A plot enables the writer to present a thought—a series of events—as a whole; complete in the message it contains, and told in such a way that it is understandable. A plot enables an author to construct a narrative that has unity of action, and it enables a reader or viewer to comprehend the meaning of that action.

It is incumbent upon a writer to present work in a way that fits a recognisable structure, a format for consumption that makes the work complete and whole.

By researching a vast amount of storytelling over a long period of time, Christopher Booker (The Seven Basic Plots, Continuum2004) identified what he calls the seven basic plots. His work has attracted a fair amount of criticism, some of which is justified, and some of which does no more than reveal a particular critic’s inability to grasp the meaning of the work.

At the core of his work is the recognition of the need to connect stories to the human condition. He attempts to give meaning to the question, why we tell stories. While Booker looks at mostly Western storytelling, it is evident that he has arrived at a plausible definition of why it is necessary for humans to tell stories across many cultures and languages.

While it is not necessary to understand the connection of storytelling to the human condition in order to understand the plots and structures of stories, it is this connection that gives the structure of stories meaning capable of transcending the gap between storyteller and story-consumer, and make connections across different cultures and time spans.

Different Storytelling Forms

Storytelling comes in a great many different forms. Experts within each storytelling form believe they have a unique condition to be met with their methods and media. What most have in common however, is the recognition that, although a story may be written, it does not become a story without a connection to a story-consumer. This connection allows the retelling of a story across different generations, different cultures and different geographies, and use different media.

If a story-consumer is faced with a collection of ideas and events that are told in an incomprehensible way, then what they are presented with is not a story as they know it.

A second condition often existing in storytelling that obscures its comprehension, is when the story fails to be resolved in a way that is satisfactory to the story-consumer. This is noticeable when a narrative concludes on a weak emotional revelation, calling upon superficial values to represent changes in either character or condition.

This type of storytelling is frequently found in propagandised features and narratives that push particular idealised currencies. Common examples can be found in war stories that glorify the victors, love stories that do not involve the shifting of a heart, and voyeuristic stories that focus on vilification as the narrative’s sole purpose.

These forms of narrative, while often popular for short periods of time, fail to have a lasting impression because they do not have a genuine connection to the human condition. Rather they are exhibitions of selfish indulgence in which control over human behaviour is the goal.

Connecting Stories to the Human Condition

To understand what it is that connects stories to the human condition, we need to take a step back from life and look deeper at attitudes and belief systems.

We all begin life as a child. In practically all cultures and most, save for the very unfortunate, we spend our youngest years nurtured by a mother who cares for our emotional and physical well-being. Also, in most cultures, the father figure features little in the earliest of years, and it is only very recent in many Western societies where the father has had a growing role in care-giving at this stage of life.

Our education systems then begin to take over in the nurturing of our intelligence, and we will begin various indoctrinations into belief systems that our societies have created as either social orders, legal systems or religions. In many ways, the state or church take on the father role in life, providing the guidance for behaviour: the strength and order that is required for society to function.

And, whether we like it or not, the division between the male role and female role is determined at an early age by the two simple facts of mother nurture, a condition present by nature that is wholly feminine; and societal order, a condition that is of human creation and wholly masculine.

The central goal of the human condition is to find identity. This occurs through the process of growing up in an environment that helps us to understand personal issues such as gifts and talents, occupational aptitudes and sexuality. Ultimately we seek to find a partner with whom we might fulfil our genetic goal, which is to bring the next generation into the world. It is the sum of these character traits that become our fit into society and the world.

It is also at this point where the human condition often finds itself embroiled in serious competition for position in society, driven by ambitions that range from material through family, to selfish through communal goals. This competition, while one of the most pervasive changes occurring in the human condition, centres around the need to eliminate constraints to recognising identity—the very thing that forms the greatest component of storytelling. And it is easy to see why.

From the Beginning

As a child, most of us are introduced to carefully structured stories that help us make sense of the world. Many of our earliest stories are what are commonly called fairy tales. Regardless of where we come from these are stories of cultural significance, designed to help us learn that life is conditioned and unfree. They teach us that the world we live in has restrictions; that, for each of us, there is good and bad, and that we have to learn how to distinguish between the two, and grow up to take the correct path.

Religion is often used to augment or replace such tales, offering us various versions of good and bad represented by artificial constructs like heaven and hell, virtues and sins and so on. On top of that, nearly every culture on earth has recorded some version of creation stories that help to explain how we have come into being, and what has shaped the world around us.

It is fairly evident that all of these stories—fairly tales, myths and legends of creation—are, to a large extent, fiction. Yet they are told to us as universal truths, used to shape our beliefs and condition our behaviours towards others.

They are used to help us establish our identities at a very early age, helping us recognise events and objects that may come along as a constraint to our success in the world.

The one idea that concerns us as humans above all else—throughout our entire lives—is that of succession. When a younger sibling enters the life of a small child, the elder is faced with having to deal with another person succeeding to the nurture of mother—the older sibling is forced to relinquish a coveted position.

When someone dies, a will is left to determine the succession of that person’s assets. Succession so dominates our lives that we are forced to tell stories to ensure that it is a smooth and emotionally stable process. Succession is the fodder of many of the great pieces of literature of all times in all cultures.

The stories we tell contain the codes of culture and behaviour, of success and failure, and of judgement and willingness—all based around the constraints of succeeding from one generation to the next.

And this is the purpose both of storytelling and story-consuming.

To the Ending

A story-consumer in today’s overcrowded media environment is seeking the same outcome as one in Shakespear’s day: a glimpse into the meaning of life.

We like to read about heroes who are much more accomplished than we are. Growing numbers of readers are seeking the stories of real life heroes who have taken on challenges that surpass our own ordinary lives. And while such tales often offer portrayals of hope, they frequently lack the ability to transcend generations and deliver meaningful lessons because—unless the story is about a hero who has died either heroically overcoming a monster, gathering a treasure, righting a ubiquitous wrong or rising from obscurity to some coveted and regal position; or in tragic circumstances—they are stories that do not contain satisfactory resolutions.

Readers and moviegoers don’t only want to know what happens in a life, they want answers that they can apply to their own lives.

This is borne out by the enormous growth in the number of self-help books offering expert advice on any and every subject. Again however, these books do not offer resolution. They merely carve out the pathway. They provide some vain glimpse of hope that a reader may achieve some distant goal by following the instructions that resulted in the success of another person.

Unlike fiction, such works cannot illustrate a complete story. That is, one that resolves in an ending that provides understanding of the message that the story’s core conflict contains.

All stories are centred around a conflict. What the story-consumer is seeking is the resolution to the conflict, not the journey through it. And whether that resolution augers with their own personal beliefs about the issues of the core conflict.

Conflict results from attempts to overcome constraints to progress.

A war is not fought for no purpose—even though the purpose may be misguided. Wars are usually fought because one party is impeding the progress toward the goal of another party. The conflict is over that impedance, and it resolves in its successful removal or not. The meaning it imparts is a message about the purpose of the action. If there is no resolution, there is no collective message, and therefore it will not be a satisfactory conclusion.

Competition in the modern world has changed tremendously in recent years. Where competition was once largely a battle of supremacy of good over evil—and it was enough simply to persevere in the good in order to prevail—there is now some evidence that it is not only the success that is being sought.

In many ways—in sport, in business, in politics—it is not enough to win. It must be seen that there is a clear and humiliated loser. Furthermore, what we are beginning to see in many facets of sport, business and politics is an attempt by real players to mimic what has long been the provenance of fiction.

Reality television shows such as Big Brother and Idol cannot have satisfactory and fully resolved conclusions because the conflict at core of the show is sentimental and arbitrary. It has no deeper meaning than to project the ego of those judging the winner—the winner having no specific heroic qualities whatsoever—and therefore, from the point of view of story, rely almost entirely on the humiliation of those chosen to lose. Such shows are not kept alive by the winners, they are kept alive by the losers, and the humiliation that can be projected. Because there is no underlying message other than, “do you think you could take this humiliation,” the story-consumer is not getting any story value from such shows.

Building a Plot

For storytelling a plot has to be much more than simply the idea of man versus man, or man versus machine, or man versus the divine, or man versus anything. It has to be much more than, A stranger comes to town. These are not so much plots as they are themes describing the magnitude of conflict.

The function of plot is to connect the story’s conflict to the human condition through a narrative of consequential events. Its role is to mark the points at which the story changes direction, and provide the direction in which the story turns. Ultimately it has to provide a satisfying resolution to the conflict.

Clearly a story has to have a beginning point. This is a moment where a character comes face to face with some agent of change. Lajos Egri describes it as a Point of Attack, and should be a moment that marks a turning point in the pivotal character’s life.

A story also has to have an end point, which is where that agent of change has been fully identified and subsequently resolved—either to be part of that character’s future, or firmly buried in his or her past.

It has to have a middle, through which the story-consumer must travel in order to evaluate the consequences of the effect the agent of change will have on the characters involved, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the opposing forces in the conflict.

Because the plot of a story must centre around a core conflict, there has to be a way of dividing the two potential outcomes of the conflict. At the conclusion, one side must hold the upper hand. The key story question is whether the same side has held the upper hand in the beginning and through the middle, or has the conflict resulted in an ultimate change of command.

This division can be seen as the division between the light and the dark powers of the story—the light representing the good side, and the dark representing the bad or villainous side.

Another way of looking at it is to consider a horizontal line in which the command of the story is above the line, and the struggle that takes place results in the force below the line succeeding to a position above.

The majority of stories are the telling of a struggle of an unfortunate light force against the dominance of an overpowering dark force, resolving in either the light force overcoming that dominance in some way, or succumbing to it.

Therefore a plot is built on the framework required for the struggling light force to rise to succeed beyond the grip of the dark force. Which means that the plot—no matter what kind—must come from the pivotal character and what he or she is seeking.