There are no new plots. There are twelve engines, and every script you've ever loved runs on one of them.
The working set: the Quest, the Revenge story, the Love story, the Underdog, the Fish Out of Water, the Transformation, the Mystery, the Heist, the Escape, the Rivalry, the Sacrifice, and the Coming of Age.
You don't have to agree with the exact list. The number isn't the point. The point is that your script has an engine, and you should know which one it is.
Why does your script need an engine?
The engine tells every scene what its job is. Writing a revenge story? Then every scene either feeds the hunger, complicates it, or raises its cost. A scene that does none of those things is a scene you cut.
Most first drafts fail right here. Not on dialogue, not on format — on engine. The writer has six good scenes from six different movies and nothing connecting them. It reads as "episodic," which is the polite word for lost.
How do you build your plot engine?
1. Name the engine in one sentence. "A disgraced cop hunts the man who killed his partner." That's revenge. If you can't name it in one sentence, you don't have one yet.
2. Define what the engine wants. Revenge wants satisfaction. A quest wants the thing. Love wants the person. The want is the fuel — make it specific and make it burn.
3. List what stands in the way, in escalating order. The engine runs on obstacles. No obstacles, no story. Each one bigger than the last.
4. Decide what it costs. Every engine has a price. Revenge costs the soul, quests cost innocence, love costs pride. The cost is what makes the third act hurt.
5. Make the ending answer the engine. The revenge story ends when revenge is taken or renounced. Don't end a quest with a wedding unless the quest was secretly about love all along.
Pick your engine before you write page one, and the middle of your script stops being a swamp. Every scene gets a job interview: feed the engine or get cut.