by The Anatomy of Story- 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (mobi)
Two men come to repossess his car, so he takes off. Suddenly, his tire blows (inciting event). Joe turns into Norma Desmond's driveway and thinks he has gotten away. In fact, he has just fallen into a trap from which he will never escape.
Casablanca
Ilsa and Laszlo enter Rick's. They are the outsiders who will shake Rick out of his steady and masterful but unhappy position.
Tootsie
Michael's agent, George, tells him that no one will hire him because of his horrible personality. This prompts Michael to put on women's clothes and try out for a soap opera.
5. Desire
The desire is your hero's particular goal. It provides the spine for the entire plot. In our discussion of the seven steps in Chapter 3, I mentioned that a good story usually has one goal that is specific and extends through most of the story. To these elements we must add one more: start the goal at a low level.
One of the ways you build a story is by increasing the importance of the desire as the story progresses. If you start the desire at too high a level, it can't build, and the plot will feel flat and repetitious. Start the desire low so you have somewhere to go.
As you build the desire over the course of the story, be sure you don't create an entirely new desire. Rather, you should increase the intensity and the stakes of the desire you start with.
Casablanca
Rick wants Ilsa. But as a love story, this desire is blunted because Ilsa is also Rick's first opponent. Bitter at her for abandoning him in Paris, he first wants to hurt her.
With Rick's desire for Ilsa frustrated, the story shifts focus to someone else's desire: Laszlo's wish to get exit visas for himself and his wife. But the writers make Rick's desire clear early on, which placates the impatient au-dience during Laszlo's actions because they know Rick's desire will take over soon enough. The waiting makes the desire percolate and boil.
Near the end of the story, Rick comes up with a second, conflicting desire, which is to help Ilsa and Laszlo escape. Having such a conflicting desire early on would give the story two spines. But when the conflicting desire comes near the end and remains hidden until the last moment, it becomes both a revelation and part of Rick's self-revelation.
Tootsie
At first, Michael wants to get an acting job. But he accomplishes this quite early in the story. The goal that actually serves as the spine of the film is Michael's desire for Julie, one of the actresses on the show.
PLOT TECHNIQUE: LEVELS OF DESIRE
Part of the success of your story is based on the level of the desire you give the hero. A desire that remains low throughout the story reduces your hero and makes any complexity of plot virtually impossible. For example, the lowest desire line is simple survival. The hero is under attack and wants to escape. This reduces the hero to the level of an animal. The plot in escape stories simply repeats the same beat of running away.
Here are the levels of some classic desire lines, from lowest to highest:
6. Ally or Allies
Once the hero has a desire line, he will usually gain one or more allies to help him overcome the opponent and reach the goal. An ally is not simply a sounding board for the hero's views (although that is valuable, especially in theater, film, and television). An ally is a key figure in the character web and one of the main ways by which you define your hero.
KEY POINT: Consider giving the ally a desire line of his own. You have relatively little time to define this character. The quickest way to make the audience think they are seeing a complete person is to give that character a goal. For example, the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz wants a brain.
KEY POINT: Never make the ally a more interesting character than the hero. Remember the rule from our discussion of premise: always write a story about your most interesting character. If your ally is more interesting than your hero, redesign the story so that the ally is the hero.
Casablanca
Rick's allies are the various role players in the bar: Carl, the professor turned waiter; Sacha, the Russian bartender; Emil, the croupier; Abdul, the bouncer; and Rick's sidekick, Sam, the piano player.
Tootsie
Michael's roommate, Jeff, is writing a play, Return to the Love Canal, that Michael wants to put on so he can play the lead.
PLOT TECHNIQUE: SUBPLOT
In Chapter 4, on character, we talked about the subplot having a very precise definition and function in a story: a subplot is used to compare how the hero and another character approach generally the same situation.
Remember two key rules about subplot:
1. The subplot must affect the hero's main plot, or it shouldn't be present at all. If the subplot doesn't serve the main plot, you have two simultaneous stories that may be clinically interesting to the audience, but they make the main plot seem too long. To connect the subplot to the main plot, make sure the two dovetail neatly, usually near the end. For example, in Hamlet, the subplot character, Laertes, allies with Hamlet's main opponent, Claudius, and he and Hamlet duel in the battle scene.
2. The subplot character is usually not the ally. The subplot character and the ally have two separate functions in the story. The ally helps the hero in the main plot. The subplot character drives a different but related plot that you compare to the main plot.
Most Hollywood movies today have multiple genres, but they rarely have true subplots. A subplot extends the story, and most Hollywood films are too interested in speed to put up with that. Where we see true subplots most often is in love stories, which is a form that tends to have a thin main plot. An example is Moonstruck, which has two subplots, one involving the heroine's father, the second involving her mother. The main plot and the subplots all deal with the problem of fidelity in marriage.
Subplot is not one of the twenty-two steps because it's not usually present and because it is really a plot of its own with its own structure. But it's a great technique. It improves the character, theme, and texture of your story. On the other hand, it slows the desire line—the narrative drive. So you have to decide what is most important to you.
If you are going to use a subplot, you only have enough time to work through the seven key steps. But be aware that if you can't cover all seven, it won't be a complete story and will seem forced. Because of the limited time, you want to introduce your subplot as early in the story as is naturally appropriate.
7. Opponent and/or Mystery
The opponent is the character who wants to prevent the hero from reaching his goal. The relationship between this character and your hero is the most important in your story. If you set up the opposition properly, your
plot will unwind just as it should. If you don't, no amount of rewriting will make any difference.
The best opponent is the necessary one: the character best able to attack the great weakness of your hero. Your hero will be forced either to (welcome that weakness and grow or else be destroyed. Look again at (Chapter 4 on character for all the elements needed for a great opponent. There are two main reasons opponent and mystery are closely related:
1. A mysterious opponent is more difficult to defeat. In average stories, the hero's only task is to defeat the opponent. In good stories, the hero has a two-part task: uncover the opponent and then defeat him. This makes the hero's job doubly difficult and his success a far greater accomplishment.
For example, Hamlet doesn't know that the king really killed his father, because he heard it from a ghost. Othello doesn't know that Iago wants to bring him down. Lear doesn't know which daughter really loves him.
2. In certain kinds of stories, like detective and thriller, there must be a mystery to compensate for a missing opponent. Since detective stories purposely hide the opponent until the end, the audience needs something to replace an ongoing conflict between hero and opponent. In this kind of story, you introduce a mystery at about the time you would normally introduce the main opponent.
Before introducing your main opponent, ask yourself these key questions:
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br /> ■ Who wants to stop the hero from getting what he wants and why?
■ What does the opponent want? He should be competing for the same goal as the hero.
■ What are the opponent's values, and how do they differ from the hero's? Most writers never ask this question, and it's a big mistake. A story without a conflict of values, as well as characters, cannot build.
Casablanca
Because Casablanca is essentially a love story, Rick's first opponent is his lover, Ilsa Lund. A woman of mystery, she has not told Rick that she was,
and still is, married to Victor Laszlo. Rick's second opponent is Ilsa's competing suitor, Laszlo, the great man who has impressed half the world. Though both men hate the Nazis, Rick and Laszlo represent two very different versions of a great man. Laszlo is great on the political and societal level, whereas Rick is great on the personal level.
Major Strasser and the Nazis provide the outside opposition and the danger that move the stakes of the love story to a much higher level. Strasser is not mysterious in any way, because he doesn't need to be; in Casablanca, he is all-powerful.
Tootsie
Because Tootsie uses the farce form (along with romantic comedy) for its structure, it does not use the mysterious opponent technique. Farce has more opponents than any other form and works by having a lot of opponents attack the hero at a progressively faster rate of speed. These are the main opponents who attack Michael's weaknesses:
1. Julie forces Michael to confront how he has mistreated and abused women.
2. Ron, the arrogant director, doesn't want Dorothy (Michael) for the role and remains hostile toward her.
3. Les, Julie's father, unknowingly shows Michael the effects of his dishonesty when he becomes attracted to Dorothy.
4. John, another actor on the show, makes unwanted advances toward Dorothy.
PLOT TECHNIQUE: THE ICEBERG OPPONENT
Making the opponent mysterious is extremely important, no matter what kind of story you are writing. Think of the opponent as an iceberg. Some of the iceberg is visible above the water. But most of it is hidden below the surface, and that is by far the more dangerous part. There are four techniques that can help you make the opposition in your story as dangerous as possible:
1. Create a hierarchy of opponents with a number of alliances. All of the opponents are related to one another; they are all working together
to defeat the hero. The main opponent sits at the top of this pyramid, with the other opponents below him in power. (See our discussion of four-corner opposition in Chapter 4. An example of this technique as used in The Godfather can be found at the end of this chapter.)
2. Hide the hierarchy from the hero and the audience, and hide each opponent's true agenda (true desire).
3. Reveal all this information in pieces and at an increasing pace over the course of the story. This means you'll have more reveals near the end of the story. As we shall see, how you reveal information to hero and audience is what makes or breaks your plot.
4. Consider having your hero go up against an obvious opponent early in the story. As the conflict intensifies, have the hero discover attacks from a stronger hidden opposition or attacks from that part of t he opponent that has been hidden away.
8. Fake-Ally Opponent
The fake-ally opponent is a character who appears to be an ally of the hero but is actually an opponent or working for the main opponent.
Plot is driven by reveals, which come from the steps the hero takes to uncover the true power of the opposition. Every time a hero discovers something new about an opponent—a revelation—the plot "turns," and the audience is delighted. The fake-ally opponent increases the opponent's power because the fact of his opposition is hidden. The fake-ally opponent forces the hero and the audience to dig below the tip of the iceberg and find what the hero is truly up against.
The fake-ally opponent is also valuable because he's inherently complex. This character often undergoes a fascinating change in the course of the story. By pretending to be an ally of the hero, the fake-ally opponent starts to feel like an ally. So he becomes torn by a dilemma: he works for the opponent but wants the hero to win.
You usually introduce the fake-ally opponent after the main opponent, but not always. If the opponent has come up with a plan to defeat the hero before the story even begins, you may introduce the fake-ally opponent first.
Casablanca
Although he is always charming and friendly to Rick, Captain Renault protects himself by working for the Nazis. Renault is much more open in his opposition than most fake-ally opponents, who work undercover. At the very end, Renault flips to become Rick's true ally. This is one of the biggest kicks of the story and is a good example of the storytelling power that comes from switching a character from ally to opponent or from opponent to ally.
Tootsie
Sandy is not the usual fake-ally opponent either, fooling the hero and the audience from the beginning. She starts off as an actress friend of Michael's. She becomes a fake-ally opponent when Michael dresses up as a woman to try out for a part in a soap opera that Sandy wants for herself. When she catches him trying on her clothes, he must extend the deception even further by pretending he has fallen in love with her.
9. First Revelation and Decision: Changed Desire and Motive
At this point in the story, the hero gets a revelation—or reveal—which is a surprising piece of new information. This information forces him to make a decision and move in a new direction. It also causes him to adjust his desire and his motive. Motive is why the hero wants the goal. All four of these events—revelation, decision, changed desire, and changed motive—should occur at the same time.
The reveals are the keys to the plot, and they are usually missing in average stories. In many ways, the quality of your plot comes down to the quality of your revelations. Keep these techniques in mind:
you have started a new story. You want to adjust, intensity, and build the original desire line. 3. Each revelation must be explosive and progressively stronger than the one that preceded it. The information should be important, or it won't pop the story. And each reveal should build on the one before it. When we talk about the plot "thickening," this is what is actually happening. Think of the revelations as the gears in a car. With each reveal the car (story) picks up speed until at the final one the vehicle is zooming. The audience has no idea how they ended up moving so fast, but they sure are having a good time.
If your revelations don't build in intensity, the plot will stall or even decline. This is deadly. Avoid it at all costs.
Note that Hollywood has become more plot-conscious in recent years, and that makes many screenwriters' reliance on three-act structure even more dangerous. Three-act structure, you will recall, requires that your story have two or three plot points (reveals). Aside from the fact that this advice is just plain wrong, it will give you a lousy plot with no chance of competing in the real world of professional screenwriting. The average hit film in Hollywood today has seven to ten major reveals. Some kinds of stories, including detective stories and thrillers, have even more. The sooner you abandon three-act structure and learn the techniques of advanced plotting, the better off you will be.
Casablanca
■ Revelation Ilsa shows up at Rick's bar later that night. ■ Decision Rick decides to hurt her as deeply as he can. ■ Changed Desire Until Ilsa arrived, Rick simply wanted to run his bar, make money, and be left alone. Now he wants her to feel as much pain as he feels. ■ Changed Motive She deserves it for breaking his heart in Paris.
Tootsie
■ Revelation Michael realizes he has real power when "Dorothy" acts like a bitch at the soap opera audition and gives Ron, the director, a piece of her mind.
■ Decision Michael, as Dorothy, decides to behave like a no-nonsense, powerful woman.
■ Changed Desire No change. Michael still wants the job.
■ Changed Motive Now he sees how to have the job on his terms
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TWENTY-TWO STEPS TECHNIQUE: ADDED REVELATIONS
The more revelations you have, the richer and more complex the plot. Every time your hero or audience gains new information, that's a revelation.
KEY POINT: The revelation should be important enough to cause your hero to make a decision and change his course of action.
Tootsie
■ Revelation Michael realizes he is attracted to Julie, one of the actresses on the show.
■ Decision Michael decides to become friends with Julie.
■ Changed Desire Michael wants Julie.
■ Changed Motive He is falling in love with her.
10. Plan
The plan is the set of guidelines and strategies the hero will use to overcome his opponent and reach the goal.
KEY POINT: Beware of having your hero simply play out the plan. This gives you a predictable plot and a superficial hero. In good stories, the hero's initial plan almost always fails. The opponent is too strong at this point in the story. The hero needs to dig deep and come up with a better strategy, one that takes into account the power and weapons at the opponent's disposal.
Casablanca
Rick's initial plan to win Ilsa back is both arrogant and passive: he knows she will come to him, and he tells her so. His main plan, which he figures
out relatively late in the story, is to use Ugarte's exit visas to help Ilsa and Laszlo escape the Nazis. The advantage of having such a late plan is that the plot twists (reveals) near the end are rapid and breathtaking.
Tootsie
Michael's plan is to maintain his disguise as a woman while convincing Julie she should free herself from her boyfriend, Ron. He also has to fend off the advances of Les and John without their finding out that Dorothy is a man. And he must deceive Sandy about his interest in her and his role on the soap opera.
PLOT TECHNIQUE: TRAINING
Most heroes are already trained to do what they must do to succeed in the story. Their failure in the early part of the plot comes because they have not looked within and confronted their weaknesses.
But training is an important part of certain genres, and in these stories, it is often the most popular part of the plot. Training is most common in sports stories, war stories (including the suicide mission, as in The Dirty Dozen), and caper stories (usually involving a heist, as in Ocean's Eleven). If you include training in your story, it will probably come right after the plan and before the main action and conflict lines kick in.
