Over the past year and a half, much has been made of Mark Schaefer’s theory of Content Shock, the idea that we are incurring rapidly diminishing returns on content marketing. Part of the reason is the explosion of content being created by everyone. A bigger part of the diminishing returns in the Content Shock theory…
Over the past week or so, we’ve had a chance to look in depth at each of Christopher Booker’s 7 Basic Plots as they apply to marketing and storytelling: Overcoming the Monster: The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force which threatens the protagonist and the things/people/places the protagonist cares about. Rags to Riches:…
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the last of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: the Rebirth. The Rebirth is one of our favorites stories, as a human race. Rebirth is the story of redemption, of bad made good. Rebirth is especially…
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the sixth of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: the Tragedy. The tragedy is one of the oldest storytelling forms, in which the protagonist is actually a villain whose demise everyone roots for. One of the…
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the fifth of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: the Comedy. Comedy isn’t just funny content. While there are shows on Netflix of stand-up comedians doing their routine for two hours, that’s not comedy in the…
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the fourth of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: Voyage and Return. JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit epitomizes the Voyage and Return, so much so that the subtitle of the book is There and Back Again, a…
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the third of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: The Quest. If you’ve enjoyed Lord of the Rings, you’ve enjoyed The Quest. The hero endures a difficult journey to a destination, to a goal of some…
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the second of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: Rags to Riches. If you’ve seen Cinderella, Pretty Woman, or other similar archetype stories, you know how it goes. Poor hero faces incredible challenges, gains something, loses…
Previously, we looked at Christopher Booker’s 7 basic plots of how stories are told. Today, we’ll look at the first of these 7 from a content marketing perspective: overcoming the monster. Overcoming the monster seems elementary. The protagonist battles the antagonist. The challenge with overcoming the monster is that the story must have a compelling…
Back in 2004, Christopher Booker took a series of concepts from Carl Jung’s archetypes, Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, and Arthur Quiller’s conflicts and rendered them down to 7 core plot types. These plots are eternal and form the basic fabric of virtually all our stories. The logical question is, do these story archetypes translate well…
