Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

I stumbled onto an article called The 9 Types of Stories and How to Master Them by Joe Bunting.  Don’t know who that is, but I was looking for inspiration for writing-based posts and this came into my search feed.  Highly recommend giving the article at least a skim because it had some interesting stuff.

The basic theory seemed to be that all stories are built around 6 values, which come from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  These can be used to create 9 basic stories.  I don’t mean genres like fantasy and science fiction.  The 9 are:

• Action
• Adventure
• Thriller
• Horror
• Mystery
• Romance/Love
• Performance/Sports
• Coming of Age
• Temptation/Morality

Yes, some of those are the names of genres, but it’s more about the category.  It’s pointed out that you can combine these into a single story.  Also, genres tend to work off these 9 types.  For example, fantasy can be a story that touches on these values and types with the addition of magic.  It’s the magic that makes it fantasy and not the action, adventure, mystery, etc.  So, we’re going to push genre to the side of the conversation for the next two weeks.  Think about story category.

Now, I’m not going to give each type it’s own day.  That didn’t give me as much to work with as I wanted.  Instead, I’m going to use the 6 values, which I will list after this paragraph.  These values can cover 1-3 types, which I found interesting.  Shows how closely connected some of these stories are.  So, what are the values taken from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

• Life vs Death
• Life vs Fate Worse Than Death
• Love vs Hate
• Accomplishment vs Failure
• Maturity vs Immaturity
• Right vs Wrong

Really hope everyone enjoys these posts coming up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  Please read that article for more information if you’re interested.