When looking at human-generated categories or labels, it's useful to think about the meta layer of "lumpers vs splitters": <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters</a><p>This thread's article divides drama situations into 37 buckets. And another person divides stories into 7 types: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots</a><p>In music... a Lumper might think of only 2 types of music -- instrumentals vs songs with vocals. A Splitter says there are 1000s of genres because even within sub-category of rap music, East coast Miami rap is <i>totally different</i> and 180 degrees opposite from West coast Los Angeles rap.<p>Lumping vs Splitting type of thinking happens in programming topics too. E.g. A lumper has no problem saying, <i>"C/C++ are low-level languages with manual memory management"</i> ; but a splitter will object with, <i>"I hate it when C and C++ are lumped together! They are TOTALLY different languages!"</i><p>Depending on what you focus on, everybody's customized taxonomy is "correct".
This reminds me of two things:<p>1. The <i>Save The Cat!</i> books by Blake Snyder. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Snyder#Save_the_Cat" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Snyder#Save_the_Cat</a>!<p>2. TV Tropes (warning: TV Tropes) <a href="https://tvtropes.org/" rel="nofollow">https://tvtropes.org/</a>
<a href="https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/oP3c1h8v2ZQ</a><p>Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories.
The categorization is interesting, from today's perspective. Things that the author asserts are "without criminal intent": rebellion, vengeance, involuntary criminal love. And then even more interesting, "with criminal intent": struggle against god, sacrifice all for a passion, adultry.
Note that the article talks about 37 "possible stories", while the manual talks about "basic dramatic situations" which is a different thing.
To Sacrifice all for a passion -> 62 things to be passionate about <a href="https://designepiclife.com/things-to-be-passionate-about/" rel="nofollow">https://designepiclife.com/things-to-be-passionate-about/</a>
Given that:<p>1. Some of those 37 situations are more interesting than others<p>2. You need more than one of them for a good screenplay<p>3. Some situations do not mix well in one story<p>You will come to conlusion that there is limited number of possible stories.<p>Now, Hollywood has been producing dozens of movies every year for over a century it becomes clear that it is slowly running out of stories to tell. That's why you see so many remakes/sequels: Star Wars, Rambo, Die Hard, etc. Or remakes with a twist: let's make main characters black/women/gay/trans and pretend that we created a brand new, original story.<p>Hollywood is eating its own tail.