Yeah, like you’re going to see a list of plot types that doesn’t include the Quest. The Quest is a search for a place, item, or person that requires the hero to leave home in order to find it. Sometimes the item is just a MacGuffin to drive the plot along; other times the thing driving the quest is specific to the story’s circumstances. Either way, the hero is leaving home to find whatever the heck the story demands, and we get to come along for the ride.
Everyone loves a success story, especially when it results from years of hard work and the protagonist has struggled from the depths of despair. This story type is so beloved, that it is Charles Booker’s second plot type of seven: Rags to Riches.
My roommate and I spent a good chunk of Sunday evening watching Avatar on FX since neither of us had seen it, and it was apparently a huge deal when I was out of the country for eleven months. As we were watching, I said to her, “This is kind of like Pocahontas meets Fern Gully, but with sex.” She agreed, which got me thinking about the fact that a lot of our literature, television, and film is similar.
Christopher Booker had the same idea in 2004, and wrote The Seven Basic Plots, which argues that all stories told in any medium can be categorized into one of seven archetypes. Today, we’re covering the first plot: Overcoming the Monster.
Possessives are a funny thing. When used correctly, they add much-needed clarity to our sentences. But they seem to confound our apostrophe rules.
Let’s sort out this grammar conundrum, shall we? With these rules mastered, you’ll clear up your readers’ confusion and use possessives like a pro.
Back at the end of April, we discussed using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to develop your characters. We covered the more obvious personality traits: Extroversion vs. Introversion and Thinking vs. Feeling. I would feel bad if we didn’t take the plunge into rounding out all of the elements of the Myers Briggs test, so here we’re tackling Intuition vs. Sensing and Judging vs. Perceiving, which are often the harder Myers Briggs character traits to explain.
