The coupled cliche conundrum

[random user]

Well but the ideas can spur plots based on it which previously were inconceivable. The earth revolving around the sun is an idea, but a story based on such an idea did not exist before that idea existed.

While a generalized "magic" of spirits coming into your body has existed for a while, the specific use of nanotechnology to enter our blood stream, stitch up and fix parts of our bodies, I bet is a fairly new one (comparatively speaking).

By definition I can't come up with an example of a plot that hasn't been invented yet. It's like trying to imagine calculus before it was invented. Or trying to imagine the chemical structure of benzene before it was discovered.

We've come up with plots to relating to everything we currently know. But, unless you are willing to say we know everything, by definition there is stuff we don't know. If there is still stuff we don't know, then there is a good chance new plots can be made of that information once it is discovered.

I do agree though that if you reduce everything to its most base concept of "Something happens" then yes, every plot is (probably) known.

 

[Gez]

How can you base a story on the fact the Earth moves around the Sun? It's not a plot, just a trapping. You tell the same story on a hollow earth, a flat earth, or a normal earth.

You just change the trapping, but not the plot.

The mad scientist can be a mad wizard or a mad god. He can threaten to destroy a house, a town, a city, a continent, or a whole world. He can plan his destruction with a nuclear apocalypse or a swarm of angry spirits or by sucking all imagination and creativity out of the mind of the people. He can be defeated by killing him or by finding a magic stone to put in a special receptacle on an altar in a lost temple. Which can be on another planet, or in the Swamp of no Return, or merely hidden in the hero's house's basement.

The plot is the same. Not the story.

And the chemical structure of benzene was known before chemistry, it's a very simple geometric figure: the hexagon.

 

[two]

troll-bait

Why do I have the funny feeling I'm gnawing on troll-bait?

They did before they were made. Movies are entertainment and storytelling. They're just a particular cultural take on it. Every story ever told in movie form has been told somewhere else already. The Chase Scene is nearly as old as the Hunt itself.

OK I'll make this VERY easy on you. Since every story told in movies has been told before somewhere (as you put it), please explicate/explain/tell me the plot predecessors for:

1) The Sweet Hereafter
2) Memento
3) Dr. Strangelove

The movies I have picked feature some obvious problems for you. The first is a very complicated, touching, horrific, human story, which has no major plot predecessor (that I can tell). The seconds is relatively complicated from a structural standpoint, and inverts expectations on a number of levels. The third features a plot/narrative from a cultural moment including technological aspects that were unavalable even 50 year previous.

On the other hand, all these were distributed via Hollywood, which cuts down dramatically on various narrative experiments. Still. have it it.

There. Go. And it does not count to say "they are all love stories." All humans breathe. This is true but trivial. It does not tell you much about a given human to say he/she breathes.

Because this is cultural variation, not artistic variation. It's not "new" it's just "new to them." Americans are used to movies being done in a particular way. Greeks were used to plays being done in a particular way. Chinese lexographers were used to literature beign done in a particular way.

None of these are 'new.' They use different trappings, but tell the same story.

You have not shown in any way that movies either encompass all possible narrative forms or that every movie conforms to a given narrative form. In fact, all you have done is state it as fact. Just a few examples, heck, just a few hundred, would help your position.

It's not an empty statement -- plots are always about something. That's a common theme of human experience, not mere drivel. From cave paintings to Sienfeld, plots are always about something, and there can be no new plots, because all plots have forever and will always be about something. Ergo, there are no new plots. It's not laziness, it's not bad writing, it's a case of there bing nothing new to write about. There are cultural variations on the themes, and specific contexts to frame them in, but it's all about something.

This is the most badly-argued, trollish thing I've read in a long time.

YES. You are RIGHT! Plots are ABOUT SOMETHING!

However, to claim that "all plots have forever and will always be about something...ergo, there are no new plots" you must prove the following:

1) The category of "something" is so limited that it's easy to display all members of this category,
2) all members of the category "something" have already been displayed,

ERGO

3) Any new plot must pick from category = "something" which has a limited variety, and display this selection (but this too, has already been done).

I find it heart-breaking that you take comfort in eliding the difference between, (your example), a cave painting and a television program. By extension, JS Bach is "roughly doing that same stuff" as B.Spears, and a local sportswriter is "writing the same types of stories" as Milton or Melville.

The world must be a very bland, very uniform place in your eyes...

Granted, you CAN see things in the way your describe, but what beauty, what details, what truths you are missing! The loss is not ours, my friend, but your own. That's what makes me a little sad.

 

[jmucchiello]

I've only seen Strangelove, but....

1) The Sweet Hereafter

From IMDB: This film documents the effects of a tragic bus accident on the population of a small town.

Okay, so this film is a bunch of plots woven together. But ultimately it is a story about a tragic event that affects many people.

2) Memento

From IMDB: A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes and tattoos to hunt down his wife's killer.

Now, you are telling me that there are no stories where someone hunts down a killer of his wife. The plot is very simple. You are confusing the odd structure of the film (certainly innovative) with the plot being new. It isn't. It's just a detective story.

3) Dr. Strangelove

Ultimately, this film is a "science will destroy mankind" story. It is Frankenstein with atomic bombs. Heck, Nero fiddling while Rome burns is the same basic "comedy".

The movies I have picked feature some obvious problems for you. The first is a very complicated, touching, horrific, human story, which has no major plot predecessor (that I can tell). The seconds is relatively complicated from a structural standpoint, and inverts expectations on a number of levels. The third features a plot/narrative from a cultural moment including technological aspects that were unavalable even 50 year previous.

But in your own words, they are normal stories. The "touching, horrific, human story" is just a variant on all tragedies. The one with complicated structure is ultimately a detective story. And if you think doomsday concepts only first appeared in the form of atomic weapons, I have Revelations and Ragnorok to ask you to look up.

You have not shown in any way that movies either encompass all possible narrative forms or that every movie conforms to a given narrative form.

We're aren't talking about narrative form. We are talking about plot: "The pattern of events or main story in a narrative or drama." (dictionary.com) Narrative form is how a story is told, not the action that takes place therein.

I find it heart-breaking that you take comfort in eliding the difference between, (your example), a cave painting and a television program. By extension, JS Bach is "roughly doing that same stuff" as B.Spears

You are forgetting that the devil is in the details. Bach's music is more rich in content that Ms Spears music. But both contain melodies, harmonies, chords and rhythms. In isolation, there are no knew combinations of notes. There are only 12 notes in western music. All unique combinations of notes and rhythmic* elements have been played before by some one. What hasn't been done is combining all these unique combinations in all unique sequences. The sequences Bach chose are considered better than those of Ms Spears' production crew. She still made more money than Bach did.

The world must be a very bland, very uniform place in your eyes...

Granted, you CAN see things in the way your describe, but what beauty, what details, what truths you are missing! The loss is not ours, my friend, but your own. That's what makes me a little sad.

Just because I knew there are no new plots doesn't mean I cannot enjoy a new take on an old plot. Do you live in a world where you only watch a movie once and never again? Do you only listen to music once? Just because I've seen or heard it before doesn't mean I don't want to see it again. In fact, don't you go to a play because while the plot is identical to the last time you saw it, the staging may offer some new insight? Don't you see you favorite band live, even though you know the songs by heart, to see what variations they will have live? My world is not bland just because I can see a movie and say "that was similar to the Iliad". In fact, I find it more rich because I can see how the author took the Iliad and made it his own.

A question for you: Is West Side Story not the same plot as Romeo and Juliet? Explain your answer. And, whether you say they are or not, can you not gain a better appreciation of WSS by comparing it to R&J? Does saying they are diminish either in any way?

 

[WizarDru]

Granted, you CAN see things in the way your describe, but what beauty, what details, what truths you are missing! The loss is not ours, my friend, but your own. That's what makes me a little sad.

Assuming what you say is true, what is he missing, exactly? He's just pointing out that, when reduced to a basic plot level, there have not been any new structures introduced in a long time.

Consider the Star Trek (original) episode "Balance of Terror". Captain Kirk faces off against a Romulan commander in a game of cat-and-mouse, the two ships hunting each other in a tense battle. It's a great episode, one of my favorites. And it is rumored to have originally been written as a WWII drama concerning a US destroyer and a German U-boat commander for one of shows like Studio 80 or Playhouse. It certainly bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1957 movie "The Enemy Below". The details are different, but the basic plot is nearly identical. With a few changes, the setting could be virtually anywhere.

Memento, as another example, does not feature a revolutionary plot. In 2 hours, you don't have a huge amount of time to establish tons of characters and threads. Memento establishes a murder mystery that is told in a unique way, and involves a protagonist with a unique condition...but that isn't the same as having a new plot; it's a new way to deliver the plot. I mean, it's not that far a leap from "Tale of Genji" to "I, Claudius" to a Jackie Collins novel, plotwise. The devil is in the details.

Which has no relevance at all on telling a good story, or even messing with the plot, some. If, in Kill Bill, if Uma Thurman's characters kills Bill, then that's a standard plot. If she doesn't Kill Bill, then that's a standard plot (or standard variation on the plot), too. It's as much about the journey as the destination.

And, as others have pointed out, when you're inside the story, it feels much different. Your players don't have all the information you, as the DM, do. Their perception of the plot can be radically altered from the uncertainty of being inside it. And knowing the plot doesn't mean they know the story, which is the difference between being in The Seven Samurai, the Dirty Dozen or Tremors.

 

[Umbran]

How can you base a story on the fact the Earth moves around the Sun? It's not a plot, just a trapping. You tell the same story on a hollow earth, a flat earth, or a normal earth.

You just change the trapping, but not the plot.

Not necessarily true. Mr. Niven's work stands in good example here. Many of his novels are based upon worlds with drastically different physical form than a flat, round, or hollow Earth. And that drastically changes the plot of the story. Similar for, say the Weis and Hickman's "Death Gate Cycle" or their Darksword Trilogy. In the first the pysical layout and character of the world(s) affects how things progress. In the second, the nature of the rules of magic are the basis for the plot.

Don't confuse the plot with the characterization. The plot is the sequence of events that occur in the story. That can and will change due to the trappings. You may feel that the emotional content and reactions of the characters may not vary, but the "what happens next" can very well depend upon the physical arrangement of the world.

 

[two]

oy!

I've only seen Strangelove, but....

From IMDB: This film documents the effects of a tragic bus accident on the population of a small town.

Okay, so this film is a bunch of plots woven together. But ultimately it is a story about a tragic event that affects many people.

"...about a tragic event that affects many people."

Even if this IMDB blub was an accurate summary of this complicated movie (it's not), this "plot description" falls into the trite category.

It does not tell you anything. It's so broad and vague as to be meaningless. This description also encompasses: any concentration camp story, The Illiad, The Bible, The Koran, Watership Down, LOTR, Lolita, The Evening News presented by CBS, etc.

If you can't see that this sort of "plot funnellnig" is completely useless... well, then YES all plots/stories/etc. will come from the same huge broad category. What this accomplishes, I don't know. Nothing significant.

From IMDB: A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes and tattoos to hunt down his wife's killer.

Now, you are telling me that there are no stories where someone hunts down a killer of his wife. The plot is very simple. You are confusing the odd structure of the film (certainly innovative) with the plot being new. It isn't. It's just a detective story.

Except that, of course, the movie is much more complicated than the summary -- which is inaccurate. This is a story of a man that has already hunted down and killed somebody whom he beleives to be his wife's (not killer) rather, rapist, and during the movie this amnesiac is used as a pawn by various players and eventually convinces himself that the man he newly killed was somehow related to his wife's death. As opposed to who the guy says he is, which is very possible as well.

It's very not-straightfoward, and the man the amnesiac kills in the end quite possibly has nothing to do with his wife -- the whole idea of revenge is less important than the amnesiac's attempt to justify himself -- because the story he has told himself regarding the night of his wife's attack is a lie (perhaps)... etc. Continue discussion.

Ultimately, this film is a "science will destroy mankind" story. It is Frankenstein with atomic bombs. Heck, Nero fiddling while Rome burns is the same basic "comedy".

That's Dr. Strangelove? "science will destroy mankind?" And you link it to Rome (pre-science)? You noted at the end of Dr. S the earth is not destroyed, right? That the humor had a lot to do with geopolitical relationship in the cold war, with some slapstick thrown in? Your gloss on this is "science will destroy mankind?" I don't even understand your logic, much less how this story could have been told before science/nukes/cold war/etc. So you want to link it to Ragnarok, death of the gods, etc, in which case who is Loki, and who is Fenris, and...oh my this is getting messy. Is the gloss "end of the world movie?" and that's enough for you? So that's it, that's the plot, throw in "War of the Worlds" and "x" and be done with it? Isn't there more to Dr. Strangelove than that?

But in your own words, they are normal stories. The "touching, horrific, human story" is just a variant on all tragedies. The one with complicated structure is ultimately a detective story. And if you think doomsday concepts only first appeared in the form of atomic weapons, I have Revelations and Ragnorok to ask you to look up.
We're aren't talking about narrative form. We are talking about plot: "The pattern of events or main story in a narrative or drama." (dictionary.com) Narrative form is how a story is told, not the action that takes place therein.
You are forgetting that the devil is in the details. Bach's music is more rich in content that Ms Spears music. But both contain melodies, harmonies, chords and rhythms. In isolation, there are no knew combinations of notes. There are only 12 notes in western music. All unique combinations of notes and rhythmic* elements have been played before by some one. What hasn't been done is combining all these unique combinations in all unique sequences. The sequences Bach chose are considered better than those of Ms Spears' production crew. She still made more money than Bach did.

Oh god this is getting silly. Since music is just notes strung together, and there are limited notes... boom. No new music ever. You are basically saying the same thing as: no one can ever write a "new original" sentence because the number of words in English is finite; "in isolation there are no new combinations of words." You make a very basic error; finite elements do not invalidate new combinations, particularly when music/writing is relatively open-ended (can be very long if desired). Please, re-think what you mean here.

Just because I knew there are no new plots doesn't mean I cannot enjoy a new take on an old plot. Do you live in a world where you only watch a movie once and never again? Do you only listen to music once? Just because I've seen or heard it before doesn't mean I don't want to see it again. In fact, don't you go to a play because while the plot is identical to the last time you saw it, the staging may offer some new insight? Don't you see you favorite band live, even though you know the songs by heart, to see what variations they will have live? My world is not bland just because I can see a movie and say "that was similar to the Iliad". In fact, I find it more rich because I can see how the author took the Iliad and made it his own.

I never made a comment about this issue. I don't have a problem with it. I like old plots renewed and done well; I dislike people being lazy and saying "there are no new plots, no new songs, no new writings...etc. no new art..."

A question for you: Is West Side Story not the same plot as Romeo and Juliet? Explain your answer. And, whether you say they are or not, can you not gain a better appreciation of WSS by comparing it to R&J? Does saying they are diminish either in any way?

Neither is diminished in any way (particularly not Shakespeare!). WSS gains immesurably from using R&J as a base. It's a clever thing to do. It's not a particularly original theme to base a musical on, but is can be difficult to pull off, and when done well deserves respect.

 

[I'm A Banana]

the movie is much more complicated than the summary

This is pretty much the cusp of the issue, and I disagree. The movie contains variation, but it is, in it's basic form, the same story. It's still "about something."

It does not tell you anything. It's so broad and vague as to be meaningless

It tells me something *very* meaningful about the nature of storytelling and humanity. Everything is viewed in the methods of a "plot." That's hardly insignificant. It's a universality in a presumed random assortment of atoms.

It's like saying that "everything is made of atoms is so broad and vague as to be meaningless." It's obviously not. And like with creativity, the true variation is in the details.

Nothing is innovative. That's okay. It's not a bad thing, it's just a real thing.

That's Dr. Strangelove? "science will destroy mankind?" And you link it to Rome (pre-science)? You noted at the end of Dr. S the earth is not destroyed, right? That the humor had a lot to do with geopolitical relationship in the cold war, with some slapstick thrown in? Your gloss on this is "science will destroy mankind?" I don't even understand your logic, much less how this story could have been told before science/nukes/cold war/etc. So you want to link it to Ragnarok, death of the gods, etc, in which case who is Loki, and who is Fenris, and...oh my this is getting messy. Is the gloss "end of the world movie?" and that's enough for you? So that's it, that's the plot, throw in "War of the Worlds" and "x" and be done with it? Isn't there more to Dr. Strangelove than that?

Sad to say, political satire, powerful empires that can destroy each other, and slapstick comedy have been in existence since civilization.

There's more to Strangelove than just that, but that's it's major dimension. Everything else, all of it, the bomb, the cowboy hat, the bodily fluids, is all just cultural variation on the same themes that have been around since before history.

You're looking at it far too closely. You're looking at the details. No one is disuputing that Loki doesn't ride a bomb in Ragnarok. What we are saying is that the basic story has been done. The satire, the warning of destruction, the commentary comedy, this isn't anything new. And the fact that these kids of stories exist throughout human existence is valuable, because it displays a unique variation on human beings in all of creation. I don't, offhand, know of any chimpanzee tales of the end of the world involving political comentary. It's part of what makes mankind different.

But to presume that Strangelove was something "new" is a bit ethnocentric, a bit too closely examining it, and a bit too desperate for innovation. It's different. But that doesn't make it new. And it doesn't make it better. It's just a cultural variation on the same thing that's been going on as far back as we can remember. It's powerful, this stuff, but it's nothing we haven't seen before.