Strictly Formula / Literature

• Every American Girl until Kaya's release got a series of six books written to formula down to the titles: Meet [Name] (introduction), Lessons for [Name] (school), [Name]'s Surprise (Christmas/Winter Holiday), Happy Birthday, [Name]! (spring birthday story), [Name] Saves the Day (summer with some sort of adventure), and Changes for [Name] (winter and ending/wrap-up of ongoing plot). They started to break the formula with Kaya since she's Nez Perce and didn't have formal schooling, birthday celebrations, or Christmas (but still tried to go along the same style of titles including a winter "gift giving" story and a summer trip) and were similarly loose with most characters until the switchover to BeForever; while Maryellen's series was written in the same six book format, Melody and Nanea had volumes written as a full story that told a less formulaic sectioning. Post-BeForever books are generally much less formulaic; while two volumes are still written, the stories are much shorter overall than in characters before that.
• The Anita Blake novels are immensely formulaic. Just read the work's page on This Very Wiki. The sex scenes also follow a general formula: Anita is propositioned by one or more people, but refuses on moral grounds. The arduer takes over, hair is pulled and mutual screaming orgasms are achieved.
• Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Books 2-7 are all of the same basic pattern of the Baudelaires being sent to a new guardian and Olaf arriving in disguise to try and steal their money. Surprisingly, the formula is broken halfway through the series after the VFD subplot takes over.
• Isaac Asimov:
  • His Azazel stories have a specific formula to them. One of George's friends wants something impossible (to be able to fly, to never have to wait in line, etc.) Azazel uses magic (or superscience, if Asimov was trying to sell the story to a sci-fi outlet) to solve the problem. This, in turn, ruins said friend's life. The only exception, "A Dim Rumble," has Azazel's intervention instead leave a world-shattering super-weapon on the loose.
  • There are a number of other outcomes. There is, for example, a story where a woman becomes more beautiful, but it damages her personality for the worse and hurts her husband. Or a story where a guy is turned into a Living Lie Detector and it causes problems for his girlfriend. In this case we get the formula of ruining the life of someone around the friend. The third formula is George intending to benefit from the change, but failing to. The sole case when George does gain something seems to be in "To the Victor", where he gets laid by a beautiful girl offscreen.
  • Similarly, his Black Widowers stories are just as formulaic. The Widowers meet in the Milano with a guest and dine, waited upon by Henry Jackson. The guest has a problem that he tells the Widowers about. The Widowers discuss possible solutions, but all are shot down by the guest. Then they turn to the waiter, Henry. The guest is surprised about this, but it is explained Henry is considered a member of the club. Henry then solves the case.
• The Brother Cadfael novels by Ellis Peters have fairly formulaic romance subplots — as soon as the young lady is introduced, you know she'll be one half of the meant-to-be-together couple, and ditto with the young man; and you know that despite everything that threatens to keep them apart, they will get together in the end, one way or another. This predictability and warm fuzziness are part of the "Cozy Mystery" genre, and it doesn't get boring because the writing is good and the mysteries themselves don't get stale.
• The Ciaphas Cain stories tend to proceed as follows: the eponymous commissar is deployed to a new crisis zone, and runs into some trouble during or shortly after his arrival there. After that it quickly becomes clear that things are not as they seem, and while Cain and his soldiers fight against the preliminary threat, he soon uncovers evidence of another force at work. While his allies prepare for a push against the first enemy, Cain volunteers to go on a seemingly-unrelated errand or minor supporting mission under the logic that it's less likely to get him killed, only to discover that he's landed right in the middle of the real danger. But instead of running, Cain (often with the help of Jurgen) defeats the threat, excusing his heroism as an attempt to maintain his Fake Ultimate Hero status. The book ends with him being debriefed (and afterwards, presumably de-briefed) by his Inquisitor love interest, usually over dinner. Oh, and at some point he'll assure us that "If I had only known what was waiting for me, I would've [insert cowardly and/or self-deprecating action here]."
• Lester Dent (best known for his Doc Savage stories) actually had a standard formula he used for all his stories, described here:
  This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words. No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell. The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.
• The Dresden Files has a formula that seems to be followed to the letter in books one, two, three, and five:
  • Harry is working on a low-key wizarding (that is, consulting) job or personal business when two problems develop more or less simultaneously: a police investigation with a supernatural side and a client hiring him for his magical expertise. The two cases almost always turn out to be connected. He butts heads with the police frequently even if he's working on something with their blessing, because they don't know or don't like how the magical world works and he can't tell them. He also butts heads with and insults local crime lord Johnny Marcone, but they're never actually enemies. He is tied up and/or gets his ass kicked several times by Mooks as he's hunting down his two cases. He will do something awesome to save a woman. By the time he and his allies in this story finally find the Big Bad, he is already in bad shape but wins by throwing a Spanner in the Works.
  • The sixth book appears to follow the formula at first but turns out to be a subversion. The later books go completely off the formula. The author says that this was a conscious choice which he did not initially believe would work, but which he made in an attempt to prove his writing teacher wrong. And then came Changes...
• This is taken to a ridiculous extreme in the Encyclopedia Brown books. The first few pages of every book are word-for-word identical. Chapter 1 is always a case from his father, Chapter 2 is always a case he solves by himself in which he proves that the culprit is Bugs Meaney, and Chapter 3 always features Bugs's attempt at revenge for being foiled in Chapter 2, introducing Sally (cue more verbatim passages) as the explanation for why said revenge is "attempt to frame Encyclopedia" rather than "beat the crap out of Encyclopedia."
• Meta example: In All the World is a Stage, the theater director reveals that he writes all his plays based on the same 10 dramatic character archetypes, and the public loves it. The protagonist himself ends up writing a play based on the same formula (but IN JAPAN) to make an impression on the actress he fell in love with.
• The first three Harry Potter books play this fairly straight - Dursleys, Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, Quidditch, Christmas, the big plot issue, end of year feast, everyone goes home. Parts of the formula stay for the later books (Harry always starts out at the Dursleys in the books, no matter what) but Rowling then breaks these down as the universe gets darker and more complicated - and Harry matures. By Deathly Hallows, Voldemort takes over the ministry and Hogwarts, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend most of the book in pursuit of his horcruxes. They only return to Hogwarts during the latter half when the search leads them there.
• A lot of the Haruhi Suzumiya Light Novels, most of which have not been animated, follow a formula when dealing with the entire Brigade: Haruhi gets a hair up her ass about doing some sort of activity. Kyon complains, Koizumi agrees, Nagato says nothing, Mikuru is confused, and they all go along with it. Something strange is going on with whatever activity they are doing, but Haruhi remains oblivious to it, either enjoying whatever they are doing or getting bored. Koizumi and/or Nagato explain whatever is going on, then Koizumi and/or Nagato fixes it, possibly with help from Kyon, though sometimes Mikuru From The Future shows up to settle the matter. In the end Kyon finds out that if the weird event wasn't obviously caused by Haruhi, then it had some connection with her anyway.
• In The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School, Charlotte Knowles' father writes detective novels. Amy Thomsett notes that they all follow the same pattern: There's an impossible murder that's given an elaborate non-supernatural explanation in the final chapter, the murder victim is always one of two character types (both female), and the most helpful, handsome, learned man in the supporting cast always turns out to be the murderer.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  • The Restaurant at the End of the Universe lampshades this in-universe with the band ''Disaster Area":
    Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being under a silvery moon which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
  • The Song Cycles of Vassillian composed by the Great Circling Poets of Arium in the same book. There are 794 of them and they all follow exactly the same pattern:
    The first part of each song would tell how there once went forth from the City of Vassillian a party of five sage princes with four horses. The princes, who are of course brave, noble and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fight giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea with weird gods and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their wanderings are therefore accomplished.
    The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back.
• In Death: Each story in the series follows this basic formula: A murder occurs. Eve Dallas is called in to investigate the murder. She works the case to figure out who the murderer is. When she does, she goes and gets the bad guy. The series does play around with this formula, like the bad guy might actually get away somehow, the murderer is already identified, or the murderer goes after Eve first. Also, the series focuses on the developing relationship between Eve and Roarke, as well as other characters.
• Mathemagics discusses how formulaic bodice-ripper romance novels are. One author who writes them under a Pen Name just for the money admits to copying and pasting the publisher-mandated sex scenes from one book to the next, and having heroines who differ mainly by hair color.
• In the Nero Wolfe books, this and the character interplay between Wolfe and Archie is generally considered one of the big draws of the series. They generally follow a pattern like this: Wolfe gets a case, either because Archie has talked him into accepting a client, because money's low and he's gone hunting for one, or because a matter of honor has compelled him to take the case without payment. The case is almost always a suspicious death that, despite the attitude of the police, is most likely murder. Archie is 'given instructions', which usually revolves around either taking a look at the crime scene, interviewing a person of interest and / or getting persons of interest in the case to Wolfe's office so he can interview them. After the above has taken place a couple of times, Inspector Cramer or some other police officer / authority figure shows up to try and bully / cajole information out of Wolfe; it's usually unsuccessful, although Wolfe may throw out an often-ignored hint or play with Exact Words. Another murder — often with the best suspect so far playing the victim — occurs. Wolfe has a "Eureka!" Moment and Archie is often frozen out of the investigation so that Wolfe can employ other operatives^note and so that Archie can't reveal the guilty party to the reader too soon although Archie may have deduced (or at least have strong suspicions) about who the murderer is anyway. One of the other operatives (often Saul Panzer) digs up a vital piece of evidence which clinches the matter, at which point Wolfe summons the suspects and / or the police to his office to outline his theory and expose the murderer.
• Monk inspired a series of novels written by show writers Lee Goldberg and later Hy Conrad. In most novels, Natalie introduces Monk and Monk quickly solves an unrelated murder, which is meant to establish Monk's detective skills. Then the main murder plot happens, and Monk accuses someone out of pettiness. Monk determines the real killer, who has an airtight alibi; at first, typically only Natalie believes him, until evidence comes proving Monk is right. That said, the formula is sometimes twisted:
  • In Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse, the unrelated murder case happens midway through the story, after the investigation for the main murder starts.
  • In Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu, the story ends up being made of three main murder investigations. The first is the Golden Gate Strangler, a serial killer who has attacked three women. Then there comes the subplot of another serial killer, which turns out to be a spree killer trying to hunt down the witness to her murder of an astrologer. Then there's the death of a police officer which turns out to be connected to the reward to bring in the Golden Gate Strangler.
  • In Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, there is a variant: many of the threads that set up the main murder mystery's plot occur within the first 14 chapters (Monk and Natalie meeting Bill Peschel and Paul Braddock, the two eventual murder victims), but in the first half, there are two unrelated subplot murders that are solved within one chapter: a small university shooting that Monk solves on the spot, and the assassinations of two judges.
  • In Mr. Monk in Trouble, the unrelated murder at the beginning doesn't have Monk even visit the crime scene but identify the killer based on what he's wearing. This gets a callback when Natalie reads an entry in Abigail Guthrie's journal where Monk's great-great-great grandfather Artemis Monk identifies a killer in the same way without ever going to the crime scene or seeing the dead body. The mysteries in that journal turn out to be Chekhov's Gun for the main plot.
  • An in-universe case happens in Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants. When Monk and Natalie go to Los Angeles to investigate a murder that Sharona's husband Trevor has been framed for, they meet Ian Ludlow, a bestselling murder mystery author who also consults for the LAPD under an arrangement similar to the one Monk has with the SFPD. Natalie buys a few of Ludlow's novels to read. During the drive back to San Francisco, Monk begins thumbing through the books and is quickly unimpressed when he realizes that Ludlow's books have a predictable formula.
    Adrian Monk: [opens Names Are For Tombstones] The beekeeper did it. [Monk puts that down and picks up another one, Death Works Weekends, reads a few pages, then shuts it] The matador did it. [He picks up Death is the Last Word, reads a few pages, then closes it] The massage therapist did it.
    Natalie Teeger: You only glanced at the first couple of pages.
    Adrian Monk: Ludlow is so heavy-handed he might as well reveal the killer on the cover. The murderer always has a personality quirk that is his or her undoing.
    Natalie Teeger: How would you know? You haven't read to the end of any of his books. [Monk picks up one book and quickly flips through it]
    Adrian Monk: The massage therapist is claustrophobic, so she opened the windows at the crime scene. That's how Detective Marshak knew it was her.
    Natalie Teeger: Thanks for ruining the books for me.
    Adrian Monk: They were lousy anyway. You live more interesting mysteries than Ludlow can make up.
    Natalie Teeger: Those are work. These would have been for enjoyment.
    Adrian Monk: What's enjoyable about reading some contrived mystery where the killer is always the least obvious person who is caught the same way every time?
    Natalie Teeger: Nothing anymore. I can never read an Ian Ludlow book again.
    • It turns out that the reason Ludlow's bookwriting has become so formulaic is because, in a desperate need for new book material, he's turned to committing murders himself and acting like the very killers he writes about in his books: he befriends someone for long enough to study the people in their life, then kills them. Then he drops an orgy of excessive clues left and right that are designed to frame the least likely suspect for the crime. And after that, he writes a book. This includes the murder Trevor was framed for, and a later murder where Ludlow frames Natalie for killing a shoe salesman in San Francisco and making it look like an alligator attack. When Monk gets the evidence needed to catch him, he revels in pointing out that Ludlow, like his fictional killers, has a personality quirk that incriminates him. Namely, that he can't resist signing his own books whenever he goes into a bookstore that sells them. Monk connects him to the murder he framed Natalie for because he signed books at three stores in San Francisco including one down the block from a pizzeria where the victim ate his last meal, all on a day when Ludlow purportedly claimed he was in Los Angeles.
• Although the details of the plots differ, the basic premise of all the Night World books is usually the same: a human (or seemingly human) girl gets caught up in supernatural shenanigans and falls for a Night Person who turns out to be her soulmate; they angst over it because of Night World laws forbidding their love but all comes right in the end. Or alternatively, a girl who is a Night Person gets caught up in supernatural shenanigans and falls in love with a human boy who is her soulmate, and so on and so forth.
• A typical Point Horror book will follow a teenage female character, who falls in love with another teenager boy, set amidst seemingly paranormal occurrences. As mentioned above, the spooky happenings usually turn out to be perfectly explainable.
• Every set of Rainbow Magic books follows the same formula: Jack Frost steals/misplaces seven magical items, and Rachel and Kirsty have to find them with the help of seven fairies that guard the items.
• Brian Jacques' Redwall series runs on four plots: the siege, the kidnapping, the land quest, and the sea quest. All will also need a puzzle/rhyme/prophecy to be solved. All with lots and lots of Food Porn.
• The Stick Dog books usually have this plot to them.
  • Stick Dog and his friends meet up.
  • Stick Dog smells something that leads them all to realize there's food nearby.
  • The group finds the food and Stick Dog announces they need to get some.
  • Stick Dog's friends all suggest ultra-convoluted unrealistic plans that he lets them down easy on.
  • One of the group gets distracted by a sidequest.
  • The sidequest gets sorted out.
  • Stick Dog proposed the idea they will use, which sounds much more sensible.
  • The dogs execute the plan.
  • The plan succeeds and the dogs eat food.
• Anything by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, such as The Rover Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Dave Fearless, and The Dana Girls since they're all ghostwritten according to some set format. Virtually all of the book series were about teens going on adventures or solving mysteries, with slight variations on the concept. As such, the books contained very similar themes and portrayals. Characters had platonic love lives, if any at all (rather humorously, this led to the Alternate Character Interpretation that The Hardy Boys were gay, due to their lack of interest in their nominal girlfriends, preference for male friends, and one brother's close friendship with a boy who disliked girls). Suspense was used to heighten tension, but violence was limited — characters could get knocked out or tied up, but nothing worse than that. Language was tame, and even expressions such as "oh gosh" and "oh golly" were dropped after some readers complained that they were merely euphemisms for "oh god".
• Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, by his own admission, tend to follow the same basic formula every time: Random person has random problem, random person goes to the Good Magician to ask a Question about how to solve that problem, random person gets sent on a seemingly arbitrary quest, seemingly arbitrary complications occur, at the end of the story, it turns out that going on the seemingly arbitrary quest solved the original problem, or the character finds out that the problem they thought they wanted solved wasn't actually the real problem, or they actually wanted something different, either way, they get what they "really" wanted and everybody lives happily ever after.
• Dan Brown's novels.
  • You know exactly which character is going to be evil in the end after reading the first few paragraphs (i.e. the character that either has no apparent logical reason to be the villain and/or the one that appears to aid the protagonists the most).
  • Also, the plot of the book is generally predicated around an object, discovery, piece of computer code, etc, which all the sensible characters insist should not exist such as the uncrackable security code in Digital Fortress, the meteorite in Deception Point, the existence of the Illuminati in Angels and Demons, etc. More often than not, this turns out to be the case; the conspiracy or whatever turns out to be a hoax, or a smokescreen hiding the villain's true intent.
  • And the stock Unusual Assassin: Albino Fundamentalist, Deaf Portuguese Man, etc...
• David Eddings wrote several multi-book series of high fantasy adventure, which were all identical - particularly The Belgariad and its sequel series, The Malloreon. This was because he wanted to see if he could do it and still make it interesting, and in The Malloreon, it actually becomes a plot point when the characters note that it seems like they've been through it all before and start discussing it. It is eventually explained the universe became "stuck" when its Purpose was split in two, so people keep acting out the same patterns until things get set to rights - once it is, things can move forward.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs: A handsome man of physical strength and skill, of high birth — though he may be ignorant of it, and the reader may be too — travels to far-off land and meets a heroine, beautiful, spirited, and prone to be kidnapped. She is also of high birth, though the hero and reader are even more likely to be ignorant of that, and she may be. He has adventures, several of which revolve about rescuing the heroine, and there are misunderstandings between the two of them. In the end, the misunderstandings are resolved, the dangers are dealt with, and they marry.
  Sometimes he diverged from this. The results were often unhappy.
• Jodi Picoult: Her books tend to have the same (general) formula: People (usually centering on the woman) living a normal life (in some New England town), something big happens/happened to them (i.e. husband is cheating, child is arrested) and there ends up being a court case either involving family members (i.e a family member committed a crime) or involving family members suing each other. Usually the court case involves children or teens. Expect one child to be severely ill and wiser than their years. The parents will/already did forget about the other child, if there is one. It is often a Tear Jerker, but is successful because of that (the judge/jury feels sorry for the defendant). Usually there is a twist near the end. Glaring examples include My Sister's Keeper and Handle with Care, the latter of which has been criticized for being nearly identical to My Sister's Keeper. Most of Picoult's books written before My Sister's Keeper actually are more fluid with the formula, with Harvesting the Heart not following it at all.
• A common criticism of John Green's books — all but one or two of them are about a nerdy, highly intelligent teenage boy who has his eye on a quirky, mysterious girl, eventually going on a road trip where he has a mind-blowing revelation about life. The Fault in Our Stars reverses roles, telling it from the quirky girl's perspective as she falls in love with the nerdy Teen Genius who is fawning over her.
• P. G. Wodehouse tends to be fairly formulaic in overall plot. Though given that several lines in the formula are evidently "Insert creative and unique funny moments here", who cares?
• Many of Philip K. Dick's short stories followed the formula: Man invents technology. Technology turns on man. Man fights technology. Technology defeats man. Technology turns on itself.
• The Lost Years of Merlin: There is a rhyming prophecy saying that Merlin needs to do something. He is racing against the clock, with only X number of days before disaster strikes; to emphasize this, at one point he will be knocked off for a day or longer. In the end there is usually a Prophecy Twist that means another character's actions are needed to save the day. The fourth book averts most of this, however, making it a bit of an Oddball in the Series.
• Romances do this too, although there are several categories of romance and the beat list differs based on what sort of romance you're writing. In fact, many publishing companies who specialize in romance have their specific formulas, and if you stray too far outside their guidelines, you're not going to get published by them. This allows the reader to treat a new book as a familiar comfort food, differing in the details but not outside the form they've become accustomed to.
• Vladimir Obruchev's two best-known works, Plutonia and Sannikov Land, have the following formula: group of good-hearted enthusiasts goes to the Arctic to explore an unmapped region, unmapped region turns out to be an oasis of warm climate with a prehistoric ecosystem, enthusiasts gather rich collections of specimens but lose them on their way home due to circumstances beyond their control. There are also lots and lots of Shown Their Work Description Porn (the author was a geologist), the characters meet Stone Age humans and befriend one of the women of the tribe, and the prehistoric ecosystem is fragile and due to collapse soon.

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