If you ask the internet, it will tell you that there are seven types of plots—that’s it, seven! So how is it that so many tens of millions of stories manage to exist? The key is variation—of style, of setting, of tone and temperament, of structure. But even more than that, I think it’s the characters who inhabit those stories that make them so different. Pick any situation, any stock “plot,” and put different people in it—suddenly you have a different story.