Ronald B. Tobias has spent his career as a writer moving from genre to genre, first as a short story writer, then as an author of fiction and nonfiction books and finally as a writer and producer of documentaries for public television. He is currently a professor in the Department of Media and Theatre Arts at Montana State University.
Published in 1993. The politics and world-view is dated, and the overt homophobia and ingrained Judeo-Christian moral sensibility are a little surprising. Likewise, the race and class issues are rampant, but the determined use of female and male pronouns in his examples is both welcome and sort of adorable in that "awww, early 90s! Look at you being inclusive!" way.
The plot examples from literature and film are very good. The world has changed a fair bit in 19 years, however, so the way he describes relationship dynamics reads as overly simplistic to me.
I do wish he'd addressed multiple plot. Yes, there needs to be a main plot, but subplots are essential for a story to have depth and wrangling them successfully can be difficult. I suppose that was beyond the scope of this book, sadly.
There are dozens of books that promise to list out all of the plots possible. From Heinlien's famous three to George Polti's , writers have been attempting to codify what makes a plot a plot.
Tobias' contribution is certainly in that same vein, but this is probably one of the weaker books in my "how to write" collection. The first hint that something is amiss is the cover, which has scenes from movies rather than books (although how you would illustrate a cover with "scenes from books" does, I admit, present a bit of a challenge). The book lists 20 common plots (Quest, Adventure, Riddle, Rivalry, Forbidden Love, etc...) and where to use them. "Riddles" are for mysteries is the grand Poirot, Agatha Christie flavor, and "Forbidden Love" is a common theme of lots of modern Human/Faery/Vampire urban fantasies.
It's certainly a worthwhile catalog, but for most part these aren't plots, really. They're meta-plots. They're ideas about plots. Even if your character is on a quest, how do you make his or her life hard between here and there? How do you reach the "all is hopeless" moment, and how does your character overcome it? You, the writer, must still invent that, write it, revise it, and make it meaningful to the overall arc of the story.
Most writers know the story they want to tell. 20 Master Plots might have some ideas, but not enough to get you over the hump. You're still gonna have to write that book on your own.
There's something unreadable about this book. I don't hate it, but I've DNF'd this twice as a library book. I bought Aaron Allston's Plot Book instead. A new version or cover came out this year, maybe they improved the latest addition.
#1 I liked it, but between "Plot" and this book, I feel there must be a better book on the subject. If it was great I would have poured over it again and again, instead I ran out of library time without revisiting it.
Wer mich kennt, wei脽, dass mir Originalit盲t wichtig ist, auch und besonders beim Schreiben. Im Herzen bin ich eine kleine Regelbrecherin. ;-) Aber um die Regeln brechen zu k枚nnen, muss man sie nat眉rlich erst einmal kennen. Und da kommt "20 Masterplots" von Ronald B. Tobias ins Spiel. In seinem Buch stellt der Schriftsteller, Drehbuchautor und Medien-Professor nach einer l盲ngeren Einleitung 眉ber die Grundprinzipien des Schreibens 20 Masterplots. Zu jedem der Plots gibt er Beispiele aus der Literatur und aus dem Film, die auf diesem Plot basieren und analysiert anhand von einem oder mehreren Beispielen die wichtigsten Plotelemente in Einleitung, Mittelteil und Ende jeder Geschichte. Abgerundet wird das Ganze mit einer Checkliste, die zus盲tzlich als Zusammenfassung jedes Kapitels und Masterplots dient. Autoren und Schreibanf盲nger k枚nnen beim Plotten ihrer Geschichten auf die Checklisten zur眉ckgreifen, um so einen handwerklich soliden Plot zu erstellen - und sie k枚nnen entscheiden, an welcher Stelle sie wom枚glich vom Masterplan abweichen m枚chten. :) Das Gute ist, Ronald B. Tobias predigt nicht. Er wei脽, dass Autoren unterschiedlich ticken, dass andere Autoren auf eine andere Anzahl von Masterpl盲nen kommen, dass nicht jedes Buch sich 1:1 auf einen Masterplot runterbrechen l盲sst. Das empfiehlt er auch nicht. Stattdessen m枚chte er bekannte Muster aufzeigen, bei der Entwicklung von Plots helfen und M枚glichkeiten aufzeigen. Damit schafft er es zu inspirieren. Ich hatte w盲hrend der Lekt眉re das ein oder andere Aha-Erlebnis, was mein eigenes Schreiben betrifft, aber auch meine eigenen Lesegewohnheiten. Ich wei脽 jetzt, welche Plots ich bevorzuge, kann meine eigenen Romane zum jeweiligen Masterplot zuordnen und habe Ideen f眉r neue Geschichten, die auf Masterplots beruhen, die ich selbst noch nicht angewendet habe. Mehr kann ein Schreibratgeber doch gar nicht leisten, daher gibt es von mir auch 5 Sterne.
There are a lot of books trying to tell you how many plotlines there are in the world. There's the 36 Dramatic Situations, the three in the Basic Patterns of Plot, and the Seven Basic Plots. A wiki search could tell you about any one of these theories without having to buy the books.
Essentially, even though this book states intriguingly that there are 20 plot types, the author posits there are only 2: Mind versus Body, Character versus action. For example, the first two plotlines he gives is that of a quest versus that of adventure. A quest would be Don Quixote on his way to prove something to his friends and ultimately to himself. An adventure would be Indiana Jones on any of his regular outings. In the mind/quest plot, the protagonist seeks something that ultimately changes him in some profound way, while in an adventure, the plot is simply one for fun, and nobody changes too much afterwards.
There are 26 chapters in all, and like many reviewers said, the book is pretty good for about the first half. The plots start in at chapter 8, and the author has some interesting insights about plot structure before that, about character relationships and interactions, and reader expectations in determining how to set up your plot.
Each chapter also poses a few examples in which he lays out the three points inside that specific plot structure and how it usually plays out. He ends with a checklist so that you can stay on track.
This book sort of falls apart in the "love" and "forbidden love" chapters. I'm primarily a romance reader, so the way that these sections were written clearly showed that he was fairly unaccustomed to these plotlines and a bit dismissive of the genre. That's okay; it's not for everyone. On the other hand, other reviewers also thought the book started to lose steam towards the second half as well.
He has a lot of interesting things that he posits at the beginning, probably because he reads a lot of scripts on a daily basis as a TV producer (? he mentioned his job but I can't remember now). Essentially, he worked at a TV station and knows about what news stories get presented and how soon after some news story goes viral that a TV movie then comes along with the exact same storyline. He discusses which stories are not interesting stories and which are, and he does say that, after a long career of doing this, that he finds the mind stories more interesting than the body stories.
An okay read. He's a very clear writer. It's not what I would call a self-help book, but it reads fast and is like a pop-textbook.
I was considering rating this book three stars, but the pretty egregious misreading of The Sound and the Fury towards the end of the book changed my mind. Tobias clearly missed the point of more than one of his examples, which led me to question expertise.
Otherwise, the book is a pretty pedestrian introduction to plotting, with little consideration given to non-linear plots or character driven writing. He mentions it, of course, but he clearly is much more comfortable in the realm of your linear, action driven plots. Following Tobias' "rules" will undoubtedly lead to basic, bland fiction. Imagine if Alexander Dumas had stuck to the "only pick one plot rule" when writing The Count of Monte Cristo, or George R.R. Martin had opted for the "four major characters or less" rule when crafting his A Song of Fire and Ice novels. These rules might work for an average episode of Murder She Wrote or Full House, but they're not great advice for anyone hoping to craft something deeper.
If you're looking for a very basic introduction to plotting generic network TV, by all means, read this book. But if you're looking for a more analytic, scholarly approach to writing, look elsewhere. There's nothing profound about anything in this book. You're better off looking for inspiration from the books Tobias has used as examples than relying on anything contained in this volume.
As someone currently struggling with plotting a novel (quite different from plotting a short story, turns out), this book is quite useful. I found the introductory discussion clarifying and will be referencing the section outlining various flavors of plots for years to come.
I remember the first quarter of this book was pure gold (it didn't talked about any master plot yet).
But when said 20 master plots enter the fray, it doesn't work for me, because it's pretty much a checklist of strict rules. And nowadays many authors are just blending many plots in the main story, even if one of them gets the central stage. Also, sub-plots.
And some of the said plots didn't felt really unique or even different from another. This could've been worked much better. Some articles on the Internet felt much more useful. The examples weren't great either, you probably saw them everywhere else.
Update: I had to give up on this book. It seems aimed at writers of movie scripts and genre fiction. That's not to say the information isn't useful, but there's not as much as there should be and it is buried in a dross of simplistic statements such as these.: "As you develop a character, keep in mind your character's motivations." This book could be at minimum half its current length. The page count comes from blow by blow breakdowns of movies like Ben-Hur, Casablanca, and High Noon.
Trying to consolidate and categorize the entirety of human fiction into a handful of neatly-defined archetypes has been attempted multiple times, but that doesn't mean it's an easy task. Rudyard Kipling thought there were sixty-nine. Carlos Gozzi thought there were thirty-six. Aristotle argued there were only two. Why does this book land on twenty? Well, why not?
The "Master Plots" as they're laid out are logical and defended in a fair manner with lots of examples, both from literature and screenplays and movies. I was well past the halfway point when I noticed that all of the examples being given seemed oddly dated and nothing past the 80's was being referenced, and it was only then that I clocked that this was published in 1993. I think that goes a long way into explaining why a lot of the suggestions and guidelines provided here felt strangely conservative to me.
Nothing terribly groundbreaking here, but I enjoy occasionally reading something meta-level about fiction, and I'm sure I'm gonna start fitting these "Master Plots" to whatever books I read next, seeing how neatly they line up with the tried and true approaches.
"So the point of this book isn't so much to give you a rundown of twenty master plots, but to show you how to develop plots in fiction." Page 7, Kindle edition.
That quote pretty much sums up this book for me, and I think the author did a good job of providing his claimed intention. While I read a lot of criticism about this book saying that it was too narrowly defined or there were too many examples or other such things. The author goes out of his way to remind the reader that there are not a finite number of plots.
Personally, I liked the examples, for it allowed me to see the plots being used, and since there were a few plots that varied slightly from each other in terms of definition, it helped to have an example of both which I could compare to each other.
But "Plot is a slippery thing, and no one can hold onto it for long." Page 11, Kindle edition.
Plot is a starting point, not the finishing touch. Until you know your plot and begin to understand what your readers will expect by your plot, you can't write a perfectly plotted novel.
Although this book had great tips for developing plot, I didn't feel that it a book to help me during the writing of my novel--rather it would help me plot it before hand. That's a great resource to have though, and can help immensely during the outlining of a novel, whether that pre- or post-first draft.
It's not one that I think I would purchase and add to my shelf of writing books, but I will keep it in my Kindle to refer back to for future works perhaps. It's not a book I regret spending my time on, as seeing how having a solid plot gives you a heads up in terms of writing your story well.
After each of the 20 plots mentioned, the author gives a reference checklist for that plot, allowing you to probe how your character arcs and plot line should be applied for the given plot. While he does mention that these plots are not set in stone, he warns against deviating too far from the traditional plot. He also does state that these are not the only plots in the world, but simply 20 of the major ones.
Definitely a book I consider worth reading, but maybe check it out from the library or the Kindle Unlimited program.
The title of this book made it seem prosaic and formulaic but wow, this is one of the best writing craft books I've read. It gave me great new insights into the difference between character-driven and plot-driven stories, and why some stories naturally fit more into a "literary" genre while others are naturally more "commercial." He goes into detail on the basics of the 20 major plots themselves, taking care to point out what the reader is likely to expect, and which story aspects to focus on for this type of plot, and why. That is so much more useful than the generic "presumably good for all novels" advice I see in most craft books, because I can always think of exceptions -- which now makes sense, if those exceptions were different kinds of plots. A-HA!
Tobias admits that there are an infinite number of ways you can count up plots, and that this list isn't exhaustive. I'm glad he didn't include more, because that would have meant less detail for those he included here. I'm still working out how to fit some of my WIP's and novel ideas into one plot or another, but others fit more clearly.
The book is a great inspiration, too. For a few master plots, I could see right away I'm not interested in writing that type of story. But for others, when I couldn't think of a story idea I already have that fit, it inspired me to come up with new novel ideas on the spot!
I will definitely keep going back to this book again and again.
Although I enjoyed this book, I would actually recommend reading Plot and Structure by James C. Bell. In Bell鈥檚 book, he鈥檚 gets down to the nitty gritty. Once you read that, this book on Master Plots would be a supplement.
Tobias does not go into details about some things regarding plot elements. However, he does a great job with giving a bunch of examples of various type of plots.
One thing I appreciated after reading this book was that plot patterns were impressed into my brain so when I sat down to outline my plot, my ideas seemed to come out fluently.
I don鈥檛 recommend this book if you are relying on it to teach you everything you need to know about plot and structure. However, I highly recommend it for the reason that it will give you lots of ideas to get the juices flowing.
A simple breakdown of the phases of different types of plots and the different elements and types of characters one needs for each. As with many Writer's Digest books, the amount of content is skimpy for the price. However, I've never seen this material laid out in this way before, so the price was worth it to me.
This review contains no spoilers (there really are none for this book).
I wrote a story last year and let it sit for a while. Then I went to my shelf of writing guides and pulled this one out to see if it could give me any thoughts on how to fine-tune my story to really make it work before I try to send it off for consideration. I found that it did give me some good inspiration for revision, but - interestingly - I don't feel like the story aligns very well with any of the 20 plots provided. I did find the breakdown of all these plots very insightful, however, and I can envision using this book as a helpful reference in future.
My suggestion for how to use this book as an effective writing guide is to read it once and then refer back to the specific plots you might use for your own writing when it makes sense. If you don't have time to read the whole thing, I don't think it matters terribly. Reading the introductory chapters that precede the 20 master plots should also be sufficient, then you can just read the relevant chapters when necessary.
My main complaint with the structure of this book is, ironically, one of its underlying strengths. For the most part, the chapters are laid out similarly so you have a good idea of how to build your stories to match that plot. Reading them all straight through, however, lends a sort of monotony to the read. I did, however, like the many relevant examples the author cited to clarify how each plot worked.
My other issue was that some of the differences between the plots were pretty esoteric, and while the author did work hard to clarify the distinctions, it didn't always work for me. And by the end of the book, the last several plots felt like they were tacked on to reach 20. They definitely felt lighter and less helpful in terms of the "how to" instructions. I wondered at one point if they were bolted on to give the book a tad more heft.
Overall, this one could be helpful for writers who want to understand the mechanics of some great plots. Just strategize how you want to make use of it, and don't feel like you have to "over-read" it if your schedule doesn't permit it or if your interest starts to wane.
Interessante Hintergr眉nde welche Plots sich in B眉chern und Filmen verbergen. Es gibt 20 Masterplots, die eingehend beleuchtet werden. Zun盲chst immer eine Zusammenfassung, um was es in dem jeweiligen Plot geht. Danach in einer 3 Akte Struktur der Aufbau des Plots erkl盲rt. Sehr interessante Lekt眉re und sehr empfehlenswert!
'20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them' is a well thought out idea that falls a little short in it's delivery, but in the end saves itself through originality.
The first chapter, titled 'Invisible Fiction', sets the mood for what's to come. The author expresses his opinions on plots and the many forms, how they all originate from a top three to be broken down into a 'top 20' for easier following. Chapter two, ' The Lowest Common Plot Denominators', discusses building tension through opposition, the three sections of a story (beginning, middle, and end), and other crucial things a plot requires to stay alive. Chapter 3, 'The Strong Force', is short in length, basically informing the reader what a 'character driven plot is' versus a 'plot driven' one.
Chapter four, 'Deep Structure', focuses on themes and moral arguments, while chapter five, 'Triangles', is an interesting, unique way to see characters and how they interact with each other.
After this, we finally begin the '20 plots', each divided by chapter. Each goes through all three 'acts' of the plot (again: beginning, middle, end), ending with a checklist to recap all that has been learned.
The wrap up chapter, 'Parting Shots', reminds you that the book is not a guide etched in stone and that rules are made to be broken. It's also stated that many times a plot is a mixture of two or more basic '20 Master Plots'.
At 232 pages, this book covers quite a bit. I was enthused as the sections, and recognized many of the 'patterns', but was left wanting in other areas. The information was useful, but if you read it straight through, many of the plot types repeat the same thing and it becomes redundant and dull. Also, some held examples of other novels and stories to illustrate what the author meant. I loved this; it enabled me to get a firmer grasp on things. Unfortunitely many of the plots don't have as many examples, or none at all, and I missed it when they did.
Wrapping up, this is a great resource guide for writers. If you have trouble with plotting, pick this up for a reasonable price. Heck, even if you don't, still pick it up for there are things out there you may not know about yet. On the downside it wasn't the most interesting thing to read, was a bit redundant, other times not being consistent enough.
Excellent overview of different types of plot with good instructive examples. Interesting for both beginners and advanced writers, as well as for anyone who wants to know more about the kinds of stories they have encountered. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the history and uses of various story plots.
I mostly skimmed this book. I liked how each plot was boiled down to its essentials, with examples from master texts, although I wish this had been done more consistently throughout. Most of the plots had a 3-act structure spelled out, with a checklist at the end of the basics, but some did not even when the checklist mentioned each act. This isn't necessarily a book that will help you outline or prewrite a story, but I think it would be useful as a tool once you know what type of story you're writing and know whether you've hit the major components for each act. An example: I wrote a revenge story that didn't seem to work, and now I see why. This does paint the plots in the broadest of strokes - you might use for a deeper dive on beats within each act and for trying to outline.
Great book for the Monday morning book reviewer. Ie those, like me, who love to review but have never 鈥榙one the work鈥�.
So if you love fiction why not try to write something?? After 100鈥檚 of books that鈥檚 what I think so I am reading and learning as much as I can to make a first attempt at something I am told will be terrible. I鈥檓 fine with that. I mean, I golf, so I get it. I can KNOW a lot about something and still be terrible. Lol.
For the beginning writer I find this book to be excellent. If there is an idea in your head see if it fits one of these structures and you will have a better idea what works from a plot standpoint. You will also learn the difference between story and plot.
It's OK. Nothing new here. Serves as a decent overview of some possible ways to structure your story. I didn't find any revelations in this book. It doesn't talk about tropes but rather reads like a laundry list. Could be handy if you don't know what kind of story you want to write, or if you have a vague idea but don't know how to organize it into a plot.