by The Anatomy of Story- 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (mobi)
■ Theme Line When you find your one true love, you must commit to that person with your whole heart.
■ Story World The Utopian world and rituals of weddings.
Harry Potter Books ■ Designing Principle A magician prince learns to be a man and a king by attending a boarding school for sorcerers over the course of seven school years.
■ Theme Line When you are blessed with great talent and power, you must become a leader and sacrifice for the good of others.
■ Story World A school for wizards in a giant magical medieval castle.
The Sting
■ Designing Principle Tell the story of a sting in the form of a sting, and con both the opponent and the audience.
■ Theme Line A little lying and cheating are OK if you bring down an evil man.
■ Story World A fake place of business in a run-down Depression-era city.
Long Day's Journey into Night
■ Designing Principle As a family moves from day into night, its members are confronted with the sins and ghosts of their past.
■ Theme Line You must face the truth about yourself and others and forgive.
■ Story World The dark house, full of crannies where family secrets can be hidden away.
Meet Me in St. Louis ■ Designing Principle The growth of a family over the course of a year
is shown by events in each of the four seasons. ■ Theme Line Sacrificing for the family is more important than striving for personal glory.
■ Story World The grand house that changes its nature with each season and with each change of the family that lives in it.
Copenhagen
■ Designing Principle Use the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to
explore the ambiguous morality of the man who discovered it. ■ Theme Line Understanding why we act, and whether it is right, is
always uncertain. ■ Story World The house in the form of a courtroom?
A Christmas Carol
■ Designing Principle Trace the rebirth of a man by forcing him to view his past, his present, and his future over the course of one Christmas Eve.
■ Theme Line A person lives a much happier life when he gives to others.
■ Story World A nineteenth-century London countinghouse and three different homes—rich, middle-class, and poor—glimpsed in the past, present, and future.
It's a Wonderful Life ■ Designing Principle Express the power of the individual by showing what a town, and a nation, would be like if one man had never lived, ■ Theme Line A man's riches come not from the money he makes but
from the friends and family he serves, ■ Story World Two different versions of the same small town in America.
Citizen Kane
■ Designing Principle Use a number of storytellers to show that a man's life can never be known.
■ Theme Line A man who tries to force everyone to love him ends up alone.
■ Story World The mansion and separate "kingdom" of a titan of America.
THE ARENA OF THE STORY
Once you have the designing principle and a one-line description of the story world, you must find a single arena that marks the physical boundaries of that world. The arena is the basic space of drama. It is a single, unified place surrounded by some kind of wall. Everything inside the arena is part of the story. Everything outside the arena is not.
Many writers, especially novelists and screenwriters, mistakenly believe
that since you can go anywhere, you should. This is a serious mistake, be-cause if you break the single arena of your story, the drama will literally dissipate. Having too many arenas results in fragmented, inorganic stories.
The single arena is easiest to maintain in theater because you have the natural advantage of the stage frame, edged by the curtain. Movies and novels expand the arena, but that just makes a unified place even more essential for building the drama.
Creating the Arena
I'm not suggesting that you adhere to the rigid "Aristotelian unity of place" that says all action should occur in a single location. There are four major ways of creating the single arena without destroying the variety of place and action necessary for a good story.
1. Create a large umbrella and then crosscut and condense.
In this approach, you describe the largest scope of the story somewhere near the beginning. In effect, you start with the big world and the wall that divides it from everything else. Then you focus on the smaller worlds within the arena as the story progresses.
This large umbrella could be as big as the flat plain of the West, a city, outer space, or the ocean, or it could be as small as a small town, a house, or a bar.
This technique can be found in Casablanca, Alien, Spider-Man, L.A. Confidential, The Matrix, Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, Mary Pop-pins, Groundhog Day, Sunset Boulevard, Nashville, Blood Simple, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Great Gatsby, Shane, Star Wars, and It's a Wonderful Life.
2. Send the hero on a journey through generally the same area, but one that develops along a single line.
This approach appears to destroy the single arena, and when not done properly, it does. One reason many journey stories feel fragmented is that the hero travels to a number of very different, unconnected places, and each place feels like a separate episode.
You can create the sense of a single arena if the area the character travels through remains fundamentally the same, like a desert, an ocean, a river, or a jungle. But even here, try to make the journey a single recognizable line and show a simple development of the area from beginning to end. This gives the area the appearance of unity.
We see the single-line journey in Titanic, The Wild Bunch, The Blues Brothers, Jacques Tati's Traffic, and The African Queen.
3. Send the hero on a circular journey through generally the same area.
This approach works in much the same way as the second one, except that the hero returns home at the end. You don't get the benefit of the single line to give the audience a sense of a unified, directed path. But by going from home to home, ending back at the beginning, you highlight the change in the character in contrast to the world, which has remained the same.
The circular journey is the foundation for The Wizard of Oz, Ulysses, Finding Nemo, King Kong, Don Quixote, Big, Heart of Darkness, Beau Geste, Swept Away, Deliverance, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Field of Dreams, and Alice in Wonderland.
4. Make the hero a fish out of water.
Start the hero in one arena. Spend enough time there to show whatever talents he has that are unique to that world. Then jump the character to a second world—without traveling—and show how the talents the hero used in the first world, while seeming to be out of place, work equally well in the second.
This approach is found in Beverly Hills Cop, Crocodile Dundee, Black Rain, and to a lesser but still important extent in Witness and Dances with Wolves.
Strictly speaking, fish-out-of-water stories take place in two distinct arenas, not one. Consequently, they often feel like two-part stories. What holds them together is that the hero uses the same talents in both places, so the audience comes to feel that while both arenas are superficially quite different, they are in a deeper sense the same.
One of the keys to using the fish-out-of-water technique is to avoid staying too long in the first arena. The first arena is the jumping-off point for the main story, which takes place in the second arena. The first arena has fulfilled its function as soon as you show the hero's talents in that world.
Oppositions Within the Arena
You don't create characters to fill a story world, no matter how fabulous that world may be. You create a story world to express and manifest your characters, especially your hero.
Just as you define the character web by dramatizing the oppositions among the characters, so do you define the story world within your single arena by dramatizing the visual oppositions. You do that by going back to the oppositions among the characters and the values they
hold.
Return to your character web, and look for all the ways the characters fight with each other. Look especially at the conflict of values, because values are what the main characters are really fighting about. From these oppositions, you will start to see visual oppositions emerge in the physical world as well.
lease out the visual oppositions, and figure out what the three or lour central ones might be. Let's look at some examples in stories and see how they come out of the character oppositions.
It's a Wonderful Life
(short story "The Greatest Gift" by Philip Van Doren Stern, screenplay by
Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, 1946) It's a Wonderful Life is structured so that the audience can see two different versions of the same town. Notice that this huge element of the story world, a town, is a direct expression of the fundamental character opposi-tion between George Bailey and Mr. Potter. And each version of the town is a physical manifestation of the values of these two men. Pottersville is what you get with one-man rule and unchecked greed. Bedford Falls is what you get with democracy, decency, and kindness.
Sunset Boulevard
(by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder & D. M. Marshman, Jr., 1950) The central opposition in Sunset Boulevard is between struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis, who still has a belief in doing good work beneath that money-grubbing veneer, and rich, aging movie star Norma Desmond. The visual oppositions come from Joe's cramped apartment versus Norma's run-down mansion; sunny, modern, wide-open Los Angeles versus a dark Gothic house; young versus old; snuggling outsiders trying to break in versus the grand and secure but ruthless movie studio; and the common-man entertainment workers versus Hollywood movie star royalty.
The Great Gatsby
(by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925) In The Great Gatsby, the primary oppositions are between Gatsby and Tom, Gatsby and Daisy, Gatsby and Nick, and Nick and Tom (notice the four-corner opposition). Each of these characters is some version of an ordinary midwesterner who has come east to make money. So the first story world opposition is between the flat plains of the Midwest and the tall towers and elegant mansions of the East. Tom is "new money," but he is older money than Gatsby, so there is an opposition within the riches of Long Island between the more established East Egg, where Tom and Daisy live, and the still wealthy but more nouveau West Egg, where Gatsby lives. Indeed, Tom and Daisy's mansion is depicted as opulent but conservative, while Gatsby's mansion and his use of it are portrayed as the epitome of garish bad taste.
Gatsby has gained his extreme wealth illegally, as a bootlegger, while Nick is a struggling, honest bond trader. So Nick rents Gatsby's little guest cottage, where he can gaze on the fake community of Gatsby's parties. Tom is a brute and a bully who is cheating on his wife, so Fitzgerald contrasts Tom's mansion with the gas station of Tom's mistress. Fitzgerald adds another contrast of subworlds when he depicts the city of ashes, the hidden detritus of the great capitalist, mechanistic engine represented by New York City and Long Island. In a final thematic burst, Fitzgerald compares the city of New York, the height of American "civilization," with New York before it was developed, when it was full of promise, the "great green breast of the New World."
King Kong
(by James Creelman and Ruth Rose, 1931) King Kong sets up its primary opposition between the showman-producer, Carl Denham, and the giant prehistoric beast, Kong. So the main opposition within the story world is the island of New York, the man-made and overly civilized but extremely harsh world where image-maker Denham is "king," versus Skull Island, the extremely harsh state of nature where Kong, master of physical force, is king. Within this main visual opposition is a three-part contrast of subworlds between the city dwellers, the villagers of Skull Island, and the prehistoric beasts of the jungle, all of whom are involved in a different form of the struggle to survive.
Dances with Wolves
(novel and screenplay by Michael Blake, 1990) Dances with Wolves shifts the central opposition of characters and values over the course of the story, and so the main visual oppositions shift as well. At first, the hero, John Dunbar, wants to participate in building the American frontier before it vanishes. So the first opposition of the story world is between the Civil War America of the East, where the nation has been corrupted through slavery, and the broad empty plains of the Western wilderness, where America's promise is still fresh. Within the world of the Western plains, the apparent conflict of values is between the white soldier, Dunbar, who believes in building the American nation, and the Lakota Sioux, who appear to be savages bent on its destruction.
But writer Michael Blake uses his depiction of the subworlds to undercut this apparent opposition of values. Dunbar's cavalry outpost is an empty mud hole, devoid of life, an ugly gash on the land. The Sioux village is a little Utopia, a cluster of tepees by the river, with horses grazing and children playing. As the story progresses, Blake shows that the deeper opposition of values is between an American expansionist world that treats animals and Indians as objects to be destroyed versus an Indian world that lives with nature and treats each human being according to the quality of their heart.
L.A. Confidential
(novel by James Ellroy, screenplay by Brian Helgeland & Curtis Hanson, 1997)
In L.A. Confidential, the main character opposition appears to be between cops and killers. In fact, it is between police detectives who believe in different versions of justice and a murderous police captain and a corrupt district attorney. That's why the first visual opposition, done in voice-over, is between Los Angeles as an apparent Utopia and Los Angeles as a
racist, corrupt, oppressive city. This essential opposition is then divided further as the three lead cops are introduced: Hud White, the real cop who believes in vigilante justice; Jack Vincennes, the smooth cop who makes extra money as a technical adviser on a TV cop show and who arrests people for money; and Ed Exley, the smart cop who knows how to play the political game of justice to further his own ambitions. The investigation plays out this opposition of characters and values through various sub-worlds by contrasting locations of the rich, white, corrupt Los Angeles that actually commits the crime and the poor black Los Angeles that is blamed for it.
DETAILING THE STORY WORLD
You detail the visual oppositions and the story world itself by combining three major elements: the land (natural settings), the people (man-made spaces), and technology (tools). A fourth element, time, is the way your unique world develops over the course of the story, which we'll discuss later. Let's begin by looking at the natural settings.
Natural Settings
Never select the natural settings for your story by happenstance. Each setting carries a multitude of meanings for an audience. As Bachelard says, "A psychologist of the imagination . . . comes to realize that the cosmos molds mankind, that it can transform a man of the hills into a man of islands and rivers, and that the house remodels man."3 You need to know some of the possible meanings of the various natural settings, such as hills, islands, and rivers, so that you can determine if one best expresses your story line, characters, and theme.
Ocean
For the human imagination, the ocean divides into two distinct places, the surface and the deep. The surface is the ultimate two-dimensional landscape, the flat table as far as the eye can see. This makes the ocean surface seem abstract while also being totally natural. This abstract flat sur-face, like a huge chessboard, intensities the sense of the contest, a game of life and death played out on the grandest scale.
The ocean deep is the ultimate three-dimensional landscape where all creatures are weightless and thus live at every level. This weightless, floating quality is a common element when the human mind imagines a Utopia, which is why the ocean deep has often been the place of Utopian dreamworlds.
But the ocean deep is also a terrifying graveyard, a great, impersonal force quietly grabbing anyone or anything on the surface and pulling it down to the infinite black depths. The ocean is the vast caver
n where ancient worlds, prehistoric creatures, past secrets, and old treasure are swallowed up and lie waiting to be discovered.
Ocean stories include Moby-Dick; Titanic; Finding Nemo; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; The Little Mermaid; Atlantis; The Sea Wolf; Master and Com-mander; Run Silent, Run Deep; Mutiny on the Bounty; The Hunt for Red October; Jaws; and Yellow Submarine.
Outer Space
Outer space is the ocean of "out there," an infinite black nothingness that hides an unlimited diversity of other worlds. Like the ocean deep, it is three-dimensional. Like the ocean surface, outer space feels both abstract and natural. Everything moves through blackness, so each thing, though a unique individual, is also highlighted in its most essential quality. There is the "spaceship," the "human being," the "robot," the "alien." Science fiction stories often use the myth form, not only because myth is about the journey but also because myth is the story form that explores the most fundamental human distinctions.
Because outer space holds the promise of unlimited diversity of other worlds, it is a place of unending adventure. Adventure stories are always about a sense of discovery, of the new, of the amazing, and this can be both exciting and terrifying. At this point in the history of humans on earth and the development of stories, outer space is the only natural setting where this sense of unlimited adventure is still possible. (The ocean is largely unexplored territory as well. But because we can't imagine a real community living there, the ocean is the site of a human world only in fantasy.)
Outer space is the realm ol science fiction stories such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dune, the Star Wars movies, Blade Runner, Apollo 13, Forbidden Planet, many of the Twilight Zone stories, the Star Trek movies and television shows, and the Alien films.
Forest
The central story quality of the forest is that it is a natural cathedral. The tall trees, with their leaves hanging over us and protecting us, seem like the oldest wise men assuring us that whatever the circumstances, it will resolve as time moves on. It is the place where contemplative people go and to which lovers sneak away.
But this intense inward gaze of the forest also has a sense of foreboding. The forest is where people get lost. It's the hiding place of ghosts and past lives. It is where hunters stalk their prey, and their prey is often human. The forest is tamer than the jungle; the jungle will kill anything in it at any moment. The forest, when it does its frightening work, causes mental loss first. It is slower than the jungle but still deadly.
