Is There More Than One Plot Type?

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website.

Everywhere you look, it feels like it's more of the same. Hero saves the day. Boy gets girl, loses girl, gets girl back. Rebels expose corrupt government. Action hero saves the world and doesn't get a scratch. There is a protagonist, maybe two, if it's a romance. And all these stories fit into nifty three-act structures.

But is that the only way to tell a story? What if your story doesn't have a disaster? What if you have four acts instead of three? What if you have five protagonists? What if your story is all narration and you like it that way? Does that mean you are doing things wrong?

Not necessarily.

The three-act structure is, indeed, the most popular model for storytelling today. It's been around a really long time, too. Greek philosopher Aristotle gets credit for the idea since he said in his Poetics, "A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end." And Hollywood has perfected this structure, as have novelists. The thing works. Readers and viewers like it. But sometimes it feels wrong for your story idea. Sometimes you want to do something different. But what?

I once wrote a post on Georges Polti's 36 Plot Structures. And that list might get your brain thinking of new ideas. But I recently stumbled upon another list of plot types that enthralled me, and I wanted to share them with you. Dr. Charles Ramírez Berg has written numerous articles on film and is currently a professor of film history, screenwriting, and criticism. He created a list of alternative plot types for filmmakers, but I think that we can learn much from his analysis of films. I've listed several of them below.

The Daisy Chain Plot
This type of story has no main protagonist. One character's entire story leads right into the next character's entire story, and so on. Sometimes the story will come back to the first protagonist. Sometimes not. But this is a fun way to tell a story. My husband had an idea for a Daisy Chain Plot once. He wanted to tell a story that followed a one dollar bill.

The Ensemble Plot
In this type of plot, there are many protagonists. No one character is more important than another. The stories may intertwine. Or they might not. But each protagonist has his or her own story to tell. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a good literary example of an ensemble plot.

The Multiple Personality Plot
Here the main character plays more than one role. Maybe one person is living two lives. Or maybe he's schizophrenic. Or maybe he's been cloned. Or maybe he's a time traveler, so there is two of the him in the story at once. Or maybe he's George Bailey, getting to see what life would be like if he were never born, though, I suppose, there is only ever one George in the story at a time, so maybe that doesn't count.

The Subjective/Internal Plot
In this type of story, the plot is all inside the main character's mind. It's personal, emotional, internal. And it's very subjective or one-sided. We only get the perspective of once character. You might argue that all first person stories are this way. But a Subjective Plot is different. The story happens more in the characters thoughts than in his actions. This type of storytelling requires a unique voice and lots of narration.

The Backwards Plot 
This story is told backwards. Best example I can think of is the movie Memento. If you haven't seen it, it's pretty cool. Warning: it's scary. But these types of stories are told in reverse. There was an episode of Seinfeld told this way once. It was pretty entertaining.

The Repeated Action Plot
Ever seen the movie Groundhog's Day? How about 50 First Dates? Both are examples of the Repeated Action Plot in which the hero re-lives the same event over and over and over until he, somehow, manages to break the cycle. I saw one last Christmas called 12 Dates of Christmas. You can probably see the whole movie in your head just from that title.

The Repeated Event Plot
Picture a police detective trying to get the facts at a crime scene. He might hear over and over, "That's not how it happened." That's the gist of this plot type in which we have one event happening over and over, each time seen through a different character's eyes.

The Jumbled Plot
Here you have a number of scenes that appear to make no sense at all. But the story is like a puzzle. A nonlinear sequence of events. Out of order. Confusing at first. But each time a scene is added, the story will make more sense until it all comes together in the end. Quentin Tarantino really seems to like this style of storytelling.

The Existential Plot
In this type of story, the goal is often simply "stay alive." Many war stories fit into this category, and the reader/viewer experiences the action first hand. We often don't have a clue what is going on. At all. But we'll figure it out eventually. This type of story is meant to be honest and immerse you into the existence of the main character. You experience life as is, and it might not be pretty in the beginning, middle, or end.

So what do you think? Ever thought of writing a story that didn't fit the typical three-act structure or didn't have a main character and a happy ending? Which one of these plot types most interests you? Share in the comments.