The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories

 I just finished a ponderously long tome (700 pages) by Christopher Booker entitled The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. It is, of course, impossible to summarize a book of this length and significance in a single blog post. But, what I will do here is to provide a gross over simplification of why it is important and then provide more insight into it in future posts from time to time.

Most of you probably know that chemistry was preceded by a more primitive field of study called alchemy. For those of you who like word origins, the Ancient Greeks had a field of study called chemia which we would call metallurgy. When this knowledge passed into the Arab world it was referred to as "the chemia" or alchemy. This, in turn, came back into the Latin West along with most Greek knowledge including the works of Plato and Aristotle around the 12th century CE. Alchemy was a combination of mysticism and practice. And it did not make much progress until the 17th century when practitioners began to approach it scientifically. Along the way, fundamental units which we call elements were identified and these elements were organized into the Periodic Table. At this point, advances in chemistry took off like a rocket.  

"What does this have to do with stories?", you might ask. Writing today is a combination of mysticism and practice. You can refer back to the blog post on September 20, 2020 entitled Two Schools of Thought on Writing for a longer explanation of this. The mysticism of writing is the Expressive/Inspirational School which encourages your to find you voice or connect with your muse. The practice of writing is the Technical/Teleological School which encourages you to learn the techniques (or best practices) of writing. But, no where, until just recently, was there a scientific school of storytelling.

Booker's book makes some huge strides toward a more scientific view of writing and the role of stories. But, before I get ahead of myself let me let me get a little more concrete and list the seven basic plots.

1. Overcoming the Monster
2. Rags to Riches
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

Unfortunately, that doesn't help much. However, Booker spends the next 200 pages explaining these plots and providing ample detailed examples. To simplify things, consider the following. Obvious examples of Overcoming the Monster would include stories such as Beowulf, King Kong, Jaws, and Jurassic Park. But, the monster doesn't have to be a large thing that is chasing you. The monster might be someone or a group that is threatening you. It might be a plague or a famine. It could be debt or an addiction. The Overcoming the Monster plot is the archetypal situation in which the peace or predictability of your life is upset by a major threat which you do not understand and do not know how to address. And you need to figure out how to overcome this threat in order to survive and return to a life of peace and predictability. You may or may not be victorious in overcoming the monster, and there is something for the reader of the story to learn either way. You may overcome the monster and not be able to return to your earlier innocence. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see how the Overcoming the Monster plot represents hundreds, possibly thousands, of variations with different monsters and different outcomes. This is because the plot is a general outline of archetypal human experience and each story is an instantiation of that general outline in a specific circumstance. 

Each of the seven basic plots could be expanded as I just did yielding endless variations and each variation, in turn, could yield endless more variations. This is why they are "basic plots". It is the archetypal nature of these experiences which plays out in the endless variety of situations that we call human experience. But how does the vast variety of stories from comic books to TV shows and films to novels and religious texts fit so neatly into these seven categories? The answer is that archetypes represent the fundamental units of human experience and it was human experience that produced these stories. So, you can think about stories as experiments that advance our understanding of human experience much like the ways that experiments in chemistry advance our understanding of chemistry. 

Yes, I am being a little simplistic here. But, we are very early in our understanding of the science of stories and I am very early in my study of it. So, be patience as I will add more to this as I come to grips with it myself. It took Christopher Booker 35 years to write this book, and it took me dozens and dozens of hours to read it. I suspect it will take months, if not years before it all sinks in. So, I will hop over 700 pages, for now, and close with a quote from the book on page 700.

"One day, I believe, it will eventually be seen that for a long time that one of the most remarkable failures of our scientific approach to understanding the world was not to perceive that our urge to imagine stories is something just as governed by laws which lay it open to scientific investigation as the structure of the atom or the genome."

Thus begins the Scientific School of Storytelling. Stay tuned.

The Triune Brain and Why Stories Matter

 It is with great trepidation that I journey into the realm of cognitive neuroscience to explain something about stories. But, without some basic understanding of the brain, it is difficult to fully understand why stories are so important. Cognitive neuroscience is not my field of expertise. So, I will begin with some caveats lest I mislead anyone. 

First, cognitive science is a rapidly evolving field so what is generally a consensus at one time may not be at another. Second, like in any field of science, there is disagreement among the scientists. So, while what I am going to say is generally true, there will be experts who disagree with it. Third, I am over simplifying in order to make what I say comprehensible. Scientific papers which attempt to be fair and correct are far beyond the scope of what the average reader can understand.  And finally, I am going to anchor what I say in a quote from Wikipedia on the Triune Brain which you can look up for yourself. Don't feel obligated to read it, if you do not want to. I will pull out the important parts after the quote and in future posts.

"The triune brain is a model of the evolution of the vertebrate forebrain and behavior, proposed by the American physician and neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean. MacLean originally formulated his model in the 1960s and propounded it at length in his 1990 book The Triune Brain in Evolution. The triune brain consists of the reptilian complex, the paleomammalian complex (limbic system), and the neomammalian complex (neocortex), viewed each as independently conscious, and as structures sequentially added to the forebrain in the course of evolution. However, this hypothesis has been subject to criticism, and is no longer espoused by the majority of comparative neuroscientists in the post-2000 era." Wikipedia

Triune brain theory asserts that the over the course of evolution we have developed three brains. We have two eyes, cows have four stomachs, so it is not beyond comprehension that we have multiple brains. Further, each brain evolved to provide functionality not provided by the previous brain. The first brain is referred to, in layman's terms, as the reptilian brain (see reptilian complex above).   The second brain is often referred to as the mammalian brain (see paleo-mammalian above) and is also referred to as the limbic system. The third brain is most commonly known as the neocortex (see neomammalian above). Although the three brains work together somewhat, each has its own consciousness.

To be fair and honor my caveats, I thought I would offer this  link Refutation of Triune Brain Theory which explains how advances in brain theory have called a lot of MacLean's ideas into question.

However, for our purposes, I will limit discussion to the limbic system vs. the neocortex. Jordan Peterson, in his book entitled Maps of Meaning, asserts that these two brains provide two different interpretations of the world. (Note: this agrees with MacLean's assertion that each brain has its own consciousness.)According to Peterson, the world of the neocortex is the world of things, and is understood through science. The world of the limbic system is the world of values, and is understood through narratives. In the world of the neocortex we ask what a thing is. In the world of the limbic system we ask what does it mean and what should we do. We often speak of conscious thought as being the realm of the neocortex while nonconscious thought is the realm of the limbic system.

The vast majority of your thought occurs in the limbic portion of your brain. When the instructor in your exercise class tells you to remember to breathe, they are simply making you aware of a process that happens automatically 99+% of the time. If you have ever been driving when your mind was somewhere else and suddenly became conscious that you are driving and don't know where you are, you have shifted control from the non-conscious limbic system to the conscious neocortex. If you ever went to bed planning to dream about being on an island paradise with your favorite celebrity sweetheart, but instead dreamed about getting locked out of your house, naked, five minutes before an important meeting of your Home Owners Association, then your limbic system got the upper hand.

I could go on forever exploring this dichotomy and there are plenty of books that do that. However, I just want to cut to the chase and say that the vast majority of your life is ruled by your limbic system and your limbic system is ruled by narratives, or, in layman's terms, stories. Science may help you understand what a thing is and how it interacts with other things, but stories help you understand what it means and what to do. Sadly, many people believe that science has eliminated the need for stories, when, in reality, is has greatly increased the need.

Logical vs. Narrative Reasoning

I bitch a lot about the decline of education in America after having spent nearly 30 years as an academic. However, there are some bright spots to which I fail to give appropriate attention. The brightest spot for me was the free time I had to explore ideas most of which ended up having some very practical (I realize that this term is highly relative) value. I have endless curiosity and having free time to explore that curiosity was really the best way I could spend my time. I have a motivational poster on my office wall with a quote from Dorothy Parker which says, "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity". I spend my time keeping boredom at bay by following my endless curiosity. And, in the process, I have discovered many, many wonderful things that most people do not seem to be at all aware of. I often say that there are twelve things that you need to know in order to make sense out of the world although I have never bothered to write them down.

One of these discoveries was that people have two parallel modes of reasoning that we will refer to as Logical vs Narrative Reasoning. It comes from the field of Cognitive Science which is a sub-discipline in Psychology. And it is one of those twelve ideas.

I first stumbled on to it a couple of decades ago when I was doing some research on the role of stories in computer ethics. In the meantime, it has come to the foreground most notably in a popular press book entitled The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr published in 2020. Storr is a journalist rather than a scientist, but he presents an easily accessible summation of research that has evolved over decades. I will summarize Storr's book in a future post. But, in preparation for that, I need to provide some bite sized bits of information as a foundation. The focus of this post, as the title suggests, is to briefly explain the differences between these two modes of reasoning.

Here we have a table comparing Logical vs. Narrative Reasoning. Below I will expand on the differences. For the sake of simplicity you can think of Logical Reasoning as what is employed in science and mathematics, while narrative reasoning is employed in stories.

Logical Reasoning versus Narrative Reasoning
Logical	Narrative
General	Specific
Objectively Verifiable	Verifiable via Inter-subjective Experience
Difficult to Grasp	Easy to Grasp
Single Conclusion	Multiple Conclusions
Context Independent	Context Dependent
Abstract	Concrete

 General vs. Specific: Logical reasoning is based on generalities abstracted from the material and social worlds. For example, it is the case that Gold melts at 1,948°F. It is not the case that it melts at a lower temperature if a lover betrays it or its friends talk about it behind its back. Narrative reasoning is based on specific circumstances. A particular character in a particular situation did a particular thing. 

Verification: Logical reasoning can be verified objectively. For example, a scientific experiment should be repeatable with the same result by any disinterested party. Narrative reasoning is verified by inter-subjective experience. You and I read the same story and it should agree with our understandings of how people behave in a certain circumstance. 

Effort to Grasp: A scientific argument may be difficult to grasp due to its level of abstraction or the necessity of vast background information. A narrative argument (or story) is usually much easier to understand, at least superficially. Character A did something to character B and character B did something back to character A.

Conclusions: A logical argument should lead to a single conclusion. If it rains, the sidewalk will be wet. It rained. Therefore the sidewalk will be wet. A narrative argument may lead to multiple conclusions. Was Huckleberry Finn a moral person? You could spend your life trying to answer that definitively. In fact, a story that led every reader to the same conclusion would not be a very interesting story.

Context: A logical argument is context independent. As a general argument it does not vary based on circumstances. The sun sets in the west for everyone. It is not the case that the sun sets in the east for twelve year olds, old people  and cats. A narrative argument is context dependent. Bob might see Jane in one light if he meets her at a bar where she winks at him and in a very different light if he meets her at a party where she pretends to ignore him.

Level of Abstraction: Due to the generality of a logical argument it is validly presented at a level of abstraction which overlooks specific details. If you sell a stock at a price more than what you paid for it, you will make money. This is true for all stocks and all people. It is not the case that it will only be true for good people. However, a narrative argument is rendered in a concrete and specific circumstance. It is not true that all runaway boys who take a raft down the Mississippi river will get rich. But, in the specific and concrete circumstances of the story about Huck Finn, it makes sense. 

This dichotomy will appear in more circumstances that you can possibly imagine. And, in future posts, I will explore it further. But, for our immediate purposes, understanding this dichotomy is central to understanding good storytelling.

 

 

 

 

Two Schools of Thought on Writing

To lay some foundation for further exploration of the craft of writing, I need to distinguish between two schools of thought that inform and lead to two different approaches to writing. I will call these two schools the Expressive/Inspirational School (here after  the Expressive School) and the Technical/Teleological School (here after the Technical School). I should mention that I just made up these two names to explain something about writing. Other people may have any number of dichotomies or ontologies of writing practice. I find mine to be useful for what I have to say. [Note: There are two kinds of people in the world - those who like dichotomies and those who don't 😎]

The Expressive School focuses on connecting with your muse, finding your voice or waking up your creative spirit.  You need to find something that inspires you and the words will flow. The word 'inspire' literally means to breathe into. ( You can see the connection between inspiration and respiration) And in this case, a supernatural being, such as a muse, was breathing into you (or so they believed in days gone by).

For most people, their muse is asleep, possibly in a coma. So, in order to wake it they will do exercises such as describe a time when you were really angry or describe a transcendental experience such as standing on the edge of the grand canyon. Expressive writers will often work in writer's groups so that they can get feedback from other writers on how well they expressed themselves. I should point out that for some people their muse is in a persistent vegetative state. In this case they will reject the very idea of a muse. It would be like acknowledging that a dead carrot is lodged somewhere in the creative part of their brain.

If you want to hear a little more about nurturing your expressiveness you may find inspiration in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within . There are actually many books available for expressive writers. But, I thought I would mention this one as it helped me see the difference between these two approaches more clearly. 

Elizabeth Gilbert (better known for Eat Pray Love) wrote an excellent book on creativity entitled Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear in which she talked about the need to feed your muses. She said something to the effect that if you don't nurture your creativity it will leave you and find somebody else to inhabit. That is so true even if I don't fully agree with the metaphor. This is one of the reasons why I so strongly encourage people to write every day. And, although I am not in the Expressive camp, I thought her book and its perspectives on creativity were excellent.

The Technical School focuses on how to use the techniques of writing to achieve an end. The word 'Teleological' in Technical/Teleological title recognizes the need for having a purpose in mind. The Ancient Greeks recognized this dichotomy in the words "Telos vs Techne". Telos is the purpose or desired end state, while techne is the means by which it is achieved. In simple English one might say that it is one thing to know what you want, it is something else to know how to achieve it. Or, similarly, it is one thing to know how to do something but you still need to know what to do. We see this in a lot of creative activities. You might know how to cook but cannot develop a new recipe. Or you might have an idea for a recipe, but have no idea how to achieve it. Similarly, you may know how to use your camera, but are frustrated trying to find the perfect shot. And so on.

For most people, their desire to write is frustrated by a lack of technique. Should you use big words or small words, long sentences or short ones? Should you spell it out for the reader or leave more to their imagination? Should you write in correct English or allow an accent? Should your writing be lofty or accessible? The problem I have with the Expressive School is that when you find your voice it may be like the voice you use when you sing in the shower. It's OK when no one is around but needs a lot of work if others are going to hear or read it. This, again, is why daily practice is a good idea. You can experiment with difference techniques so  that you are familiar with them when the need arises.

I would also recommend reading the works of the masters. You may have gone into an art gallery at some point and seen an aspiring painter copying someone's master piece. They do this to learn the techniques of the masters. Writing is no different. (For that matter neither is cooking, acting, photography or any other creative endeavor). By reading classics of literature, you can learn techniques that will enrich your writing. And, if you get really, really, really ambitious, you can take one of your daily essays and rewrite it in the style of Ernest Hemingway or Erskine Caldwell or (god forbid) William Falkner.

I am very much in the Technical camp although I would never dismiss the importance of the Expressive camp. The Expressive camp focuses on Telos at the expense of Techne while the Technical camp focuses on Techne at the expense of Telos. If you just want to write because it feels good, you are a good candidate for the Expressive camp. If you want to write to achieve a clear and specific purpose, then you are a good candidate for the Technical camp.

If you want to hear a little more about the importance of developing your technical chops in writing you may want to look at The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner which helped me clarify my thoughts about writing. I should also mention that I belong to both camps depending on the situation. In my private writing activity I rely heavily on the Expressive view. But, when talking about writing publicly, I rely heavily on the Technical view as it is much easier to explain and teach.

Another question one might ask is whether you prefer to be a solitary writer or if you prefer to be part of a writing group. Generally, although not always, people in the Expressive camp will prefer to be a part of a writing group. People in the Technical camp will prefer to work alone. Personally, I am solitary and prefer not to bother with the opinions of others. So, I found great inspiration in Stephen King's On Writing which I read and later listened to a recorded version of twice. I will probably read it again at some point. If you find yourself drifting in that direction, you may want to check it out. To get back to the point about writing groups, King points out in his book that he is not a fan of writing groups. Neither am I.

Before I close, I would like to use King to make another point. There is another dichotomy that writers fall into. Some writers, such as King, prefer not to plot. They prefer to put the characters into an interesting situation and let them drive the outcome. Other writers prefer to have the entire book plotted out before they begin writing. Which is the correct way? The answer is that the correct way is the one that the writer is most comfortable with. I happen to agree with King on this point. I am much more of a character driven writer.

We are almost done. The two things I just mentions are points where I strongly agree with King. There are points on which I do not agree. So, if I agree, my views are reinforced. If I disagree on certain points, I just ignore them. You should do the same with my advice. If you agree and find what I say useful, then I am happy. If you disagree, feel free to to ignore it.