A professor of English once told me that there were basically only three plots in the whole of literature, and as two out of the three were the Iliad and the Odyssey that doesn't leave the rest of us with much room for originality. Other people have claimed that there only are seven plots, or twenty plots, or some other number in between - but I'm afraid that the true number is much, much worse.
There is, you see, only one plot in the whole of literature. Every novel ever written, every play, every film tells this one same story. It has to tell it with variations, of course, otherwise things would get extremely boring; but when you pare it right down to the bare bones then every story ultimately comes out the same.
And this is it:
'The central character needs something, very, very badly. Failure to get this thing or do this thing will have dire consequences for this character or his or her loved ones. To begin with, every effort she or he makes to get this thing only adds to the complications and makes success look even less likely, but in the end there is a resolution, and either the protagonist gets the thing, and avoids the dire consequences, or doesn't, and the feared dire consequences come to pass.'