by The Anatomy of Story- 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (mobi)
In more modern stories, the visit to death is psychological. The hero has a sudden realization of his own mortality; life is finite, and it could end very soon. You might think that this realization would cause him to flee the conflict, since it could cause his death. Instead, it spurs him to light. The hero reasons, "If my life is to have meaning, I must take a stand for what I believe in. I will take that stand here and now." Thus the visit to death is a testing point that often triggers the battle.
The gate, gauntlet, and visit to death is the most movable of the twenty-two steps and is often found in other parts of the plot. For example, the hero may visit death during the apparent defeat. He may pass through the gauntlet during the final battle, as in the trench fight in Star Wars or the tower in Vertigo. Or he may pass through it after the battle, as Terry Malloy does at the end of On the Waterfront.
Casablanca
This step occurs during Rick's efforts to reach the airport with Ilsa, Laszlo, and Renault and Major Strasser's attempt to catch up with them.
Tootsie
Michael experiences a gauntlet of escalating nightmares when he must baby-sit Julie's screaming infant, Amy; deal with Julie's rejection when he tries to kiss her; dance with Les, who has fallen in love with Dorothy; get rid of John, the soap opera actor who also wants Dorothy; and refute Sandy's accusations when he gives her the candy Les gave him.
19. Battle
The battle is the final conflict. It determines who, if anyone, wins the goal. A big, violent conflict, though common, is the least interesting form of battle. A violent battle has lots of fireworks but not much meaning. The battle should give the audience the clearest expression of what the two sides are fighting for. The emphasis should not be on which is the superior force but which ideas or values win out.
The battle is the funnel point of the story. Everything converges here. It brings together all the characters and the various lines of action. It occurs in the smallest space possible, which heightens the sense of conflict and unbearable pressure.
The battle is where the hero usually (but not always) fulfills his need and gains his desire. This is also where he is most like his main opponent. But in that similarity the crucial differences between them become even clearer.
Finally, the battle is where the theme first explodes in the minds of the audience. In the conflict of values, the audience sees clearly for the first time which way of acting and living is best.
Casablanca
At the airport, Rick holds a gun on Renault and tells Ilsa she must leave with Laszlo. Rick tells Laszlo that Ilsa has been faithful. Laszlo and Ilsa get on the plane. Major Strasser arrives and tries to stop the plane, but Rick shoots him.
Tootsie
During a live broadcast of the soap opera, Michael improvises a complicated plot to explain that his character is actually a man and then pulls off his disguise. This simultaneously shocks the audience and the other people on the show. When he's finished, Julie slugs him and leaves.
The final conflict between Michael and Julie is fairly mild (Julie's punch). The big conflict has been replaced with a big reveal whereby Michael strips off his disguise in front of cast, crew, and a national viewing audience.
One of the brilliant touches of this script is that the complex plot that Michael improvises for his character tracks the same process of female liberation that he has undergone by playing a woman.
20. Self-Revelation
By going through the crucible of battle, the hero usually undergoes change. For the first time, he learns who he really is. He tears aside the facade he has lived behind and sees, in a shocking way, his true self. Facing the truth about himself either destroys him—as in Oedipus the King, Vertigo, and The Conversation—or makes him stronger.
If the self-revelation is moral as well as psychological, the hero also learns the proper way to act toward others. A great self-revelation should be sudden, for better dramatic effect; shattering for the hero, whether the self-revelation is positive or negative; and new—it must be something the hero did not know about himself until that moment.
Much of the quality of your story is based on the quality of the self-revelation. Everything leads to this point. You must make it work. There are two pitfalls to making it work that you should be aware of:
1. Make sure that what the hero learns about himself is truly meaningful, not just fine-sounding words or platitudes about life.
2. Don't have the hero state directly to the audience what he has learned. That is a mark of bad writing. (Chapter 10, "Scene Construction and Symphonic Dialogue," explains how to use dialogue to express the self-revelation without preaching.)
PLOT TECHNIQUE: DOUBLE REVERSAL
You may want to use the technique of the double reversal at the self-revelation step. In this technique, you give a self-revelation to the opponent as well as to the hero. Each learns from the other, and the audience sees two insights about how to act and live in the world instead of one.
Here's how you create a double reversal:
1. Give both the hero and the main opponent a weakness and a need.
2. Make the opponent human. That means, among other things, that he must be capable of learning and changing.
3. During or just after the battle, give the opponent as well as the hero a self-revelation.
4. Connect the two self-revelations. The hero should learn something from the opponent, and the opponent should learn something from the hero.
5. Your moral vision as the author is the best of what both characters learn.
Casablanca
■ Psychological Self-Revelation Rick regains his idealism and a clear sense of who he really is.
■ Moral Self-Revelation Rick realizes that he must sacrifice to save Ilsa and Laszlo and that he must rejoin the fight for freedom.
■ Revelation and Double Reversal Renault announces he's become a patriot too and will join Rick on the new path.
Tootsie
■ Psychological Self-Revelation Michael realizes he's never really loved because he doesn't look beyond a woman's physical attributes.
■ Moral Self-Revelation He sees how his own arrogance and disdain for women has hurt himself and the women he has known. He tells Julie he learned more about being a man by living as a woman than he ever learned by living as a man.
21. Moral Decision
Once the hero learns the proper way to act in the self-revelation, he must make a decision. The moral decision is the moment when he chooses between two courses of action, each of which stands for a set of values and a way of living that affects others.
The moral decision is the proof of what the hero has learned in the self-revelation. By taking this action, the hero shows the audience what he has become.
Casablanca
Rick gives Laszlo the letters, makes Ilsa leave with him, and tells Laszlo that Ilsa loves him. He then heads off to risk his life as a freedom fighter.
TootsIE
Michael sacrifices his job and apologizes to Julie and Les for lying.
PLOT TECHNIQUE: THEMATIC REVELATION
In Chapter 5, "Moral Argument," I talked about the thematic revelation as a revelation gained not by the hero but by the audience. The audience sees how people in general should act and live in the world. This allows the story to grow beyond the bounds of these particular characters to af-fect the audience in their own lives.
Many writers shy away from this advanced technique because they don't want to sound preachy in their final moment with the audience. But done properly, the thematic revelation can be stunning.
KEY POINT: The trick is in how you draw the abstract and the general from the real and the specific of your characters. Try to find a particular gesture or action that can have symbolic impact on the audience.
Places in the Heart
(by Robert Benton, 1984) An example of a brilliant thematic revelation is found at the end of Places in the Heart, the story of a woman, played by Sally Field, in the American Midwest
of the 1930s whose sheriff husband is accidentally killed by a drunken black boy. Klansmen lynch the boy and later drive out a black man who's been helping the widow farm her land. In a subplot, a man has an affair with his wife's best friend.
The movie's final scene takes place in a church. As the preacher speaks of the power of love, the adulterer's wife takes his hand for the first time since his affair almost destroyed their marriage, and he feels the overwhelming power of forgiveness. The communion plate is passed down one row after another. As each person drinks the wine, he says, "Peace of God." Every character we've seen in the story drinks the wine of communion. And slowly, an amazing thematic revelation comes to the audience. The banker, who was one of the hero's opponents, drinks. The black man who was driven off—and has long since left the story—also drinks. The
Sally Field character drinks. Sitting beside her is her dead husband, and he drinks. And beside him, the black boy who killed him and died because of it drinks too. "Peace of God."
From a realistic depiction of the characters in this story, the scene gradually evolves into a moment of universal forgiveness that the audience shares. The impact is profound. Don't avoid this magnificent technique for fear that you may sound pretentious. Take a chance. Do it right. Tell a great story.
22. New Equilibrium
Once the desire and need have been fulfilled (or tragically left unfulfilled), everything goes back to normal. But there is one big difference. Because of his self-revelation, the hero is now at either a higher or a lower level.
Casablanca
Rick has regained his idealism and sacrificed his own love for the sake of someone else's freedom and a higher cause.
Tootsie
Michael has learned to be honest and less selfish about himself and his career. By telling the truth, he is able to reconcile with Julie and begin a real romance.
The twenty-two steps comprise a powerful tool that gives you an almost limitless ability to create a detailed, organic plot. Use it. But realize that it is a tool that requires much practice to master. So apply it to everything you write and everything you read. As you apply it, keep two points in mind:
1. Be flexible. The twenty-two steps are not fixed in their order. They are not a formula by which you whip your story into conformity. This is the general order by which humans try to solve life problems. But every problem and every story is different. Use the twenty-two steps as a framework for the organic unfolding of your unique characters solving their specific problems.
2. Beware of breaking the order. This second caution is the opposite of the first, and again, it's based on the fact that these steps are how
humans solve life problems. The twenty-two steps represent an organic order, the development of a single unit. So if you try to change the order too drastically in an effort to be original or surprising, you risk a story that seems fake or contrived.
Good writers know that revelations are the key to plot. That's why it's so important that you take some time to separate the reveals from the rest of the plot and look at them as one unit. Tracking the revelations sequence is one of the most valuable of all storytelling techniques.
The key to the revelations sequence is to see if the sequence builds properly.
1. The sequence of revelations must be logical. They must occur in the order in which the hero would most likely learn of them.
2. They must build in intensity. Ideally, each reveal should be stronger than the one that came before it. This is not always possible, especially in longer stories (for one thing, it defies logic). But you want a general buildup so that the drama increases.
3. The reveals must come at an increasing pace. This also heightens the drama because the audience gets hit with a greater density of surprise.
The most powerful of all reveals is known as a reversal. This is a reveal in which the audience's understanding of everything in the story is turned on its head. They suddenly see every element of the plot in a new light. All reality changes in an instant.
A reversal reveal is most common, not surprisingly, in detective stories and thrillers. In The Sixth Sense, the reversal reveal comes when the audience discovers that the Bruce Willis character has been dead for most of the movie. In The Usual Suspects, the reversal reveal comes when the audience discovers that the meek Verbal has been making up the entire story and that he is the terrifying opponent, Keyser Soze.
Notice that in both of these movies, the big reversal reveal comes right
at the end of the story. This has the advantage of sending the audience out of the theater with a knockout punch. It's the biggest reason these movies were huge hits.
But you must be careful with this technique. It can reduce the story to a mere vehicle for plot, and very few stories can support such domination by the plot. O. Henry gained great fame using the reversal technique in his short stories (such as "The Gift of the Magi"), but they were also criticized for being forced, gimmicky, and mechanical.
Let's look at the revelations sequences in some stories besides Casablanca and Tootsie.
Alien
(story by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, 1979)
■ Revelation 1 The crew realizes that the Alien is using the air vents to move through the ship.
■ Decision They decide to flush the Alien toward the airlock and vent it into space.
■ Changed Desire Ripley and the others want to kill the Alien.
■ Changed Motive They must kill the Alien or die.
■ Revelation 2 Ripley learns from the computer, MOTHER, that the crew is expendable in the name of science.
■ Decision Ripley decides to challenge Ash's actions.
■ Changed Desire She wants to know why this was hidden from the crew.
■ Changed Motive She suspects that Ash is not on the crew's side.
■ Revelation 3 Ripley discovers that Ash is a robot that will kill her if necessary to protect the Alien.
■ Decision Ripley, with Parker's aid, attacks and destroys Ash.
■ Changed Desire She wants to stop the traitor among them and get off the spaceship.
■ Obsessive Drive She will oppose and destroy anything and anyone who aids the Alien.
■ Changed Motive Her motive remains self-preservation.
■ Revelation 4 After his robot head is revived, Ash tells Ripley that the Alien is a perfect organism, an amoral killing machine.
■ Decision Ripley orders Parker and Lambert to prepare for immediate evacuation and the destruction of the spaceship.
■ Changed Desire Ripley still wants to kill the Alien, but it now means destroying the ship.
■ Changed Motive Unchanged.
■ Audience Revelation The Alien remains an unknown, terrifying force throughout. So the audience learns things at generally the same time as Ripley and the crew, depriving them of a sense of superiority over the characters and increasing their fear.
■ Revelation 5 Ripley discovers that the Alien has cut her off from the shuttle pod.
■ Decision She races back to abort the self-destruct sequence, ■ Changed Desire Ripley doesn't want to blow up with the ship.
■ Changed Motive Unchanged.
■ Revelation 6 Ripley discovers that the Alien is hiding on the shuttle. ■ Decision She gets into a spacesuit and opens the shuttle to the
vacuum of space.
■ Changed Desire Ripley still wants to kill the Alien.
■ Changed Motive Unchanged.
Notice that the final revelation is the classic horror one: the place you escape to is actually the deadliest place of all.
Basic Instinct
(by Joe Eszterhas, 1992)
■ Revelation 1 Nick discovers that a professor was killed while Catherine was attending school at Berkeley.
■ Decision Nick decides to follow Catherine.
■ Changed Desire Nick wants to solve the murder and bring Catherine down off her throne.
■ Changed Motive Ni
ck and the police thought Catherine had been cleared but now think otherwise.
■ Revelation 2 Nick finds out that Catherine's friend Hazel is a murderer and that Catherine knew the professor who was killed.
■ Decision He decides to continue following Catherine.
■ Changed Desire Unchanged.
■ Changed Motive Unchanged.
■ Revelation 3 Nick finds out that Catherine's parents died in an explosion.
■ Decision He decides that Catherine is the killer and goes after her.
■ Changed Desire Unchanged.
■ Obsessive Drive He will beat this brilliant killer if it's the last thing he does (and it may well be),
■ Changed Motive Unchanged.
■ Revelation 4 Nick's fellow cop, Gus, tells him that an internal affairs cop named Nilsen died with a large sum of money in the bank, as if someone had paid him off.
■ Decision Nick makes no clear decision based on this information, but he does decide to uncover the source of this money.
■ Changed Desire Nick wants to find out why Nilsen had all this money.
■ Changed Motive Unchanged.
■ Revelation 5 Nick discovers that his ex-girlfriend, Beth, changed her name, that Nilsen had her file, and that Beth's husband was killed in a drive-by shooting.
■ Decision Nick decides to try to prove that Beth is the real killer.
■ Changed Desire He wants to know if Beth is committing these murders and pinning the blame on Catherine.
■ Changed Motive He still wants to solve the murder.
■ Revelation 6 Gus tells Nick that Beth was Catherine's college roommate and lover.
■ Decision Nick decides to go with Gus to confront Beth.
■ Changed Desire Nick still wants to solve the murders, but now he's certain Beth is the killer.
■ Changed Motive Unchanged.
Notice with the detective thriller, the revelations get bigger and closer lo home.
"Theme of the Traitor and the Hero"
(by Jorge Luis Borges, 1956) Borges is a rare example of a writer who has great reveals, even in very short stories, but they don't dominate the story at the expense of character, symbol, story world, or theme. Inherent to Borges's philosophy as a writer is an emphasis on learning or exploring as a way out of a labyrinth that is both personal and cosmic. As a result, his revelations have tremendous thematic power.
