Do We Hear More Than One?

Ronald Tobias, whom we'll revisit in a minute in greater detail, has argued that all plots can be reduced to two major categories, which he calls "plots of the body" and "plots of the mind."²

The same spirit of pigeonholing prompted William Foster-Harris to reduce his list of plots to three: happy ending, unhappy ending, and the "literary" plot.³

Jessamyn West, an Internet Public Library volunteer librarian, supplies us with a somewhat more useful list of seven basic plots or stories:[wo]man versus nature, [wo]man versus man, [wo]man versus the environment, [wo]man versus machines/technology, [wo]man versus the supernatural, [wo]man versus self, and [wo]man versus god/religion.⁴

Christopher Booker is another adherent of the seven-plot school. His candidates are "Overcoming the Monster," in which a hero struggles with the personification of evil, escapes death, and saves his or her community or the world from evil; "Rags to Riches," in which a poor character rises to great wealth or power; "The Quest," in which a hero starts out in search of a prize, enjoying fabulous adventures along the way; "Voyage and Return," in which our hero leaves his or her normal life, enters an alien realm, and returns safely home; "Comedy"; "Tragedy"; and "Rebirth." Oddly, after compiling his list of seven plots, Booker adds two more—"Rebellion" and "Mystery"—making his "list of seven" actually a list of nine.⁵