The BS of Seven Basic Plots
It is a maxim of the writing world these days; there are only seven stories the world over, forever and ever amen. Therefore anything you write will in essence be a rehash of one of these seven stories. Sorry, no hope to be original. Your only chance is to rehash better than others have rehashed.
Unless of course it is 12 basic plots. But still, that’s it. You have nothing new to say. Okay, maybe it is 36 basic plots…
Like all bullshit, this “Only X Number of Original Plots” platitude shifts and slips around depending on who is saying it. Or stepping in it as the case may be.
There are even “writers”, who fancy themselves some kind of divinely appointed guardians of this tired trope. Pick any plot in the universe and before you can finish your sentence they will jump in with something like,
“No, but the protagonist does do this and this and this, and you have to consider the setting to be thus and so. Ergo, it would qualify as plot number four in the end.”
And that sort of conversation qualifies as a waste of time.
Or, as I said at the start, it qualifies as bullshit. Not seven basic types of bullshit, but one unified concept of uselessness. Especially to writers.
For reasons I have yet to understand, many worship at the shoddy altar of this obtuse literary pronouncement, and it’s time people free their creativity from the bondage of same.
Now I realize this claim is sometimes used with the intent to actually inspire creativity. As a sort of release from the responsibility of creating something that is 100% new in all aspects. It is offered as a sedative to those new writers, (or experienced ones) who are having a breakdown trying to think of something “new”.
“Relax. Don’t pressure yourself to be so original. Every story has already been written. Just write your version in a memorable way that people will want to read and buy.”
Such people get half-credit for at least trying to free the minds of writers. Yet it still puts an unnecessary clamp on the imagination.
Depending on which source you use, one of these almighty seven basic story archetypes is “Man vs. Man.” Let’s stop and think about just how broad that is.
Someone vs. Someone Else. There are what, thousands upon thousands of stories out there with this description? Put some mental effort into it and it becomes clear that this label is the only thing they truly have in common, yet they are considered the “same story with different names.” Good Night and Good Luck and V for Vendetta are basically the same old story with the names and setting changed.
If you want to zoom out so far as to not even be constructive, I suppose they are the same story. In both, at one point a human being stands in opposition to another human being. In the end, one of them wins, and one of them does not. Call the copyright police.
Why stop there, though? Let’s zoom out even further and be even more obtuse about this. I am going to declare that only two stories have ever been told in history. Are you ready? Here they are:
1) Somebody gets something that they want.
2) Somebody does not get something that they want.
Could not Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man. vs God, and all of the other cogs in this old wheel of seven original plots fall into both of those? Hell, you could probably combine even those two and just say “characters do stuff“, is the one and only plot of any story ever told, or any story yet to be told.
All stories have similar components, just as the lives of all humans have similar components. Everyone you meet or will ever meet will have been born the same way, and will some day die. In between they will need food, water, and shelter. Does this mean in the end you have really only ever met one person? Introvert that I am even I am not willing to declare every single person no more than a different size of the same style shoe. And I know you are not wiling to do so either. That is because you have sense, and you can apply that sense just as easily to the originality of stories you read and stories you write.
Sure, people rip off other stories all of the time, and it sucks. Especially when it is only being done for money. But let that be what it is-a lack of originality. Let originality, your originality be what it is as well. Though they of course will share some parts with the stories of fellow human beings living in this world, the tales you tell are your own if you want them to be. They are not merely a sub-sub-sub-genre of this nebulous seven plots classification system posted in the heavens. Don’t let snobby literary parlor games tell you otherwise.
Of course stories often share elements with other stories. They share elements with being human. We recognize ourselves in our stories. If we didn’t, there’d be no stories to begin with.
The Real Reason I Write.
I would provide the link if I could remember it, but I didn’t bookmark it at the time. However I can tell you it was an interview with a highly successful (financially) author of best selling novels. Suspense is their genre, I believe. And one quotation from this author had me a bit annoyed. Since I forgot the link like a fool, I will have to paraphrase what they said. It was something like this:
“The reason I write novels is simple; I can not stop writing. I live and breath the act of creating these stories for myself, always have. And for me to stop writing them would be to stop breathing.”
I took to Twitter to announce my skepticism about such a statement.
If such a novelist were doing it strictly because they loved to write things, why would they go through the endless, exhausting, and often demoralizing gauntlet of the traditional large publishing house? The path of least resistance would be to keep that novel in a drawer to share with a few close friends, skipping all of that New York City nightmare.
Don’t get me wrong. There are legitimate reasons for heaving one’s self into that nightmare. Fame. Bragging rights. A sense of approval from the supposed literary gatekeepers. Could be a “bucket list” item. The previously mentioned desire to make money. Some may even do so in hopes of their story reaching a wider audience, and hence touching more people. (Though by the time a big house is done with it, it probably will no longer be the author’s story, and even then there is little chance the house will help it reach people, but that’s another post.)
I’d accept all of those reasons, alone or in combination. They are not all my reasons, but they would be legitimate, if claimed by an author.
Yet the one reason I just cannot accept from someone that is firmly ensconced in commercial fiction success is “oh, I just love writing, and I can’t stop. i do it for me.”
Sure. So you won’t mind providing every novel you write for the rest of your life, free of charge? Or back during your debut novel, you would have been just as willing to tackle all of those obstacles if you were guaranteed zero money for your effort, and that at most 100 people in the world would ever read it?
I’m not suggesting wealthy and famous authors don’t take pride in their writing. There are times when they may indeed spend hours a day for weeks at a time writing a novel, epic poem, or screenplay purely for their own enjoyment without the desire to sell it to anyone. Nonetheless, I have to wonder.
In my writing group there is a woman who writes literary fiction. Based on the few samples of her work I have read so far, she has a talent for doing so. I enjoy her pieces, despite not being fond of literary fiction most of the time. This woman has expressed she has no interest in being published. She writes simply to get the stories out of her mind, and to see if other people in the group, and friends of hers get something from them.
I know another writer who recently decided, after years of rejection letters, to skip the idea of having someone in New York City who doesn’t know her declare her work “good enough” for consumption, and is instead self-publishing. She has been writing this fiction for years, and editing it as well. She believes that what she has written has achieved her vision for it as best as possible, and is ready for others to take part in the experience of reading her work. (And perhaps make some money on it on the side. She has worked in marketing after all.)
Two things were true in both of the above cases. The first is that neither writer at this time feels motivated to crawl through the desert of traditional publishing. They have maintained control over what their fiction is to them, and are proud to do so. The second thing they have in common is that neither one of them, to the best of my memory, has ever claimed that they write 100% for themselves simply because they “need” to. I won’t put words in their mouth of course, and it is possible both of them do feel this way. Yet in both cases, something other than writing in isolation is taking place by virtue of the fact they have allowed someone else to read their work.
A freelance-writing friend of mine put it well when I sparked this conversation on Twitter. She said that despite the fact she loves language, and creating good sentences and pieces, writing into a vacuum was not enough for her. In other words, she does want people to consume her product. If she didn’t make her living writing, she would still write, but she confessed she would not be able to write as much.
However the problem I have with the “I write because I need to” approach is not that I feel making money is the only legitimate reason to write. I have already named several other reasons in this post. No, what bothers me about financially successful authors that claim this motivation is that it rings of false nobility. As though writing for any other reason but love were not pure. As though such people are not in fact taking their checks to the bank like everyone else is.
Twitter friends pointed out that I shouldn’t expect people to avoid making a living doing something they love. I should not, and I do not. But if one is in fact making that living soley because of what they write, they are not doing it because they love it. They just happen to be lucky enough to love some aspects of their job, I’d say.
If you are one of those who believes that in order to be a successful writer, one must be compelled in every waking moment to sit at a keyboard and write without break for hours a day, and indeed needs family to drag them from the keyboard in order to eat and shower, than say hello to a failure. If you think that they only way to “make it” as a writer is to always be satisfied to write things even if we were to be promised they would never be read by anyone anywhere, say hello to someone who is never going to make it, because neither of those things is true for me.
The fact is, I want people to read my stuff. I want these blog posts to cause readers to think in a new way, or to just reaffirm to like-minded people that they are not alone in how they think. I want to give people ideas with these posts, and inspire them somehow. I want them to share that with others. If I wrote them only because I was in love with the idea of writing them, I’d put them in a private Word file, and read them to myself every night. Better yet, I’d save the energy, and just think them to myself.
I write my fiction in hopes of making readers feel the same way as the story unfolds for them, as I felt when it unfolded to me. I want lots of people to think that the characters, settings and events I have had a hand in creating are neat. Memorable. Cool. Touching. Funny. I want readers to feel different somehow after they read my fiction than they did before. If I didn’t feel that way, I would have stopped at the first draft of my novel, printed it off and stuck it in my closest, unedited, where I could leaf through it alone any time I wanted. Things we write just for ourselves need no second draft. Or third. Or tenth.
Part of it is also that I feel my writing is the only way by which to prove to certain elements my intelligence, my worth to society, and my value as a human being. Right or wrong, that is another reason I write. (And it has worked sometimes.)
Some of my writing I do simply because I make money doing it. I take pride in its quality, and I sometimes enjoy the subject matter of pieces I get paid to write. But I do get paid, and there are many things I wouldn’t be writing if not for the fact I got money for them.
The truth for me is, writing is not my breath, and my food. It would be easier to not write something than it is to write it. Writing can be a tedious, exhausting, soul-sucking labor. At times writing can also be an exhilarating, invigorating, life-affirming labor. But in both cases writing is a labor. Even if you are good at it. Especially if you are good at it. And because it is a labor, I’d do less of it if I were rich tomorrow. Certainly less of the tedious, exhausting kind, and more of the life-affirming kind. The kind that may not be marketable, but the kind I nonetheless feel compelled to write.
Even then, I wouldn’t sit back as a rich guy and just write all day if an angel whispered in my ear and assured me it would never be read by anyone. Though if the same angel whispered in my ear today, as a writer without money, and promised me that millions would want to read my next novel, so long as I made no money from it, there is a chance I’d still write. Hell, I probably would.
In a way I guess I do write because I need to. But because I need to make a difference. Have an impact. Bring more light into the world. Deepen the human experience, even if it is only for the few thousands people that read my stuff. Yet it is not because I get euphoric at the mere notion of watching myself string sentences together to make a solid piece. (Even though I am damn good at doing so.)
Why do you write?
They Chose Stories.
One of the attendees of the two-hour theatre workshop I presented on Friday suggested I name the evening, “Story Hour with Unglebower.” While I was not there merely to tell stories, the jocular comment nonetheless was appropriate to some degree, as I did share many stories both from my own experience and that of my theatre friends. It was my weapon of choice in my mission to impart my knowledge to those in attendance.
I was given free reign by my friend, the director of this theatre lab, to choose whatever subject matter I wanted for this workshop. I chose to cover how to correct mistakes one makes on stage during live performances. I shared a collection of true stories about mistakes I have made, those by others I corrected (or tried to) , and those mistakes that I helplessly witnessed as an actor in front of an audience over the years.
Not wanting to bore the audience, however, I designed my presentation in such a way that I would share advice, supported by stories from my past, for about half of my allotted time. For the second half, I created an activity.
When the time came I gave them the choice: do the activity, or listen to more of my stories.
They chose stories. Both hearing mine, and sharing some of their own.
I should not have been surprised by this selection by acclimation to continue with story telling. I take pride in my talent of telling stories in various mediums as it is what I do, and I have spent much of my adult life perfecting and improving ways to do it. (Written word, spoken word, acting.) And actors do love to travel down memory lane, (or perhaps down the theatrical via dolorosa) with a fellow actor who is presenting war stories from their past.
Yet I won’t take all of the credit for the group’s desire to hear more stories. Nor will I allow my material, culled from years as an actor to take all of the credit. (Though in all honesty some of the material is so golden I think anyone could tell these tales and have the attention of theatre and non-theatre folk alike.)
No, I give most of the credit to something I have addressed many times in my life and writings. Something around which not only this blog but my freelance writing business is built: stories matter.
Indeed they do. And not just in a theatre workshop, but everywhere.
There are of course terrible, boring stories out in the world. (I am relieved mine were not seen as such on Friday.) Yet even when we encounter a bad story, our first response is often to wish it had been a better story. This as opposed to wishing that no story at all had been told.
When in doubt, tell a story. Even if you tell a lame one, you are probably half a step ahead of someone who tries to convince, educate or relate to others without having a story to share. I came to an audience that contained a few people that are much younger than I am used to dealing with. That to me was a bit unnerving.
Yet I was determined to find some of my more memorable, or at least funnier theatre stories, and tell them with the conviction of someone who not only lived through them, but wanted to prevent others from having to experience similar circumstances. And it would appear that I succeeded.
We usually do succeed when we tell a memorable story, though. That is because the mere act of doing so is a success in its own right. It allows us to tap into some of the deepest wiring of the human brain, and it is the first doorway into the human spirit. We may not make the sale, get the bill passed or change the opinion, but we will have taken part in an art form so ancient that we might as well say it is concurrent with the history of the human being; we are telling stories.
Like many people, I don’t always assess my own talent accurately. I see adequate when others see impressive. I feel a sense of missing a mark when others see a bull’s eye. And even when I can see that I have worked hard and produced a great result, I can’t always explain the exact nature of my talent, or “how I do it.” Like with most talents there is an element of mystery to them, even to the practitioner. That is probably why beyond a certain point many refer to talents as gifts.
I don’t know if I am gifted. Sometimes I don’t even know if I am “talented”. But I know that in many areas I do happen to be equipped with many stories that I am eager to tell. And if by so doing I more often than not reach others the way I seemed to have reached the theatre workshop on Friday, what I have done with my life will be confirmed again and again. As it has been throughout the years.
I have stories to tell. Do you?
My Certain Shyness.
People who have known me a while but don’t know me deeply are often surprised if not shocked when they find out that I don’t mind public speaking, or performing on stage in most cases. They see the quiet, supposedly aloof guy who doesn’t like to engage people at parties, nor shove his business card in everyone’s face, and they assume, “he’s too shy to give a speech.”
At that point of course I am forced to remind people once again that shyness and introversion are not the same thing. That while the two often go together, they are not synonymous anymore than a hamburger roll and a hamburger are the same thing simply because burgers are often found on such rolls.
Shyness, in its various degrees of severity indicates a sort of social anxiety. A fear of being judged by others, or somehow threatened by them should one behave naturally. I suppose just as everyone has some degree of both introvert and extrovert in them, everyone to some degree under certain conditions is a little shy. It’s a matter of whether or not shyness is one’s default position that makes it an appropriate descriptor for any given person. I would say that shyness is not my true default position, despite how I may appear to some.
So when is this introvert actually shy? I have given this question much thought, to be honest. Sometimes the line is blurred between being uneasy about sharing or doing something in front of others, (shyness) and just really not giving enough of a damn to waste my time on doing something with or to others. (introversion).
Perhaps to some degree I am a little shy about sexual topics. I have a rather open view on human sexuality as a whole, but outside of general things, (I am a heterosexual…I prefer brunettes…I find intelligence sexy…Butt man), I won’t get into a detailed discussion as to my turn-ons and what not in an open forum.
I discuss those things with partners of course, or once I have gained a certain level of trust from friends, but in most cases if it were a discussion in a group at a party somewhere, I would refrain from sharing much. For some that would just be privacy, and for others it would be shyness. It’s probably a little of both for me, because I don’t want those with whom I am not sexual to judge the quality of my friendship based on my sexual preferences. That is probably shyness at work to some degree.
Certain aspects of my appearance sometimes cause shyness. Some of my teeth are a bit crooked, and I have a small gap between two of my front teeth. All things I have thought about correcting when I have more money, but for now are a part of me. I don’t hide my face, but I do sometimes try to minimize the impact as it were. The same thing in regards to the fact that I have no defined musculature. I am in good shape by and large, but there is nothing there to look at, and I sometimes allow that to make me feel like less of a “real man”.
Every once in a while I am shy about the stigma some people place on being a writer full time. I am not ashamed to be one, but sometimes I wish the “what do you do” question would be banned from social gatherings so I could just meet new people without having to answer and explain that I am not some drunk luxuriating outside in front of a laptop all day. I’m not getting rich, but this shit is hard, you know?
The oddest one is perhaps entering someone’s home. I am a bit shy when I am in somebody’s house. Even friends. There are people nearby I have known for years now, and yet for the first ten minutes or so I am in their house, I feel off. The world seems somewhat colder and feel constrained from being myself. Not sure if I should sit on the same couch I have sat on every time I have been there the previous dozen times. I don’t know why. I just have a thing about being a guest. It fades quickly with friends. It can last a while if I am new to a house.
There may be a few more examples of my being shy, in that I fear being judged for what I am by nature. Yet there are far fewer such times now than there were when I was a child. Back then one could accurately label me as shy. But not today. Today I am mostly an introverted man with specific moments of shyness, just like anyone else.
I wonder if the moments that make me a little shy now will someday vanish as well. I think the chances aren’t good at this point, but I’m okay with that. After all, I am not shy about admitting I am shy every once in a while.
When are you shy? Would you call yourself a shy person, or just someone who at times feels shy?
My Novel: A Progress Report.
Over the weekend I finished the third draft of my novel, Flowers for Dionysus. It’s a pretty exciting time, though there is still much work to be done. This draft didn’t take me too long. Just under eight weeks or so.
Right now it comes in at around 120,000 words, which by most research is the high end of the acceptable range of the average novel these days. Though some have said that the higher end of that range is usually reserved for science fiction, I am not ceding that territory to one genre. Rather I am going to tell the story I want to tell, and take as many words as I feel it needs.
That being said, if I can shave a few thousand words, I won’t be upset. Yet that is for the fourth draft, which my self imposed deadline will not require me to complete until December 15th of this year. It will remain in third draft mode for at least a few months before I think of starting the next draft.
While the second draft was about getting rid of chapters and scenes that I determined weren’t needed at all, as well as basic house keeping, this third draft was mostly about streamlining sections that have made the cut already. With few exceptions, I didn’t eliminate entire scenes or encounters in the third draft, though some were changed and shortened quite a bit as a result of eliminating entire pages of same.
I also added a few brief spacers here and there which shed a bit more light on some aspects of the characters that I thought I may have left too much in the dark in the previous draft.
My hope is that I also deepened the brief interludes I take into the lives of several of the characters. My novel has a total of five points of view, though one is the most prominent, and one is only utilized four times or so in the entire piece. Yet each character who’s point of view we visit is experiencing a smaller arc that ties into the larger arc of the story, and I had been concerned that in some cases the smaller arcs were being rushed.
I want to keep these smaller arcs, I just don’t want too overwhelm the reader with them, which could happen if I wasn’t careful. I could delve deeply into the lives of each of them, but I made a conscious decision to only include certain bits. Yet I don’t want them to appear as throw-aways either. The challenge will be to convey each character’s journey as equally important, even though not as much ink is dedicated to each. I think I achieved that better in this third draft than in the second.
The age old metric of “showing not telling”, though over-preached is nonetheless in better effect in the third draft, than it was in the second. That accounted for about half of the edits this time I would estimate.
I may also begin to look more seriously into the publishing options available to me now that the third draft is behind me. The more I read, the more I lean towards self-publishing to be honest, though I have by no means ruled out trying to find an agent to sell it to a traditional house. (Not a Big Five, however.) I will be exploring both avenues more in depth now, whereas before now I was only keeping a casual ear to the ground in regards to how things work.
For now I look forward to giving the creative work on this piece a rest for a few months, and instead allow people to enjoy it as is. I may even return to the broad outlining of my second novel, half of which I outlined while others read the second draft of my current novel. I’ve had some time away from that project, and it may be fresh again if I return to it now. (Editing one novel while outlining the other didn’t seem feasible to me.)
I don’t yet know who I will allow to read the third draft, with a few exceptions. But I do know I am looking forward to hearing the impressions people have of same.
My novel breaks several of the rules and conventions that people say a novel, especially a debut novel must follow. I am not ashamed of that, especially when every week it seems I read a story of some nobody who broke rules and ignored trends, and just got plucked out of thin air by an agent that made them famous. I am not saying that always happens, but I am saying it happens enough to people who believe in the vision of their story that I am not currently inclined to hammer my manuscript into absolute conformity with the tendencies of today’s publishing industry. (Which will be different two weeks from now anyway, most likely.)
The adventure continues…
Ty Unglebower 