My Kind of Story
A 2004 book by Christopher Booker asserted that all the stories we tell basically break down to seven plots to rule them all:
1. Slay the Monster
2. Rags to Riches
3.The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth
I haven’t read the whole text, but I can see the logic behind the classification, particularly if you’re willing to account for a lot of metaphor.
I’ve also heard that one of the most common story threads in fiction is “a stranger came to town,” and it’s not hard to think up a slew of examples for that. But one of my favorite plot lines, though it can overlap with the seven plots and the mysterious stranger, is a little more specific. It goes:
Person with unusual dream slowly wins over cynics around them.
Those stories are my JAM. Take One Piece, one of the most popular manga of all time. Protagonist Monkey D. Luffy is a guy whose body stretches like rubber, and he wants to be the first king of the pirates in 30 years. I’ve read over 20,000 pages of that story, because gosh darn it, I just love people slowly realizing that he can actually do it.
It’s why my favorite modern Disney movie is Tangled. There’s a great musical sequence where Rapunzel tries to convince a bar full of rowdy criminals to help her achieve her dream of seeing floating lanterns by asking them if they ever had a dream…
That $&@/ is wholesome as hell! And it’s just good fun watching people in fiction start rooting for these odd little dreams. Studio Ghibli gives us Kiki’s Delivery Service, that scratches that same itch: a simple, out-of-place dream that you just want to work.
One show that recently hooked me with this plot line is The Bear. An award-winning chef named Carmen (“Carmy”) takes over his deceased brother’s sloppy sandwich shop in Chicago. He and his new sous chef Sidney want to turn the restaurant into something special, while most of the staff is reluctant to change. Cooking, Cursing, and Chaos ensue.
One character, Marcus, gets into the new system and starts a project to create the perfect donut, and I have rarely been so invested in a storyline. These stories are better the less they’re wrapped up in money or power. Anybody can obsess over the iron throne. Only Marcus is worried about this donut, and I love him for it.
I think the appeal of these stories is that so many of us are taught to dream big when we’re young and then gently (if we’re lucky) told to rein all that in as we get older. And we do. But we don’t forget them, either. We don’t just want to watch dreams come true; we want to watch the people inspired by those dreams coming true and being better for it.
Sometimes it’s cheesy and sometimes it’s illogical, but as a lifelong weird dreamer, I can’t resist.