The Seven Domains of Story

Beyond genre, we can distinguish stories by the fundamental questions they ask.

There are seven domains of story: the domains of method, psychology, virtue, appetite, philosophy, politics, and education. (Or more. Or fewer. All classification schemes are provisional, ad hoc, incomplete, and fuzzy around the edges.)

I bring this up because I recently listened to a workshop leader debunk the oft-cited rubric that literary fiction is character-driven while genre or commercial fiction is plot-driven. You can’t have much of a plot without characters, he argued, and you can’t show very much about a character if they don’t move and do things. All stories need both characters and plot. He was right, of course. But if that’s not what distinguishes them, what is? I’d suggest that it is the different ways in which character and plot are used in the different domains.

These seven story domains are different ways of using plot and character to tell a story. Or, to look at it another way, a story centers on one of seven questions: how is it done, why is it done, should it be done, is this what you like, what does it mean, who is to blame, and what have we learned?

Or, to put it another way still, it hinges on the question, “What makes this hard?”

If a character’s task is to rescue a princess from a grim castle guarded by a thousand grim knights, is this hard because:

• It is hard because the walls of the castle are high, and the 1000 grim knights are well armed, and the skies are full of ravens who spy for them and tell them every move you make. The story is in the domain of method. The protagonist’s method will be to undergo the seven trials of Menthos in order to claim the Dread Sword of Rolos, return to the castle, shoot the crows from the sky with the Enchanted Bow of Mars, slay the thousand grim knights with the Dread Sword of Rolos, rescue the princess, marry her, and live happily ever after.

• It is hard because the protagonist doubts his mettle as a hero, his friends have abandoned him, the princess scorned him when last he met her in her father’s castle, his mother always liked his brother better because the brother rescues princesses all the time from grimmer castles guarded by more knights, and last time the protagonist tried he couldn’t even rescue a milk maid from a pretty pink cardboard castle guarded by three overweight goblins armed with soup spoons. The story is in the domain of psychology. The protagonist has no method. He sits on the mountainside and broods about it while the evil wizard defiles the princess. He weeps.

• It is hard because while the protagonist is confident that with the Dread Sword of Rolos and the Enchanted Bow of Mars, he can enter the castle and rescue the princess, the protagonist knows that each of the thousand grim knights is held in thrall by the evil wizard’s spell and that each knight has a wife and children at home who love him and long for his return. He also knows that if he once unsheathes the Dread Sword of Rolos, it will turn his heart to stone, and he will never love again. The story is in the domain of virtue. The protagonist makes the selfish choice, is condignly punished, repents, does penance, and the castle transforms into a great church, the grim knights become groomsmen, the evil wizard becomes a bishop, and the princess offers him her hand in marriage, but he turns her down because his one true love is Daisy, the scullery maid, though she is not nearly as rich or as pretty as the princess, but has a heart of gold.

• It is hard because the protagonist lusts for the princess but can’t get to her. The story is in the domain of appetite. The protagonist hacks his way through the thousand grim knights in an orgy of quasi-erotic violence until he reaches the dungeon chamber where the princess is hanging in chains and then — well, let us draw a veil over what happens next.

• It is hard to follow because the protagonist is a symbol. The princess is a symbol. The castle, the thousand grim knights, and the wizard are all symbols. The seven trials of Menthos are a symbol. The Dread Sword of Rolos is a symbol. The Enchanted Bow of Mars is a symbol. What matters is the philosophical argument that is expressed by the juxtaposition of these symbols. The story is in the realm of philosophy. It doesn’t matter what the protagonist does. It only matters that it means something profound but non-obvious. The hard part is finishing it.

• It is hard because the evil wizard and the thousand grim knights are the patriarchy. The hero is also an agent of the patriarchy who only wants to rescue the princess to assert his dominance over the evil wizard and recruit the thousand grim knights to advance his bloody wars of oppression. The story is in the domain of politics. The princess rescues herself, spurns the hero, and is crowned queen by the grateful villagers. Any reader who gives it less than a five-star review is a running dog lackey of the late-stage capitalist oppressors.

• It is hard because it feels like homework. You learn what a princess is and what a knight is and how to build a castle, and how good wizards ought to behave. The story is in the domain of education. The hero gives the evil wizard a good talking-to and shows him that kindness is important, and the wizard lets the princess go, releases the grim knights from his thrall, and turns the castle into a home for lost puppies.

This is all I am going to say about the domains of philosophy, politics, and education because they all co-opt the story form to serve other ends. This may be a legitimate way of discussing philosophy and politics and of doing education, and may attract an audience for that reason. But it seldom makes for a good story. There’s nothing much to say about the domain of appetite that is not already obvious. The domains of method, psychology, and virtue, however, are legitimate story domains concerned, each in its own way, with aspects of particular human experience.

It is not that stories in one domain are entirely unconcerned with the questions raised by the other domains, of course. In any story, there will be elements of how something was done, why it was done, and whether it should be done. Method, psychology, and virtue play a role in every story. These questions, after all, arise in everything that everyone does in life. Similarly, many novels make some appeal to appetite and contain asides on philosophy, politics, and educational topics. The question is, which of these things drives the tension in the story? That is what determines the domain the story belongs to.

This, in turn, determines which kind of reader a story appeals to. The seven stories outlined above may proceed from the same premise, but they are not likely to attract the same audience. Thus, different parts of the market tend to feature books in particular domains, even if not exclusively so.

The Domain of Method

Popular fiction today exists mostly in the domain of method. Take, for example, Andy Weir’s The Martian. It is a science fiction story about an astronaut stranded on Mars and the efforts to rescue him. I recently watched an interview with Andy Weir in which he talked about the amount of research that he did to try to get every detail as scientifically accurate as possible. Why this obsession with accuracy? Because The Martian, like most, though not all, science fiction lies in the domain of method. Its primary question is, how was it done? How does the astronaut survive on Mars with limited supplies, and how does NASA mount a rescue mission to bring him back to Earth?

Method in a story is not an instruction manual. It is the application of knowledge to particular circumstances by a particular character under particular constraints. Particularity is the universal mark of a story. Courage and ingenuity are, therefore, key aspects of the method story. It is the ability to apply a method under particular forms of duress that separates a method story from a technical manual.

Because method is the primary focus of the story, the method must be plausible, or the story will lack form. Thus, getting the science right tends to matter greatly in a science fiction story, and there is often an educational element to such stories as well.

Detective stories and thrillers, similarly, usually exist in the domain of method. The quickest way for the writer to lose the reader is to write a story with an implausible method. The characters in these stories are often stock characters with predictable characteristics and backstories. There is, for instance, the middle-aged detective with the wayward teenage daughter, the bitter ex-wife, and the younger, more by-the-book partner who tries to rein in his worst impulses but always sticks by him when the waste matter impacts the air circulation device. He occurs over and over and over, but no one ever gets tired of him because he is simply an instrument of method, and it is method that the reader came for.

Fantasy, similarly, exists in the domain of method, but with made-up methods, problems, and circumstances. This is why worldbuilding has to be so meticulous in fantasy, because it forms the ground rules for the method that the character must learn and use to defeat the menace.

Historical fiction, too, is largely concerned with method, either in the sense of examining historical methods of doing things, like sailing and fighting a ship of the line or lacing up a corset or turning a herd of stampeding cattle, or else with how some particular event actually took place, such as the Battle of Waterloo or the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. There is perhaps more of an element of education in historical fiction than in other popular genres, though, as I have noted before, you can’t learn history from historical fiction.

Stories in the domain of method are not entirely unconcerned with the questions of why a thing was done or whether it should be done. The character is often faced with a choice between alternative courses of action. These are usually decided based on which is the better method, but moral questions can enter into the equation as well. Often, hard moral choices are avoided by the invention of an extraordinarily clever method that avoids having to make the hard choice. The moral dilemma becomes a catalyst not for making hard moral choices but for inventing ingenious ways to get out of the situation.

The psychological domain enters the picture as well when the motivations and characteristics of other characters enter into the protagonist’s calculation of method. But it is the method that is the center of focus, and the questions of psychology and morality are dealt with only insofar as they affect the method. This is perhaps why such fiction is often said to be plot-driven. The plot is where the exposition of the method occurs in a method-domain story. But again, the particularity of the character’s circumstances — their morals and their psychological state and the particular situation they find themselves in — are what make it a story and not an instruction manual.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with stories in the domain of method. You might say that method is the most basic of the story domains, supporting the brain’s need to understand how the world works so that it can make good predictions about what will happen next and form good plans about how to handle it when it comes. Without those skills, people can run into trouble quite easily, so there is a strong drive for the brain to train itself on stories of method to prepare itself to handle real life. This domain is particularly attractive to younger readers who are occupied with the need to develop a capacity for action in a complex world. Method, particularly method under duress, is one of the things they need to learn.

There is, however, more to life than method. We grapple not only with how to do things, but whether we should do them at all. This brings us to the domain of virtue.

The Domain of Virtue

In the domain of virtue, the character’s main struggle is to decide what is the right thing to do, rather than how to do it. In the domain of virtue, method cannot be used to avoid facing the moral question. The focus is on how to face a moral quandary, make a choice, and live with the consequences of the choice. Nothing, therefore, can be done to make the cup pass from the protagonist’s lips. The tune has been played, and the piper must be paid. Plotting a story in the domain of virtue is often about systematically removing alternatives from the protagonist so that they have no choice but to face the moral question. That is to say, plotting a story in the domain of virtue is about depriving the character of any and all recourse to methods for escaping the unbearable choice.

One way to deprive a character of recourse to method is through the use of magic. As I have noted before, fantasy and fairytales use magic in very different ways. In fantasy, magic is a method. It has rules that can be learned and mastered. In a fairytale, magic is the antithesis of method, the destroyer of method. It is chaos. It sets all tools and skills at naught, deprives the protagonist of all resort to method, and forces them to deal with questions of virtue.

Thus, in Sir Gawain and the Elf Knight, Sir Gawain cannot resist the Green Knight’s blow by recourse to method — by his skill at arms — for that has already been tried and the results set at naught by the Green Knight’s magic. All that is left for Gawain is the exercise of virtue when faced with the seduction of the Green Knight’s lady.

Thus, also in The Lord of the Rings (a fairy tale, not a fantasy), Sam and Frodo are systematically stripped of method, of the aid of wizardry by the death of Gandalf, of the craft of dwarves, of the magic of elves, and of the might of men, by the sundering of the Fellowship of the Ring, and are left only with a test of virtue, an act of improbable mercy to a grotesque foe, on which the whole tale turns.

The Domain of Psychology

The domain of psychology is found largely in literary fiction. In the domain of psychology, the protagonist, as in the domain of virtue, cannot resolve their difficulties by resorting to a method. But unlike the domain of virtue, in which the protagonist must be physically stripped of all methods of evasion, whether by circumstance or by magic, in the domain of psychology they are stripped of the recourse to method by their own dysfunction. The means of the redemption lie readily to hand, but they will not take them up or use them. If they do finally resolve their psychological issues, this can be indicated by their finally employing the method that was always ready to hand, but the resolution is not achieved by method, but by finding the willingness to employ the method.

For this reason, you will not commonly find fantasy or fairytales in the psychological domain, where adding to the available methods through magic, as in a fantasy, or by removing them through magic, as in a fairy tale, are both antithetical to the focus on the psychological disability to use a method ready to hand. Thus, the use of fantasy and fairytales in literary fiction is relatively rare (though not unheard of, because there are no iron walls between the domains and their methods). This is also why literary fiction is often said to be character-driven. Depriving the character of method through psychological impediment means that that impediment must be examined in detail, and also that the character is inhibited from moving or acting towards a resolution (though they may move sideways). So there may not be a lot of active plot in the story, and a lot of time may be spent on psychological vivisection of the characters.

For similar reasons, stories in the domain of psychology tend to avoid questions of virtue, or to treat them not as relating to an external moral law, but as part of the character’s psychological makeup, perhaps even of their psychological dysfunction. Obedience to an external moral law would provide a kind of get out of jail free card for the psychologically damaged protagonist. Rather than having to delve into the depths of their psyche, the character would simply have to do the right thing because it was the right thing. Moral certainty, therefore, creates a problem for stories in the psychological domain that more or less forces them to treat morality not as a fixed standard but as a manifestation of the character’s psychosis. This is the main reason that modern literary fiction feels so different from the great literature of the past, most of which was written in the domain of virtue.

On the flip side of the coin, psychological issues can complicate the lives of characters in a domain of virtue story. The moral difficulty of a character in a story in the domain of virtue will generally stem either from the difficulty of determining the right thing to do in the current situation, the need to act before all information is known, or from the cost that the right action will impose on them, of which the psychological cost is a very real component. In other words, in the domain of virtue, psychology is often shown as an impediment to virtue, while in the domain of psychology, morality is often shown as an impediment to psychological integration.

Another common feature of literary fiction is its emphasis on beautiful prose, on clever writing and cunning images. This makes sense in the psychological domain, where the reader is being invited to examine the protagonist as a diagnostic subject, rather than to accompany them on an adventure as in the domains of method and virtue. The reader is stood back from the action and is in a more deliberative and diagnostic mode. Thus, the use of complex linguistic techniques that would be distracting in a more active story in the domains of method and virtue fit much better with the reader’s analytical frame of mind in the domain of psychology. The reader can pause from their analysis of the story and of the character for a moment to admire the cleverness of the writing. Stories in the domains of method and virtue can certainly contain brilliant and beautiful prose, but that prose should enhance the experience in those domains rather than calling attention to itself as a feature of the story in its own right.

As I noted above, the great literature of the past was largely written in the domain of virtue, a practice which has become rare in our day, where method and appetite dominate popular fiction and psychology dominates so-called literary fiction. I hope to see that change. I think that the domain of virtue makes for the finest stories, as it has made for the finest stories of the Western tradition (and I’d be willing to bet, other traditions as well).

And to reiterate the point, being in the domain of virtue does not mean moralizing. Moralizing is actually part of the domain of education. Stories in the domain of virtue are not about teaching people what to do, but about acknowledging and portraying how difficult it can be to do the right thing in particular circumstances. What makes life difficult for the main character is a moral dilemma to which there is no easy and obvious answer. The story is not about what the right thing is. Rather, it is about the experience of grappling with the question with too little time, too little information, and events unfolding around you with terrible speed. Because, of course, those are the circumstances under which we often have to make hard moral decisions in our own lives, and thus we need to prepare ourselves to face those times when they come, and to live with the consequences of the choices we make. Stories help make us wise and brave.

My forthcoming novel, a YA portal fantasy called The Withered King, lies in the domain of virtue. It asks, would you let your little sister fight a demon king to save a fairytale kingdom?

Here is the blurb:

When Colin Cameron’s dying father entrusted him with the protection of his baby sister Effie, neither anticipated that Colin and Effie would one day stumble through a portal into the Kingdom of the Green King. There, the king’s winsome daughter’s first words to Colin are a proposal of marriage, and the entire kingdom mistakes Effie for their long-promised savior, the Spotless Maiden. The ancient scrolls say that only the Spotless Maiden can defeat their great enemy, the Withered King. Colin is not about to let his little sister ride to war against a demon king, but not everyone in the Green King’s kingdom is willing to take no for an answer. And saying no to the Green King’s daughter’s proposal is not as easy as it seems.

You can preorder the novel here: https://mybook.to/ZxSUqx. Preordering helps give the book a bit of momentum on launch day that makes Amazon take a little bit more notice of it. Thanks for helping.

I’m also currently looking for a few ARC readers for the novel. The job of an ARC reader is to read the book before publication day and then, hopefully, to provide glowing but honest reviews, principally on Amazon and Goodreads, as soon as it is published. If you would like to help with this, drop me a direct message, and I’ll give you the link to the ARC. Or simply reply to this email, and that will reach me too. Thanks in advance for your help!