Do you agree /lit/?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3679510/There-just-SIX-plots-film-book-TV-Researchers-reveal-building-blocks-storytelling.html
>>8262699
>there are only six plots
>all six are exactly the same
Not a big deal, since its character that defines a plot.
If you take a "Steady fall" type of plot, but for two instances have a bitter old man as a protagonist, and a happy schoolteacher as another, both stories will be completely different from each other.
>>8262699
>Reading for plot
May as well go and watch movies, that's right movies, not films.
I do not agree completely, because the list simplifies some more nuanced plots and ignores the fact that many books have multiple of these "plots" at once. that being said I will be using this in my classroom for the upcoming school year.
>>8262699
Absolutely meaningless. This is exactly why STEMbots can't pass a Turing test.
>>8263252
I'm not following that link, but there have been countless iterations of inane "there are X plots" statements before, all of them issued by members of "the humanities". Your post is just as meaningless and you should feel ashamed
>>8263268
Bleep blorp, motherfucker.
There is only one plot; all stories have a beginning and an end and therefore are all the same.
>>8263285
>implying the last page of Finnegan's Wake is the end
>>8262699
the humanities infuriate stem because literature consistently resists quantification. what analytics bemoan as "continental obscurantism" is merely philosophy which attempts to grapple with the full range of possibility literary form enables.
I think a better way of wording it would be "every plot of every story when reduced to its primary components falls into one of six major plot-equations" instead of going full clickbait and saying THERES ONLY SIX PLOTS.
>>8262699
lol
That's stupid. They're so vague that stuff can generally fit into the categories but it seems pretty meaningless.
But even so there are lots of books that wouldn't really fit into any of these. Gravity's Rainbow and Catch 22 are the first to come to mind.
>>8262699
>Researchers discover all sentences consist of a subject, an object, and a verb.
There's actually two plots: things change, things stay the same.
>>8263621
>Ok.
>>8263285
The movement of the plot is not the plot itself you dumb sack of pseud shit.
>reading for plot
>>8262699
This is the most retarded thing I've read in 6 years. Thanks
>>8262699
The only reason they came to this conclusion was because they eliminated every single element of the plot down to either "things are getting better" or "things are getting worse." It would be impossible not to find patterns this way.
>muh 6 million
>>8262699
>boy meets girl
FINDS A WAY
>>8262762
what do you read for?
>>8264453
this - they're basically saying that all plots are the same because they all contain conflict in some sense. seems a little reductive to me
>>8262699
"Every day the DM proves there is no such thing as a new story." -Nutty Norman, Catalhoy uk, United Kingdom,
>>8263299
>Finnegan's
>gan's
>n's
>'
>>8262707
>bitter old man
>schoolteacher
what's the difference
>>8265707
So that I can tell myself I am actually doing something everyday instead of just masturbating to dudes dressed as women, and collecting welfare.
There's actually just one plot
>there's some sort of conflict in the book
I think I deserve a Nobel for this.
>>8265792
its really up to you
Which one did they drop?
>>8262699
Borges said somewhere (maybe it was even one of his essays) that there are only four basic plots or stories that get retold over and over. Somebody else (mabye W. Gass?) said there's only two plots: "a stranger comes to town" and " the hero goes on a journey".
>>8262699
>NEWS FLASH! STUDIES SHOW THAT ALL MUSIC IS COMPRISED OF ONLY 7 NOTES
>>8266153
Then anon said there is only one plot: the hero goes on a journey and comes to another town as a stranger.
Then the Nobel prize committee declared literature solved and promptly committed suicide en masse. The UN dissolved itself and the world devolved into primal chaos, with God mumbling something about how this iteration had figured it out fairly quickly.
>>8266157
12, you mook
>>8266644
do re mi fa sol la si
a b c d e f h
whatever's in between those doesn't count
How do books like the soft machine fit into this? Or even infinite jest which jumps from rising and falling across a variety of characrers and times. Or any book that isn't YA or written before the 20th century (and even then there are a few that wouldn't fit in to the six plots provided).
Kurt Vonnegut must have invented 5 of those plots, unless you can find what Cat's Cradle is derived from.
>implying there are even two plots in literature
Every single book in the world is just a retelling of the hero's journey.
t. World Lit freshmen.
>>8266724
are you German? you must be to be this dumb.
>>8263285
-Joseph Campbell
>>8263285
>There is only one life; all lives have the same beginning and end and are therefore the same
There is ONE type of plot:
>book begins
>action occurs
>book ends
ALL YOUR LIFE YOU HAVE BEEN READING THE SAME PLOT IN EVERY BOOK
- The Daily Mail
>>8265800
which plot does this one have anon
>>8262699
>Plots
Palindromes say: Fuck off
>>8263320
>"continental obscurantism" is merely philosophy which attempts to grapple with the full range of possibility literary form enables.
Nah
There's a 50% chance this is true because either it is or it is not.
It's basically "digressions : the novel"
It's also quintessential high literature. It goes through many phases, it starts as an adventure yarn, sometimes it is a sermon from an extremely well read preacher, other times it is a whale biology book. What remains constant is God tier prose. Check out this excerpt:
Lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
>>8264453
>>8265730
You guys have understated how retarded the article is. If the only options are up and down and you don't allow for consecutive runs such as up up because you would just call it up then inevitably the combinations are up, down, up down, down up, up down up, down up down. Not included in the study but probably less commonly occurring, up down up down, and down up down up. This result is completely an artifact of the methodology and says nothing about the stories.
summary image lifted from article
>>8263299
>'
Opinion discarded
>>8268562
What about a book in which no progress is made?
At least the people who defined 20 plots and 36 plots actually described specific situations and motivations involved in the story. "The researchers" in this article just described the flow of the story. It's meaningless. The sequence in which "bad events" and "good events" unfold isn't the actual plot itself.
>>8268557
best combination is up up down down left right left right b a start, do it at the beginning for greater effect
>>8265786
funniest shit i've seen all day
>>8262699
Plot is extremely overrated anyway.
Only brain dead idiots and women care about WHAT HAPPENS.
How the story is told is everything.
>>8271048
They both matter equally, if your characterization is shallow amd inconsistent which inevitably leads to bad plot movements then you very much have a shit story, nevermind how its told when the offenses are on the root level
>>8262699
>six million plots
>abrupt ending
>best story ever told
when you categorise things, you can be infinitely detailed if you like, or broad enough for literally everything to be included in one category.
