Lesson 6 - The Seven Plot Types

Discover the foundation for every story every told, and how you can use one of these plot types as the foundation for your story.

Lesson 6 - The Seven Plot Types

Developed by Jason Tomaric, FilmSkills
ABOUT THIS LESSON

Every story that has every been told, is being told, and will ever be told can be distilled into one of seven basic story lines. And every story is a variation of one of these plot types. In this lesson, we will explore each of these 7 plot types and how you can adapt them to your story.

 

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

Learn about each of the seven plot types and how they can serve as the foundation for your story.

  • The Quest
  • Journey and Return
  • Comedy
  • Tragedy
  • Rebirth/Resurrection
  • Overcoming the Adversary
  • Rags to Riches
ABOUT THE LESSON AUTHOR
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Jason Tomaric

Jason Tomaric

Director, Cinematographer Los Angeles, California
Jason J. Tomaric is an Emmy, Telly, and CINE Award-winning director and cinematographer of four internationally-distributed feature films, dozens of national television commercials, music videos, and the largest film training content library in the world, published author of 8 books - used in many top universities, and creator of AccuSkills.com, an industry-changing learning management platform. 
 
Jason has worked in Los Angeles and around the world in over 20 countries. His clients include Disney, NBC/Universal, National Geographic, McDonald’s, Toyota, Scion, Microsoft, and Paul Mitchell, with narrative work screened at Sundance, Slamdance, and South by Southwest film festivals as well as on Netflix and on all broadcast networks.
 
Jason has taught and/or guest lectured at some of the nation's most prestigious film schools including UCLA, Columbia College, John Carroll University, Kent State University, San Francisco State, University of Notre Dame, and numerous film festivals.
 
Jason has written eight industry-defining books, all sold in bookstores, and used in film schools around the world. The American Society of Cinematographers hails Jason's books - "There are no wasted words in Tomaric's tome, which concisely summarizes each facet of the director's craft.  It's difficult to think of a step in the process that Tomaric fails to address." 
 
Jason’s DVD training series on Hollywood film production have trained filmmakers in over 40 countries, with distributors in Europe, Hong Kong, New York and Australia.
 
In 2010, Jason launched FilmSkills, which combines the world’s largest film training video library with his proprietary learning management system.  Adopted by 47 universities within the first year, FilmSkills is now the leading industry-standard training solution for motion picture and television production.
 
In 2015, Jason launched AccuSkills.com, an industry-changing learning management platform that bridges the gap between academia and industry.
CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS LESSON
Chris Huntley

Chris Huntley

Academy Award-winning creator of “Scriptor," and co-creator of "Dramatica"
Chris Huntley is an Academy Award-winning software developer and Vice President of Write Brothers® Inc. Chris is also the co-creator of Dramatica®, an acclaimed theory of story and the basis of the popular Writer's DreamKit™ and Dramatica® Pro software. Chris regularly teaches workshops and classes on story structure and development.

While an undergraduate in Cinema Production at the University of Southern California, Chris created several short films, including the award-winning animated short, “Daddy’s Gone a’ Hunting,” which was chosen as the short film screened before the world premiere of the George Romero film, “Dawn of the Dead.” After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Cinema Production, Chris worked for several years in the film industry.

In 1982, Chris went into business with fellow USCinema alum, Stephen Greenfield, and formed Screenplay Systems Inc., now doing business as Write Brothers® Inc. Together they created Scriptor™, the world’s first professional screenplay formatting software, for which they won a 1994 Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They went on to produce other award winning, industry standard software, such as Movie Magic® Budgeting and Movie Magic® Scheduling, Dramatica® Pro, Writer’s DreamKit, Movie Magic® Screenwriter, StoryView™, Word Menu® and more.

As co-creator of the Dramatica® story theory, the co-author of “Dramatica: A New Theory of Story” (1994), and co-developer of the Dramatica® Pro and Writer’s DreamKit™ software, Chris has spent thirty years working with narrative theory and its practical application.

Today, Chris splits his time working as Vice President of Write Brothers® Inc. between design work for new products and overseeing day-to-day business affairs. Chris also spends a fair amount of time giving workshops in story development in the U.S. and abroad.

Jason J. Tomaric

Jason J. Tomaric

Emmy-winning director/Cinematographer
Jason J.Tomaric is a multiple Emmy, Telly and CINE Award-winning director and cinematographer. With four feature films, sixty commercials, music videos and an educational DVD series on the market, Jason's approach to filmmaking has made for a successful, fulfilling career. Jason has worked in over 20 countries as a director and has taught at some of the nation's most prestigious film schools including UCLA and the New York Film Academy. Jason's book, "Filmmaking"(Focal Press) is available in bookstores worldwide.
 
Jason is also the creator of FilmSkills.
Neil Landau

Neil Landau

Writer, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” “Melrose Place,” “The Magnificent Seven,” and MTV’s “Undressed”
Neil Landau is an American screenwriter, playwright, producer, and director. His film and television credits include the teen comedy Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Melrose Place, The Magnificent Seven, Doogie Howser, M.D., The Secret World of Alex Mack and MTV's Undressed. He has developed numerous one-hour drama TV pilots for several studios and networks including Warner Bros., Touchstone, CBS, ABC Family, and Lifetime, and has written movies for Universal Pictures, Disney, Columbia Pictures, and 20th Century Fox.
 
He is currently rewriting an animated feature based on the popular Tadeo Jones comic books for El Toro and Warner Bros. Pictures, for whom he also worked as executive script consultant on the film, "Lope,"Writer, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” “Melrose Place,” “The Magnificent Seven,” and MTV’s “Undressed”
which was short-listed for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Film. He is slated as executive script consultant for the upcoming El Toro/Universal Pictures film "Bruc".
 
Neil has also worked internationally as both co-head-writer and executive script consultant on television and film projects for Sony Pictures Television International (in Russia), Freemantle Media (in Australia), and Intereconomia (in Spain).
 
Neil recently served as Executive Vice-President of Scripted Development for Amedia Film Group located in Moscow (Russia), working with writers, creative producers, story editors, and studio executives, guiding a slate of original projects including feature films, animation, miniseries, made-for-television movies, one-hour drama series, situation comedies, soap operas, and historical docudramas.
 
Neil teaches in the MFA in Screenwriting and Producing Programs at both UCLA School of Film & Television and USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is also a faculty advisor in the MFA in Writing Program at Goddard College.

 

Xander Bennett

Xander Bennett

Writer, “The Colour of Fear,” and Author of “Screenwriting Tips... You Hack"
Xander Bennett is an Australian screenwriter and author. He is a former Hollywood script reader, who divides his time between Los Angeles and Sydney. Bennett is best known for his laconic advice about the practice of screenwriting, shared daily in a blog called Screenwriting Tips... You Hack, and for a book of the same name.
 
Bennett has written for television, videogames, role-playing games, and comics, and is the author of a graphic novel.  He wrote educational comics for Pan Macmillan and worked on Ghostees, a small browser game for BakedOn Entertainment, which hasn't been released yet. He has written tabletop RPG books for The Le Games (Unorthodox Pirates), Highmoon Media (The Song of Roland), and Dogsoul Publishing.
He lived in Vancouver during 2008, where he did some freelance journalism and copywriting, and worked as a quality assurance tester for Electronic Arts Vancouver. In 2009 he moved to Los Angeles for a year to attend the UCLA Professional Program in Producing. While there he worked as a reader for a minor production company. Bennett administers an online script reading service, Hack Notes.
 
He is managed by Madhouse Entertainment, Los Angeles.