The 8 Basic Storylines

[Oliver Melodius]

You could do this to all forms of entertainment, most of it is just summarising genre's.

[DarknessofHeavenandDreams]

Richard Braughtigan and John Steinbeck probe you fail.

[Pengi-sama]

Wow, I sure was surprised when I logged onto Gaia today and found my thread had been dragged from the depths of the Writers' forum e.g. necroed xp

And replying to the new posters, and agreeing with Skye Thomnson, it was just a theory. I don't think I mentioned this in the original post, but this theory was also found in a newpaper, I think. At the time I found it interesting because it did make me think about my writing. Plus I wanted to see what others thought of it.

Just one thing that might be worth pointing out though - this English teacher was pretty rubbish. I went up a whole grade the next year not because I worked any harder, simply because I changed teachers, so I'll use that as a reason not to trust these ideas too much (if you ever were planning to do so).

[Sheimi5]

My stories are usually a mix of no. 4 and 5 xp

[Ai Kinomoto]

Of the top of my head: To Kill a Mocking Bird, His Dark Materials, and one book that I'm writing right now. I don't think it can be applied to anything. Those kind of sound like plot tropes.