: The search for and attainment of a thing or place after being found worthy. Examples: losing my virginity, The Lord of the Rings.
What kind of magic to GloboLeft wizards use? Soycery.
Voyage and Return: A trip to an unfamiliar place, a learning experience, and a return as a changed hero. Examples: The Mrs. and I moving to Alaska and back, The Hobbit.
Rebirth: External events happen, and force the hero to change for the better. Examples: I was adopted. Duh. Groundhog Day.
Comedy: External things keep happening and pile up to the point that they get more and more confusing, but then sort themselves out in the end. Examples: My first marriage, any episode of Frasier.
Tragedy: Bad things happen to good people because they let temptation spoil their virtue. Examples: Me giving up on a drug-addicted friend, Macbeth.
Yup. Seven plots.
Whether or not you agree with them, all of them (with one exception that we’ll talk about in a bit) all have the same basic idea: the hero goes out, does stuff, and grows. That personal growth is what leads to ultimate victory in the climax of the story. Sure, luck can play a part of the victory, but to have a really emotionally satisfactory end, the victory comes because the character has faced his past mistakes, worked, grown, and is now a better man.
Our new puppy can’t write a decent plot. The only thing he can get out is ruff drafts.
This is a wonderful story and sings to our hearts: who of us hasn’t lost? Who of us hasn’t worked hard to get better, and then won in the end, even if it was just a small victory?
It is the personification of a story of virtue that we want to change to improve, to work to a higher goal, to pay the price in effort, and to win. Who wouldn’t want their children to live that life?
An aside: one of the (many) reasons modern movies suck is because, especially with victim-class characters and girl-bosses, they can never be shown in any sort of negative light. Looking at the stupid movie that made me hate Star Wars™, The Girlboss Awakens©, the main character starts off as invincible, invulnerable, and never has to grow. Why should she? From the first moment she can pilot the Millenium Falcon© better than Han Solo®, fight better with a lightsaber™ than a man who has spent his entire life in perfecting that skill, and is way better at The Force© after hearing about it for the first time.
No struggle. No growth – how could she need it? She was born the BeSTeSt EvAR hero because she’s a girl. This is of course, even though the character was written by people who would tell you that gender doesn’t exist and that you’re a bigot for not liking girls even though they don’t exist either. Bigot.
Her next movie? Fifty Shades of Rey.
It’s also the deprivation of that challenge that’s ruining our kids. I had a conversation with a Zoomer the other day, and he noted that, yeah, they were a generation that lived on phones, didn’t have bullying, and were afraid of real challenges because they never had to face them. Why are Zoomers on anxiety meds? Because their parents protected them from the dragons and never let their kids work themselves out of a hole that they’d dug for themselves.
We need to let kids do heroic things, dammit!
Okay, I’ll step back away from that ledge, and end this aside.
Fun fact: most coyotes, despite years of effort to teach them, cannot do simple calculus.
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, plots. There’s one different plot.
Tragedy. This plot shows how temptation lures in the innocent hero, corrupts him, and then causes his ultimate destruction.
This is also a story we want our children to know. Regardless of intent, regardless of skill, there is a danger in allowing temptation to overcome virtue, allowing negative emotions to rule our lives.
Here’s a real-world example: the firefighter who was murdered (Corey Comperatore, PBUH) at the Trump rally. A tragedy? Do you think he’d look back at his life and call it tragic? A hero who died saving his family, who fathered children who love him and who was married to a wife who mourns him?
It’s not tragic. It’s heroic. There was no vanity, no anger, no petty emotion that led to his downfall. He didn’t have a downfall. He died a hero’s death. Tragic? Absolutely. The plot of a tragedy? No.
And, in this case, we find seeds of the important: the plot of our lives, as long as we breathe, as long as we can change, isn’t set. The ultimate destiny of whether we live as the hero on a quest or a villain who lived the plot of a tragedy rests with us.
Me? I’m trying, very hard, to be a hero. I can look back on my life and see places where I could have been more heroic, but also places where I’m damn proud of my actions and would do them again, no matter the outcome. I can also see places where my weaknesses made me the villain in a tragedy or two.
But, as long as I’m breathing, I’m still attempting to be the hero.
You can, too.
They’ve added some since I was in school. I learned that there were three basic tropes: man vs man, man vs nature, and man vs self.
you missed the important one man vs God
That is either a Tragedy (God) or monster-slaying (a god or gods)
The one missed was the redemption and sacrifice story. The story of the Deeper Magic before the Dawn of Time.
Most heroic of all.
Often catches up all the other stories in its wake. See The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe. Or, that other Story.
Ditto. Those are the ones I grew up with. But, hey, people gotta write books. And blogs 🙂
My plot in life is of a person perpetually perplexed about stupid people and how to control my anger. Maybe that fits the seven basic plots, or not.
It’s a comedy. All good 🙂
There may be only seven plots, but those stories are told using a seemingly endless number of tropes.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/index_report.php?filter=AtoZ&findfor=
Totally agree about the growing misuse of the concept of tragedy in our world today.
True tragedy must involve a dark fate for the central character DUE TO THEIR OWN SHORTCOMINGS. Type “tragedy” into Google and hit the “News” link and you’ll find plenty of sad stories where innocent bystanders THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN have died. These are not tragedies as they are often claimed to be.
It works the other way around, too. These days here there are many deliberate attempt to equate “true tragedy” with “victimhood” to trigger guilt among innocent bystanders so they will “do something”. Like fund anal drug injection kits with taxpayer money.
https://www.themainewire.com/2024/06/maine-is-handing-out-free-boofing-kits-to-help-fentanyl-addicts-squirt-drugs-up-their-butts/
> free boofing kits
It’s like the dance “limbo”. Liberals can’t go so low that conservatives won’t still obey them. Who did the worse thing? Liberals who claim not to know better, or Conservatives who do?
Telling people to get on a boxcar is Liberal. Getting on a boxcar is Conservative. Liberals wouldn’t have any fun if there were no Conservatives around to degrade themselves on command. Conservatives are like first-year British boarding school boys who warm the toilet seats up for the upperclassmen.
Hey, boofers gonna boof.
You misspelled autobiography. 😉
Thank you! Fixed.
My life plot would have an “Ex” axis and a “Why?” axis
Only have one Ex, and I know Why.
A great tragedy causes grown men to well up with tears. You have succeeded.
Thank you.
That is the berries. Thank you Mr Wilder.
Thank you. That’s what keeps me writing.
Corey Comperatore (RIP) represents everything the Left hates: A masculine man, who served his community and is admired and loved by his family. A traditional nuclear family. The Left runs on hatred (Even Stalin admitted it is the primary fuel of the Left). If a tranny or horror show like Megan Rapinoe would have been killed, the Left would be freaking … but since Comperatore represents everything they’re NOT, they find it “funny”.
I don’t know how we can ever close this political divide. It’s a divide between hate-filled, control-freak psychos and people who just want to be left alone. I’m hoping that the country will break up before a shooting war starts. I’ve already fought in too many wars – don’t need another one here at home.
It is the victim versus the non-victim. They hate that.
You can mix the plots as well. I would say this story, “Last Chance Cafe” has elements of “destroying the monster” and “rebirth”, though I was not consciously thinking of either when I wrote it.
https://sigmadog.com/2024/07/19/last-chance-cafe/
Excellent story. Excellent.
Also, modern story-telling can’t do tragedy. See, for instance, Denethor from the Lord of the Rings. In the books, he’s a great man who fought hard but was broken by something he could not face down and lost hope. In the movies, he’s just kind of a jerkass and that’s almost all there is to him.
Denethor was one of my true disappointments in the movie. They made him so much less than he actually was.
The movies did a lot well. In terms of characters, though, the three biggest failures were Denethor, the Ents, and Faramir.
Good call.
And not including Tom Bombadil.
Exactly. Nuance is lost on that character, which is a shame.
the final plot is not a plot it’s where one spends eternity IMHO hero denotes trying to bring all you can with you
Yup, and it’s a choice.
I have no idea which plot my life is in, John. Often times it seems feels like “Dumpster Fire On A River”, which seems to be outside the seven.
So, a comedy like mine?