Craft Chat Plot Types

[Robinne Weiss]

***Thread moved here from Café Life by request***

Ran across this today and thought it was worth sharing. Don't know if it really is what it claims to be--EVERY plot ever--but it's a nice long list that I found useful in terms of considering my current WIP.

An Encyclopedia of Every Literary Plot, Ever

 

[Paul Whybrow]

It's a thought-provoking list. I see that the first Cornish Detective novel that I wrote, The Perfect Murderer, falls into the category Mystery: Mirror Version: The criminal’s identity is revealed early on, so the reader knows more than the detective (but not enough to know what happens next).

One of the problems when querying is that if you're asked to compare your story to a well-known book, it immediately puts you on your back foot. Although you've demonstrated knowledge of your genre, it implies that you think your work is as good as the published author's. But, this is what we have to do—inflate our egos to full capacity!

 

[RK Wallis]

A formidable list

 

[Rich.]

One of the problems when querying is that if you're asked to compare your story to a well-known book, it immediately puts you on your back foot. Although you've demonstrated knowledge of your genre, it implies that you think your work is as good as the published author's. But, this is what we have to do—inflate our egos to full capacity!

Not necessarily, I think. If we pitch in terms of my book will appeal to readers of X book, we're simply making a comment about our target readership and knowledge of the market; we're not making value judgements about our books compared to others. Ego pressure nil

 

[Barbara]

One of the problems when querying is that if you're asked to compare your story to a well-known book, it immediately puts you on your back foot. Although you've demonstrated knowledge of your genre, it implies that you think your work is as good as the published author's. But, this is what we have to do—inflate our egos to full capacity!

I agree with Rich. It's not about inflating our submission, which might actually come across as annoying. It's all about pointing to the size of the novel's potential market. If I say my book can be 'compared' to Whistling Songs Backwards - A How-To Manual (a silly, made up example), they will know my market isn't all that huge and hence the book won't sell well. But if I 'compare' it to something that has sold well, they know they can sell this too, hence make money. It's about helping them see how they can make money from our work. This is the bit we need to make most of.

So if we can show an agent that our novel has a tried and tested plot type, the agent can see that it is a safe bet, not some obscure storyline with muddles genres and which might be a hard sell.

 

[KateESal]

@Rich. it's probably worth moving this thread into writing wiki...that link is likely to be very handy, especially when we're scratching our heads trying to come up with comps....