Everything new is old again – or is that vice versa?

August 16, 2012 by

Did you know there are only seven different stories?

Don’t believe me? Well here they are, courtesy of a British critic called Christopher Booker:

 

1. Tragedy

2. Comedy

3. Overcoming the monster

4. Voyage and return

5. Quest

6. Rags to riches

7. Rebirth

 

Can you believe that? With all those hundreds and millions of books out there. Only seven stories?

What’s a writer supposed to do?

When I first found this out, I was pretty pissed off. Here I was, an ambitious up-and-coming writer, with my head filled with stories, then what do I find? They’ve all been written and actually there are only seven of them.

Of course, my natural reaction was to figure out who to blame. Obviously, it wasn’t my fault, so it had to be someone else’s. But who do you blame for something like this? After all, the big problem I had was being born after each of those seven stories had been written. What was I supposed to do – take time itself to court? It seemed that as far as legal remedies went, there wasn’t an awful lot I could do.

After I got over my fury (which believe me, took a good while), I began to feel sad. Sad for all those writers slaving away on their books, not realising that there was no point as their stories had already been written. Sad for all those hundreds and thousands of books sitting around in bookshops, and taking up digital space on the web, wholly unaware that they were actually completely redundant. Sad for all those readers wasting their time as all they needed to do was read seven books and be done with it all.

So that’s exactly what I decided to do. I would read each of those seven stories. At that’s where things began to get really complicated. You’d think it would be easy. After all, all I had to do was find seven stories. That shouldn’t take long at all. But the more I tried, the harder it became to actually pin them down.

I mean, take Quest for example. You’d think that would be easy. The Hobbit, or something obvious like that. But hang on a minute. Bilbo leaves home and then comes back, so does that make it Voyage and return? And he helps destroy Smaug the dragon, so maybe it’s really Overcoming the monster. And the bits with the trolls is pretty funny, so could it really be Comedy? And I could go on and on.

That’s when I realised something. Maybe there are only seven stories. But there are also hundreds and thousands of different stories, each similar to other stories in some ways but also unique in others.

So I no longer care about those seven stories. I just sit down and write my own stories, knowing that each one is a brand new, completely unique creation. And who knows. Maybe one day, I’ll actually write something so ground-breakingly different and original that Mr Booker will have to go back and add to his list. Eight different stories. I like it.

 

Jonathan is a member of the Alexandria Publishing Group – view their profile page

 

Related articles (external)

 

Enhanced by Zemanta
 
**Please note that guest posts and columns reflect the opinions of the individual author and not The Indie Exchange as a whole. Also note, The Indie Exchange uses affiliate links to offset the costs of hosting etc.**  
Jonathan Gould

Jonathan Gould

Jonathan Gould has lived in Melbourne, Australia all his life, except when he hasn't. He has written comedy sketches for both the theatre and radio, as well as several published children's books for the educational market. He likes to refer to his stories as dag-lit because they don't easily fit into recognisable genres (dag is Australian slang for a person who is unfashionable and doesn't follow the crowd - but in an amusing and fun way). You might think of them as comic fantasies, or modern fairytales for the young and the young-at-heart. Over the years, his writing has been compared to Douglas Adams, Monty Python, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, the Goons, Dr Seuss and even Enid Blyton (in a good way).
Filed Under: Alexandria Publishing Group, Columns Tagged With: , , ,

Comments

  1. Jonathan Gould says:
    August 16, 2012 at 5:42 pm

    Thanks to the Indie Exchange for having me here today.

    Wondering what other people think – readers and writers. Are there really only 7 different stories? Can anybody think of any other ones?

  2. Amanda says:
    August 18, 2012 at 12:47 pm

    I suppose if you want to over-simplify, you can say there are only seven stories. Too use a *much* more narrow example, there are only three country music songs:

    1. He/She Left Me

    2. I'm In love

    3.Let's Get Drunk

    But there are thousands of songs out there and more being released every day.

    With both books and music, it's the personal twist each individual puts on a timeless theme that makes every work different and special.

    On another note, you almost made it to "grumpy" here. Keep working on it.

  3. Jonathan Gould says:
    August 18, 2012 at 4:54 pm

    Hi Amanda,

    I've been doing my best to be grumpy but I've had a bit of a cold- that's my excuse.

    Great comment. Reminds me of the joke about what happens when you play a country song backwards – you get out of jail, your dog returns and your true love comes back.