The Anatomy of Story (11 page)

The buddy strategy allows you essentially to cut the hero into two parts, showing two different approaches to life and two sets of talents. These two characters are "married" into a team in such a way that the audience can see their differences but also see how these differences actually help them work well together, so that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

As in the love story, one of the buddies should be more central than the other. Usually it's the thinker, the schemer, or the strategist of the two, because this character comes up with the plan and starts them off on the desire line. The buddy is a kind of double of the hero, similar in important ways but also different.

Structurally, the buddy is both the first opponent and the first ally of the hero. He is not the second hero. Keep in mind that this first opposition between the two buddies is almost never serious or tragic. It usually takes the form of good-natured bickering.

Usually, you fill out the character web with at least one outside, dangerous, ongoing opponent. And because most buddy stories use a mythic journey, the buddies encounter a number of secondary opponents on the road. These characters are usually strangers to the buddies, and they are dispatched in quick succession. Each of these opponents should represent a negative aspect of the society that hates the buddies or wants to break them up. This technique is a great way of defining secondary characters quickly and distinguishing one from another. It also helps broaden and deepen the buddy form because you define various aspects of the society in relation to the two leads.

One of the most important elements of the buddy web has to do with the fundamental conflict between the friends. There is a snag in the relationship that keeps interfering. This allows an ongoing opposition between the two leads in a traveling story where most of the other opponents are strangers who quickly come and go.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

(by William Goldman, 1969)

■ Hero
Butch

■ Main Opponent
Sundance

■ Second Opponent
Railroad boss E. H. Harriman (who never appears) and his hired guns, the all-star posse, led by Joe Lafors

■ Third Opponent
Bolivian cops and army

■ Fake-Ally Opponent
Harvey, who challenges Butch's leadership of the gang

■ Ally
Etta, Sundance's girlfriend

■ Fake-Opponent Ally
Sheriff Ray

■ Subplot Character
None

CHARACTER TECHNIQUE: MULTIPLE HEROES AND NARRATIVE DRIVE

A
lthough all the popular genres have a single main character, there are some nongenre stories that have multiple heroes. You'll recall that in Chapter 1, we talked about how stories move, with the extreme opposites being linear action and simultaneous action. Having a number of heroes is the main way you create a sense of simultaneous story movement. Instead of tracking the development of a single character (linear), the story compares what many heroes are doing at about the same time. The risk is that you show so many characters at the same time that the story is no longer a story; it has no forward narrative drive. Even the most simultaneous story must have some linear quality, sequencing events in time, one after another.

To write a successful multihero story, you must put each main character through all seven steps—weakness and need, desire, opponent, plan, battle, self-revelation, and new equilibrium. Otherwise the character is

not a main character; the audience has not seen him move through the minimal stages of development.

Notice that having lots of heroes automatically reduces narrative drive. The more characters you must lay out in detail, the more you risk having your story literally come to a halt.

These are some of the techniques you can use to add narrative drive to a multihero story:

■ Have one character emerge over the course of the story as more central than the rest.

■ Give all the characters the same desire line.

■ Make the hero of one story line the opponent in another story line.

■ Connect the characters by making them all examples of a single subject or theme.

■ Use a cliffhanger at the end of one line to trigger a jump to another line.

■ Funnel the characters from many locations into one.

■ Reduce the time. For example, the story may take place over one day or one night.

■ Show the same holiday or group event at least three times over the course of the story to indicate forward drive and change.

■ Have characters occasionally meet by coincidence.

Examples of multihero stories that use one or more of these techniques are
American Graffiti, Hannah and Her Sisters, L.A. Confidential, Pulp Fiction, The Canterbury Tales, La Ronde, Nashville, Crash,
and
Smiles of a Summer Night.

CHARACTER TECHNIQUE: CUTTING EXTRANEOUS CHARACTERS

E
xtraneous characters are one of the primary causes of episodic, inorganic stories. The first question you must ask yourself when creating any character is "Does this character serve an important function in the overall story?" If he doesn't—if he only provides texture or color—you should consider cutting him entirely. His limited value probably won't justify the time he takes up in the story line.

CHARACTER, WEB BY ARCHETYPE

A second way that characters connect and contrast in a story is through archetype. Archetypes are fundamental psychological patterns within a person; they are roles a person may play in society, essential ways of interacting with others. Because they are basic to all human beings, they cross cultural boundaries and have universal appeal.

Using archetypes as a basis for your characters can give them the appearance of weight very quickly, because each type expresses a fundamental pattern that the audience recognizes, and this same pattern is reflected both within the character and through interaction in the larger society.

An archetype resonates deeply with an audience and creates very strong feelings in response. But it is a blunt tool in the writer's repertoire. Unless you give the archetype detail, it can become a stereotype.

KEY POINT: Always make the archetype specific and individual to your unique character.

Starting with the psychologist Carl Jung, many writers have spoken about what the different archetypes mean and how they connect. For fiction writers, probably the key concept of an archetype is the notion of a shadow. The shadow is the negative tendency of the archetype, a psychological trap that a person can fall into when playing that role or living out that psychology.

We need to translate each major archetype and its shadow into practical techniques that you can use in creating a story. This involves thinking of the various archetypes in terms of both the beneficial role and the probable weaknesses that each might have in a story.

King or Father

■ Strength
Leads his family or his people with wisdom, foresight, and

resolve so that they can succeed and grow.
■ Inherent Weaknesses
Can force his wife, children, or people to act according to a strict and oppressive set of rules, can remove himself

entirely from the emotional realm of his family and kingdom, or may insist that his family and people live solely for his pleasure and benefit.

■ Examples
King Arthur, Zeus,
The Tempest, The Godfather,
Rick in
Casablanca, King Lear, Hamlet,
Aragorn and Sauron in
The Lord of the Rings,
Agamemnon in the
Iliad, Citizen Kane, Star Wars,
Stanley in
A Streetcar Named Desire, American Beauty,
Willy Loman in
Death of a Salesman, Fort Apache, Meet Me in St. Louis, Mary Poppins, Tootsie, The Philadelphia Story, Othello, Red River, Howards End, Chinatown.

Queen or Mother

■ Strength
Provides the care and protective shell within which the child or the people can grow.

■ Inherent Weaknesses
Can be protective or controlling to the point of tyranny, or can use guilt and shame to hold the child close and guarantee her own comfort.

■ Examples
Hamlet, Macbeth,
Hera, Stella in
A Streetcar Named Desire, Elizabeth, American Beauty, The Lion in Winter, The Glass Menagerie, Long Day's Journey into Night,
and
Adam's Rib.

Wise Old Man, Wise Old Woman, Mentor, or Teacher

■ Strength
Passes on knowledge and wisdom so that people can live better lives and society can improve.

■ Inherent Weaknesses
Can force students to think a certain way or speak for the glory of himself rather than the glory of his ideas.

■ Examples
Yoda in
Star Wars.
Hannibal Lecter in
The Silence of the Lambs, The Matrix,
Gandalf and Saruman in
The Lord of the Rings, Wuthering Heights,
Polonius in
Hamlet,
Homais in
Madame Bovary,
Miss Havisham in
Great Expectations,
Mr. Macawber in
David Copperfield,
and the
Iliad.

Warrior

■ Strength
The practical enforcer of what is right.

■ Inherent Weaknesses
Can live according to the harsh motto of "kill

or be killed"; may believe that whatever is weak must be destroyed and so become the enforcer of what is wrong.

■ Examples Achilles and Hector in the
Iliad
; Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in
Star Wars\ Seven Samurai
; King Arthur; Thor; Ares; Theseus;

Gilgamesh
; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli in
The Lord of the Rings, Patton\ Die Hard
; Sonny in
The Godfather; A Streetcar Named Desire; The Great Santini\ Shane; Platoon
; Sundance in
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid\ The Terminator
; and
Aliens.

Magician or Shaman

■ Strength Can make visible the deeper reality behind the senses and can balance and control the larger or hidden forces of the natural world.

■ Inherent Weakness Can manipulate the deeper reality to enslave others and destroy the natural order.

■ Examples
Macbeth,
Harry Potter books,
Phantom of the Opera,
Merlin,
Star Wars, Chinatown, Vertigo,
Gandalf and Saruman in
The Lord of the Rings, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Conversation,
and detectives like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Nick Charles in
The Thin Man.

Trickster

The trickster is a lower form of the magician archetype and is extremely

popular in modern storytelling.

■ Strength Uses confidence, trickery, and a way with words to get what he wants.

■ Inherent Weakness May become a complete liar who looks out only for himself.

■
Examples Odysseus in the
Odyssey, Men in Black, Beverly Hills Cop, Crocodile Dundee, Volpone,
Loki in Norse mythology, Iago in
Othello,
Indiana Jones,
Home Alone, Catch Me If You Can,
Hannibal Lecter in
The Silence of the Lambs, Brer Rabbit,
Butch in
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
Sgt. Bilko on
The Phil Silvers Show,
Michael in
Tootsie,

American Beauty
, Verbal in
The Usual Suspects, Oliver Twist, Vanity hair, Tom Sawyer,
and
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Artist or Clown

■ Strengths
Defines excellence for a people or, negatively, shows them what doesn't work; shows them beauty and a vision of the future or what appears to be beautiful
but
is in fact ugly or foolish.