Plots and Plotting: Part 4 – The Shapes, or the Different Kinds of Plot

The idea that stories come in a limited number of shapes is old. Older than the printing press. Older than paper, actually. It goes back to a man we’ve met twice in this series now: Aristotle.

In the Poetics, Aristotle didn’t just talk about beginning, middle, and end. He also made the first recorded attempt at categorising kinds of plot. He split plots into two big buckets: the simple plot, where events just happen in a straight line, and the complex plot, where the story turns on one of two magical devices peripeteia, the sudden reversal of fortune, or anagnorisis, the moment of recognition, the terrible clarity when a character finally understands the truth. Oedipus, Aristotle’s favorite example, is a complex plot squared: he gets both. He recognises the truth because his fortune reversed. Two and a half thousand years later, “twist ending” writers are still using exactly these two gears. Aristotle literally invented the taxonomy of story shapes, and nobody’s improved on his basic categories all that much.

The next big leap came in 1863, when Gustav Freytag drew his pyramid – exposition climbing to climax, then falling to resolution – and suddenly storytelling had its first diagram. A shape you could literally draw on paper. That was enormous. It made structure visible. And it kicked off a long, glorious tradition of people trying to count and map the shapes of stories.

In 1895, a French playwright named Georges Polti published The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, in which he claimed – with the confidence of a man who’d read a truly unhinged number of plays – that all drama boils down to thirty-six basic situations. Supplication. Deliverance. Revenge. An abducting person. An adulteress. A mother sacrificing her children. Thirty-six of them. He listed them like a periodic table of drama, and the book is still in print, which tells you how much writers love a good list.

Then came the twentieth century, and this is where it gets really fun. Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949, laying out the monomyth – the hero’s journey – that every story from Star Wars to Moana now runs on. Kurt Vonnegut spent years developing his theory of the shapes of stories, literally graphing a character’s fortune against time, which I’m going to get to in a minute because it’s my favourite part of all of this. Ronald Tobias published 20 Master Plots in 1993. Christopher Booker published The Seven Basic Plots in 2004. John Truby built his entire method around story types. And somewhere in the middle of all that, some anonymous folk genius reduced everything to a sentence that’s been passed around writing workshops ever since: someone wants something and has trouble getting it.

See the pattern? Every generation, some very smart person announces they’ve finally counted all the shapes. And every generation, the shapes turn out to be a handful – but the stories they describe stay infinite. That’s not a contradiction. It’s the whole point.

Okay, I promised I’d spend time on Kurt Vonnegut, and I meant it, because his way of thinking about story shapes is the most useful, the most fun, and the most genuinely human I’ve ever encountered.

Vonnegut’s idea was beautifully simple. Take a piece of graph paper. The horizontal axis is time – the beginning of the story to the end. The vertical axis is the protagonist’s fortune – from “things are going terribly” at the bottom to “things are going great” at the top. Then you trace the protagonist’s journey as a line across that graph. That line is the shape of the story. That’s it. That’s the whole theory, and it’s embarrassingly useful.

He identified a few classic shapes. The most famous is the “man in a hole” shape: the line starts level, then drops – the hero falls into trouble – and then climbs back up, better off than they started. It’s the shape of almost every adventure story ever told. Then there’s the Cinderella shape: the line starts low, rises to a high point – the ball! the happiness! – then plunges to the lowest point – midnight, the slipper, loss – and then rises to the very top, higher than it ever was before. It’s a two-peaked mountain. And then there’s the Kafka shape, which is just a line that starts high and falls forever. The protagonist begins in a good place and loses everything, steadily, without recovery. The Metamorphosis. Crime and Punishment. A lot of literary fiction. It’s a shape that makes readers feel something very specific, and Vonnegut loved pointing out that it’s structurally valid even though nobody claps at the end.

Here’s why I love this so much. It strips “what is the plot?” down to a question you can see. When you’re planning a story, you’re really just deciding on a shape: does my protagonist end higher than they started? Lower? Do they rise, fall, and rise again? That single choice – the trajectory of fortune – determines how the reader feels when they close the book, and it should be a choice you make deliberately, not one you discover by accident on page 180.

If Vonnegut gave us the geometry, Christopher Booker gave us the family tree. In The Seven Basic Plots, he argued – persuasively, and with a terrifying amount of research – that essentially all stories fit into seven shapes. Let me introduce you to them, because I promise you’ll recognise every single one.

Overcoming the Monster. The hero faces a great and terrible threat and must destroy it. Beowulf and Grendel. Harry Potter and Voldemort. Jaws. The shape is simple and primal: terror, confrontation, victory, and the world is saved. It’s the oldest story in the book, and it never gets old.

Rags to Riches. The hero starts at the bottom, climbs to success, loses it, and regains it – usually transformed. Cinderella. Aladdin. Pip in Great Expectations. The shape is the rise, the fall, and the rise again – Vonnegut’s Cinderella curve, basically. The emotional engine is wish fulfilment and the fear of losing what you’ve won.

The Quest. The hero must travel to a distant destination and retrieve something, while forces oppose them at every step. The Odyssey. The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit. The shape is all journey – the trials along the way are the story. This is the shape that made the middle of our last post so important: in a quest, the middle is the whole point.

Voyage and Return. A close cousin, but different in a crucial way. The hero travels to a strange, alien world -— sometimes literally, sometimes emotionally – experiences wonders and horrors, and returns home changed. Alice in Wonderland. The Wizard of Oz. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The shape emphasises the contrast between worlds, the return, and the growth that the journey caused.

Comedy. And I don’t mean jokes. In Booker’s sense, comedy is a story that begins in confusion – a web of misunderstandings, false identities, crossed wires – and ends in a joyful resolution where everything is untangled and the lovers are united. Shakespeare’s comedies are the best example. Much Ado About Nothing. Jane Austen. The shape is chaos that resolves into harmony. It’s a shape about order being restored, and it’s why comedies make you feel good.

Tragedy. The dark twin. The protagonist – usually a flawed, powerful person – makes a choice that sets them on a path of self-destruction, and despite every chance to turn back, they can’t. Macbeth. Othello. And the modern master of the shape: Breaking Bad, where Walter White’s pride and ego carry him down a staircase that only goes one way. The tragedy shape is about the inevitability of downfall, and it’s devastating precisely because the hero could have gotten off the train at any stop.

Rebirth. The hero is trapped in a kind of living death – spiritually, emotionally – and must be liberated. A Christmas Carol. Beauty and the Beast. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The shape is about transformation: the cold heart is warmed, the prisoner is freed, the person becomes whole. It’s the shape of redemption, and it ends in the emotional equivalent of a sunrise.

Now, here’s the crucial thing to understand about these seven: almost no story is pure. Harry Potter is overcoming-the-monster wrapped around a quest. Pride and Prejudice is comedy with rags-to-riches seasoning and a dash of rebirth. The best stories blend shapes the way a good cook blends spices – but there’s almost always one dominant flavour, and that dominant shape is what the story’s spine is made of. Figure out your story’s dominant shape, and you’ve figured out an enormous amount about what it needs.

So why do you care? You’re a writer, not a folklorist. Who cares that a French guy in 1895 counted thirty-six situations?

Here’s why I care, and why I think it’ll save you months of flailing. The shape of your story isn’t just an academic label. It’s a diagnostic. It tells you where your story needs to put its weight.

If your story is a tragedy, you need to plant the fatal flaw early, and you need an ending that doesn’t flinch. If you’re writing a tragedy and your hero keeps winning and everyone keeps congratulating them at the end, you’ve got a shape problem – your story is claiming to be one shape while behaving like another, and the reader can feel the lie.

If your story is a quest, you need a concrete destination and trials that get harder. If you’re writing a quest and your hero never leaves the kitchen, you’ve got a shape problem.

If your story is a rebirth, you need a protagonist who is genuinely stuck in a limited self – and you need a transformation that’s shown, not announced. If you’re writing a rebirth and your hero was already pretty great on page one, you’ve got a shape problem.

Every shape comes with its own obligations, its own natural emphasis, its own way of ending. Knowing your shape is like knowing your genreGenre refers to the books that have some strong element in them that defines them as a particular type of book, such as fantasy, romance, or crime fiction. These types of novels have required tropes, and if the novel doesn't have those, it's not that genre. Readers expect to see those tropes and are disappointed if they're not there. Refers to either a general classification of writing, such as the novel or the poem, or to the categories within those classifications, such as the thriller or action story. Genre lets your reader know what to expect from your writing. More, except deeper. It’s the difference between knowing what your book is and knowing how your book works.

Let me show you what I mean with a concrete example. Take the voyage-and-return shape, the old Wizard of Oz structure. Dorothy goes to Oz, has adventures, comes home – and she’s changed, even though her world looks exactly the same. Now imagine you recognised that shape in your own draft. What does it tell you? It tells you your middle needs to be a contrast – the strange world has to be vividly strange so the return lands. It tells you the return home can’t be a footnote; it’s the whole payoff, the place where the change becomes visible. It tells you the story isn’t really about the destination at all – it’s about what the journey does to the traveller. That’s the shape doing your planning for you.

Or take the revenge plot, which Polti would have called “revenge,” Tobias would have called a master plot, and you’ve probably binge-watched in some form. Revenge is a shape with a built-in engine and a built-in trap: the engine is the wrong done at the start, which pushes the protagonist forward; the trap is that pure revenge usually turns the avenger into the thing they’re hunting. The Count of Monte Cristo knows this. Kill Bill knows this. The shape works best when the revenge costs the avenger something, because that’s what gives the shape its moral gravity. Know the shape, and you know where the depth is supposed to live.

And now, the end of the road. Because if you keep compressing the shapes – past the seven, past the thirty-six, past the twenty – you eventually get down to the reduction that writers whisper to each other in workshops like a secret.

John Gardner said it best. “There are only two plots,” he said. “A person goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town.” Think about that for a second. Every quest, every voyage, every descent into the underworld – a person goes on a journey. And every story where someone arrives and changes the world – the detective in the murder town, the new girl in school, the gunslinger riding into the saloon – a stranger comes to town. Or, in the phrase you’ll hear everywhere, the third reduction that swallows them both: someone wants something and has trouble getting it.

Here’s what I want you to understand about these reductions, and about the whole history of shape-counting. They’re not saying your story is a copy. They’re saying your story is part of a family. And families are wonderful – they’re where you get your nose and your stubbornness and your weird talent for memorizing song lyrics, but you’re still unmistakably you. The shapes are your inheritance. What you build with them is your life’s work.

Alright, let me give you the practical stuff – how a working writer actually uses all of this:

1. Identify your dominant shape before you draft. Is this a quest? A tragedy? A rebirth? Write it down in one sentence. You’d be amazed how much clarity one sentence provides.
2. If you’re stuck in a draft, diagnose your shape. A story that feels wrong usually has a shape problem – the ending it’s building toward doesn’t match the shape it’s been traveling in. Fix the shape, and the story will often fix itself.
3. Match your shape to your themeTheme is the unifying idea of a story, tying everything together. It gives larger meaning to the events and people in the novel. An idea or point at the heart of a story. A theme can be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel.. If your themeTheme is the unifying idea of a story, tying everything together. It gives larger meaning to the events and people in the novel. An idea or point at the heart of a story. A theme can be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. is redemption, you probably want a rebirth shape. If your themeTheme is the unifying idea of a story, tying everything together. It gives larger meaning to the events and people in the novel. An idea or point at the heart of a story. A theme can be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. is hubris, you probably want a tragedy. Don’t fight the shape; it’s telling you something about what you actually care about.
4. Blend deliberately, not accidentally. You can have a quest with a comedy’s ending, or a tragedy wearing a monster story’s clothes. But choose the blend the way you choose a meal – one main dish, a couple of sides.
5. Use the shape to find your emphasis. A quest needs a strong destination. A voyage-and-return needs a vivid strange world. A rags-to-riches needs a loss in the middle. The shape points at the work.
6. Use the shape to find your ending. Every shape ends a specific way. If you don’t know your ending, ask what the shape demands. It usually knows.
7. Read across shapes. When you’re learning, deliberately read a comedy, a tragedy, a quest, a rebirth – and see the machinery. It’ll teach you more than any textbook.
8. Treat the shapes as liberating, not limiting. You’re not inventing a new skeleton. You’re filling an old one with a soul. That’s not a small job. It’s the whole job.
9. When in doubt, reduce. If you’re lost, ask the two-plot question: is my character on a journey, or is a stranger coming to town? And what do they want, and what’s stopping them? That sentence will always give you a path.

And now, as always, the warning list. Here are the five ways writers get tangled up with the shapes:

1. Force-fitting a shape that fights your themeTheme is the unifying idea of a story, tying everything together. It gives larger meaning to the events and people in the novel. An idea or point at the heart of a story. A theme can be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel.. You’re writing about the slow poison of ambition, but you’ve forced it into a rags-to-riches happily-ever-after. The ending will feel false, because the shape and the themeTheme is the unifying idea of a story, tying everything together. It gives larger meaning to the events and people in the novel. An idea or point at the heart of a story. A theme can be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. are at war.
2. Believing “no new stories” means your story doesn’t matter. This is the defeatism that gave me problems. Nothing could be more wrong. There are no new skeletons, but there are endless new people, new voices, new hearts to put inside them.
3. Blending shapes without a spine. Quest, comedy, tragedy, and revenge all at once, none of them dominant, and the book becomes a muddle. Pick one captain for the ship.
4. Letting the shape become a formula. The moment you start hitting beats because “the shape requires it,” you’ve turned a diagnostic tool into a straitjacket. The shapes describe; they don’t command. (This series keeps saying this. It keeps being true.)
5. Ignoring the shape entirely. Writing by pure instinct, never noticing that your “comedy” is actually marching toward a tragedy’s ending, and wondering why the final act feels like it belongs to a different book.

If you remember nothing else, remember these five:

1. There are a finite number of story shapes – but an infinite number of stories. The skeleton is shared; the soul is yours.
2. Shape is the emotional trajectory of a story – where fortune starts, where it goes, and where it lands. Vonnegut drew it as a line on a graph for a reason.
3. Aristotle started the taxonomy with simple and complex plots; Polti gave us thirty-six; Booker gave us seven; Gardner reduced it all to two. All of them are right.
4. Your story has a dominant shape, and that shape tells you where to put your weight – and how to end.
5. Use the shapes as a diagnostic, never as a formula. They exist to help you see, not to tell you what to write.

And now, as is our tradition in this series, let’s close with the masters weighing in on the shapes of stories.

Katherine Anne Porter: “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” I love this quote because it says both things at once. Yes, the stories repeat — the shapes are old, the situations are familiar. But they repeat “as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” That ferocity is what you bring. That’s the whole game. The shape is borrowed; the ferocity is all yours.

John Gardner: “There are only two plots: a person goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town.” Gardner was one of the great teachers of fiction, and this reduction of his is worth more than a shelf of plotting books. Every story you’ll ever tell is someone leaving, or someone arriving. And in the best stories, both things happen at once – the stranger who comes to town goes on a journey just by showing up. Hold that sentence in your head when you’re stuck. It will always, always point you home.

Kurt Vonnegut: “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers. They are beautiful shapes.” This is from Vonnegut’s famous lecture on the shapes of stories – the master’s thesis the University of Chicago rejected and the whole world has been quoting ever since. He’s right. The shapes are simple, and they are beautiful, and you can hold them in your mind like you’d hold a shell up to your ear. There’s no mystery left in why a story works, at the level of pure shape. The mystery – the glorious, inexhaustible mystery – is what you do with the shape you’ve been given.

So here’s where we’ve landed. There are no new stories. There are only new tellings – new voices, new hearts, new particular, specific, unrepeatable human lives poured into shapes that are older than writing itself. And that’s not a disappointment. That’s a relief. You don’t have to invent a new kind of story. You just have to tell your story, in whatever shape it’s been trying to take, with as much truth and ferocity as you can muster.

And if you’re ever unsure which shape you’re writing, ask yourself the questions we’ve been asking all series. What does my protagonist want? What’s standing in their way? Where does their fortune start, where does it go, and where does it land? Are they on a journey, or is a stranger coming to town? Answer those, and the shape will reveal itself – and the shape, once you see it, will tell you exactly what to do next.

That’s the gift of the shapes. They’re not a cage. They’re a map of the territory every storyteller has been walking since the first fire. Walk it your own way. But walk it knowing you’re not alone out there.