Here’s the TLDR of a recent article in The Atlantic:
AI identified six kinds of story archetypes (narrative arcs of popular storylines / mapping the emotional trajectory of a story):
1. Rags to Riches (rise)
2. Riches to Rags (fall)
3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise)
4. Icarus (rise then fall)
5. Cinderella (rise then fall then rise)
6. Oedipus (fall then rise then fall)
How they came up with these categories:
Based on an idea from Kurt Vonnegut. They mapped “the narrative arc of popular storylines along a simple graph. The X-axis represents the chronology of the story, from beginning to end, while the Y-axis represents the experience of the protagonist, on a spectrum of ill fortune to good fortune.”
He’s discussed the idea in this video:
Here’s an example of what the Cinderella story arc looks like when mapped out this way: