Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble For... (13 page)

Having established a problem, anything that is NOT will have to be carefully weighed in each of these concepts. If a story point doesn't directly relate to the spine, out it goes!

And if you can't find the problem, try harder! In truth we, the audience, don't care what you pick. The hero's deficit doesn't matter as long as you set it up and show the problem evolve through the movie. This is why I'm so cavalier when I read your script. I know that as an audience what I'm really looking for is not your brilliant imagery, but a character with a problem, who changes. Together we'll find it; we just have to look.

I have a wonderful little motto that I use with writers:
Force it
. You can apply this to any screenwriting dilemma, for it forces you to make changes you may not think you need. If you don't feel like figuring it out, or have no idea, make it up! This is the joy of “forcing it” — and it works.

I also have another great troubleshooting slogan I'll introduce at this point. It's something I like to call
Here's the bad way to do this
. Like the beautiful simplicity of “force it,” this lets us recalcitrant writers off the hook. Can't come up with a problem for the hero of your movie? Say: “Here's the bad way to do this” and proceed to tell us something dumb.

It takes the pressure off.

And it very often is not only
not
dumb, it's the solution.

How does the hero begin this movie and how does he end up?
This is the third question I always pose when dealing with story scoliosis, especially when I am not seeing the hero change. I've suggested you know who the hero is, and also tell us his problem. And make sure that problem is huge! But I need to know more.

Most stories are about an underdog, and establishing the world he lives in is part of explaining why he's the way he is. The hero is an underdog because he has defects of character that cause him to be so, fear mostly — and any number of behaviors masquerading as fear. But his “world” is also deficient. It's a world where they pray to the sun every day, and when the sun rises, all hail the king who organized this ritual. Only we the audience, and our hero, suspect the king is a sham. By story's end, the hero's life must be turned upside-down. It's not enough for him to win; he must expose the king — and transform the kingdom! — to truly succeed.

Stacking the deck against the hero at the start of your story is part of what I call “snipping the ends.” How does your hero start this tale, and how does he end it? That start and finish had better be extremes. We set up his home life, work life, and play life; these are all part of his world. But by the end, these aspects must be wholly new. When figuring out where the story begins and where it ends, change is your guide.

To show what I mean, and to let those who believe I'm only talking about “formula” movies — that you think Hollywood squeezes out like so much Play-Doh — let's look at three Academy Award®-nominated screenplays for 2007. Each of these screenplays has picture-perfect opening and closing images that are the right ones because the writer has properly snipped the ends of the story:

►
The Savages
– Laura Linney begins this movie repressed sexually and professionally, and belittled by dominating brother, Philip Seymour Hoffman. By the end she's a successful playwright and has dumped her bald, overbearing lover in favor of… his dog.

►
Michael Clayton
– George Clooney is on the run from his law firm, uncertain of his life or character, and broke. By the end he's left the firm, turned the tables on them, and is parleying a million-dollar settlement with “Company Man” Tilda Swinton.

►
Lars and the Real Girl
– Ryan Gosling starts bereft, due to his mother's death, and alone. By the end, he's made peace with his mom at her gravesite — and found the “real girl” who loves him.

In each of these stories we ask: “What happened?” What caused this remarkable, life-altering change? It begins with picking the Alpha-Omega, the snapshot of the world before this movie began… and after. If you don't have that, or can't answer the question yet, or aren't
forcing
these changes to occur in your story…

Do.

Just to pile it on while I've got your attention, let's talk about goals: yours and your hero's.
What is your hero's goal?
is the fourth question I ask writers. And again, when I do, it's because it's missing from your story — or not apparent.

Every hero in every good story has to demonstrate a burning desire to do something and be proactive about it throughout. In addition, that hero has a lesson to learn, a change to experience that is the subterranean story, and in truth the real reason for the tale. In most writing classes, you'll hear this described as the “wants and needs” of the hero. A baseball star
wants
to win the big game; what he
needs
is a lesson in teamwork. But to me, it's more than that, and these two types of goals touch on a more important aspect of storytelling: the reason we do this job!

I prefer to think of “wants and needs” as
the tangible and the spiritual
. Both the “tangible” (wants) and the “spiritual” (needs) are important and must be shown in your hero's story — and I want to know both, even with the very briefest of pitches. That's because these two very distinct goals work together and have to be tracked throughout. One without the other is an empty experience, and so we must knit hard to weave them together.

“What is the hero's actual goal?” “What concrete thing is he after?” is usually what I ask when the tangible isn't clear. I cite the Little League trophy Walther Matthau chases in
The Bad News Bears
(1976), the job promotion Mel Gibson seeks in
What Women Want
, the missing soldier Tom Hanks searches for in
Saving Private Ryan
.

And btw, the hero has to pursue these things with vigor.

The goal has to be tangible because if you tell me that your hero wants “peace on earth” or “to make the world a better place,” I will ask you: When does he know he can stop? To be a “tangible” goal, it has to be something you can actually quantify, a thing, something we can know for sure when he's won or lost. If that isn't the case, you are blurring the goals.

Because the point of the story involves more.

The “spiritual” goal is why we're really going on this trip. Just like in life, you may want all kinds of things — a better job, a bigger house, the right mate, admittance to the cool clubs — but what we're looking for is much deeper. What we seek is a spiritual connection, the sense of something important happening in our lives, the proof that whether we get what we want or not, there is a point to being here. And whether yours is a silly comedy, big action piece, slasher flick, or musical, the invisible underpinning of why we go along on your trip must be known by you and constantly reinforced throughout your story.

It's all about showing a hero with twin goals — seen and unseen, concrete and invisible, actively sought and conferred.

Take
Maria Full of Grace
, a wonderful Indie I dissect in my second book, about a pregnant girl in a small South American town who takes on a dangerous mission by becoming a drug mule. Like the hero of the movie I cite at the start of this chapter,
The Wages of Fear
, Maria is stuck in a South American town, facing a lifeless future. Both movies begin their protagonist's journey all the way back behind the eight ball of life. In both cases, the tangible goal of each character is palpable: to earn the money to get out! It's why each decides to risk his or her life.

Yet beneath the tangible goal that drives the plot is a spiritual one that's the real story. In
Maria Full of Grace
, to change her world, Maria thinks she has to leave it. In fact, she just has to see the world in a different way. By movie's end, the money she risked all to earn has been lost; she's adrift in America, homeless, friendless, back to square one. The difference is: She's proud. And happy! The
tangible goal she thought she really wanted has been replaced by something divine. Love, hope, friendship, gratitude, new ways of thinking — and, yes, grace — are divine. And like the problem that is solved in all good stories, in Maria's case… the solution is the last thing she expected!

When I ask about the tangible and spiritual goals of your hero, that's what I mean. On the surface, what actual goal is driving your hero? And below the surface, at the hidden level that is your real story, what does your hero need? And get?

Here is an easy way to remember these two threads that must intertwine within every well-structured tale:

► The “tangible” – is the A Story, the concrete goal driving your hero at every given point along the way; it is “the plot.”

► The “spiritual” – is the B Story, the below-the-surface tale that is the “lesson” your hero will learn and “the theme.”

Isn't this stuff about as cool as it gets?

What we are talking about here, keep in mind, is making, and keeping, the spine of your story straight throughout.

And the solution is like clear mountain spring water.

Once we see it.

We need a hero who starts
waaaay
back at the beginning, and is pocked with problems. He is at a loss, in fear, pushed down, held back, and may not even know it! His is a world, in fact, that in every part of his life — at work, at home, and at play — looks at him like he's from Mars. And in his own way, he is. His is a backstory with all manner of Achilles heels, assorted recurring nightmares he can't quite shake, defects of character that stop him from enjoying life to its fullest — and whether he is Donald Trump rolling in the dough-ray-me, or a homeless bum on the skids, he reminds us of someone we know very well: ourselves.

And, like him, we know
somethin's
gotta give… and soon.

Once he is sent off on his mission (this very cool little pitch you've come up with), we have armed him with such a tangible goal, and such a driving desire to get to the end, he can't help but keep moving — and we can't help but hope he makes it. He's the detective on the case, the soldier on the march, the girl who burns to find true love. And by the end, when they reach their last beat, they have been so awakened to the real meaning of the trip, they dare to do something so breathtakingly new, that the world they left, or came back to, will be changed forever, as in upside-down.

And we say:
mama!

What a ride.

That's all we're looking for. That's how to straighten your spine! And don't be confused by the hundreds of movies you see that don't have this, that get away with murder at the Cineplex.

I know I can't be the only one who's noticed!

I'm the guy who sits in lots of movies and when my date and I leave, I say: “Nothing happened.” “What are you talking about?” she says. “Didn't you see all those special effects, those car chases, those hilarious jokes?” Yes, I did. What I didn't catch was a story. What I missed was a hero with a problem who in the course of this movie extravaganza learns something and changes.

And so it is not surprising that the movie we all rushed to see in the first week — due to the great special effects and the funny trailer moments and all the other “stuff” — drops off the radar in the second week. Box office falls 50 or 60 or even 70% and everyone wonders why. It's because what the movie gave audiences was only so much fluff. There was lots of stuff happening, when actually nothing happened at all. And all the movie had to give me was just a tiny bit of a story, something I can use in my life here on Earth. They need to show me a guy with a problem who changes and grows for the journey.

I need that.

And so do you.

Which leads me to the fifth and final question I ask a struggling, spine-scoliosied writer who (picture Igor:
Yeth, Math-ter!
) comes to me wondering why his screenplay is crooked:

What's it about?

The good news is: By answering this question, you will know everything about your movie. It's the theme of your film, and we know how important theme is.

The bad news is: You may not know what it is until the end!

Here's a story…

As part of my duties in
Cat!
dom, I gave a speech to the talented writers and artists at a major studio's animation division. It was maybe the highlight of my career. Having been a writer with an office on that lot, to return “home” was one of the great moments of my life. Later, I listened while a group of 40 animators went over a project they were working on, and were, by their own admission, stuck. The session was designed to un-stick them.

The problem was, they not only didn't know what the ending was, they couldn't settle on the Midpoint, or how it segued into Act Three. Versed in
Save the Cat!
(many of the animators have both
Cats!
by their work stands —
Yes!
), we batted around “All Is Lost” and the “Dark Night of the Soul” but couldn't get a handle on any of it, until I asked what seemed an obvious question:

What's it about?

At which point everyone jumped in
en masse
and said they had five different takes, and five different ways to go, and we all realized that's why they had no ending — they had no theme! Without knowing why they were telling the story, they could not find what it meant to have one ending or another, one lesson or another, one direction or another. Without knowing “What's it about?” they had no compass. And without one, they were lost.