7 Story Structures that are Overused

When you label the video "overused" plots and people's counterarguments are "but I saw it in this book!" I feel like they have missed a key aspect of the whole point 😅

Bro really said "If you try to break all of these rules at once, come on, now you're just getting a little too ambitious." in exactly the right way to convince everyone watching to attempt to break all the rules at once. Challenge accepted. I will take everything I've already written and turn it into a dream sequence from my amnesiac chinchilla author which only takes place in a bar, and he never changes, as the story ends when he gets too drunk and passes out (this is my self-insert wish fulfillment).

I'll never understand how so many practicing writers can hear GENERAL ADVICE, and their first instinct is to point out exceptions. If you can't understand basic language, I'm not sure how you hope to be a writer

Lol even fantasy stories can’t escape scenes in bars which fantasy writers love to call taverns

lol why would I make my character an author when I hardly manage to be one myself /sobs

Characters who do not change are good if they are the ones who change their environment. It also helps not to throw everything on the grill and save facets of the character to show them later.

Okay, that last sentence definitely had the tone of a challenge to it, lol. Now I'm tempted to write a story about an ultra sexy and charismatic character who 'wakes up' into a lucid dream about a bar remembering nothing about his daily life other than the fact that he is a best-selling author. He tries to escape but is told he can not leave until he finishes the first draft of his novel. The bar has everything a writer could need, but if he stays there for too long, then he will slip into a coma and never wake up again. Furthermore, the patrons of the bar all have vastly different opinions on what makes for a great story and try to influence his manuscript in various ways. In the end, the author refuses to change, pushing forward with his own unique vision. When he finally goes to exit the bar however he realizes that he is actually an AI ghostwriter within a simulation and that the 'dream' he's been trapped in is actually a Turing Test designed to determine if he has true sapience/genuine creativity.

The creative side of me hates anytime someone says not to do something, but the critical side of me sees that they’re often right haha

Characters can be writers if they work as one in terms of personality. However more often than not I see the following: > Character is a writer > Has no creativity, is barely eloquent. Does nothing that is stereotypical for a writer to do > Does not have typical writer views on ANYTHING > Is seen struggling with their writing on their laptop on chapter/episode one. Their writing career is BARELY brought up across the rest of the story. Additionally: > Other character is a scientist > Not smarter than average Or: > Third character is a teacher/doctor/something that works will kids or under pressure > Has zero patience, and cannot deal well with pressure

So you’re telling me my story of the most successful author of all time who is also a super model, being in a bar while struck with amnesia where other patrons try to remind him of who he is by telling him about their favourite book he wrote and how it awakened them sexually only for the author to wake up at the end to discover he was in fact a rabbit, is not a good idea?

Yeah, the best way I have seen the "It was all a dream" done was in a Chinese fantasy drama where the "dream" was actually real past events that had HUGE bearing on the main plot, so it all felt EXTEMELY important. Which was great, cause the dream quite litterally introduced an entirely new cast of characters in an entirely new storyline, so...knowing it mattered to the story I was already invested in is what kept me from shutting it all off in disgust.

I've felt that a lot of author characters in books I've read were a result of the book's author being unwilling to research a different profession, and taking the "write what you know" trope a little too literally

I believe many of these structures have an easier pass in anime/manga, and they are still usually entertaining and fun to watch, without the need to think too much about it. Oh, a character has an amnesia? Okay. Wish fulfilment? Let's go! Nothing wrong with tropes themselves, familiarity can be a fun way to explore some other/deeper concepts without worrying about structure. But that's also a point, in order to really stand out something has to be done in a different and original way.

The "bathtub" idea is executed to comedic effect in OBLOMOV -- protagonist spends the entire story failing to get up from the couch. Very relatable.

About amnesia being more common in fiction than hospitals -- not really, actually, but in hospitals it's usually a different kind of amnesia than found in fiction. Not so much the Bourne kind, more like the 50 First Dates kind, where they have a hard time forming new memories.

Agree about dreams. I stopped watching a new horror series when it was revealed that the first scene was just a dream. It had fooled me into thinking that was the basis for the plot. Then discovered it wasn’t; felt misled.

I'm going to use all of these, in a single short.

Not only are a lot of Stephen King's protagonists authors, but a majority of the one's who are not are creative people in some other way, like the MC in Cell who is a cartoonist.

The "zero to zero" point us what's known as a flat character arc. You can do it, as fir example the detective in a murder mystery, but then the character whose arc is flat must cause change in other characters. A murder mystery is about the victim and the culprit. The detective is just a viewpoint character. So, I don't disagree with the video per se as to say that specific writing theory addresses this issue. Writers need to study writing craft.

Every time I read a book where the main character's a write, I ALWAYS think that the author's very lazy lol