Customer Reviews

The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories

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and so inefficient. Truly I felt that underneath this persnickety and overwrought tome of literary archetypes and movements lies a slimmer, more cogent and helpful book screaming to be let out.

The problem is not really apparent with the book's first half, in which Booker analyzes his seven different kinds of plot themes and finds some wonderful coincidences between, say, our commercial culture and long-banished civilizations. (Dr. No and the Gilgamesh both feature solitary heroes going to the far side of the world to vanquish fearsome and bizarre monsters.)

As far as that goes, the book is useful and will painlessly teach genre studies and even a bit of comparative literature to the eager reader. The problem comes about halfway through the book when Booker, who appears eager to stamp out not only interpretations of books but discussion of books themselves that don't fit his seven-fold structure, condemns so much of modern literature as "romanticism." Well, writers as diverse as Victor Hugo, Ayn Rand and E.T.A. Hoffman have all proudly described themselves as "romantic," and even that unwieldy tent under which to house those disparate authors is more helpful than Booker's cant, who damns the "romantic" canon as distracting literature (and its readers, of course) from its real purpose; i.e., to fit his seven-fold canon.

Not only is the argument circular, it is absurd. It is like saying that candles provide the best and most consistent indoor illumination, because that damned "electricity" isn't really a form of illumination, because . . . well, just because it isn't. In this case what started out to be a purposeful and useful argument turns into a circular begging of the issues and, for a moral Aristotelian, a singularly unsympathetic ways to limn out a canon, based on one man's experience, or should I say OPINIONS?

There are many, many books that have to do with the construction of a novel and its many themes. I think offhand of E.M. Forster's ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL; of course there are tons others. Despite its initial promise, this book, I think, is best left alone unless the reader cares to spend 600-ish pages at first reinforcing, then undermining his/her knowledge of what makes a novel tick.

This book, which by all accounts has taken Christopher Booker 30 years to write, isn't the first attempt to distil all of storytelling down to a few archetypes. I dare say it won't be the last, either. While it's a fantastically learned, well-read, and at times insightful entry on the subject, it encounters the same problems others like Joseph Campbell have: that that the facts of actual literature tend to sit uneasily with the unifying theory, and that the unifying theory itself tends to rest on an analysis of human psychology which sounds like it might be so much bunk, and a particular world view - moral objectivism - which definitely is.

Both Jungian psychoanalysis and moral objectivity are taken as read by Christopher Booker and as such he spends no time justifying them (perhaps understandably - the arguments for and against each would fill this book many times over). Nonetheless, in my view, he's simply wrong about both of them, and it blows a Big Hole in his Big Idea.

Booker's Big Idea is this: when you boil them down, there are only seven archetypal stories in all of literature, and further that if you boil those archetypes down, they are in many ways the same story viewed from different perspectives. This is perhaps intuitively understandable: in the broadest sense all stories are a variation of "there once was a problem, and it got resolved" - but the kicker is this: Booker asserts that any story which fails to follow his prescription is - objectively - flawed. Now that sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn't it.

The first observation to make is that this significantly undermines his claim to have found a unifying theory: Suddenly, it's not all literature that follows the archetype, but all *good* literature. As a moral objectivist, that doesn't seem to Booker like much of a concession, but from any other perspective it is: what Booker is saying is that all literature *which he likes* meets one of the seven archetypes. What seemed to be a bold assertion about the nature of literature is instead a simple indictment of Booker's appreciation of it.

That seems more plausible, anyway: the point and content of a story, you would think, cannot be straight-jacketed in this way. The fact that popular stories tend to have similarities speaks to our cultural heritage, the common dilemmas of life and death we share, and perhaps to our lack of imagination, not to some cosmic rule of fiction. This has been borne out in more "enlightened" times (literally - since the enlightenment), as Booker notes to his dismay that these similarities have tended to fade. But even without that modern interference, Booker notes that the seven archetypes tend to fragment under the weight of closer analysis - there are "dark inversions" of each, and inversions of various characters. So, the seven become fourteen or more.

The second problem is that, as mentioned, the last couple of centuries have seen stories fail more and more to keep to the archetypes. Booker blames this on romanticism, and is required by his theory to claim that these divergent stories are intrinsically flawed. That might not be a problem were these flawed stories not to include almost all the classics of modern literature, except perhaps Lord of the Rings and the Narnia chronicles (both of which, quelle surprise, have a fundamentally Christian, and therefore morally objectivist, subtext).

So, you can write off Melville, Nabokov, Balzac, Lawrence, Stoker and Shelley, or write off Booker's theory.

For me, it isn't a difficult choice.

Olly Buxton

I liked this book very much. It was kind of longwinded. But since it is a resource book and not a mere how-to on writing, I could overlook how long it was. The more content the better because it gave me more examples and things to think about regarding the subject matter.

The book is broken into four basic parts:

1. The 7 basic plots
2. Stories told well
3. Stories not told well
4. Why people tell stories

And the 7 basic plots are as follows:

1. Overcoming themonster
2. Rags to riches
3. A journey - the quest
4. A journey - the voyage and return
5. Comedies
6. Tragedies
7. Rebirth

This book took 34 years to write (so says the author). But I think it took so long because the author was not motivated to finish it a lot sooner. This is true even though the book is kind of heavy at 728 pages. There are many stories cited throughout the book as examples of what the author discusses. And all the stories cited are referenced in an index at the end of the book.

What I liked the most about the book was how logical and informative it was. I particularly liked the fact that I could look at the Table of Contents and pretty much tell what the book was about. As a result, reading the book was a pleasure. However, I did have to dig a little when it came to Chapter 12. At first glance I thought the author had added another plot and forgotten to tell me about it or to redo the title of the book. I probably would have liked the book better if Chapter 12 had been put someplace else.

When I read this book I also read The Writer's Journey (ISBN: 193290736X) and Story (ISBN: 0060391685). All three books compliment each other and relate to the art/process of writing a bestselling novel, drama, or movie script. I recommend if you read one, then go ahead and read all three.

At the end of this book there is a glossary of terms. I found it to be a little helpful. In fact, I found it to be very helpful when reading The Writer's Journey because that book failed to have a glossary. 5 stars!

Take the time to read the whole 800 pages (give or take) and you will see the connection between plots, character types, and more. Then you will see that life is exactly the fiction we read. Art imitates life or... the other way around. As you read through, you will think not only of movie and book characters and plots, but of people you know with traits that belong to monsters and heros, damsels and royalty and you will see there is nothing new under the sun.

WRITERS: If you've ever had problems deciding where your plot should go or how your character SHOULD react to a given situation, this book answers all your questions.

Get a copy and mark and earmark. It's actually a dictionary written in easy prose.

Is it too long? Maybe. It's hard to digest so much info, so take a section at a time. I think it's very, very good.

Booker's thesis is not so much that all of storytelling contains a specific number of plots--a theory that can never be proven, be it seven, twelve, fifty, or one hundred--only that certain topics come up again and again throughout the history of literature. Why? is the question his book asks, and Booker's answers are fascinating, based on his readings of the most influentical classics in history.

His answer draws from Jung's theory of archetypes, the supposedly immutable patterns we follow in our path of self-development. (The book draws heavily from Jung, so if you're averse to his theories you probably won't enjoy it.) Basically he's saying that good stories help us accept life's challenges, grow up, face and overcome evil, and carry forward our culture and our values. Why such a theory should be controversial or threatening to some people is beyond me. Narrow? Not really--just a point in view, and one persuasively argued and eloquently written. It's long, yes, and it does have a shocking number of typos, but who cares. Booker has a gift for writing about complex ideas with simplicity, elegance, and power. Give me more writing with lousy proofreading if it's anything like this!

As for myself I think the archetypes are real. I discovered this book after finishing my novel, The Islander, only to discover that my main character's plot fit Booker's Rags to Riches category, while another character's plot fit the Voyage and Return archetype. I was not aware of these patterns while writing the book, but they clearly asserted themselves whether I was conscious of them or not.

Booker is a little hard on Romanticism and harder still on modern or experimental writing, likewise on the predominantly ironic fiction of the twentieth century (a judgment made by Northrop Frye), and sometimes this does give him the air of a moral censor. On the other hand it's refreshing to find someone who thinks there is something very serious at stake going on with our storytelling. Good stories can make us better people, he argues, and bad stories can make us worse, and I agree with him. And much of the fictional pond these days, while interesting and entertaining, is certainly polluted: nothing you would want to raise your children on.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever wondered about the value of fiction in our world. It's not just for fun. It's central to who we are, and what we say in it really matters.

This is an outstanding analysis of stories and their underlying structures. Obviously categories such as Comedy and Tragedy are nothing new but it is important to grasp from a fresh perspective how and why the psychological mechanisms of the stories work. The Voyage and Return category and Rebirth hold special qualities of their own which also require illumination which Booker offers, and plot outlines are summarised frequently and well.


It is quite possibly the first time that a work of this scope has also torn down the veil on the emasculated story telling of the 19th and 20th Centuries. That naughty Goethe set the whole thing going with The Sorrows of Young Werther - his self indulgent despair and suicide - and it's been doing great ever since! And I'll never go to a Verdi opera again! It's intriguing seeing Joyce and Beckett getting the once over and better still putting the boot into Wagner is really invigorating. But let's face it, all these neurotic and corrupted stories (from an archetypal point of view)were bound to be written as a reflection of their times. I'll always have a soft spot for Beckett's nihilism because it's so damn funny!

I have always been sympathetic to Jung's idea of archetypes and have no problem with the way the author has emphasised story archetypes as having limited permutations outside of the seven main types. The fundamental dictate in meaningful stories is that transformation from limited ego consciousness to a higher consciousness can be shown to have taken place; and unredeemable characters are shown to be destroyed or punished.

Unfortunately there is a tendency for repetition in places and I agree with the other reviewer who stated that there is a better edited version of this work buried in all the verbiage. Crikey, you could even add in diagrams or pictures!
Also, there is an over-use of the terms "light" and "dark" to show where the character is situated symbolically but this is a small price to pay for a profound insight into the world of story telling.

Many reviews here both positive and negative describe this fascinating work in great detail ... consider whichever of them you will, then factor this into your decision: Everything you are ever told is an opinion. That's true of Mr. Booker's book and the reviews expressed here. I read not to agree with the author of a work on all points but in order to see what a book makes me THINK ... to this end a book can make many points that I do not agree with and still be highly useful, entertaining, even life transforming.


I did not find that Christopher Booker's seeming criticism of certain works being "flawed" or referred to in other seemingly negative ways really damaged his basic theory ... I chose to take it that they were flawed as to how they applied to his model and pressed on. Yes, he has what may be seen as a "traditional" point of view regarding literature and other subjects but in a work about the evolution of storytelling tradition counts for quite a bit.

It's a hefty tome. I described it to some of my friends as "a career." MANY subjects (certain psychological theories and much else) must be accepted as a given or the thing would be much longer and would take forever to make any point at all. Much of the controversy stems from Booker's seeming condemnation of certain types of entertainment produced in the last 200 years.

He makes some good points, some feel like moralizing ... some are possibly legitimately moralizing. Much of his discussion of "Waiting For Godot" MAY have been criticism as it emerged from his word processor (or typewriter!) however, I could EASILY read it as commending the play for brilliantly identifying issues at large in the culture at the time ... his point is clear but his opinion is not ... and MY opinion (high praise for Godot) was built entirely on his observations.

There are places where the examination falls short, again there must be or this work, which took 30 years to complete, would remain perpetually unfinished. He, and others, fail to take into consideration the fact that much of the work he discusses prior to the Romantic Period was not "commercial writing," the author wasn't working for a paycheck, a fact that motivates many writers to put out work that isn't as completely "cooked" as material that they have revisited several times over a decade or so. Movies are examined but an aspect never discussed (by this author or most members of the entertainment press) is the influence of several levels of creative executives all submitting both intelligent and idiotic ideas to the writers (sometimes dozens of them and many uncredited) and director ... ideas that cannot be ignored (because these executives are "the boss," the final authority at the studio). Also not considered is the fact that many of the more traditional stories were told for many years before being written down, then were told more times and written down again and again. Each time they dipped into the well of the unconscious, becoming more and more distilled ... this is very different than a modern novel which is often written over a limited time frame, rewritten over a more limited time frame and then rushed into print. The modern work runs the risk of being less purely refined than a work in existence hundreds or thousands of years before it's modern incarnation. It is slightly possible that someday in the far future the recent film version of Beowolf will be considered 'the original,' it certainly has many of the features of 'classical' literature. However, it is a distinct, wonderful, and inaccurate reworking of what we know to be the story ... and the TRUE original might have been very different yet.

All that said, I return to what I hope is a meaningful point. This is not a highly controversial work but it is right and proper for anyone reading this or any other book to point out its imperfections. In many cases, especially in a work of complex opinion such as this one, that is the evidence that the author is doing his job. People are thinking, thinking hard about what he has said. Their opinions indicate that they have learned from him or refined their thoughts because of what he has written.

The Seven Basic Plots is a great work. No one needs to take it as some kind of gospel. No one needs to agree with every point for it to be the learning experience of a lifetime. It's successes and failures are simply food for more creative thought. It's a big book with small type but if you have the time and an open mind you too can read it, learn from it, agree and disagree with it.

I love books that attempt grand syntheses: Aristotle's Poetics, V. I. Propp's Morphology of the Folk-Tale, Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, and the writings of Kenneth Burke, to name just a few. For 30 years, Booker worked on this, and has for the most part achieved something spectacular. Like most great ideas, this starts off with very basic observations and questions -- indeed, questions that seem too obvious to ask: Why do stories have heroes? Why do they portray some sort of conflict? We take such things for granted. Booker, to his credit, does not.

The book is in several large parts. The first talks about the "seven basic plots": Overcoming the Monster; Rags to Riches; Voyage and Return; The Quest; Comedy; Tragedy; Rebirth. The second part talks about the four major archetypal characters (Booker acknowledges a debt to Jung) -- Father, Mother, Animus, Anima -- in their dark and light manifestations and revisits the plots in terms of these interactions. The third part talks about how plots go wrong. The fourth part, the least worthwhile chapter of the book, tries a tour-bus view of millennia of intellectual history with a view to showing inexorable decline.

Just coming up with his 7+4 theoretical framework constitutes a major achievement. As long as works conform to his archetypal plots and characters, he provides brilliant analysis, although here and there I may disagree with this view of certain aspects of a work (his downgrading of Frodo as a character in Lord of the Rings and his underestimation of Spielberg's Close Encounters seem major misreadings, despite a generally wonderful discussion). He's also very sharp on where conforming plots go wrong. The problem comes when he insists on his archetypes as the only successful patterns.

I grant that these patterns are extremely satisfying. I see the basic dramatic movement most easily in comedy. Booker lets me understand why I find Bringing Up Baby and Clueless ultimately more satisfying than Duck Soup, as funny (to me, actually much funnier than the previous two) as the Marx Brothers epic undoubtedly is. All of these plots are metaphors for an unformed or destructive set of circumstances resolving in various ways toward light and wholeness.

The problems with the book come up with stories that don't conform to the archetype. Booker rightly points out a weakening of these patterns in the 17th and especially the early 18th centuries. According to Booker, it's due to mankind's increasing alienation from a sense of cosmic wholeness. Dante's Divina Commedia can't be written now, I think we'd agree. The decline of religious dogma and the rise of scientific or empirical observation have been responsible for this. Booker blames the alienation, which I think a sentimental cop-out. It's hard to write a classic, convincing rags-to-riches story in the age of Trump. The rain falls largely on the just, while the unjust seem to have cosmic umbrellas. Millions of innocents died during the Great Leap Forward. Stalin and Mao died in their sleep. These stories also need to be told. They may be less satisfying, but they show something true, rather than, as Booker tries to argue, sentimentality. Booker refers to the Book of Job as a "good" resolution of the problem of innocent suffering. I find the end of that story incredibly hollow. Sure, Job gets a new family, but what about the old family? Why does God allow Satan to afflict Job? According to Robert Frost in his Masque of Reason, "I did it on a bet," says God, citing the very beginning of the story. Job replies, "I expected more than I could understand, and what I get is almost less than I can understand." Job is brought back into wholeness with the One (Booker uses terms like this), but does this really satisfy anybody? "Gaining the kingdom" doesn't make everything all right and indeed comes with its own set of problems. Stendahl, Proust, Joyce, and Melville don't write their stories solely out of individual psychosis or neurosis, but out of universal experience and sharp observation.

The fourth part of the book is to me little more than sentimental nostalgia for the good old days before the post-lapsarian Fall represented by Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism. As he himself shows, Booker's archetypes persist with wonderful results to the present. But that's not the only way great art can be made. Booker has fallen so in love with his own analysis that he has closed his mind to the possibility of other ways to artistic success.

We are all story lovers, some more than others. The book "seven basic plots" gives a wonderful inside into how stories are constructed, how the writer keeps us turning pages and our enjoyment on high.
After all the best movies usually end up on the screen. I had this book out of our local library for a number of months and I just had to have my own copy.

The writer Christopher Booker I believe does a splendid job in this book. It's a must for all story lovers both readers and writers and those that love the movies. I am an unpublished writer myself and this is a very welcome addition to my library.

I found Amazon pricing for this book and other items I had purchased from them more that compatible with supplies here in Australia. Their service and deliver beats anybody I have dealt with in the past.

Thank you Amazon, keep it up.

Colin G

This book is the most comprehensive text I have yet read on the subject, and though it is repetitive and biased to some degree, there are wonderful insights and clarifications. Booker acknowledges his debt to Joseph Cambell, C.G. Jung, and Northrop Frye, and this book is infinitely more readable than any of theirs. There is always a problem when classifying and dividing art, but one must not throw out the baby with the bath water.