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Are there any new stories, or have they all been told? The British literary critic Christopher Booker, has argued that there have only ever been seven basic plots, as follows:

1. 'Tragedy'. Hero with a fatal flaw meets tragic end. Macbeth or
Madame Bovary.
2. 'Comedy'. Not necessary laugh-out-loud, but always with a happy ending, typically of romantic fulfilment, as in Jane Austen.
3. 'Overcoming the Monster'. As in Frankenstein or 'Jaws'. Its psychological appeal is obvious and eternal.
4. 'Voyage and Return'. Booker argues that stories as diverse as Alice
in Wonderland and H G Wells' The Time Machine and Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner follow the same archetypal structure of personal development through leaving, then returning home.
5. 'Quest'. Whether the quest is for a holy grail, a whale, or a kidnapped child it is the plot that links a lot of the most popular fiction. The quest plot links Lords of the Rings with Moby Dick and a thousand others in between.
6. 'Rags to Riches'. The riches in question can be literal or metaphoric. See Cinderella, David Copperfield, Pygmalion.
7. 'Rebirth'. The 'rebirth' plot - where a central character suddenly finds a new reason for living - can be seen in A Christmas Carol, It's a Wonderful Life, Crime and Punishment and Peer Gynt.

I tend to agree with this, and certainly with the underlying principle.
Every story has been told. The story if always there and authors are, if you excuse the analogy, like fashion designers dressing and re-dressing a body that will always have two arms and two legs and a head.

That does not mean a novel or a play or a film can't be truly original. Of course it can. It's just originality doesn't come through plot.
It comes from style and voice and the imagination that brings language and characters and settings to life. Shakespeare, for instance, never bothered himself with inventing plots. The story of Hamlet had already been told, in more prosaic form several times before. Same with King Lear and Macbeth and every other Shakespeare work you can think of.

This is why I always think if you're going to rob stories you might as well rob from the master thief himself. My first two novels—The Dead Fathers Club and The Labrador Pact—owe heavy debts to Hamlet and Henry IV Part One, respectively. One of my aims in doing so was to show how the universal themes Shakespeare dealt with don't just apply to royal families. They apply to eleven-year-old boys in small towns. They apply to pub landlords. They apply to schoolteachers. They apply to brand consultants. Hey, they might even apply to Labradors.

So personally I don't get too bothered about whether or not a plot is considered 'original' or 'unoriginal'. All stories are, to some degree, cover versions. It's how you carry these universal plots into the present age that's the challenge for every writer.

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Matt Haig, The Dead Father's Club, fiction, revenge, ghost, Hamlet, children, father, Penguin Books, books