by The Anatomy of Story- 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (mobi)
Ideally, you want your character to move through the passageway slowly. A passageway is a special world unto itself; it should be filled with things and inhabitants that are both strange and organic to your story. Let your character linger there. Your audience will love you for it. The passageway to another world is one of the most popular of all story techniques. Come up with a unique one, and your story is halfway there.
Technology (Tools)
Tools are extensions of the human form, taking a simple capability and magnifying its power. They are a fundamental way that characters connect to the world. Any tool a character uses becomes part of his identity, showing not only how his own power has been magnified but also how well he is able to manipulate the world and maneuver through it.
Technology is most useful in genres that place the most emphasis on the story world, such as science fiction and fantasy, and in highly ambitious stories that place the hero within a larger social system. Because you, the writer, create the world in science fiction, the specific technology you invent highlights those elements of mankind that most trouble you. And because all great science fiction is about the writer's view of universal evolution, the relationship of humans to technology is always central. In fantasy, a tool such as a magic wand is a symbol of a character's self-mastery and indicates whether he uses his knowledge for good or evil.
In stories where characters are trapped in a system, tools let you show how the system exercises its power. This is especially true in modernization stories, where an entire society shifts to a more complex and technologically advanced stage. For example, The Magnificent Ambersons shows the effects of the rise of the automobile. In Cinema Paradiso, the movie house is torn down to make way for a parking lot. In the classic anti-Western The Wild Bunch, set in the last days of the American frontier, the aging cowboys encounter their first automobile and machine gun. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, another great anti-Western, has a terrific scene in which an
enterprising bicycle salesman makes his pitch to people reluctant to join a posse.
Even in story forms that do not explore the larger world, tools can be helpful. For example, action stories place tremendous emphasis on the hero's ability to turn everyday objects into weapons or use them to gain superiority over the enemy. In drama, the tools of daily life are so common as to be practically invisible. But even here, technology (and sometimes the lack thereof) helps define a character and his place in the world. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman brings home $70 in commission, but he owes $16 on the refrigerator. His son Happy gives him $50 at Christmas, but fixing the hot water heater costs $97, and he's been putting off that motor job on the car. Willy is always "getting stuck on the machine."
C ONNECTING THE WORLD TO THE HERO'S OVERALL DEVELOPMENT
The first step to building your story world is identifying the key visual oppositions based on characters and values. The second step is looking at the endpoints of your hero's development.
This is similar to the process we used when creating characters. There we began by sketching out the character web, since each character, through contrast and similarity, helps define the others. Then, focusing on the hero, we looked first at his overall range of change, starting at the endpoint (self-revelation), going back to the beginning (weakness and need, desire), and then creating the structure steps in between. We did that because every story is a journey of learning that the hero goes through, and as writers, we have to know the end of that journey before we can take any steps.
You need to match that process exactly when detailing the story world. We've already examined some of the major visual oppositions in the world by looking at the character web. Now we have to focus on the hero's overall change to see what the world will be like at the beginning and end of the story.
In the vast majority of stories, the hero's overall change moves from slavery to freedom. If that's true in your story, the visual world will prob
ably move from slavery to freedom as well. Here's how the overall movement of character and world match up.
A character is enslaved primarily because of his psychological and moral weaknesses. A world is enslaving (or freeing) based on the relationship of the three major elements—land (natural settings), people (man-made spaces), and technology (tools)—and how they affect your hero. The unique way you combine these elements defines the nature of the story world.
■ Beginning (slavery): If the land, people, and technology are out of balance, everyone is out for himself, each is reduced to an animal clawing for scarce resources or a cog working for the greater good of a machine. This is a world of slavery and, taken to its extreme, a dystopia, or hell on earth.
■ Endpoint (freedom): If the land, people, and technology are in balance (as you define it), you have a community, where individuals can grow in their own way, supported by others. This is a world of freedom and, taken to the extreme, a Utopia, or heaven on earth.
Besides slavery and dystopia, freedom and Utopia, there is one other kind of world you can create for the beginning or end of your story: the apparent Utopia. This world appears to be perfect, but the perfection is only skin deep. Below the surface, the world is actually corrupt, rotten, and enslaving. Everyone is desperate to put on a good face to hide a psychological or moral disaster. This technique is used in the opening of L.A. Confidential and Blue Velvet.
The point of creating these different kinds of worlds is to connect them to your hero. In the vast majority of stories, there is a one-to-one connection between hero and world. For example, an enslaved hero lives in a world of slavery A free hero lives in and, in getting free, often creates a free world.
KEY POINT: In most stories you write, the world is a physical expression of who your hero is and how he develops.
In this technique, the world helps define your main character through the structure of the story. It shows his needs, his values, his desires (both
good and bad), and the obstacles be faces. And since in the vast majority of stories your hero begins the story enslaved in some way, you must focus on slavery.
KEY POINT: Always ask yourself, how is the world of slavery an expression
of my hero's great weakness? The world should embody, highlight, or accentuate your hero's weakness or draw it out in its worst form.
For example, detective stories, crime stories, and thrillers often set up a close connection between the hero's weakness—when it exists—and the "mean streets," or world of slavery in which the hero operates.
Vertigo
(novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, screenplay by Alec Coppel
and Samuel Taylor, 1958) The world of Vertigo highlights the hero's psychological weakness in the opening scene. While chasing a criminal over the rooftops of San Francisco, Scottie slips and hangs by his fingertips five floors above the ground. He looks down, and vertigo overwhelms him. A fellow cop falls to his death trying to help him, which creates a guilt that haunts Scottie for the rest of the story. This technique of the story world highlighting the hero's weakness is repeated later when Scottie's vertigo prevents him from climbing a tower to save the woman he loves from committing suicide. Indeed, this technique is the source of Vertigo's greatest strength as a story: the killer uses the detective's own weakness—his vertigo—as the main trick in getting away with murder.
Creating a world of slavery to express or accentuate your hero's weakness is also useful in drama and melodrama.
Sunset Boulevard
(by Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder & D. M. Marshman, Jr., 1950) In Sunset Boulevard, the hero's weakness is a predilection for money and the finer things in life. Sure enough, he finds himself hiding out in a rundown mansion with an aging movie star who has money to burn, as long as he fulfills her wishes. Like vampires, the movie star and her mansion feed on the hero, and they are rejuvenated as the hero falls into an opulent slavery.
A Streetcar Named Desire
(by Tennessee Williams, 1947) A Streetcar Named Desire
is a perfect example of how the world of slavery at the beginning of the story expresses the hero's great weakness. Blanche is a fragile, self-deceptive woman who wants to hide in a dream world of romance and pretty things. But instead, she is thrust into a hot, cramped apartment with her sister and brutish brother-in-law. Rather than give her the illusion of romance, this hellhole, with its apelike king, Stanley, relentlessly presses in on her until she breaks.
Casablanca
(play Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison,
screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch, 1942) Casablanca is a love story with an opening world of slavery that constantly jabs at Rick's weakness. His fabulous bar, the Cafe Americain, reminds him at every turn of the love he lost in romantic Paris. The club is also all about making money, which Rick can do only if he pays off a traitorous French police captain. Every magnificent corner of his bar shows Rick how far he has fallen into a self-centered cynicism while the world cries out for leaders.
Fantasy is another story form that places special emphasis on this technique of matching the world of slavery to the hero's weakness. A good fantasy always starts the hero in some version of a mundane world and sets up his psychological or moral weakness there. This weakness is the reason the hero cannot see the true potential of where he lives and of who he can be, and it is what propels him to visit the fantasy world.
Field of Dreams
(novel Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, screenplay by Phil Alden Robinson,
1989)
In Field of Dreams, the hero, Ray, lives on a farm in Iowa near a town that wants to ban books. He builds a baseball diamond on his property even though the other farmers think he's crazy and his brother-in-law wants the farm for its practical and monetary value. Ray's need is to do something he's passionate about and make amends with his deceased father. Building a baseball diamond—which brings back the dead baseball star Shoeless Joe Jackson—creates a Utopian world where Ray lives and allows him to have one last communion with his father.
Mary Poppins
(books by P. L. Travers, screenplay by Bill Walsh and Don Da Gradi, 1964) In Mary Poppins, the household is a restrictive place, governed by a rule-bound father whose god is the clock. The apparent main character, Mary Poppins, is what I call a traveling angel, "practically perfect in every way," so she has no weaknesses. In fact, she is the agent for showing others their true potential and the negative potential of their enslaving world. The children are rebellious in a self-destructive way and have no sense of the wondrous world of enchantment that lies outside their door in London and also within their own minds.
The father, who is the main opponent, has an even greater weakness than his children. He sees the world as a business, and though he doesn't enter the fantasy worlds, he does benefit from his children's visits to them and from the magical nanny. At the end, the father's world of business has become a place where he can fly a kite with his kids.
Other traveling-angel comedies that show a similar connection between the hero and an enslaving world are Crocodile Dundee; The Music Man; Amelie; Chocolat; Good Morning, Vietnam; and Meatballs.
How the Story World and the Hero Develop Together
Notice that each of the major story elements so far—premise, designing principle, seven steps, characters, and moral argument—matches and connects with all the other elements to create a deeply textured but organic unit, with everything working together. This is the orchestration so essential to great storytelling.
In the beginning of the story, all the elements weave together and express the same thing. The hero (probably) lives in a world of slavery that highlights, amplifies, or exacerbates his great weakness. He then goes up against the opponent best able to exploit that weakness. In Chapter 8 on plot, you'll see how another element at the beginning, the "ghost," expresses the hero's weakness as well.
The connection between hero and world extends from the hero's slavery throughout his character arc. In most stories, because the hero and the world are expressions of each other, the world and the hero develop together. Or if the hero doesn't change, as in much of Chekhov, the world doesn't change either.
Let's look at some of the classic ways the hero and the world change, contrast, or don't change over the course of a story.
Hero: Slavery to Greater Slavery to Freedom World: Slavery to Greater Slavery to Freedom
The hero begins the story in a world of slavery. He struggles to reach his goal and experiences decline as the world closes in. But then, through self-revelation, he fulfills his need and becomes free in a world that is better off because of what he has done.
This pattern is found in Star Wars episodes 4-6, The Lord of the Rings, The Verdict, The Lion King, The Shawshank Redemption, It's a Wonderful Life, and David Copperfield.
Hero: Slavery to Greater Slavery or Death World: Slavery to Greater Slavery or Death
In these stories, the main character begins enslaved by his own weakness and by a world pressing in. Because of the cancer in the hero's soul, the world that depends on him is rotten as well. In seeking a goal, the hero learns a negative self-revelation that destroys both him and the world that relies on him. Or he is crushed by an enslaving world he cannot understand.
Examples are Oedipus the King, Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Conversation, The Conformist, Sunset Boulevard, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and Heart of Darkness.
Hero: Slavery to Greater Slavery or Death World: Slavery to Great Slavery to Freedom
In this approach, used in some tragedies, you break the connection between hero and world at the end of the story. The hero has a self-revelation, but it comes too late to set him free. He does make a sacrifice before he dies or falls, which sets the world free after he is gone.
We see this sequence in Hamlet, The Seven Samurai, and A Tale of Two Cities.
Hero: Slavery to Temporary Freedom to Greater Slavery or Death World: Slavery to Temporary Freedom to Greater Slavery or Death
This technique has the hero enter a subworld of freedom at some point during the middle of the story. This is the world in which the character should live if he realizes his true self. Failing to do so and moving on, or discovering the rightness of this world too late, eventually destroys the hero.
This pattern occurs in The Wild Bunch, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Dances with Wolves.
Hero: Freedom to Slavery or Death World: Freedom to Slavery or Death
These stories begin in a Utopian world in which the hero is happy but vulnerable to attack or change. A new character, changing social forces, or a character flaw causes the hero and his world to decline and eventually fall.
This sequence is found in King Lear, How Green Was My Valley, and such King Arthur stories as Le Morte dArthur and Excalibur.
Hero: Freedom to Slavery to Freedom World: Freedom to Slavery to Freedom
The hero again starts off in a world of freedom. An attack comes from outside or within the family. The hero and the world decline, but he overcomes the problem and creates a stronger Utopia.
This approach is used in Meet Me in St. Louis, Amarcord, and to a lesser degree in Cinema Paradiso.
Hero: Apparent Freedom to Greater Slavery to Freedom World: Apparent Freedom to Greater Slavery to Freedom
At the beginning of the story, the world appears to be a Utopia but is actually a place of extreme hierarchy and corruption. The characters fight ruthlessly to win, often with many dying in the process. Eventually, the hero fights through the corruption to create a more just society, or he is simply one of the last ones standing.
Examples include L..A. Confidential, Jurassic Park, The Magnificent Amber sons, and Blue Velvet.
A brilliant variation on this sequence is found in Goodfellas, which combines the gangster and black comedy forms. The story moves from the apparent freedom of the mob community to greater slavery of the hero and death for all of his friends.<
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TIME IN THE STORY WORLD
Now that the story world is connected to the hero, we have to look at the different ways the story world itself can develop. Time is the fourth major element—along with natural settings, man-made spaces, and tools—that you use to construct your story world.
Before we look at the many ways that time is expressed through the world—or more exactly, how the story world is expressed through time—we need to get beyond two fallacies that many storytellers have about time.
Fallacies of Past and Future
What we might call the fallacy of the past is common in historical fiction. The idea is that the writer of historical fiction is depicting a different world, based on its own set of values and moral codes. Therefore, we should not judge those people by our standards.
The fallacy of the past comes from the misguided notion that a writer of historical fiction is first and foremost writing history. As a storyteller, you are always writing fiction. You use the past as a pair of glasses through which the audience can see itself more clearly today. Therefore, withholding judgment about people in the past is absurd; we show them in order to judge ourselves by comparison.
You make this comparison in two ways. Negatively, you show values dominant in the past that still hurt people today. We see this with the Puritan values in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Positively, you show values from the past that are still good and should be brought back. For example, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon glorifies such values as duty, honor, and loyalty found on a military outpost in 1870s America.
