Introductory description

CW914-36 - Seven Basic Plots

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

The module will be exploratory and practical, using structured exercises, published texts, handouts, class discussion and homework to stimulate the production of new work. Each week students will study one text in particular in relation to an aspect of plot.

Week 1 Plot: An Introduction (Poetics, fairy tales, Joseph Campbell, Robert McKee, complex patterns in nature and art)
Week 2 Heroes/Heroines (Conan, Don Quixote, The Bourne Identity)
Week 3 Monsters/Others (The Bible, Frankenstein, Stephen King, Homer)
Week 4 Tragedy (Oedipus Rex, Ibsen, Chekhov, revenge)
Week 5 Comedy (Chaplin, Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Emma, P.G.Wodehouse, slapstick, stand-up, and Henri Bergson)
Week 6 The Quest (Heart of Darkness, Dan Brown, Super Mario)
Week 7 Voyage and Return (Islands, Lord of the Flies, The Beach)
Week 8 Transformation (Dostoevsky, Great Expectations, A Star Is Born, the Bildungsroman)
Week 9 Anti-Plots (Clarice Lispector, Christine Brooke-Rose, Slaughterhouse-Five, Adaptation)
Week 10 Plots: A Summary

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Display a practical understanding of plot types and techniques and to have developed a critical understanding of some of the central ideas and principles of plot and plotting in fiction.
• Demonstrate a practical and critical knowledge of the construction of literary fiction in terms of language, genre, form, narrative, character, dialogue and description, and of representative examples by published writers.
• Analyse prose sentence by sentence in terms of how each works in terms of structure, music and voice, reflect on the relation between theory and practice

Indicative reading list

Aristotle, Poetics
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Jane Austen, Emma
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

SECONDARY READING

Aristotle, ‘Poetics’, in Classical Literary Criticism, trans. T.S. Dorsch (1965)
Bell, James Scott, Plot and Structure (1995)
Booker, Christopher, The Seven Basic Plots (2005)
Brooks, Peter, Reading for the Plot (1985)
Burke, Kenneth, The Philosophy of Literary Form (1957)
Chatman, Seymour, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (1978)
Kermode, Frank, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (1966)
Lodge, David, Working with Structuralism (1981)
McKee, Robert, Story (1999)
Module Content and Teaching
Mittelmark, Howard and Sandra Newman, How Not to Write a Novel (2009)
Polkinghorne, David, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences (1988)
Polti, Georges, The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, trans. Lucille Ray (1977)
Prince, Gerald, A Dictionary of Narratology (2nd edn., 2003)
Ryan, Marie-Laure, ed., Avatars of Story: Narrative Modes in Old and New Media (2006)
Thompson, Kristin, Storytelling in Film and Television (2003)
Vogler, Christopher, The Writer’s Journey (3rd edn., 2007)

Subject specific skills

No subject specific skills defined for this module.

Transferable skills

No transferable skills defined for this module.