A project a story.

Which narrative models can help us in its drafting?
In this post we will deal with storytelling and cultural planning.
The characters can be invented and can mix with each other; the variations would seem endless.
And then, how many plots are inspired by reality, which is always unpredictable?
And once a texture has been created, how many can be created due to variations, modifications and deformations of it?
The question would seem to make no sense, then.
But the conditional must, if in the history of literature (and of literary criticism) there have been so many attempts at classification.
Again, then, how many possible plots are there?
According to Ronald Tobias, Kipling would have identified 69, but we don't have a list.
For Patricia Ryan (Pats Premises: Popular Plots, Conflicts and Elements in Romance Novels, Romance Writers Report, 17 (4), April 1997) there are fifty-eight.
That is: Enhanced intimacy (8 plots); Love wins all (2 plots); A Lover rehabilitates or heals the Other (6); The Emotional Baggage or Inner Forces keep the Lovers divided (12); The Lovers Differences divide them (8); The Similes of lovers divide them (2); Babies and children (7); Comedy of errors (5); Relationship development (3); Elements of Myth or Fables (5).
Carlo Gozzi and Georges Polti (Les trente-six situations dramatiques, Paris: dition du Mercure de France, 1895).
Polti's classification still used today in creative writing schools and some plot generation software (detailed list here).
According to Ronald Tobias (20 Master Plots, and how to build them, Cincinnati: Writers Digest Books, 1993) there are twenty main frames.
Tobias's classification does not claim to be exhaustive and the categories are rather generic (Search, Adventure, Pursuit, Rescue, Escape, Revenge, Lenigma, Rivalry, the Underdog, Temptation, Metamorphosis, Transformation, Maturation, Love, Forbidden Love, Sacrifice, Discovery, Extreme Misery, Ascent, Descent).
Christopher Booker in The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, Continuum, London, 2004, argues that the possible plots can be traced back to seven basic models.
Each structured model, internally according to a meta-model in five phases: Anticipation; Dream; Frustration; Nightmare; Solution.
The possible plots are therefore: Defeating the Monster; from rags to riches; Research; Travel and Return; Comedy, Tragedy; Rebirth.
Wikipedia's Conflict (narrative) entry also lists seven possible plots: Man versus Himself; Man against Society; Man against Man; Man versus Nature; Man versus Destiny; Man versus God (or Supernatural); Man versus Machine (the classification seems to be due to a volunteer librarian named Jessamyn West).
The Foster-Harris model (Foster-Harris.
The Basic Patterns of Plot.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959.)
has three types: Type A with happy ending; Type B with no happy ending; Type C (literary) where the story, no matter if with a happy ending or not, is told in reverse and comparable to the fatal mechanism of Greek tragedies.
Tobias, in the book cited above, hypothesizes a further classification, dividing the plots into Plots of the Body and Plots of the Mind.
Some critics have speculated that the classification should not be made on the basis of the typology of the story being told, but on the basis of the structure of this narrative.
For these critics it is therefore a question of analyzing The Structure of the Plot.
Gustav Freytag (Die Technik des Dramas, 1863) referring to Aristotle's Poetics, proposes a model that is referred to as the Freytag triangle.
More recently Christopher Vogler with The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers (1998) analyzed the plots and structure of the most successful films by proposing an epic narrative model known as the Hero's Journey.

From Vittoriorenuzzi