Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

by Chuck Wendig

  Han Solo has a limitation, too. If you say that his problem and solution are that he’s a scoundrel with debts (problem), so he needs to take jobs that pay them off (solution), getting drawn into a galactic struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance is of no use to him. His limitation, however, presses him further into service because, as it turns out:

  Han Solo has a heart.

  He’s got this hard exterior made of sheer swagger and scoundrel snark, but the reality is, oops, Han Solo is actually a nice guy. Worse, he’s a nice guy who is falling in love with Princess Leia, which adds one more complication/limitation to the pile—yet another bend in the maze. This hampers his ability to get the job (debts paid off) done.

  Which is to say, it creates, complicates, and deepens his character.

  And deepening his character also enriches the story.

  Once again, we see how the two are inextricably bound.

  THE STAKES ON THE TABLE

  The stakes of the story are that which can be won, lost, or otherwise protected. What can be won arguably amounts to the character solving the problem. What would be lost is that the character has failed to solve the problem and must reap the harvest of his failure. (There’s also an option to return everything to the status quo, which is to say the character does not precisely win or lose. It would be the equivalent of gambling your money and not coming out ahead, but not losing anything, either.)

  A complication can raise the stakes, or change them.

  Raised stakes mean that, in the gambling metaphor, there is now more to be won—and/or more to lose—than there was when the stakes were introduced.

  The stakes at the outset of Die Hard are that John McClane can either fix his marriage or lose it. Then the first complication comes (oh shit, terrorist attack). When that happens, the stakes are raised—now, not only is his marriage in metaphorical danger, he and his wife are literally in mortal danger. Then, when Hans Gruber discovers who John’s wife is—and the media also puts their children into play—the stakes are raised again. Another elevation of the stakes occurs when we learn that the terrorists are going to blow the whole building and that they have a plan that will result in the FBI killing the hostages. At each of these points, the conflict steps up. Things get worse. Much more is on the line.

  Ah, but what happens when the stakes are changed?

  The game becomes something else. The rules change. You thought you were playing Poker, but it’s really Naked Battleship. And your opponent is an angry badger.

  This is what happens to poor Luke Skywalker.13 He goes along thinking that the path to adventure couldn’t be clearer: He needs to take down the Evil Empire and its brutal enforcer, the Sith known as Darth Vader—coincidentally, also the same Darth Vader who, gasp, killed Luke’s father, Anakin.

  Of course, the truth is way screwier. Anakin (uh, spoiler warning?) never died. Instead, he was mauled by Obi-Wan Kenobi and burned with a whole lot of lava, and then shoved into the Death Metal tin can known as Darth Vader’s scary-ass armor.

  Darth Vader is Luke’s father.

  Which does not merely elevate the stakes—it transforms them.

  The battle Luke thinks he’s fighting—as a newly minted rebel going up against an evil Empire and dad-killer Darth Vader—isn’t the battle at all. Upon learning that his father is alive and is actually Darth Vader, the stakes change. It’s no longer a galactic struggle. It’s no longer a mission of justice or revenge. It’s intimately personal, and, for Luke, totally conflicting. He’s told he shouldn’t face his father, but he wants to. He’s told he isn’t ready, but he’s impetuous, eager, angry. He’s then told that if he faces Vader, he’s going to have to kill him—but he doesn’t want to kill his own father. He learns, too, that Leia is his sister.14

  The stakes change for him. He decides he’s going to save his father, and he’s going to turn that clanky old half-robot back to the light.

  At the end battle, he throws away his lightsaber. He cedes the fight.

  And then Vader probes his mind and learns about Leia, and once again, even so close to the end, the stakes change—wham, another sharp uptick like a spike in narrative blood pressure. Now Leia is in danger. And Luke fights harder than he’s ever fought, almost falling into the yawning chasm that is (dun dun dun) the Dark Side to save her.

  So much is happening in that last lightsaber battle in the Emperor’s throne room. The entire galactic struggle is crystallized down to this pure moment between four people—Luke, his father, the Emperor, and, though she’s not in the room, Leia. The fate of the galaxy is balanced on the fulcrum of individual characters. Not governments, not rebellions, not Empires. It’s still about people.

  And that’s not unlike how things really are. We view history as this monolithic entity, this shifting tide of nations and city-states, of alliances and hostilities. But history comes down to people. History can change based on the whims of a president—or, in the right circumstances, a janitor.15

  Point is, in your story, raising the stakes means simply adding to what can be won and what can be lost. Changing the stakes means transforming them: What was once a battle for someone’s heart may become a battle for their life. What you thought was about money is really about independence. What was once a story of war and a battle of nations becomes instead about something internal—a struggle of a soldier against his own worst self. In The Hunger Games—literally a series about games—the “game” component changes, and Katniss’s struggle ceases to be just about survival and becomes about something much larger—about overthrowing an autocratic regime. For her, the game has literally changed.

  To change the stakes in your story, look for that hard shift.

  PLOTTING VIA PEOPLE

  If I’m doing my job right, then what you’re starting to see here is a more organic way of plotting and telling a story. It is character-driven storytelling. A character has a problem and, in trying to solve it, faces external complications and internal limitations. She traverses the maze to accomplish her goals—and that journey through the maze is the story. THE END.

  Ha ha ha! We did it! We figured it out. Together we learned to tell a story based on a singular character and—

  Wait. What’s that? Stop whispering. What are you saying?

  A story is more than one character?

  Oh. Oh.

  So …

  How the hell does that work?

  PARALLEL AND PERPENDICULAR CHARACTERS

  We like to think and talk a great deal about protagonists and antagonists, and that’s not a bad way to look at things, exactly. But it’s vital to realize that those two terms are purely a matter of perspective.

  What I mean is this:

  Your protagonist is the agent of change in the story. The protagonist is the one with the primary problem in need of a solution. The protagonist may not want to be that agent of change—Bilbo doesn’t, nor does Frodo, really, in Tolkien’s work—but he becomes that agent of change, regardless, through the work.

  Your antagonist is the opponent of the change sought by the protagonist, and quite possibly the agent of the dreaded status quo. The antagonist is part of the protagonist’s problem, either as a complication to the solution or as a direct adversary seeking to countermand any efforts to fix the problem.

  One is the hero.

  The other is the villain.

  (Neither is automatically the main character, so says the sidebar on page 53.)

  The antagonist stands in the way of the protagonist being able to solve his problem. Very roughly put, the protagonist wants to go from Point A to Point B, but as he starts on his journey, the antagonist shows up and pummels him about the head, neck, and crotch with a Wiffle ball bat.

  This breakdown can work for your story, especially if your story fits in a more traditional, trope-flavored mold. But greater nuance may be necessary.

  Here’s the problem with viewing every story and every character through the protagonist versus antagonist lens:

&
nbsp; Every character believes himself the protagonist.

  Not every character views himself as the hero, exactly, but at the same time, very few characters likely view themselves as the villains. Sure, we understand that Luke Skywalker is our Good Guy Protagonist and Darth Vader is our Bad Guy Antagonist, and, clearly, that works well enough.

  Consider, though, that Darth Vader does not necessarily view himself as evil. If we take the story from his perspective, he is trying to protect the stability of the galaxy from a band of terrorists.16

  In other words, Vader has his own problem, and his own solution to that problem. The Empire’s status quo has been disrupted by these terrorists, since that bun-headed jerk, Princess Whatshername, sent the Death Star plans down in a droid so they could be intercepted by Obi-Jerk Kenobi. So Vader plans to retake the plans and quash the Rebellion—but then he’s sidelined by some womp rat–killing teenager (complication!) who ends up a Jedi (complication!) and oh crap is also his son (complication, plus now he has an internal limitation given this sudden pull to the light)! The stakes are raised and changed! Vader shifts his own tactic—now it’s not about shooting down that flyboy in the X-wing, but rather, urging him to the Dark Side so that the two of them can take on Palpatine together. And wait, there’s a sister? And it’s that jerk, Princess Whatshername? Complications, limitations, stakes changing, heads exploding!

  Point being, Vader doesn’t know he’s evil. Sure, sure, there’s that whole thing with blowing up an entire planet, but, to be fair, the rebels blow up an entire battle station. And while there’s a difference there in the magnitude of civilian casualties, it’s still worth looking at from different points of view.17

  And if you don’t look at it through those alternate points of view, you again fall to the a-little-too-easy dichotomy of protagonist versus antagonist.

  Characters are complex. They all view themselves as being right—and often righteous—in their pursuit of goals and solutions.

  If we expect that characters are all fully formed, each with his or her own set of problems and solutions (and challenged in turn by complications and limitations, some shared, some unique to them), then we start to see an emergent storyworld full of individuals with competing desires. We don’t see a single character moving in a single line—

  We see dozens, even hundreds of character sharing the same narrative oxygen, each moving with and against each other.

  It’s the direction of that movement we should focus on.

  In a web, some threads will connect at intersections and go in different directions. And some webs will hang alongside each other. So instead of protagonist versus antagonist, let’s talk about parallel versus perpendicular.

  Parallel means two lines traveling in the same direction, with the same amount of distance between them at any point on each line. (Think two lanes of a single highway traveling ever onward. Each lane goes in the same direction, but never do they converge.)

  Perpendicular means one line traveling in one direction while another line intersects it. (Think one car traveling forward, another car T-boning it at an intersection.)

  Luke and Leia are parallel characters. They both (roughly) share a single path, and they don’t really deviate. They are on the same side of this war. Their precise problems and proposed solutions aren’t always the same, but for the most part they are moving in the same direction.

  John McClane and Al Powell (the cop he “recruits” by throwing a body on top of his cruiser) are also parallel. They’re on the same team. They’re both isolated in their own situations, so they make fast friends and allies.

  Luke and Vader are perpendicular. Their quests are at odds with one another. So, too, are the quests of John McClane and Hans Gruber.

  Now, the cool thing about a perpendicular relationship is that the shape it makes is a t. And when you turn the t on its side, it’s still a t. Meaning, each character can be viewed, depending on the perspective—or the way you tilt the t—as being the one whose quest is interrupted. Vader interrupts Luke’s quest, but Luke interrupts Vader’s, too. McClane is trying to get back together with his wife, and Gruber is trying to rob a corporation, and both are essentially bonking heads like a couple of cantankerous elk.

  Characters do not need to remain parallel or perpendicular to one another, either. Consider Spike or Angel in Buffy, or Prince Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender—these are characters who begin moving in one direction, then pivot. At different points, Spike and Angel both are antagonistic to, and allied with, Buffy. Zuko starts off as a zealous antagonist (a perpendicular force of intersection), but through the course of the show changes to move in parallel to Aang, the Avatar.18

  The women of the show Gilmore Girls also operate in a way in which they are constantly moving in and out of parallel and perpendicular relationships with one another. This isn’t to say any of them are openly antagonistic or serve as the “villains” of the series—to the contrary, a show like that is a very good example of why we need to think beyond protagonist/antagonist as our outer limits for what characters can be. Real life often includes people, even loved ones, who work for us and against us in equal measure. A parent is in many ways the perfect embodiment of this. It is my job as the father of a tiny human to a) help him become the best version of himself and b) stop him from jumping off our roof or eating gum off the floor at Walmart (or really any number of the things he wants to do daily that are not in his best interest). And isn’t that a parent’s trick? We even say it out loud:

  “I’m doing what’s best for you.”

  Thing is, what’s best for the kid isn’t always what the kid wants. And so the parent operates as both ally and enemy, in parallel and perpendicular ways. And sometimes we cross the line, thinking we’re doing the best thing when we’re not. Because we make mistakes. Just like kids make mistakes. This is life. This is story.

  This is how people are.

  PROTAGONIST VERSUS MAIN CHARACTER

  Yes, Virginia, you can have a main character who is not your protagonist. A main character is the one who the narrative focuses on (or focuses through, via that character’s perspective), whereas the protagonist is the agent of change.

  Look no further than Mad Max: Fury Road. Mad Max is the main character, as it his name is on the film. Furiosa is the protagonist, for she is the agent of change and the one with the stakes on the table. Max may be the lens through which we view the film and its surroundings—we are granted, loosely, his perspective—but Furiosa is the one with the quest. And thus, she is the protagonist, while Max is merely the main character.

  Discuss.

  THE IN-BETWEENERS

  You might wonder—is there an in-between? Is there some remixed mash-up of both perpendicular and parallel, a directional symbol that is a little bit one, a little bit the other? In math, lines are either parallel, perpendicular, or neither; can that be true for characters? And what role would that serve?

  Also, I realize I just said the phrase, “in math,” which is a phrase that actually hurts me to say. As I typed it, my fingers started to itch, and my tongue swelled up to the size of a balloon. The right half of my brain tried to strangle and kill the left half. True story.

  Still, in math,19 when two lines are neither perpendicular nor parallel, they still intersect, but they don’t travel along the same slope, and they don’t form a ninety-degree angle. This speaks to two characters who are not directly competing, but who are also not uniformly allied—and yet, they are headed toward some manner of intersection—each path inevitably crossing the other’s.

  Example? Consider the Underwoods in House of Cards on Netflix. These two hypervenomous, narcissist characters, Frank and Claire, are married. They are moving ineluctably together, ostensibly toward the same goal of aggregating power for themselves. They help one another, but most likely only to help themselves. They may love each other, but that love is built on a kind of mutual appreciation of how utterly bloodthirsty they both are. And so, we see time and time ag
ain how they move toward conflict with each other, despite traveling in roughly the same direction.

  If you want to find that kind of relationship in Star Wars, look no further than Vader and The Emperor (Palpatine20). Both serve the Empire. Both work together, with Vader in a loosely subservient position to Palpatine. The Emperor is subservient to no one, and the papery old goblin-wizard does whatever the hell he wants. As soon as Vader makes the offer to Luke—“Join me and together we’ll totally stab that old goblin-wizard in the face” (pretty sure that’s an exact quote, by the way)—then we know that Vader and Palpatine are not necessarily on the same page. They will, as all Sith do, betray each other. The apprentice will slay the Master, or the Master will detect the coming betrayal and kill the apprentice to make room for a new apprentice (likely Luke). If you read the Star Wars novels and comics—nerd alert!—you will see even more signs of how troubled the Vader/Palpatine relationship is. They are moving together, but still toward conflict. Neither parallel nor perpendicular—even though each wants the other to think that their relationship is perfectly in parallel.

  SUPPORTING CHARACTERS

  I have a distaste for the term “supporting characters.” It’s not that it’s a bad term, exactly, but it does call to mind a jockstrap or a bra—something created only to lift and support something else, that’s purely architectural and not alive with that precious spark of life we assume characters should have.21

  In the same way antagonists don’t know they’re supposed to be the Bad Guys, supporting characters don’t know they’re supporting characters. They are the protagonists and heroes of their own stories, and they don’t know they’re just punching in for a two-chapter appearance. They don’t know that the book will only give them ten, maybe twenty total lines of dialogue. Off the page and beyond the screen, supporting characters have rich, complete, complicated lives. Or they don’t, but they want those things for themselves—as we all do.