Seven is considered a lucky number by most.  According to numerology that is because it is the paring of the numbers 3 (representing the holy Trinity) and 4 (which is the number of the earth) creating the perfect number 7 and harmony between the two realms.

For writers, however, seven may be unlucky–or at least confining.  Seven is the reputed number of plots we all have to work with when crafting our work.  Seven.  How can anything new ever be written?

Aristotle tells us that plot–at least in dramatic literature–is the most important element.  Plot is the specific sequence of events that moves the reader from the beginning of the work, where the status quo has not been changed, to the resolution where some change has usually occurred.  Without plot we have a character study, which can be entertaining, grant you, but still, most people want a little action.  Especially in a romance novel.

Follow this link to a listing of the seven plots in literature:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=210539

and this link is a commentary on Christopher Booker’s different take on the seven plots:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/05/AR2005050501385_2.html

Whether or not you prefer one list over the other, the point I keep coming back to is the number 7.  According to most people that’s all the different plots we have to work with.  How can that ever be enough? 

Surprizingly, it is enough because the writer brings with her the one thing that explodes that 7 into an infinite number of possibilities:  imagination.  Plot, when it all boils down, is a guideline, a blueprint for what happens in the story.  And story is very, very different from plot.  Story is what happens, who it happens to, and how it happens in the work.  Combinations of these elements, fired by our imagination, are what has created the millions of works of fiction throughout the ages. 

And what is even more encouraging is that because each writer is an individual with individual experiences to bring to the table, individual wisdom to be imparted, individual likes and dislikes to be emphasised or hidden, the writer suddenly has an almost infinite number of stories at her fingertips to pluck and set down, limited now only by her talent to compose and the time it takes her to do so.

My favorite example these days of one plot treated different ways is the ultimate romance plot:  boy meets girl and they fall in love.  They have problems, they come up with a solution to the problems.  This is the plot of  Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  This is also the plot for Twilight.  The first time I described Twilight as “Romeo and Juliet with vampires” I got stared at quite a lot and not in a good way!  But it’s true.  Same plot, different imagination  at work.  I have described my first ms is “Romeo and Juliet with the bubonic plague and a happy ending.” 

I believe it likely that all romance writers have a Romeo & Juliet, a Holy Grail , a Jaws, a Castaway in their repertoire, just waiting to be given the chance to spring to life. 

Play God.  Take one of those seven plots as your bones, sculpt the flesh with your circumstances and complications, and breathe life into it through your diverse characters.  All of a sudden, you have a work as different from all the others as you are from other writers.

Seven plots?  Do I really need so many choices?

What has been your favorite plot to work with?  To read?  Do you have a preference for a quest? For man or woman against society?  Have I left out your favorite?  Let me know!