The Seven Basic Plots
From my Newsletter, May 2007.
Last newsletter I promised a fuller description of my new favorite book, “The Seven Basic Plots” by Christopher Booker (no kidding, that’s his name!). It’s published by Continuum in paperback and it’s over 700 pages long. (See the link below if you are interested in purchasing it.) Whether you’re working on fiction or a memoir, it’s helpful to think in terms of plot, so here’s the synopsis.
The Seven Basic Plots Are:
–Overcoming the Monster (think Jaws)
–Rags to Riches (David Copperfield)
–The Quest (Odysseus)
–Voyage and Return (Alice in Wonderland)
–Comedy (any Jane Austen will do)
–Tragedy (Macbeth)
–Rebirth (A Christmas Carol)
Plots as Archetypes
The book goes far beyond just this however. He sees all plots emerging from deep in our psyches, so that artists left to their own devices will come up with these plots again and again, because they are satisfying to us on a deep level. Then he takes it a step further. He says these plots (or archetypes) are lessons in how to live. The “monster” in the first plot is really an out-of-control ego. In fact all the plots relate to our need as humans to master our egos. “It is precisely to ‘remind’ us of what our limited state of ego-consciousness so easily overlooks that evolution developed in us the capacity to conjure up these patterns of images.” Rags to Riches and The Quest are further and deeper explorations of how the hero or heroine (the Self) must overcome the dark side (again, egotism), find his or her other half, and become whole (i.e. self-actualized). The first three plots externalize the monster or the dark side. Voyage and Return is more focused on how the hero or heroine is headed toward the dark side through immaturity and fecklessness, and must inwardly choose the light in order to be freed in the happy ending.
Comedy shows how when one person becomes possessed by egotism, everyone around is placed in shadow. The flow of life is blocked. No one can “see whole” – this is why classic comedies are full of pretence, disguise, and misunderstanding. The unknotting, when all disguises are revealed, causes the egotist to have a change of heart, and all can live happily ever after.
Tragedy shows what happens when the hero or heroine becomes possessed by the ego. When tempted, they do not succeed in making the transformation because of a fatal flaw. The hero or heroine’s vision becomes limited (they can’t see whole) which in the end brings about their destruction. The dark power is overthrown, but the hero is overthrown too.
Rebirth is the clearest example of how the hero, gripped by darkness through most of the story, is transformed. (Think of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.) We see the hero or heroine move from restricted awareness centered in ego to “the deeper centre in the human personality which opens out their understanding and unites them with all the world.”
The lesson that is taught, then, in story, is how light overthrows darkness – that is, consciousness and life- giving wholeness and clear vision will defeat narrow egotism. The only question is whether the hero will choose light or will be overcome by the dark forces.
The Modern Era: The Ego Takes Over
But then the book really gets interesting. His observation is that in the modern era, we have moved away from the archetypical story because we actually either side with the ego, or don’t believe in the possibility of wholeness. “When a split opens up between a storyteller’s ego and his unconscious, the ego takes over, and all internal symbolism (the internal changes the hero/heroine need to go through) become projected on to the external world.” This causes what he terms the “sentimental” plot, where all the motions are gone through, but there is no depth. It’s form without content. There is no deeper, archetypal meaning.
A good example of this is all the James Bond movies and books which are the Overcoming-the-Monster plot in sentimental ego-gratification version. It’s clearly not archetypal in that the boy figure never grows up, and he never changes.
On the other side of this is the passive, deflated ego. “The Ego has no sense of belonging to anything greater than itself. We see how it is in fact the framework of the Self which ultimately gives human life its sense of structure, meaning, and purpose; and how, once contact with that is lost, the isolated ego is at last left facing nothing but a dark and empty void.” Which explains Samuel Beckett, and much of modern literature. The plotlessness of modern literature is due to this “cosmic and spiritual dead end.”
The flip side of the passive ego is the active ego. This explains our culture’s seeming obsession with sex and violence. He does a good job of tracing the history of sex and violence in literature and movies. All these are part of the ego’s fantasy. It turns the archetype on its head and seems to enjoy abusing the “anima” or pure feminine which is prized in the original archetype. But, because there can be no real resolution without surrendering the ego and seeing whole, the images are unresolved and incomplete. The ego continually “ups the dose” in the fantasy spiral because there’s no resolution.
Why I Love This
So one reason I was so excited by this book is that it put down in words and fully explained what I’d been observing. The specific bias I see in modern criticism of literature that judges anything with a satisfying ending as being inherently inferior. I think Tom Wolfe was motivated by fighting this when he deliberately wrote a sprawling Victorian style novel in Bonfire of the Vanities, overflowing with character and plot.
It frustrates me that reviewers almost always praise works that “go nowhere” and have no action or development, and will over-emphasize writing (form) over content (substance). They confuse real, satisfying literature with sentimentality.
The example that jumps to my mind to prove his point is not a book but a movie. The surprising success of Little Miss Sunshine I believe is because it is exactly true to the archetype of the comedy. The dark, ego- driven father, narrow in view, is creating tension for everyone. It takes the child/anima-literally Little Miss Sunshine who heals all she touches-to break the spell and frees them all to be a community again. I think people are hungry for this kind of story and flock to it whenever it appears.
I wonder if the popularity and success of nonfiction memoirs right now is in part due to the fact that they do have plots and transformations.
There’s so much more to this book that I haven’t even begun to touch on. I’d be interested to know your thoughts.
Next issue I’m going to give some tips on hierarchy of writing first draft to second draft.