If you want to distill all stories, ever, to its atoms, you need only one bit: rise and fall. Of course a single bit (usually) makes a boring story, so combine at least two: rise & fall, or fall & rise. Now these are still pretty basic, it's best to take three, or four if you're daunting. You can make more, but at some point the reader will take a step and view a sequence of rises and falls as a single rise or fall.

Go ahead and try to apply this (admittedly a bit absurdist) scheme to any story known to mankind, ever.