Archer

EVERY STORY IN THE WORLD HAS ONE OF SIX BASIC PLOTS. 

This clickbaity title jumped out at me today as I scanned the BBC news website. Naturally, I immediately read it. To summarize, their argument was that every story ever could be shoehorned into one of these categories:

1. Rags to riches – a steady rise from bad to good fortune

2. Riches to rags – a fall from good to bad, a tragedy

3. Icarus – a rise then a fall in fortune

4. Oedipus – a fall, a rise then a fall again

5. Cinderella – rise, fall, rise

6. Man in a hole – fall, rise

Source: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180525-every-story-in-the-world-has-one-of-these-six-basic-plots

So this got me thinking, do Brandon's books fit in to these categories? I say yes. Although he tends to gravitate to ones that end fortunately for the characters.

So the challenge of course is to find/make a story that doesn't. The best way of doing it I think is to have a story where the character's net fortune doesn't change whatsoever. There's probably more ways of proving those fine folks at the BBC wrong, I just can't think of any right now. Food for thought.