30 Days of Writing and Publishing Tips – Day 3

If you haven’t read the earlier posts, here’s a link to the Day 1 tip. There is some method to the madness of the order in which I’m posting, so even if it isn’t obvious now, it wouldn’t hurt read them in order.

This particular post is to help writers who struggle with how to pull together a coherent story, or who still struggle with being able to explain their story, either to others or to themselves, even after they know their genre and the characters and what happens. This can happen before you begin to write it or even once it’s finished and you are trying to edit the beast.

Here’s the obligatory cat picture for the post, a scary beast that is a metaphor for a story needing to be edited.

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You may have heard there are only seven basic plots in stories. This came from a book by Christopher Booker (nice last name!) called, of all things, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. There have been many criticisms of the book which I won’t go into, but I thought his idea was very, very interesting. Here’s the 7 he identified:

Overcoming the Monster – Books that are Person against Nature, or Person against Evil Person fit this category. My first two books, WILDFIRE RUN and WOLF STORM are both kids against Nature with a capital N. I put some surviving war stories in this category too, so many dystopians and historicals fit this, though some are more of a Voyage and Return story.
Rags to Riches – Wikipedia describes this plot as the poor protagonist acquires power, wealth, and/or a mate, loses it all and gains it back, growing as a person as a result and uses Cinderella, Aladdin, Jane Eyre, and A Little Princess as examples
The Quest – That’s an easy one. Many fantasies fit this.
Voyage and Return – Similar to a quest, but focused on the main character taking a journey, gaining wisdom along the way and then returning home. I put my war story, ALL OR NONE, in this category, because even though the war is looming over the characters like a monster, they aren’t going to be able to overcome it.
Rebirth – Again from Wikipedia: An event forces the main character to change their ways and often become a better person. Example: A Christmas Carol
Comedy – lots of romances fit this, but any genre story could be written mainly for its comedic effect.
Tragedy – I don’t really read tragedies, but there are certainly many out there. Obviously many Shakespeare plays fit this as do tragic love stories, etc.

Not everything fits in these categories, including many great works of literature, but for a writer who is trying to plan out or finish a story, being able to put it in one of these categories may help, or to adapt a useful cliché, see the forest instead of just a bunch of trees.

Does your story fit one?

And yet again, a picture of my sci fi trilogy, which are definitely quest mixed with overcoming the monster books.

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