skills/ai-film-pipeline-master/references/phase-01-story-generation/situations.md

# Dramatic Situations and Narrative Functions

Category `sit`. The four combinatorial plot taxonomies, treated as an addressable technique set.

No equivalent file exists in the Visual Creativity Database. This is the oldest material in either set — Polti 1916, Propp 1928 — and the most stable. **Every card here is `durable`.**

<!-- GENERATED:toc — do not edit by hand. Generated in the source package -->

## Contents

- [What this file is for](#what-this-file-is-for)
- [A. Polti's Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations](#a-poltis-thirty-six-dramatic-situations)
- [B. Propp's Thirty-One Narrative Functions](#b-propps-thirty-one-narrative-functions)
- [C. Booker's Seven Basic Plots](#c-bookers-seven-basic-plots)
- [D. Tobias's Twenty Master Plots](#d-tobiass-twenty-master-plots)
- [Coverage](#coverage)
- [Sources](#sources)

<!-- /GENERATED:toc -->

## What this file is for

These are not structures and not genres. They are the **situations a story can be about**, catalogued. Use this file in three ways:

1. **Naming.** When a story is not working and you cannot say what it is, find the situation it actually is. Most confused drafts are two situations fighting.
2. **Combining.** Two situations layered produce material a single one cannot. Polti built the list expecting exactly that.
3. **Escaping the obvious.** When every idea you generate is the same shape, read a list you have not used and take the one that does not fit.

**The honest caution on all four systems.** Polti claimed the list was exhaustive; it is not, and he was arguing against a Romantic belief that plots are infinite, which is a nineteenth-century quarrel. Propp derived his sequence from one corpus — Russian wonder tales — and it does not transfer cleanly to other traditions, whatever later writers claim for it. Booker's seven and Tobias's twenty overlap heavily and disagree with each other. Read them as four different attempts to map the same territory, not as four authorities.

Card schema here is compact: roles, the situation, when to reach for it, and where it lives now. The eight-field card is for techniques; these are situations.

---

## A. Polti's Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations

Georges Polti, *Les Trente-six Situations Dramatiques*, 1916, elaborating a claim by Carlo Gozzi. Each situation is defined by the **roles** it requires — which is the useful part, because a situation with an empty role is a scene that will not work.

### Name the Situation Before the Shape

**Roles:** A story not yet named · Two questions answered out loud · A shelf of ninety-seven, of which eighty can be chosen
**The situation:** The card at the head of the `sit.` shelf. It settles first that **`sit.` is a shelf and not a lookup table**, then that it is **two decisions and not one**, and then it asks the two questions the shelf's own pair graph asks over and over — **what stands against the protagonist and what can be done to it**, and **whose life is on the other end of it** — and hands back a named shortlist. It reaches the screen in no form: it returns card ids, and the card you finally choose carries the prompt. The axes were not invented — they were read off the sixty-one `Yields to:` conditions the cards carry and the thirty-six rows `PAIR-AUDIT.md` files against them. Every card cited here is cited by id.
**When to reach for it:** Answer axis 1 out loud before you open the file, because it decides which half of the shelf you are even in. If the answer is *a situation*, answer axes 2 and 3 in one sentence each; the intersection is normally three to seven cards wide and will hold cards from two or three different taxonomies, which is the point. If the answer is *a function*, this card is finished with you — read the Propp block in order as a checklist, because that half of the shelf holds no alternatives at all. Where two answers fight for one story, ask whether the draft chose both: if it did, **that is two situations layered** — the file's second use, which is what Polti built the list expecting, not a wrong answer; if neither was chosen and each pulls the draft its own way, it is the file's first use, two situations fighting, and the repair is to name which one leads. **And distrust it three ways.** The file's own third use is *"Escaping the obvious. When every idea you generate is the same shape, read a list you have not used and take the one that does not fit"* — **a selector is a machine for doing the opposite**, so on that use close this card and read a block cold. A shortlist is also not a list of distinct options: the four taxonomies are four rival maps of one territory and the file says so — *"four different attempts to map the same territory, not four authorities"* — so a cell holding `sit.polti_28_obstacles_to_love` beside `sit.tobias_love`, or `sit.polti_26_crimes_of_love` beside `sit.tobias_forbidden_love`, is offering one situation named twice. And whenever your honest answer to axis 1 is its second value, distrust the map entirely: eighteen of the eighty cards live there, axes 2 and 3 do not reach them, and this card is then doing one third of the work it does on the other side.
**Where it lives now:** Phase 1, at the moment a story is named and before any structure or arc card is opened — and again in a rewrite, when a draft will not resolve and the suspicion is that two situations are fighting.

---

**Settled first: is `sit.` a shelf, or is it a lookup?**

**It is a shelf.** Four measurements, none of them an opinion about taxonomies:

1. **Sixty-one of the ninety-seven cards carry a `Yields to:` field** — a sentence of the exact form a selector needs, *in situation X, not this card — that one*. `sit.polti_08_revolt` → *"The power cannot be resisted, only endured."* `sit.tobias_underdog` → *"The sides are of equal power."* A table you look a fact up in does not tell you when to look somewhere else instead. `meso` and `vlb`, the two families `SHELVES.md` §2 excludes as reference, are excluded precisely because *"the canon does not offer you a choice between two Babylons"*. This shelf offers a choice between two revenges on thirty-four of its thirty-six Polti cards alone.
2. **Twenty of the sixty-one conditions cross from one taxonomy into another** — `sit.polti_27_discovery_of_dishonour` ⇄ `sit.tobias_discovery`, `sit.polti_31_conflict_with_a_god` ⇄ `sit.booker_overcoming_the_monster`, `sit.polti_11_the_enigma` ⇄ `sit.tobias_riddle`, `sit.tobias_sacrifice` → `sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin`. Readers holding a Polti card were sent to a Tobias one and back. **Four lookup tables filed together would not cite each other. One option set does.**
3. **`SHELVES.md` §2 does not exclude it**, and §2's own closing rule makes silence meaningful: *"A family that is neither listed here nor produced as a shelf is a finding."*
4. **The compact schema is not evidence of lookup.** All ninety-seven lack `What it is`, `Avoid when` and `Effect on the audience`, and the file says why: *"Card schema here is compact… The eight-field card is for techniques; these are situations."* That is a schema decision, not a genre decision. **The discriminating content is present — it is in `Yields to:` and in `When to reach for it`, not missing.** The contract's whole second change says the pair field is where the axes live, and this shelf carries sixty-one of them.

**But `SHELVES.md` §2b is answered `two`, and that is the load-bearing finding.** `sit.` is ninety-seven cards in one file in one phase, which is the shape §2b warns is the hardest to spot: *"A family in one file answering two is two shelves."* The tell here is not a filename, it is the pair graph — **and it is a disconnected graph.**

> **Not one of the fifty-nine conditions written across Polti, Booker and Tobias names a Propp card, and not one Propp card names anything outside Propp.** The two Propp conditions that exist are sequence pointers, not alternatives: `sit.propp_18_victory` → *"For the ending: defeat is not yet restoration"*, and `sit.propp_25_difficult_task` → *"The climax is direct combat, not a set trial."* Twenty-nine of the thirty-two Propp cards are filed no-pair — thirteen `additive`, sixteen `companion-only`, one `reference`.

The file states the same thing in prose: *"Use them as a checklist, not a template."* **A checklist obeyed in order is `SHELVES.md` §2's second exclusion kind exactly** — *"Rules and procedure · You obey them, in order."* So half of this family would be excluded if it stood alone, and the other half is one of the strongest shelves in the package.

**Recommended `SHELVES.md` edit, and it is cheap.** §2's table is keyed on family prefix, and a prefix row cannot say *half of `sit.`* — this is the first family where the exclusion is needed on a **sub-prefix**. Add one row and one sentence permitting them:

| Family | Kind | Why |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| the Propp block | rules | Propp's thirty-one functions are a fixed sequence obeyed in order, not alternatives. 29 of 32 carry no pair; the 2 that do are sequence pointers. The rest of `sit.` is a shelf and keeps its selector |

**This card works whether or not that row is added** — the split is axis 1 either way — but without it a future generator will keep counting eighteen unsortable cards against this shelf's coverage.

---

**The axes**

**Axis 1 — Are you naming what the story is about, or where inside it you are standing?**
Asked first because §2b says a selector built on the assumption of one decision *"cannot be repaired by adding a question later; its whole map is laid out wrong."* The evidence is the disconnected pair graph above, plus the eleven conditions inside the situation set that turn on the same question and are the reason it is a real fork rather than a filing note: *"The story is the guilt after, not the act"* (`sit.polti_17_fatal_imprudence`), *"The story is the careless act, not the guilt"* (`sit.polti_34_remorse`), *"Nobody took them; the finding is the problem"* (`sit.polti_10_abduction`), *"The affair stops short of killing"* (`sit.polti_15_murderous_adultery`), *"An action ending is wanted; that is rescue"* (`sit.polti_36_loss_of_loved_ones`), *"The avenger's unrecoverable cost is the point"* (`sit.tobias_revenge`).

**Axis 2 — What stands against them, and what can be done to it?**
Twenty-eight of the sixty-one conditions turn on this and they are stated as facts about the opposing force, never as feelings: *"The sufferer can organise against the power"* (`sit.polti_07_falling_prey_to_cruelty`), *"The power cannot be resisted, only endured"* (`sit.polti_08_revolt`), *"The absolute power can actually be destroyed"* (`sit.polti_31_conflict_with_a_god`), *"The prize's holder can be negotiated with"* (`sit.polti_09_daring_enterprise`), *"The prize must be taken by operation, not talk"* (`sit.polti_12_obtaining`), *"The powers are deliberately unequal"* (`sit.tobias_rivalry`), *"The obstacle has power to enforce itself"* (`sit.tobias_love`), *"The obstacle cannot enforce itself"* (`sit.tobias_forbidden_love`), *"The trap was imposed, not self-built"* (`sit.booker_rebirth`), *"Nothing is known to be wrong; choices are reasonable"* (`sit.tobias_temptation`), *"The traveller need not change"* (`sit.tobias_quest`).

**Axis 3 — Whose life is on the other end of it?**
Thirteen conditions turn on this, and it is the axis Polti actually built his list on — his fourth situation exists only because the third one's avenger might share blood: *"Avenger and target share blood"* (`sit.polti_03_crime_pursued_by_vengeance`), *"Avenger is outside the family"* (`sit.polti_04_vengeance_kin_upon_kin`), *"The beneficiary is a person, not a principle"* (`sit.polti_20_self_sacrifice_for_ideal`), *"The beneficiary is a principle, not kin"* (`sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin`), *"The larger claim is a family member"* (`sit.tobias_sacrifice`), *"What falls is people loved, not a power"* (`sit.polti_06_disaster`), *"The shameful truth is about someone loved"* (`sit.tobias_discovery`), *"The shameful truth is about the discoverer"* (`sit.polti_27_discovery_of_dishonour`), *"The kin compete for one indivisible object"* (`sit.polti_13_enmity_of_kin`). Asked last because it is the only axis that separates cards axis 2 has already put in the same cell.

---

**The map**

**Axis 1 — a situation, or a position inside one**

| Answer | The shortlist, by id |
| :--- | :--- |
| **A situation — you are deciding what the story is about** (62) | Polti's 36, Booker's 6 and Tobias's 20, listed in full under axes 2 and 3 below |
| **A function — the story exists and you are naming this beat** (18) | Read in order, not chosen between: `sit.propp_02_interdiction` · `sit.propp_03_violation` · `sit.propp_05_delivery` · `sit.propp_07_complicity` · `sit.propp_09_mediation` · `sit.propp_10_beginning_counteraction` · `sit.propp_13_heros_reaction` · `sit.propp_14_magical_agent` · `sit.propp_16_struggle` · `sit.propp_17_branding` · `sit.propp_18_victory` · `sit.propp_19_liquidation` · `sit.propp_22_rescue` · `sit.propp_24_unfounded_claims` · `sit.propp_25_difficult_task` · `sit.propp_26_solution` · `sit.propp_27_recognition` · `sit.propp_28_exposure` |

**Axis 2 — what stands against them** *(the 62 only)*

| Answer | The shortlist, by id |
| :--- | :--- |
| **An adversary who can be beaten, taken from or out-run** (10) | `sit.polti_02_deliverance` · `sit.polti_03_crime_pursued_by_vengeance` · `sit.polti_04_vengeance_kin_upon_kin` · `sit.polti_08_revolt` · `sit.polti_10_abduction` · `sit.polti_13_enmity_of_kin` · `sit.polti_15_murderous_adultery` · `sit.booker_overcoming_the_monster` · `sit.tobias_rescue` · `sit.tobias_revenge` |
| **A holder or an equal — the thing is in someone's keeping and must be won, bargained for or out-matched** (14) | `sit.polti_09_daring_enterprise` · `sit.polti_11_the_enigma` · `sit.polti_12_obtaining` · `sit.polti_14_rivalry_of_kin` · `sit.polti_24_rivalry_superior_inferior` · `sit.polti_30_ambition` · `sit.booker_the_quest` · `sit.booker_rags_to_riches` · `sit.tobias_quest` · `sit.tobias_adventure` · `sit.tobias_riddle` · `sit.tobias_rivalry` · `sit.tobias_underdog` · `sit.tobias_ascension` |
| **A power that cannot be resisted — only endured, witnessed, fled or begged** (21) | `sit.polti_01_supplication` · `sit.polti_05_pursuit` · `sit.polti_06_disaster` · `sit.polti_07_falling_prey_to_cruelty` · `sit.polti_18_involuntary_crimes_of_love` · `sit.polti_19_slaying_of_kin_unrecognized` · `sit.polti_20_self_sacrifice_for_ideal` · `sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin` · `sit.polti_23_necessity_of_sacrificing_loved_ones` · `sit.polti_26_crimes_of_love` · `sit.polti_28_obstacles_to_love` · `sit.polti_29_an_enemy_loved` · `sit.polti_31_conflict_with_a_god` · `sit.polti_33_erroneous_judgment` · `sit.polti_35_recovery_of_a_lost_one` · `sit.polti_36_loss_of_loved_ones` · `sit.tobias_pursuit` · `sit.tobias_escape` · `sit.tobias_love` · `sit.tobias_forbidden_love` · `sit.tobias_sacrifice` |
| **Nothing outside — the protagonist is their own antagonist** (17) | `sit.polti_16_madness` · `sit.polti_17_fatal_imprudence` · `sit.polti_22_all_sacrificed_for_passion` · `sit.polti_25_adultery` · `sit.polti_27_discovery_of_dishonour` · `sit.polti_32_mistaken_jealousy` · `sit.polti_34_remorse` · `sit.booker_voyage_and_return` · `sit.booker_rebirth` · `sit.booker_tragedy` · `sit.tobias_wretched_excess` · `sit.tobias_temptation` · `sit.tobias_metamorphosis` · `sit.tobias_transformation` · `sit.tobias_maturation` · `sit.tobias_discovery` · `sit.tobias_descension` |

**Axis 3 — whose life is on the other end** *(the 62 only)*

| Answer | The shortlist, by id |
| :--- | :--- |
| **Blood — the cost lands inside the house** (9) | `sit.polti_04_vengeance_kin_upon_kin` · `sit.polti_10_abduction` · `sit.polti_13_enmity_of_kin` · `sit.polti_14_rivalry_of_kin` · `sit.polti_19_slaying_of_kin_unrecognized` · `sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin` · `sit.polti_23_necessity_of_sacrificing_loved_ones` · `sit.polti_35_recovery_of_a_lost_one` · `sit.polti_36_loss_of_loved_ones` |
| **A bond chosen — a lover, a beloved, a companion** (13) | `sit.polti_15_murderous_adultery` · `sit.polti_18_involuntary_crimes_of_love` · `sit.polti_22_all_sacrificed_for_passion` · `sit.polti_25_adultery` · `sit.polti_26_crimes_of_love` · `sit.polti_27_discovery_of_dishonour` · `sit.polti_28_obstacles_to_love` · `sit.polti_29_an_enemy_loved` · `sit.polti_32_mistaken_jealousy` · `sit.booker_the_quest` · `sit.booker_rebirth` · `sit.tobias_love` · `sit.tobias_forbidden_love` |
| **A stranger, a rival or an institution — no bond to break** (22) | `sit.polti_01_supplication` · `sit.polti_02_deliverance` · `sit.polti_03_crime_pursued_by_vengeance` · `sit.polti_05_pursuit` · `sit.polti_06_disaster` · `sit.polti_07_falling_prey_to_cruelty` · `sit.polti_08_revolt` · `sit.polti_09_daring_enterprise` · `sit.polti_12_obtaining` · `sit.polti_16_madness` · `sit.polti_24_rivalry_superior_inferior` · `sit.polti_30_ambition` · `sit.polti_31_conflict_with_a_god` · `sit.polti_33_erroneous_judgment` · `sit.booker_overcoming_the_monster` · `sit.booker_rags_to_riches` · `sit.tobias_pursuit` · `sit.tobias_rescue` · `sit.tobias_escape` · `sit.tobias_revenge` · `sit.tobias_rivalry` · `sit.tobias_underdog` |
| **Nobody — a principle, or the protagonist themselves** (18) | `sit.polti_11_the_enigma` · `sit.polti_17_fatal_imprudence` · `sit.polti_20_self_sacrifice_for_ideal` · `sit.polti_34_remorse` · `sit.booker_voyage_and_return` · `sit.booker_tragedy` · `sit.tobias_quest` · `sit.tobias_adventure` · `sit.tobias_riddle` · `sit.tobias_wretched_excess` · `sit.tobias_temptation` · `sit.tobias_metamorphosis` · `sit.tobias_transformation` · `sit.tobias_maturation` · `sit.tobias_sacrifice` · `sit.tobias_discovery` · `sit.tobias_ascension` · `sit.tobias_descension` |

*A card appears once per axis. The answer is the intersection of axis 2 and axis 3, and it is normally three to seven cards wide. Axis 1's second value returns an ordered list rather than an intersection, because that half of the shelf has nothing to intersect.*

---

**The default, and the one against it**

**The default is `sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin`, and it is measured, not asserted.** It is the most-yielded-to card on the shelf: **three cards send a reader there and nothing else on the shelf is named more than twice** — `sit.polti_20_self_sacrifice_for_ideal` (*"The beneficiary is a person, not a principle"*), `sit.polti_23_necessity_of_sacrificing_loved_ones` (*"The hero gives up their own thing instead"*) and `sit.tobias_sacrifice` (*"The larger claim is a family member"*). The three senders come from two different taxonomies, which is the strongest form of the measurement available here: readers working on Polti and readers working on Tobias independently fell back to the same card. Its own text agrees — *"the most emotionally legible situation in the list, and the safest for audiences across every culture"* — and names its own price in the next clause: *"Its risk is sentimentality; the fix is to make the kinsman undeserving."* **Read that price as part of the default, not as a footnote to it.** A shelf whose fallback is *the safest thing for every audience* is a shelf that will produce the same film repeatedly unless the second half of this field is used.

**The one against it is `sit.polti_33_erroneous_judgment`.** Nothing routes to it; it is named by no `Yields to:` anywhere on the shelf; and it is the only situation here whose fourth role is a person **who is present and does nothing**. The card's own line is the argument: *"The Guilty One being present and silent is what makes it unbearable."* Every other unanswerable-power card makes the power either enormous (`sit.polti_31_conflict_with_a_god`), impersonal (`sit.polti_07_falling_prey_to_cruelty`) or already finished (`sit.polti_36_loss_of_loved_ones`). **`sit.polti_33_erroneous_judgment` makes it small, nearby and choosing nothing** — which is the exact inverse of the default: `21` is a person paying for a bond, `33` is a person refusing to pay while everyone watches the wrong party pay instead. Its stated cost is that it needs an institution rendered in enough detail to be believed, which is expensive and is why nothing routes to it. **Its near cousin against the grain is `sit.polti_16_madness`**, which is likewise unasked, carries no `Yields to:` at all, and is filed `execution-note` — and which records in its own text the modern form nobody is ever sent to: *"a character whose perception the audience shares and cannot verify."*

---

**The unasked**

**Thirty-four of the eighty reachable cards are the target of no `Yields to:` field anywhere on this shelf.** They can be chosen but nothing ever sends you to them. By id:

`sit.polti_01_supplication` · `sit.polti_05_pursuit` · `sit.polti_06_disaster` · `sit.polti_16_madness` · `sit.polti_19_slaying_of_kin_unrecognized` · `sit.polti_22_all_sacrificed_for_passion` · `sit.polti_23_necessity_of_sacrificing_loved_ones` · `sit.polti_24_rivalry_superior_inferior` · `sit.polti_29_an_enemy_loved` · `sit.polti_30_ambition` · `sit.polti_33_erroneous_judgment` · `sit.propp_02_interdiction` · `sit.propp_03_violation` · `sit.propp_05_delivery` · `sit.propp_07_complicity` · `sit.propp_09_mediation` · `sit.propp_10_beginning_counteraction` · `sit.propp_13_heros_reaction` · `sit.propp_14_magical_agent` · `sit.propp_17_branding` · `sit.propp_18_victory` · `sit.propp_22_rescue` · `sit.propp_24_unfounded_claims` · `sit.propp_25_difficult_task` · `sit.propp_26_solution` · `sit.propp_27_recognition` · `sit.propp_28_exposure` · `sit.booker_voyage_and_return` · `sit.booker_rebirth` · `sit.tobias_revenge` · `sit.tobias_wretched_excess` · `sit.tobias_temptation` · `sit.tobias_metamorphosis` · `sit.tobias_sacrifice`

**And the shape of that list is the finding, not its length.**

**First: sixteen of the thirty-four are the Propp block — every function in the map except the two that the other two Propp cards point at.** `sit.propp_16_struggle` is reached only by `sit.propp_25_difficult_task`, and `sit.propp_19_liquidation` only by `sit.propp_18_victory`. The Propp component is entered from nowhere and exits to nowhere. **This is not a gap in the pair graph, it is the proof that axis 1 exists**: the readers who read every card on this shelf wrote fifty-nine conditions outside Propp and not one of them said *"in situation X, use a Propp function instead."* You cannot use a function instead of a situation. **A position in a sequence is not an alternative to a subject** — the same class of thing the lighting shelf discovered when every one of its fourteen event cards turned out to be unasked. The pair field can only express *this card or that card at the same moment*, and the Propp block is not at the same moment as anything.

**Second: the whole self-destruction region is unasked.** `sit.tobias_wretched_excess`, `sit.tobias_temptation`, `sit.polti_22_all_sacrificed_for_passion` and `sit.polti_16_madness` — the four cards where the protagonist is their own antagonist and the ruin is **wanted** — are all on the list, and two of the four (`sit.polti_16_madness`, `sit.polti_22_all_sacrificed_for_passion`) are the only two Polti cards in the whole thirty-six with no `Yields to:` field at all. The shelf can be entered at addiction, obsession and appetite; it can never send you there. Meanwhile `sit.tobias_descension` (a fall through reasonable choices) is reached twice and `sit.booker_tragedy` (a fall through a flaw) once. **The shelf routes fluently between two kinds of falling and cannot route into wanting to fall.** The new card it is missing is the one where **the audience's own appetite is the mechanism** — where what consumes the character is the thing the film is inviting the viewer to enjoy, so that withdrawing the invitation late is the structure. Nothing here names that; `sit.tobias_wretched_excess` states the precondition (*"The appetite must once have been a virtue"*) and no reader is ever routed to read it.

**Third, and it is a shape rather than an absence: only nine of the sixty-two situations put blood on the other end, and all nine are Polti's.** Neither Booker's seven nor Tobias's twenty contains a single kin situation — twentieth-century plot taxonomy dropped the family entirely, and Polti 1916 is the only place it survives in this package. For heritage, testimony and migration work, where the family is usually the unit, **axis 3's first value is effectively a one-author shelf**, and three of its nine are themselves unasked (`sit.polti_19_slaying_of_kin_unrecognized`, `sit.polti_23_necessity_of_sacrificing_loved_ones`), while the default's own sender `sit.polti_35_recovery_of_a_lost_one` is reached exactly once.

`sit.situation_before_shape`

---

### 1. Supplication
**Roles:** Persecutor · Suppliant · Power in Authority
**The situation:** Someone in danger begs a third party who has the power to intervene, and that third party must decide.
**When to reach for it:** Any story about institutional indifference, asylum, bureaucracy or petition. The drama sits in the Authority, not the Suppliant — write the scene from the side that can say no.
**Where it lives now:** Immigration drama, hospital admissions, courtroom pleas, refugee narrative.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_02_deliverance` — Rescue arrives unasked, no authority decides.  
`sit.polti_01_supplication`

### 2. Deliverance
**Roles:** Unfortunate · Threatener · Rescuer
**The situation:** A helpless party is saved by an unexpected agent.
**When to reach for it:** When you need hope in a bleak structure. The rescuer arriving too early destroys the story; the standard solution is to make the rescuer reluctant or compromised.
**Where it lives now:** Action cinema, disaster film, whistleblower stories.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_rescue` — Antagonist, not rescuer, carries the moral weight.  
`sit.polti_02_deliverance`

### 3. Crime Pursued by Vengeance
**Roles:** Criminal · Avenger
**The situation:** A wrong is done and someone outside the law pursues the wrongdoer.
**When to reach for it:** The most commercially reliable situation in the list. Its craft problem is the ending: an avenger who succeeds cleanly leaves nothing behind, so the interesting versions cost the avenger something they cannot recover.
**Where it lives now:** Revenge thriller, vertical micro-drama, Western, most of the crime shelf.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_04_vengeance_kin_upon_kin` — Avenger and target share blood.  
`sit.polti_03_crime_pursued_by_vengeance`

### 4. Vengeance Taken for Kin Upon Kin
**Roles:** Guilty Kinsman · Avenging Kinsman · Victim
**The situation:** Revenge inside one family, where the avenger and the target share blood.
**When to reach for it:** Tragedy, and any story about a family with a rule older than its members. It is more powerful than ordinary revenge because the avenger destroys their own house to act.
**Where it lives now:** Greek tragedy, family saga, gangster, honour narratives.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_03_crime_pursued_by_vengeance` — Avenger is outside the family.  
`sit.polti_04_vengeance_kin_upon_kin`

### 5. Pursuit
**Roles:** Punishment · Fugitive
**The situation:** Someone flees a pursuing force, guilty or not.
**When to reach for it:** When you need built-in momentum. Its weakness is that flight has no interior; pair it with a second situation that gives the fugitive something to decide.
**Where it lives now:** Thriller, road film, prison break, survival.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_escape` — Fugitive starts confined, so act one is planning.  
`sit.polti_05_pursuit`

### 6. Disaster
**Roles:** Vanquished Power · Victorious Enemy or Messenger
**The situation:** A power falls, and the fall is witnessed or reported.
**When to reach for it:** Historical and heritage work about collapse — a city, a dynasty, a business, a marriage. The Messenger role is the one usually wasted: the person who carries the news is the story's best available viewpoint.
**Where it lives now:** Historical epic, corporate drama, war, heritage documentary.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_36_loss_of_loved_ones` — What falls is people loved, not a power.  
`sit.polti_06_disaster`

### 7. Falling Prey to Cruelty or Misfortune
**Roles:** Unfortunate · Master or Misfortune
**The situation:** Someone is subjected to suffering by a power they cannot resist.
**When to reach for it:** Social realism and testimony. Its danger is inertness — suffering without agency stops being drama. Give the Unfortunate one small thing they can still control.
**Where it lives now:** Social drama, testimony documentary, prison narrative.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_08_revolt` — The sufferer can organise against the power.  
`sit.polti_07_falling_prey_to_cruelty`

### 8. Revolt
**Roles:** Tyrant · Conspirator
**The situation:** Conspiracy against a ruling power, individual or collective.
**When to reach for it:** Political drama, and any workplace story. Works best when the Tyrant is competent and partly right, which converts the revolt from a moral certainty into a question.
**Where it lives now:** Political thriller, dystopia, historical uprising, workplace drama.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_07_falling_prey_to_cruelty` — The power cannot be resisted, only endured.  
`sit.polti_08_revolt`

### 9. Daring Enterprise
**Roles:** Bold Leader · Object · Adversary
**The situation:** A difficult undertaking attempted against opposition, for a defined prize.
**When to reach for it:** Heist, expedition, sports, start-up. It carries built-in structure — plan, execution, complication — which makes it the most mechanically reliable situation here.
**Where it lives now:** Heist, adventure, sports, competition, founding narratives.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_12_obtaining` — The prize's holder can be negotiated with.  
`sit.polti_09_daring_enterprise`

### 10. Abduction
**Roles:** Abductor · Abducted · Guardian
**The situation:** Someone is taken, and someone else must recover them.
**When to reach for it:** When you need urgency with a clock. The modern craft problem is that the Abducted is easily reduced to an object; the fix is to give them their own plot inside the captivity.
**Where it lives now:** Thriller, crime, custody drama, trafficking narratives.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_35_recovery_of_a_lost_one` — Nobody took them; the finding is the problem.  
`sit.polti_10_abduction`

### 11. The Enigma
**Roles:** Problem · Interrogator · Seeker
**The situation:** A riddle must be solved, often under threat, and the solution is withheld.
**When to reach for it:** Mystery and detective work, but also any story where the audience should be reasoning rather than feeling. It is the one situation that can carry a whole structure alone.
**Where it lives now:** Detective fiction, procedural, puzzle games, true crime.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_riddle` — The answer must be visible to the audience early.  
`sit.polti_11_the_enigma`

### 12. Obtaining
**Roles:** Solicitor and Adversary, or Arbitrator and Opposing Parties
**The situation:** Something is wanted that another holds, and it must be obtained by persuasion, negotiation or force.
**When to reach for it:** The most common situation in commercial and workplace drama, and the backbone of almost every two-hander scene. Note the second role set: with an Arbitrator it becomes a courtroom rather than a duel.
**Where it lives now:** Legal drama, negotiation, business, courtroom, most dialogue scenes.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_09_daring_enterprise` — The prize must be taken by operation, not talk.  
`sit.polti_12_obtaining`

### 13. Enmity of Kin
**Roles:** Malevolent Kinsman · Hated or Reciprocally-Hating Kinsman
**The situation:** Hatred between family members, with no external cause required.
**When to reach for it:** When a story needs conflict that cannot be resolved by leaving. Family enmity is the only conflict the participants cannot walk away from cleanly, which is why it sustains long form.
**Where it lives now:** Family saga, melodrama, inheritance drama, vertical micro-drama.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_14_rivalry_of_kin` — The kin compete for one indivisible object.  
`sit.polti_13_enmity_of_kin`

### 14. Rivalry of Kin
**Roles:** Preferred Kinsman · Rejected Kinsman · Object of Rivalry
**The situation:** Two relatives compete for the same thing — a parent's regard, an inheritance, a position.
**When to reach for it:** Sibling stories, succession, and any narrative about a parent who chose. The Object should be something that cannot be divided.
**Where it lives now:** Succession drama, family business, sports siblings, historical dynasty.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_13_enmity_of_kin` — The hatred needs no prize to explain it.  
`sit.polti_14_rivalry_of_kin`

### 15. Murderous Adultery
**Roles:** Two Adulterers · Betrayed Spouse
**The situation:** An affair that proceeds to the killing of the betrayed party.
**When to reach for it:** Noir and domestic thriller. It is the engine of the entire James M. Cain tradition. Modern versions usually invert the sympathy so the audience is complicit with the plotters.
**Where it lives now:** Noir, domestic thriller, true crime, melodrama.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_25_adultery` — The affair stops short of killing.  
`sit.polti_15_murderous_adultery`

### 16. Madness
**Roles:** Madman · Victim
**The situation:** Someone acts destructively from a disordered mind, and someone suffers it.
**When to reach for it:** Handle with care; the historical versions are cruel by modern standards. The usable modern form is a character whose perception the audience shares and cannot verify.
**Where it lives now:** Psychological drama, unreliable narrator fiction, horror.
`sit.polti_16_madness`

### 17. Fatal Imprudence
**Roles:** Imprudent · Victim or Object Lost
**The situation:** A careless act, not malicious, destroys something irreplaceable.
**When to reach for it:** The best situation available for guilt that cannot be blamed on anyone. Nobody is evil, and the loss is permanent, which is the hardest thing to write and the most recognisable.
**Where it lives now:** Grief drama, literary fiction, road accident narratives, medical error.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_34_remorse` — The story is the guilt after, not the act.  
`sit.polti_17_fatal_imprudence`

### 18. Involuntary Crimes of Love
**Roles:** Lover · Beloved · Revealer
**The situation:** A relationship turns out to be forbidden by a fact neither party knew.
**When to reach for it:** The Revealer is the role that makes this work — someone must carry the knowledge and decide when to speak. Write the scene from that person.
**Where it lives now:** Melodrama, tragedy, adoption and identity narratives, soap.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_26_crimes_of_love` — Both lovers know the prohibition.  
`sit.polti_18_involuntary_crimes_of_love`

### 19. Slaying of Kin Unrecognized
**Roles:** Slayer · Unrecognized Victim
**The situation:** Someone kills a relative without knowing who they are.
**When to reach for it:** Ancient and still potent in war narrative, where the unrecognised kin is a countryman rather than a brother. Its modern register is usually institutional rather than literal.
**Where it lives now:** War, tragedy, civil conflict, mythology.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_04_vengeance_kin_upon_kin` — The slayer knows the victim is kin.  
`sit.polti_19_slaying_of_kin_unrecognized`

### 20. Self-Sacrifice for an Ideal
**Roles:** Hero · Ideal · Person or Thing Sacrificed
**The situation:** Someone gives up something of their own for a principle.
**When to reach for it:** Note the third role — something specific must be lost, not merely offered. An ideal sacrificed for in the abstract produces a speech; an ideal that costs a named person produces a story.
**Where it lives now:** War, political drama, faith narrative, activism, heritage.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin` — The beneficiary is a person, not a principle.  
`sit.polti_20_self_sacrifice_for_ideal`

### 21. Self-Sacrifice for Kin
**Roles:** Hero · Kinsman · Person or Thing Sacrificed
**The situation:** Someone gives up something of their own for a family member.
**When to reach for it:** The most emotionally legible situation in the list, and the safest for audiences across every culture. Its risk is sentimentality; the fix is to make the kinsman undeserving.
**Where it lives now:** Melodrama, family drama, immigrant narrative, vertical micro-drama.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_20_self_sacrifice_for_ideal` — The beneficiary is a principle, not kin.  
`sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin`

### 22. All Sacrificed for Passion
**Roles:** Lover · Object of Fatal Passion · Person or Thing Sacrificed
**The situation:** Everything is surrendered for a consuming desire — a person, an art, a substance.
**When to reach for it:** Addiction and obsession stories, and artist biography. It pairs naturally with the Fall arc.
**Where it lives now:** Addiction drama, artist biopic, obsessive romance, noir.
`sit.polti_22_all_sacrificed_for_passion`

### 23. Necessity of Sacrificing Loved Ones
**Roles:** Hero · Beloved Victim · Necessity for Sacrifice
**The situation:** A duty requires the destruction of someone loved.
**When to reach for it:** The strongest available situation for an impossible choice, and the one that most reliably produces a scene an audience remembers. The Necessity must be genuinely inescapable or the hero is simply a monster.
**Where it lives now:** War, tragedy, science fiction, command narratives.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin` — The hero gives up their own thing instead.  
`sit.polti_23_necessity_of_sacrificing_loved_ones`

### 24. Rivalry of Superior versus Inferior
**Roles:** Superior Rival · Inferior Rival · Object of Rivalry
**The situation:** Two unequal parties compete for the same thing.
**When to reach for it:** Underdog stories, class narratives, and any structure needing an uphill shape. The Superior should want the Object for a reason the audience can respect.
**Where it lives now:** Sports, class drama, romance across status, workplace.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_rivalry` — The two sides are of equal power.  
`sit.polti_24_rivalry_superior_inferior`

### 25. Adultery
**Roles:** Two Adulterers · Deceived Spouse
**The situation:** An affair, without murder.
**When to reach for it:** Domestic drama. Unlike situation 15, its interest is entirely in what the deception costs daily rather than in what it leads to — so it needs scenes of ordinary life, not incident.
**Where it lives now:** Literary fiction, domestic drama, melodrama, soap.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_15_murderous_adultery` — The affair proceeds to the spouse's death.  
`sit.polti_25_adultery`

### 26. Crimes of Love
**Roles:** Lover · Beloved
**The situation:** A relationship that violates a social or legal prohibition.
**When to reach for it:** The prohibition must be real inside the story's world. This situation dies when transplanted to a setting where nobody would object, which is why period and specific-community settings carry it better than contemporary generic ones.
**Where it lives now:** Period drama, community narratives, forbidden romance.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_18_involuntary_crimes_of_love` — The bar is a fact neither lover knew.  
`sit.polti_26_crimes_of_love`

### 27. Discovery of the Dishonour of a Loved One
**Roles:** Discoverer · Guilty One
**The situation:** Someone learns that a person they love has done something shameful.
**When to reach for it:** One of the most useful situations for contemporary drama, because the discovery scene writes itself and the aftermath is inexhaustible. Everything depends on whether the Discoverer tells.
**Where it lives now:** Family drama, crime, journalism, coming of age.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_discovery` — The shameful truth is about the discoverer.  
`sit.polti_27_discovery_of_dishonour`

### 28. Obstacles to Love
**Roles:** Two Lovers · Obstacle
**The situation:** A relationship blocked by something external.
**When to reach for it:** The entire romance genre. Its craft rule: the obstacle must be genuinely insurmountable by an honest conversation, or the audience will spend the story shouting at the characters to talk.
**Where it lives now:** Romance, romantic comedy, period drama, migration narrative.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_forbidden_love` — The obstacle is a prohibition that enforces itself.  
`sit.polti_28_obstacles_to_love`

### 29. An Enemy Loved
**Roles:** Lover · Beloved Enemy · Hater
**The situation:** Love for someone on the opposing side.
**When to reach for it:** War, sectarian and communal narratives, and any story where the audience needs to be moved across a line. It is the most politically useful situation in the list and the most easily made sentimental.
**Where it lives now:** War romance, sectarian drama, sports rivalry, historical conflict.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_28_obstacles_to_love` — The barrier is external, not the beloved's side.  
`sit.polti_29_an_enemy_loved`

### 30. Ambition
**Roles:** Ambitious Person · Thing Coveted · Adversary
**The situation:** Someone pursues advancement against opposition.
**When to reach for it:** The default situation of modern workplace and political drama, and the natural host for the Corruption arc. Make the Thing Coveted specific — a title, an office, a name on a door.
**Where it lives now:** Political drama, corporate, gangster, sports, artist narrative.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_ascension` — The rise is resisted rather than pursued.  
`sit.polti_30_ambition`

### 31. Conflict with a God
**Roles:** Mortal · Immortal
**The situation:** A human sets themselves against a divine or absolute power.
**When to reach for it:** Mythology and heritage work directly; contemporary work by substitution, where the Immortal becomes an institution, an algorithm, a disease or history itself. The substitution is the technique.
**Where it lives now:** Mythology, faith narrative, science fiction, heritage epic, medical drama.
**Yields to:** `sit.booker_overcoming_the_monster` — The absolute power can actually be destroyed.  
`sit.polti_31_conflict_with_a_god`

### 32. Mistaken Jealousy
**Roles:** Jealous One · Object of Possession · Supposed Accomplice · Cause of Mistake
**The situation:** Jealousy founded on an error.
**When to reach for it:** Note the fourth role — the Cause of the Mistake. Polti insists someone or something manufactured the error, which is what separates this from ordinary suspicion and gives it a plot.
**Where it lives now:** Tragedy, melodrama, farce, domestic thriller, soap.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_25_adultery` — The jealousy is founded; the affair is real.  
`sit.polti_32_mistaken_jealousy`

### 33. Erroneous Judgment
**Roles:** Mistaken One · Victim of Mistake · Cause of Mistake · Guilty One
**The situation:** An innocent is condemned while the guilty party goes unnamed.
**When to reach for it:** Miscarriage-of-justice narrative, and any story about an institution that cannot admit error. The Guilty One being present and silent is what makes it unbearable.
**Where it lives now:** Legal drama, true crime, social drama, historical injustice.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_32_mistaken_jealousy` — The manufactured error enrages instead of condemning.  
`sit.polti_33_erroneous_judgment`

### 34. Remorse
**Roles:** Culprit · Victim or Sin · Interrogator
**The situation:** Someone is consumed by guilt for what they did.
**When to reach for it:** The Interrogator role is the one that makes it playable — remorse alone is interior and static, but remorse under questioning is a scene. The interrogator can be a priest, a child, a journalist or the culprit themselves.
**Where it lives now:** Literary fiction, war narrative, crime, faith drama, testimony.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_17_fatal_imprudence` — The story is the careless act, not the guilt.  
`sit.polti_34_remorse`

### 35. Recovery of a Lost One
**Roles:** Seeker · One Found
**The situation:** Someone searches for a missing person and finds them.
**When to reach for it:** The finding is not the end — it is the problem. The strongest versions make the One Found unwilling, changed, or not who the Seeker was looking for.
**Where it lives now:** Migration narrative, missing-person drama, adoption, heritage, road film.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_10_abduction` — Someone took them and must give them back.  
`sit.polti_35_recovery_of_a_lost_one`

### 36. Loss of Loved Ones
**Roles:** Kinsman Slain · Kinsman Spectator · Executioner
**The situation:** Someone witnesses the destruction of people they love and cannot prevent it.
**When to reach for it:** The Spectator is the viewpoint. This is the foundational situation of testimony, genocide narrative and heritage work about catastrophe — it is about being unable to act, which is why it must not be given an action ending.
**Where it lives now:** War, testimony documentary, heritage, historical atrocity, tragedy.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_02_deliverance` — An action ending is wanted; that is rescue.  
`sit.polti_36_loss_of_loved_ones`

---

## B. Propp's Thirty-One Narrative Functions

Vladimir Propp, *Morphology of the Folktale*, 1928. Derived from one corpus of Russian wonder tales. The functions are fixed units that appear in a constrained order and are independent of which character performs them — which is precisely what makes them addressable.

**Use them as a checklist, not a template.** Not every tale contains every function; the claim is that those present appear in this order. The list is at its most useful for animation, kids' content, game quest design and mythology, and at its least useful for contemporary realist drama.

### 1. Absentation
A family member leaves home, opening the gap the tale will fill. **When:** the cheapest possible opening — remove the protector and the story begins.
`sit.propp_01_absentation`

### 2. Interdiction
A forbidding command or warning is issued. **When:** you need a rule the audience can watch be broken. The interdiction is a promise of its own violation.
`sit.propp_02_interdiction`

### 3. Violation of Interdiction
The warning is disregarded. **When:** the inciting incident of most folk and children's narrative. Make the violation understandable, not stupid.
`sit.propp_03_violation`

### 4. Reconnaissance
The villain seeks information about the victim. **When:** you want dread before threat — the audience sees the hunt begin while the hero does not.
`sit.propp_04_reconnaissance`

### 5. Delivery
The villain obtains the information. **When:** the moment safety ends. Often the strongest place for a hard cut.
`sit.propp_05_delivery`

### 6. Trickery
The villain attempts deception to take something. **When:** you need the villain to be interesting rather than merely strong.
`sit.propp_06_trickery`

### 7. Complicity
The victim is deceived and unwittingly helps. **When:** the function that makes a victim active rather than passive, and the one most often skipped.
`sit.propp_07_complicity`

### 8. Villainy or Lacking
Harm is done, or a need is discovered. **When:** the true beginning. Note the two forms: something is taken, or something was always missing — and the second produces a very different story.
`sit.propp_08_villainy_or_lacking`

### 9. Mediation
The misfortune becomes known and the hero is dispatched. **When:** the call. The Dispatcher role exists for this function alone.
`sit.propp_09_mediation`

### 10. Beginning Counteraction
The hero agrees to act. **When:** the commitment. Without it there is no hero, only a victim in motion.
`sit.propp_10_beginning_counteraction`

### 11. Departure
The hero leaves home. **When:** the threshold. In modern terms, the end of act one.
`sit.propp_11_departure`

### 12. First Function of the Donor
The hero is tested by a figure who may help. **When:** you need to prove the hero's character before rewarding them. The test is usually about kindness, not strength.
`sit.propp_12_donor_test`

### 13. Hero's Reaction
The hero responds to the test. **When:** the payoff of function 12, and the place where a hero earns what is coming.
`sit.propp_13_heros_reaction`

### 14. Receipt of a Magical Agent
The hero acquires the aid. **When:** the reward must be proportionate to the test, and useless without it.
`sit.propp_14_magical_agent`

### 15. Guidance
The hero is transported to the decisive location. **When:** compressing travel. Folk narrative simply skips distance, which modern short-form has rediscovered.
`sit.propp_15_guidance`

### 16. Struggle
Hero and villain meet in direct conflict. **When:** the confrontation. Note it is not the ending — eight functions follow it.
`sit.propp_16_struggle`

### 17. Branding
The hero is marked — a wound, a ring, a scar. **When:** you need proof later. This function exists entirely to service function 27.
`sit.propp_17_branding`

### 18. Victory
The villain is defeated. **When:** the apparent resolution. The tale continues because defeat is not yet restoration.
**Yields to:** `sit.propp_19_liquidation` — For the ending: defeat is not yet restoration.  
`sit.propp_18_victory`

### 19. Liquidation
The original misfortune is undone. **When:** the actual resolution of function 8, and the point most modern adaptations wrongly treat as the end.
`sit.propp_19_liquidation`

### 20. Return
The hero travels home. **When:** the second half begins. Everything after this is about whether the hero can be received.
`sit.propp_20_return`

### 21. Pursuit
The hero is chased. **When:** you need the return journey to have stakes of its own.
`sit.propp_21_pursuit`

### 22. Rescue
The hero escapes pursuit. **When:** closing the pursuit. Often where the magical agent is spent.
`sit.propp_22_rescue`

### 23. Unrecognized Arrival
The hero arrives home and is not recognised. **When:** the most dramatically rich function in the list, and the most transferable to modern work — the returning soldier, the migrant, the released prisoner.
`sit.propp_23_unrecognized_arrival`

### 24. Unfounded Claims
A false hero claims the achievement. **When:** you need injustice after victory. This is the function that makes the ending earned rather than given.
`sit.propp_24_unfounded_claims`

### 25. Difficult Task
A final trial is set. **When:** the true climax. Distinct from the Struggle, and usually harder.
**Yields to:** `sit.propp_16_struggle` — The climax is direct combat, not a set trial.  
`sit.propp_25_difficult_task`

### 26. Solution
The task is accomplished. **When:** proof of identity through capability rather than through claim.
`sit.propp_26_solution`

### 27. Recognition
The hero is recognised, usually by the mark from function 17. **When:** the emotional summit of the whole form. Plant the brand early and cash it here.
`sit.propp_27_recognition`

### 28. Exposure
The false hero or villain is revealed. **When:** the release of the injustice built in function 24.
`sit.propp_28_exposure`

### 29. Transfiguration
The hero is given a new appearance or restored. **When:** the external sign of internal change — the modern equivalent is a costume, a house, a name.
`sit.propp_29_transfiguration`

### 30. Punishment
The villain faces consequences. **When:** optional, and its absence is a choice with meaning. Folk tales punish; modern tragedy often does not.
`sit.propp_30_punishment`

### 31. Wedding
The hero marries or is elevated. **When:** the new equilibrium. Read it as any permanent elevation in status, not only marriage.
`sit.propp_31_wedding`

### The seven roles
Propp's *dramatis personae*: **Villain** (creates the struggle) · **Dispatcher** (sends the hero) · **Helper** (aids the journey) · **Princess or Prize** (the sought object, and often the one who sets the difficult task) · **Donor** (tests, then equips) · **Hero** (acts and resolves) · **False Hero** (claims the credit).
**When to reach for them:** as a casting audit. One character may hold several roles, and a role with nobody in it is usually the reason a draft feels incomplete. The most commonly empty role in modern drafts is the Donor.
`sit.propp_roles`

---

## C. Booker's Seven Basic Plots

Christopher Booker, *The Seven Basic Plots*, 2004. The broadest of the four taxonomies and the most contested. Useful for orientation, not for construction.

### Overcoming the Monster
A threat to a community is confronted and destroyed. **When:** the monster is best read as anything that cannot be negotiated with — a disease, an ideology, a debt.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_31_conflict_with_a_god` — The power cannot be destroyed, only opposed.  
`sit.booker_overcoming_the_monster`

### The Quest
A journey toward a distant goal, with companions and trials. **When:** the destination should turn out to matter less than the company. A quest whose prize is the prize is thin.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_quest` — The seeker's change matters more than the company.  
`sit.booker_the_quest`

### Voyage and Return
A character enters a strange world, is changed, and comes home. **When:** the return is the content. Use it whenever the story's subject is perspective rather than achievement.
**Yields to:** `sit.booker_the_quest` — The subject is achievement, not perspective.  
`sit.booker_voyage_and_return`

### Rags to Riches
A character rises from nothing, usually falls, and rises again more truly. **When:** the two-stage rise is the whole form — a single unbroken ascent is a fantasy, not this plot.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_ascension` — The ascent is single and unbroken.  
`sit.booker_rags_to_riches`

### Rebirth
A character is trapped in a dark state and is redeemed, often by another's love or act. **When:** redemption narrative, Christmas story, addiction recovery. The trap must be self-built.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_07_falling_prey_to_cruelty` — The trap was imposed, not self-built.  
`sit.booker_rebirth`

### Comedy
Confusion and misunderstanding proliferate until a revelation resolves everything into union. **When:** Booker's comedy is structural, not tonal — it is about a knot tightening and then releasing, which is why it describes many non-funny works.
`sit.booker_comedy`

### Tragedy
A character's flaw drives them through escalating commitment to destruction. **When:** pairs exactly with the Fall arc; read that card alongside this one.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_descension` — No flaw is needed, only reasonable choices.  
`sit.booker_tragedy`

---

## D. Tobias's Twenty Master Plots

Ronald B. Tobias, *20 Master Plots and How to Build Them*, 1993. Split into **plots of the body**, which are driven by action, and **plots of the mind**, driven by psychological change. The split is the useful part: it tells you where the reader's attention will sit.

### Plots of the body


`sit.dramatic.plots_of_the_body`

### Quest
A search for a person, place or thing that changes the seeker more than it changes the world. **When:** the object sought should be specific and the change should be unplanned.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_adventure` — The traveller need not change.  
`sit.tobias_quest`

### Adventure
Motion and incident for their own pleasure; the protagonist need not change. **When:** you want delight rather than meaning, and should stop apologising for it.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_quest` — The journey must change the traveller.  
`sit.tobias_adventure`

### Pursuit
The chase, where the chase itself is the plot rather than its cause. **When:** pace is the product. Give the pursued something to decide or the form goes hollow.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_escape` — The protagonist starts static and must plan.  
`sit.tobias_pursuit`

### Rescue
A triangle of hero, victim and antagonist, with the moral weight carried by the antagonist. **When:** the antagonist must be the most defined of the three, or the rescue is an errand.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_10_abduction` — The captive, not the captor, needs the interior.  
`sit.tobias_rescue`

### Escape
Confinement and the attempt to break it. **When:** distinct from Pursuit in that the protagonist starts static — which means the first half is planning, not running.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_pursuit` — The protagonist is already running.  
`sit.tobias_escape`

### Revenge
Retaliation outside the law, in which the audience is asked to approve what it would condemn elsewhere. **When:** the approval must be withdrawn before the end, or the story has argued for something it does not believe.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_03_crime_pursued_by_vengeance` — The avenger's unrecoverable cost is the point.  
`sit.tobias_revenge`

### The Riddle
The answer is present from the beginning and the pleasure is in not seeing it. **When:** the clue must be shown plainly and early. A riddle that hides its answer is a cheat.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_11_the_enigma` — The solution is withheld in-story, under threat.  
`sit.tobias_riddle`

### Rivalry
Two forces of roughly equal power competing for the same irreducible thing. **When:** equality is the requirement — the moment one side can simply win, the plot ends.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_underdog` — The powers are deliberately unequal.  
`sit.tobias_rivalry`

### Underdog
Rivalry with the power deliberately unequal, so the audience's sympathy is structural rather than earned. **When:** cheap and reliable. Its risk is that the underdog need not be good, only small.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_rivalry` — The sides are of equal power.  
`sit.tobias_underdog`

### Wretched Excess
A character's appetite exceeds every limit and consumes them. **When:** pairs with the Fall arc and with Polti's *All Sacrificed for Passion*. The appetite must once have been a virtue.
`sit.tobias_wretched_excess`

### Plots of the mind


`sit.dramatic.plots_of_the_mind`

### Temptation
A character knows what is right and wants what is not, and the plot is the yielding. **When:** pairs exactly with the Corruption arc — read `arc.corruption` alongside it.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_descension` — Nothing is known to be wrong; choices are reasonable.  
`sit.tobias_temptation`

### Metamorphosis
A literal change of form that externalises an internal condition. **When:** fantasy, horror and fable. The change must be irreversible or it is a costume — and a costume, a house or a name given as the outward sign of an inner change is `sit.propp_29_transfiguration`, a different function, not a failed metamorphosis.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_transformation` — The change is of character, not of form.  
`sit.tobias_metamorphosis`

### Transformation
Change of character through a passage of experience, usually one-way. **When:** the difference from Maturation is that Transformation can happen at any age and is usually caused by a single event.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_maturation` — The change is innocence lost with age.  
`sit.tobias_transformation`

### Maturation
The coming-of-age shape specifically: innocence tested and replaced by knowledge. **When:** the knowledge gained should cost the innocence permanently; a protagonist who ends as they began has not matured.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_transformation` — One event changes someone at any age.  
`sit.tobias_maturation`

### Love
Two people who should be together kept apart by something real. **When:** the obstacle must survive an honest conversation between them, or the audience will spend the story impatient.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_forbidden_love` — The obstacle has power to enforce itself.  
`sit.tobias_love`

### Forbidden Love
Love against a prohibition that has the power to enforce itself. **When:** the enforcement must be shown working on someone else first.
**Yields to:** `sit.tobias_love` — The obstacle cannot enforce itself.  
`sit.tobias_forbidden_love`

### Sacrifice
A character gives up something of great personal value for a larger claim. **When:** read with `arc.cost_of_truth` — the thing given up must be named and specific.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_21_self_sacrifice_for_kin` — The larger claim is a family member.  
`sit.tobias_sacrifice`

### Discovery
A character learns the truth about themselves or their origins and cannot unlearn it. **When:** the story is what they do afterwards, not the learning. Place the discovery early.
**Yields to:** `sit.polti_27_discovery_of_dishonour` — The shameful truth is about someone loved.  
`sit.tobias_discovery`

### Ascension
A character rises to meet a challenge and is elevated by it. **When:** the rise must be resisted by the character first, or it reads as a promotion rather than a plot.
**Yields to:** `sit.booker_rags_to_riches` — The rise breaks and must be made twice.  
`sit.tobias_ascension`

### Descension
A character falls from a height through their own agency. **When:** distinct from Tragedy in that no flaw is required — a series of reasonable choices is enough, which is more frightening.
**Yields to:** `sit.booker_tragedy` — A flaw drives the fall. Read it to name the story; the Booker section says its seven are for orientation, not construction, so build from the pattern here.  
`sit.tobias_descension`

---

## Coverage

All `durable`.

*Build notes from when this file was drafted — targets, running totals and what remained to be written — are kept verbatim in the [coverage history](../tools/history/coverage-history.md). They were true of the draft, not of the file, so they no longer sit here as if they were measurements.*

## Sources

Verified 2026-09-17.

- [The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations)
- [Vladimir Propp — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp)
- [The Map of All Story Plots — Steven R. Southard](https://stevenrsouthard.com/the-map-of-all-story-plots/)
- [The 36 Dramatic Situations — Steven R. Southard](https://stevenrsouthard.com/tag/the-36-dramatic-situations/)
- [20 Master Plots — Steven R. Southard](https://stevenrsouthard.com/tag/20-master-plots/)
- [20 Master Plots — Writer's Digest](https://www.writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/20-master-plots)
- [Tobias' 20 Plots — Changing Minds](http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/tobias_plots.htm)
- [The top basic plots of fiction — spdrdng](https://spdrdng.com/posts/the-top-six-or-seven-or-three-basic-plots-of-fiction-in-literature-that-can-help-to-speed-read-novels)