Thirty years of study led Christopher Booker to assert the existence of seven recurring plots in story. He calls them: Overcoming the Monster; Rags to Riches; The Quest; Voyage and Return; Rebirth; Comedy; and Tragedy. Each plot, he argues, consists of five acts: the call to action, a dream stage in which everything goes well, a frustration stage at which fortunes turn, a descent into nightmarish conflict, and finally a resolution. Following Jung, Booker outlines a character transformation he believes ubiquitous. At the story’s start the protagonist’s personality will be ‘out of balance’.
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