I was going to post that folklore framework. I love initiatives to formally catalogue and index everyday, organic, non-quantitative things like stories. Does anyone know of similar efforts in any other fields?

There's also the late Blake Snyder's Save The Cat tenfold classification scheme for screenplays, which can be useful at least for ameliorating a bad movie watching experience by leading to debates over which one of the ten categories you just saw.

On the other hand, if you know his categories, it can take away from the enjoyment of films; once you know you're watching a movie of a specific category, it's easy to anticipate the rest of the plot.

Or 31 basic structural elements? Identified in Russian folk tales by folklorist Vladimir Propp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp#Narrative_struc...

Or only one bit: rise/fall. Most stories have 2 or 3 bits, some have so many that you can't get a meaningful average.