writeworld:

Stories have plots or storylines, by which the stories are told.

One of the ideas in storytelling is that there are a limited number of plots. Here are some of them (or maybe all – who knows?), with commentaries on many elements:

Different plots

• Booker’s Seven Basic Plots: A modern perspective.
• Friedman’s Story Plots: 14 plots (and discussion of each).
• Georges Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations: Common plot elements.
• Reich’s American Narratives: Four real themes.
• Tobias’ 20 Plots: From his popular book.
• Parker’s Story Types: Ten types of story.
• Classic Story Conflicts: Tension conflicts that appear in many stories.
• Classic Story Types: Many common types of story.

The story structure

Here are expositions of the classic heroic storyline, which many similarities, plus more general structures.

• The Five-Stage Story Structure: Common to many stories.
• Three Stage Story: Three stages that appear in more than stories.
• A Classic Story Structure: A simplified epic structure.
• Heroic structures:

• Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’: A classic decomposition of the epic tale.
• Vogler’s Story Structure: A simplification of Campbell’s structure.
• Propp’s 31 Narratemes: From his ‘Morphology of the Folk Tale’.
• The Eight Point Story Arc: May and Watts’ variant.