Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble For... (10 page)

“Stakes raised,” “time clocks” forcing his decision, the hero must decide. What's it gonna be, pal: butterfly or worm?

The Midpoint is where the hero stands up and says: Yes, I'm going through with this. Whether by dumb luck, determination, or pressure from the “Bad Guys,” he must keep going forward.

And speaking of Bad Guys, this is where they start to “close in” — and there's a good reason for that, too. Part of the risk of declaring one's self a hero is that it attracts the attention of those who most want to stop us from growing, changing, and winning. The Bad Guy/Good Guy intersection at Midpoint is key to upping the stakes of that conflict. The Midpoint is the place where “the Bad Guy learns who his rival is,” as Alan Rickman does when he first meets Bruce Willis and his cowboy persona at the false victory Midpoint of
Die Hard
; it's where the secret power or flaw of a hero, or his role in besting the Bad Guy, is discovered, as in
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
when Jim Carrey's rival for Kate Winslet's affections (Elijah Wood), learns he's getting competition from Jim…
still
; it's also where, if the hero is hiding, or his location is unknown, “the Bad Guy learns the hero's whereabouts.” We see this when the chasers in
Witness
realize Harrison Ford is hiding in buttermilk country, and
when Peter Coyote and his gang of key-jinglers discover E.T. is secreted somewhere in suburbia.

The Magical Midpoint has all these characteristics, but like a writer brilliantly pointed out in my workshop one weekend, it's not all
on
page 55! These beats are spread out, often over several scenes mid-way. To quote Gene Wilder in the dart-throwing scene of
Young Frankenstein
: “Nice… grouping!”

Having crossed the “point of no return” at Midpoint, a hero of a story begins the most difficult phase of his transformation.

And this is true for the writer of the tale as well.

Remember change is painful. Midpoint is not only the end of the Fun and Games and the glimpse of what a hero can be, it's the knowledge that he has to change. Whether a false victory or a false defeat, the lesson's not over. That's why the hero starts to fight it from here until All Is Lost.
I don't wanna go!
you can almost hear him cry. But like it or not, he's going!

And you as the writer have to go with him.

Part of the reason this section is so difficult to figure out is it's about stuff happening
to
the hero — that will lead to the ultimate when he “dies” on page 75. As writers we like our heroes to be proactive, leading the charge, always in control.

But this is the part where what the hero once believed was real, solid ground, is crumbling away, forcing him to react.

After the false victory beat in
Alien
when the monster attached to John Hurt's face drops off and “dies,” Sigourney Weaver and the crew of the
Nostromo
prepare to go back to Earth.

Hey! Let's have a party!

But once that creature splatters John's stomach all over the dinner table and skates off squealing into the darkness, the disintegration of Sigourney's world begins in earnest. Not only do her fellow crew members start getting eaten right and left, it's slowly dawning on Sigourney that her belief in the company is false… and the rules she thought would keep her safe, won't.

And that's unthinkable.

So she resists. And resists. And resists.

Until it becomes painfully obvious at All Is Lost.

That's
Bad Guys Close In. Externally, aliens are actually attacking. Internally, we are still clinging to our old beliefs.

And one by one they are being exposed as false.

Resistance is not as easy to write as proactive, leading-the-charge, directioned activity that heroes normally exhibit.

How do you reveal the internal fear of a hero, for whom it's gradually being revealed her old beliefs are wrong? How do you show panic — which most heroes are trying
not
to show?

That's why BGCI is so tough to write!

But if you know that's the purpose of that section, it's at least easier to think about, plan, and aim for in your writing. This is disintegration of the old ways, the slow sloughing off of ideas, beliefs, and friendships that are wrong, useless, harmful. The horrible realization that the keyhole is near and you're going through it and there's no escape. We… are… going!

And that realization begins at the Magical Midpoint.

Why are there so many scenes at Midpoint that involve the “hero kissing a girl,” you may well ask? It's because another intersection that happens here at Midpoint is the
A and B Story cross
. And since many writers have asked for more on this, there's no time like the present for further elucidat'n’.

Midpoint is not only where we “raise the stakes” of the hero's A Story, but where we do the same for the B Story. And that's why the boy and girl so often kiss here — or at least come close. I told this “discovery” to an old-time screenwriter once, thinking myself quite brilliant for having figured this out all by myself, only to be told by him: “Oh yeah!‘Sex at Sixty’!” That was the term he and his screenwriting buddies used for the “kiss at the first hour.” It just goes to show that where the basics of storytelling are concerned, nothing changes.

As suggested, most movies have two intertwining skeins:

The A Story is the hero's tangible goal, what he wants.

The B Story is the hero's spiritual goal, what he needs.

The A Story is what is happening on the surface. It's the plot. The B Story, or what I call the “helper story,” helps push the hero to learn the spiritual lesson that every story is really all about. Most often the B Story is “the love interest” aka “the girl.” The hero enters the upside-down version of the world of Act Two, looks across a crowded room, and there she is — the person who'll help him on his way to transformation, and hold his hand as he dies and is reborn! And, of course, because she can't be with him when they meet (otherwise where'd we have to go?), the process of boy wins girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back in a poker game, is seen time and again in a thousand forms.

“The girl” can also be “the mentor.” Check out the B Story of the hit comedy
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
. Who's the B Story? Who's the “helper” character that will push hero Vince Vaughn to learn his lesson in leadership? Why it's Rip Torn, as down-and-out ex-dodgeball champ, Patches O'Houlihan! Proof comes when seeing how the B Story beats of that movie line up. We first meet Patches on page 30, when Vince and his team see an old dodgeball instructional film starring the younger Patches (Hank Azaria). At Midpoint, the stakes are raised, and A and B cross, when an older Patches arrives in the flesh and — publicly — tells Vince that he is now the team's coach. Since all mentors go to page 75 to die, Patches does too, giving Vince pause before pushing him to action in Act Three, where Patches even reappears —
en spirito
— to give Vince the ghostly final shove he needs to go on to dodgeball greatness. Rudimentary? Yes. Silly? Of course!

And yet this basic construct appears again and again.

Whether the B Story is one person like a love interest, mentor, or sidekick, or a group such as the host of helpers the heroes learn
from in the Act Two worlds of
Legally Blonde
,
Miss Congeniality
, and
Gladiator
, these B Story pulse points denote the function of forcing the hero to learn his real lesson.

And all of it ties back into Theme!

Keep in mind the only reason for storytelling and why A and B must cross throughout: It's to show the true reason for the journey is not getting the tangible goal, but learning the spiritual lesson that can only be found through the B Story!

The Theme Stated moment on page 5 of a well-structured screenplay ties in to the lesson the hero will learn. This is the place, up front, when you as writer get to say what this movie is about — and it might take a few drafts to enunciate precisely. A clue for finding it is seeing how the B Story “helps” the hero learn the lesson. When you do figure it out, state the lesson up front, tie it to the B Story's introduction on page 30, the raising of the stakes at Midpoint, the
moment of clarity
that helps the hero realize his error in Dark Night of the Soul, and the final push into Act Three the hero needs to learn his lesson — and triumph.

The various sections of the Transformation Machine are each different. They serve a different need, have a different tone, and yet all point to the same goal:
change
. They also help troubleshoot our brilliant ideas that don't quite fit, or that we don't quite know what to do with — and even help with the problem of selling our scripts. The Fun and Games is a great example of this.

“Fun and Games” is my term, and indicates, I hope, where the “promise of the premise” of a movie is found. It's the part where the hero first enters and explores the Antithesis world — and it's “fun” to the extent that we are not as concerned with plot as we are with seeing what this new world is about. But this term has also led to confusion. What's “fun” about the series of bodies found in this section of many murder mysteries and slasher flicks? What's “fun” about Russell Crowe in
Gladiator
being given up for dead and
learning the ropes of
Spartacus
-like combat? While not every Fun and Games section is purely fun, it does offer us a cool way to troubleshoot the problem of figuring out what the poster of your movie is, if you don't know. Why?

Because the Fun and Games is your pitch!

I can't tell you the a-ha! moment that occurred for me when this fact hit me. I was trying to help a writer get her adventure going.
It's like
Miss Congeniality,
I was telling her, by the time you hit page
25, the story is on! Tomboy FBI agent, Sandra Bullock, is undercover…
Then a lightbulb. I saw Sandra in her gown, crown, and sash, a gun in her garter. That's the Fun and Games of
Miss Congeniality
.

It's the poster!

It's the concept!

To me, a guy very concerned with delivering on his premise, I thought that was enough to worry about. But knowing this new twist, I can also reverse engineer both what goes into Fun and Games and how to double-check to make sure it's my movie's crux.

This is an important a-ha! because when you're trying to figure out what your story is, you will pitch all kinds of things: Setting, Theme, Catalyst, even the Finale of your tale.

I've heard them all. And they're all
not
your movie.

No, the movie is not where it's set. It's not its “meaning.” It's not how the hero is “called to action.” And it's not the big slam-bang Finale — even though all these are vital.

It's the Fun and Games.

That's your movie.

And if your Fun and Games section isn't solid, or isn't delivering on your premise, now's the time to find out.

Looking at the map on page 47, and seeing all the pieces of this flow chart, helps us see other points of interest, too, ones which, while I stood at the whiteboard, led to similar a-ha! moments.

One really interesting point of comparison is the similarity between two sections: “
Catalyst – Debate – Break into Two
” and “
All Is Lost – Dark Night of the Soul – Break into 3
.”

Just look at how these sets of plot points line up:

–
Catalyst
and
All Is Lost
are both points where something is done to the hero. In Catalyst, it's innocent, an invitation, a telephone call, the discovery of news that starts the adventure. The All Is Lost is also done to the hero, but it's more serious: This is where he's evicted, fired, loses his significant other, or someone dies. It's a different tone, but the same function.

–
Debate
and
Dark Night of the Soul
also are alike. It's… hesitation. Having received an invitation or, later, when the stakes are more serious, and having experienced a death, jail, or exile… now what? Again, the difference is that early on the consequences are few; later, more serious. But the function is the same: Given a life-altering jolt, what will the hero do next?

–
Break into Two
and
Break into Three
is the response. Both are proactive moves on the part of the hero that take him to the next level. Having been hit with something, and thought about it, the hero now acts. Here again, the stakes are more serious later on because we are just about to face “the final test.”

And all these sections of your movie are designed to do what the entire Transformation Machine is set up to accomplish: Force change in the hero or heroes — and in us, the audience.

So are we done yet? Not quite.

When it comes to “structure dilemmas,” no part of a story can be more frustrating than Act Three — one about which I realize I am guilty of not revealing all. I have been amused by how often I get called out on point #14 in my 15-point Blake Snyder Beat Sheet — the one that is simply labeled “Finale.” “Well, thanks a pantload, Blake,” is the gist of the objection. And while I say the basis of this section is Synthesis, it doesn't seem quite enough. Where is the little red button that Tommy Lee Jones told Will Smith not to touch in
Men in Black
that
Save the Cat!
is known for? Because when you're
deep in it, and have tried every trick you can to solve the problem, I want you to not only have that button, but to push it!