The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker (2005).
Several years ago, this book was recommended to me by one of my pastors because he claimed it demonstrated how all stories have their basis in the Bible. It took me several years to actually get around to reading it. But after it had sat and collected dust on my bookshelf for a few years I finally accepted the challenge (it is a 500+ page book) and spent several weeks working my way through it at about a chapter a day.
The premise of the book is simple. Booker sets out to explain the seven basic plots that underlie all the stories ever written. They are in their most basic archetypal forms:
Overcoming the Monster – the hero* has the task of overcoming a monster threatening the land in a fight to the death.
* By this I mean the lead character in the story, regardless of whether they are male or female. Please don’t take the use of masculine language to mean I am excluding all female leads.
Rags to Riches – tells of the hero’s rise from a lowly position to a high one.
The Quest – the hero and a band of companions go on a quest to achieve a particular task and face many perils and obstacles along the way.
Voyage and Return – the hero goes on a journey into a world very different from his normal life, where his experiences can either change him or not when he returns to his normal life.
Comedy – this is a story where the baddies undergo a change of heart, where hidden identities are revealed, family divisions repaired and couples fall in love and overcome the obstacles to their union. The story centers on all the characters becoming in harmony with each other.
Tragedy – the choices of the hero begin a downward spiral of events, which leads to them being isolated from all around them and ultimately leads to their premature or violent death.
Rebirth – the hero is trapped in a state of living death and has to be saved from it by their love interest.
Each plot is usually more complicated than this and any story can have elements of several of these plots within it and some even have all seven. Examining each through numerous examples of stories that follow a particular plot allows Booker to delve deep into story telling to understand why we tell stories. He examines the set of features and characters that allow each plot to develop while still allowing the story to take its own path and not just be a copy of the plot archetype. Variations of these features are common in each plot, giving endless variation in storytelling. He also examines how stories have changed in the last 200 years as sex and violence have become more common and more extreme in both books and movies.
The major flaw of this book is that it can be rather repetitive. Booker uses numerous stories to illustrate each plot and even each point he is trying to make within each plot. However, if you are like me and like reading lots of stories, then this is not too much of a problem. The detailing of so many plots can ruin several of the stories if you were planning on reading then. I was reading War and Peace at the same time, and found out numerous important plot points before I reached them in the book itself which did encourage me to read it faster.
The ultimate question Booker is trying to answer is “Why do we tell stories?” This is the most fascinating part of the book. Stories are the medium through which we are taught the basics about life, about its perils and challenges, the struggle between good and evil, and exemplars of ideal human behaviour resulting in living happily ever after (although some stories, such as tragedies, achieve this by showing the exact opposite). Stories are not an escape from the real world. They inspire the story of our own life, shaping how we live and interact with others, as well as who we look up to and how we choose to spend our time and money. In the end, we have seven basic plots for a reason. These are the types of stories which both entertain us and teach us. They mirror what we do and don’t want in life and how we would like life to be. This is also why stories that stray too far from these archetypes seem strange and uninteresting a lot of the time.
One of the things Booker didn’t set out to do was show that all stories are based on those in the Bible. Each type of plot did have biblical stories that fell within its parameters but the origin of each plot archetype is rather obscure.
I found that The Seven Basis Plots really expanded my understanding of stories without ruining all the books I read and films I watch. More than anything it made me aware of the power that these stories have over how we live, and that they should not simply be thought of as a place to escape to. Despite its length and repetition, I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the stories in the world around them.
