Six Story Types

The Six Story Types

1. Rags to riches – a steady rise from bad to good fortune

2. Riches to rags – a fall from good to bad, a tragedy

3. Icarus – a rise then a fall in fortune

4. Oedipus – a fall, a rise then a fall again

5. Cinderella – rise, fall, rise

6. Man in a hole – fall, rise

theatlantic.com

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180525-every-story-in-the-world-has-one-of-these-six-basic-plots

or Seven?

Overcoming the Monster

Hero learns of a great evil threatening the land, and sets out to destroy it.

Rags to Riches

Surrounded by dark forces who suppress and ridicule him, the Hero slowly blossoms into a mature figure who ultimately gets riches, a kingdom, and the perfect mate.

The Quest

Hero learns of a great MacGuffin that he desperately wants or needs to find, and sets out to find it, often with companions.

Voyage and Return

Hero heads off into a magic land with crazy rules, ultimately triumphs over the madness and returns home far more mature than when he set out.

Comedy

Hero and Heroine are destined to get together, but a dark force is preventing them from doing so; the story conspires to make the dark force repent, and suddenly the Hero and Heroine are free to get together. This is part of a cascade of effects that shows everyone for who they really are, and allows two or more other relationships to correctly form.

Tragedy

The flip side of the Overcoming the Monster plot. Our protagonist character is the Villain, but we get to watch him slowly spiral down into darkness before he's finally defeated, freeing the land from his evil influence.

Rebirth

As with the Tragedy plot, but our protagonist manages to realize his error before it's too late, and does a Heel–Face Turn to avoid inevitable defeat.

but also...

1. coming of age

A story featuring an adolescent making the mental leap from child to adult. In real life, this happens over the course of several years. Literature, films and some television series are media that have the space to show the story at a slow pace. But for a movie, things have to be compressed to several months at the most, so expect some really accelerated character development. The words bildungsroman (Ger. "educational novel") or bildungsgeschichte (Ger. "educational story") are sometimes used to describe these kinds of stories. A note on the translation: the terms originated in the Age of Enlightenment, when "Bildung" meant not only "education" but also "self-improvement" (cf. English "building") — or as Werner Heisenberg put it, Bildung is "that which is still there after you've forgotten everything you had ever learned". In other words, it's not a "novel to educate the readers" but a "novel about the hero becoming someone".

2. boy meets girl

One of the oldest and most basic plots goes thus: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl. Details vary, but those are the major Narrative Beats.

tvtropes.org

https://www.autocrit.com/blog/7-stories-world/

Sooooo...

via GIPHY