7 Basic Plots – My Personal Gamechanger

Before I finally made the decision to bite the bullet and just damn-well make my own movie, I spent many years as a struggling screenwriter. I had some early success in terms of getting scripts picked up but nothing got made.

When I wrote my first ever screenplay, I had no idea about format or dramatic structure. All I did was read my neighbour’s screenplay and thought “I could do that.” The screenplay then got picked up for Anglia TV’s First Take series.

In those first few months, it looked like this ‘being successful in the film industry’ game was going to be a breeze. First attempt – boom! What’s the big deal?

Then it didn’t get made. So, in an attempt to become a better screenwriter, I turned to some Hollywood screenwriting ‘how to’ books.

Screenplay by Sid Field

The first one I read was Screenplay by Sid Field. This book was the top of many screenwriters and filmmakers recommend list – and still is. So I got hold of a copy and set to work.

At first, I was fired up and enthusiastic. I’d only just started trying to be a screenwriter, so I absorbed the insights in the book like a sponge. I attempted to structure next screenplays around Field’s method. But none of them came out too well. Looking back, they were backwards steps from my first screenplay which I wrote with almost complete innocence.

The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler

Some years later, I found myself with a writer’s agent in L.A.

Yes, after years of writing, I’d decided I needed to stop messing around and make some actual money from it. To do this, I would write the most commercial Hollywood blockbuster romantic comedy ever.

That screenplay was about a woman who was addicted to cheap romance novels but her boyfriend was the opposite – a pizza-eating, beer-drinking, football-watching idiot. So the woman buys an “elixir” from an old lady which is supposed to make her boyfriend more romantic. The result is that he switches with the romantic hero from her favourite novel.

So the sensitive but unrealistic lover ends up in the real world and the beer-drinking boyfriend ends up in the romantic novel. The 2 plot threads follow, side by side, until they reunite at the happy resolution.

Nailed-on commercial hit right?

Anyway, the agent was very direct and told me everyone in Hollywood now followed the path set down by Christopher Vogler and his “Mythic Structure for Writers”. So I was instructed to get hold of a copy and learn it.

Ultimately, although I learned a lot, the script didn’t get anywhere. And somehow, I didn’t feel good about it anyway. Added to that, I realised writing for Hollywood wasn’t going to fulfill my dream of being a filmmaker.

Unlock the Block

So what went wrong? How can you learn more about your craft but yet become a worse writer? It doesn’t make sense does it? Surely any knowledge about what you are trying to do can only improve your creative ability?

Thing is, I think many of us turn to these books when we’re feeling a bit lost. The need we have is for some guidance to fill in the holes in our understanding of what we’re trying to do. Especially when we’re just starting out.

In hindsight, I’d say you should be careful what you fill those holes with. Make sure this knowledge fits you. Or take your time to learn it but don’t automatically let it rule your creative process.

The problem comes when those guidelines are the focus of your story; when they dominate the creative process. For me, I began to realise these methods locked me in to some restrictive way of thinking. They were like traps which led me to create in an artificial, forced way.

What is the most important element in the stories we tell? Is it structure, 3 acts, 5 acts, character arcs, points of no return, refusal of the call and all the other stuff you get in these books?

Stories are People

No. The answer is people. The people in the story are not just the most important part of any story, they essentially are the story.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood “how to” books are selling you this dream. The promise that if you know this secret structure that Hollywood uses, you will soon find yourself with a big house and a pool and that screenwriter success you crave.

Neither of these two books talk about people. They only talk about contriving a structure for your story, or a journey for your hero, that will connect with the masses. They’re saying if you write your screenplay this way, you will improve your chances of $$$ success.

What I came to realise is that’s a bit of fool’s game. As a writer, that’s not a journey I wanted to take. Because personally, I am interested in people and not $. So, no matter how many $$$ I made by following those books, I would not be satisfied as a writer.

Dollars, red carpets, villas in Hollywood with a pool, meetings with high flying film execs and so on were a false goal. If that is our goal as a writer, then I suggest we are not really writers. Of course, I understand the dilemma: on the one hand we want to tell the stories true to us, on the other hand we want to make a living.

How do we make these two paths meet? Because one without the other is probably destined to leave us unfulfilled and burned out. But that’s probably a theme for another post…

The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker

Sometime after I decided I would follow my heart rather than chase the $ and red carpets, a friend who worked at the BBC said they were emptying their library of books and did I want one? One of those books was The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. I thought, well it’s free so why not?

I was expecting something along the lines of the other books I’d read. Some kind of formula for storytelling which will tap into the consciousness of the masses and make us rich. But that turned out to be a false first impression.

While the book is still pretty accessible, it does not dictate to you how a story should be constructed. Instead, Booker simply talks about stories of all kinds: operas, novels, ancient Greek tales, James Bond movies, Shakespeare and so on. He also ties these different stories together by reflecting on their connecting points.

This book is basically a discussion on how stories work. And I found that discussion to be much more useful and inspiring than books which tell you how to “ramp up conflict” by the using such things as “obstacles” “compilations” or “reversals.” Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots allows you to discover storytelling without smothering your own voice.

Structure ideas

7 Basic Plots does not give you a point by point 3 act structure to follow. It does not tell you how to construct scenes. Instead, Booker simply talks about stories throughout history.

He does talk about structure though, but in more general terms. Ideas such as the ‘dream phase’ and ‘nightmare phase’ of a story. Structures are discussed, such as how a tragedy is the same structure as a comedy, except the comedy has a happy end, for example.

There are plenty of connections to the works of Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler, but I just find Booker’s book to be far more compelling. When I was writing Third Contact, reading Booker’s description of Oedipus the King gave me an idea which eventually tied the whole story together.

What I like about the book is that it’s neither too intellectual nor too simplistic. As someone new to storytelling, it shouldn’t be too overwhelming. And for someone who has been writing for years, there’s still plenty to learn from the book.

And this is a huge book, that I still haven’t completed. Thing is, you don’t need to. Just dip in and read about what interests you. You will certainly find something revealing.

It’s not just about film

As a filmmaker, I really recommend you learn about stories of all kinds. One of the problems we have today, is that films have now become about films. In fact, worse – they’re about films about video games about films about comic books.

In the film industry, there has evolved a kind of feedback loop where most filmmaker’s story references are previously successful films, rather than people and the stories we have lived during 1000s of years of human history.

The hero tropes presented have become so ingrained in us, we don’t even question them. We don’t consider there might have been a real person at the heart of the story at some point.

Our movie heroes are what heroes did in previous movies and we mark them from 1-10 for interpretation, like judges at the Olympics Figure Skating. How will we rank Joaquin Phoenix’s interpretation of The Joker? Will he beat Heath Ledger for The Joker gold medal?

The reason why The Seven Basic Plots was so refreshing to me as a filmmaker was that it wasn’t just about film. It helped me step out of the feedback loop and see stories as something eternally human, as opposed to something only filmmakers do.

And as streaming changes film, and algorithms change structures of films, being locked in the 90-120 minute film structure could be a bad move for any aspiring screenwriter, right now. In my opinion, it’s now more important than ever for screenwriters to open themselves up new ideas. Which, when it comes to The Seven Basic Plots, happens to be centuries of old but ultimately timeless ideas.

It’s time to learn from the past to create a new future…

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