Said noir/mystery author Jim Thompson:

There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I have used every one of them. But there is only one plot:  things are not what they seem.

(Cited on the Facebook page for Neko Case.)

So tell me: We could go around and around forever regarding what he meant by “ways to write a story,” let alone whether there are only 32 of them, or not even 32, or whatever. (I found one citation on Google Books which said the number Thompson gave was 37.)

But is the plot of all stories, in fact, “Things are not what they seem”? What do you think?

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* And of course readers, editors, agents, drive-by commenters, vagrants and vagabonds, rabbis, priests, and ministers, and the duck they walked into the bar with as well as the bartender who gave them a hard time… anybody, really.