Pachelbel's Canon and the Seven Story Archetypes
How writers make everything new again
As some of my readers know, I started out blogging on Medium. While writing there, I also read a lot of other bloggers. This post was inspired by two things on Medium that came together for me, though each seems completely unrelated to the other at first glance.
The first was a grouping of song-based writing prompts from The Friday Fix (Now publishing as Friday Fix Fiction).
The second was a post by Shaunta Grimes about plagiarism in which she made the point that sometimes what seems like plagiarism is just someone else who is presenting a topic many people have written on before. When enough people write about the same thing, some work is bound to look similar.
So how do these two disparate topics tie together?
As I thought about the two, I remembered a wonderful YouTube video from comedian RobPRocks released in 2006. It’s titled Pachelbel Rant. I’ve included it below. It runs just over five minutes and is worth every moment of your time.
The rant occurs as a song, sung by a frustrated and angry Rob, who was forced to play only eight notes of Pachelbel’s Canon over and over again in his high school orchestra. I find it especially funny because this is one of my favorite pieces of music.
The crux of the rant is that those eight notes appear in an enormous number of modern songs. Rob laments Pachelbel following him everywhere, as he plays snatches of songs you will probably recognize, each featuring the eight notes that tortured him through high school.
The point of all of this is the recognition that there are only so many notes to play with and some combinations, especially if they’re pleasing will surface again and again in others’ work. It doesn’t mean they’re stolen.
For writers, in addition to Shaunta Grimes’s message on plagiarism, it means that we must feel free to write variations on a theme when we write our fiction pieces.
The seven story archetypes
Depending on which source one quotes, there may be anywhere between three and seven story archetypes in the world. Everything written is a variation of one of them. But what wonderful variations there are. Everything from stories of the everyday lives of people just like you and me to wild space opera adventures.
The seven plots of the archetypes include:
Overcoming the monster
Rags to riches
The quest
Voyage and return
Rebirth
Comedy
Tragedy
That means every story ever written falls into one or more of these archetypes. All writers owe a debt to those who have gone before. Everything has already, in one form or another, already been written.
When a writer gets hold of an idea and sits down to create, magic happens
Stories are reborn in different guises, often fresh and new. But they’re still all variations on a theme.
Consider West Side Story, a tale set in 1950's New York, against a backdrop of gang violence. This classic story is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
What about all of the riffs on Cinderella? Ever After, starring Drew Barrymore as Danielle, sets the story in France and manages to include Leonardo da Vinci.
And then there’s Gregory Maguire’s version, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Of course, his most famous work is Wicked, his own, ingenious take on The Wizard of Oz. Maguire has made a career out of rewriting fairy tales.
These examples are conscious re-renderings of the works of others. Most of us, when we write, set out to create something completely original. The reality is that we can’t divorce ourselves from the limited number of story archetypes and the millions of books that have gone before.
Mashable reported in 2010 that Google Books estimated nearly 30,000,000, that’s thirty million, books had been written in modern history. The number has only grown since then. Those books take up a lot of real estate in the world of possible story plots. And that’s okay.
The nuance of each story told makes it unique
Billions of humans have lived out their lives on this planet. While the details of each of our histories varies, there are universal themes to our existence. Essentially, just as there are no truly original stories, there are no truly original lives.
You may argue with this, citing people like Bill Gates, J.K. Rowling, and Elon Musk. It’s true their genius and creativity sets them apart in many ways. It adds nuance to their stories and a flavor that makes them interesting to read about. But that’s entirely in keeping with the point I’m trying to make.
If we look at each of their stories, they’re still human beings who live as other human beings. Rich, poor, brilliant, or average, there remain only so many themes we live out, regardless of our circumstance. It’s how we live within those themes that sets us apart, one from the other. The same is true in fiction.
Mark Twain, in his autobiography, Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters From the North American Review, said,
“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”
Fiction is all about making new combinations
In one sense, writers are doomed to write the same stories as those who have gone before, whether we have read them or not. But in another, exciting sense, we each face the task of how to make those stories new and relevant.
We turn our mental kaleidoscope, and the configuration of the colored glass which makes up the seven story archetypes or plots changes. We update stories for the modern world. We build fresh worlds in which they occur. We twist the stories so they become unrecognizable.
This is the magic of storytelling
It’s what makes creatives of all types special. A glassblower has only so many possible things he can create, yet each is somehow unique. As Pachelbel Rant so aptly demonstrates, songwriters face the same dilemma. Writers are no better off.
What we all share in common, and what equally sets us apart, is our ability to view our art through a kaleidoscope. We endlessly play our eight notes (or seven plots), somehow bringing a newness to them that keeps audiences coming back for more.