The Seven Basic Plots

Part 1: Why Do We Tell Stories?
Chapter 1 - Overcoming the Monster - Beowulf - Red Riding Hood - Jaws
Chapter 2 - The Thrilling Escape from Death - The Pit and the Pendulum - Jonah - Journal of the Plague Year
Chapter 3 - Rags to Riches - The Ugly Duckling - Jane Eyre - The Gold Rush (Chaplin)
Chapter 4 - The Quest - The Odyssey - Exodus - The Aeneid - Moby Dick - Babar and Father Christmas
Chapter 5 - Voyage and Return - Alice in Wonderland - Peter Pan - Rasselas - The Third Man - Orpheus and Eurydice
Chapter 6 - Comedy - Aristophanes (The Wasps) - Plautus (The Pot of Gold) - Shakespeare (Love's Labours Lost, The Comedy of Errors etc) - Moliere (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) - Sheridan (The School for Scandal)
Chapter 7 - Comedy: The Plot Disguised - Fielding (Tom Jones) - Austen (Pride and Prejudice) - P.G Wodehouse - South Pacific - Four Weddings and a Funera
Chapter 8 - Tragedy Icarus - Macbeth - Don Giovanni - Anna Karenina - Bonnie and Clyde
Chapter 9 - Tragedy: The Divided Self
Chapter 10 - Tragedy: The Hero As Monster - Richard III - Dr Jekyll
Chapter 11 - Tragedies of Redemption and Fulfilment - King Lear - Tannhauser - Samson - The Snow Goose
Chapter 12 - From Shadow Into Light

Part 2: The Complete Happy Ending
Chapter 13 - The Dark Figures - Crocodile Dundee
Chapter 14 - Seeing Whole - The Jewel In the Crown
Chapter 15 - The Perfect Balance
Chapter 16 - The Unrealised Value
Chapter 17 - The Archetypal Family Drama
Chapter 18 - The Light Figures
Chapter 19 - Reaching the Goal - The Magic Flute - Lord of the Rings -Harry Potter
Chapter 20 - The Fatal Flaw

Part 3: Missing the Mark
Chapter 21 - Enter the Dark Inversion - Pere Goriot - Moby Dick
Chapter 22 - The Ego Takes Over: The Dark and Sentimental Versions - My Fair Lady - James Bond - Star Wars
Chapter 23 - The Ego Takes Over II Clarissa - Kafka - Catcher in the Rye
Chapter 24 - The Ego Takes Over III - Traviata - Tosca - Dorian Gray -You Only Live Twice
Chapter 25 - Losing the Plot - Thomas Hardy A Case History
Chapter 26 - Going Nowhere - Chekhov - Proust - Tender is the Night - Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Chapter 27 - Why Sex and Violence? Sade - Ulysses - Last Exit to Brooklyn - A Clockwork Orange
Chapter 28 - Rebelllion Against the One Job - 1984
Chapter 29 - The Mystery - Murders in the Rue Morgue - Sherlock Holmes - Citizen Kane
Chapter 30 - The Riddle of the Sphinx - Sophocles - Hamlet