The Anatomy of Story (46 page)

Michael uses to play a part in the theater and the makeup Michael uses to play a woman in front of and behind the camera.

The make-believe, chauvinistic soap opera world expresses and exacerbates Michael's great weaknesses: he is a chauvinist who will lie and betray the trust of others in order to get a part.

3. Weakness and Need

■ Weakness
The hero has one or more character flaws that are so serious they are ruining his life. Weaknesses come in two forms, psychological and moral. They are not mutually exclusive; a character can have both.

All weaknesses are psychological. The inner person is damaged in some way. A weakness is also moral if it causes someone else to get hurt. A character with a moral weakness always has a direct negative effect on someone else.

KEY POINT: Many writers think they've given their hero a moral weakness when it is only psychological. The key test for a moral weakness is if the hero is clearly hurting at least one other person at the beginning of the story.

■ Need
Need is what the hero must fulfill in order to have a better life. It almost always requires that he overcome his weaknesses by the end of the story.

■ Problem
The problem is the trouble or crisis your hero faces at the very beginning of the story. He is aware of the crisis but does not know how to solve it. The problem is usually an outgrowth of the hero's weakness and is designed to quickly show that weakness to the audience. While it should be present at the beginning of the story, it is far less important than weakness and need.

Casablanca

Rick seems not to want or need anything. But he is only hiding his need.

He seems stronger than others, self-contained. While his cynicism does

reveal a man who is deeply troubled, he is the master of his world. He runs

his club as a kind of benevolent dictator. He is also a man who controls

women. And he is a man of extreme contradictions:
t
hough he is now cynical, bitter, and often immoral, he was a freedom lighter lor various good causes in the not-too-distant past.

What is unique in this story is that the main character, though very much in control, begins as an observer and a reactor. Rick is a man of great power and history, but he has chosen to withdraw from his rightful domain in the world, back to his club in one of the world's lost corners, Casablanca and back into himself. Rick is a lion caged in a cell of his own making.

■ Weaknesses
Rick is cynical, disillusioned, reactive, and selfish.

Psychological Need
To overcome his bitterness toward Ilsa,
regain a
reason for living, and renew his faith in his ideals. ■
Moral Need
To stop looking out for himself at the expense of others.

■ Problem
Rick is trapped in Casablanca and trapped in his own bitter world.

Tootsie

■ Weaknesses
Michael is selfish, arrogant, and a liar. ■
Psychological Need
To overcome his arrogance toward women and learn to honestly give and receive love. ■
Moral Need
To stop lying and using women to get what he wants, ■
Problem
Michael is desperate to find work as an actor.

Openings

Ghost, story world, weakness, need, and problem constitute the all-important opening of your story. There are three kinds of structural openings in storytelling in which these elements are established.

Community Start

The main character lives in a paradise world where the land, people, and technology are in perfect harmony. As a result, the hero has no ghost. He is happy, with only the most minor problem, if any, but is also vulnerable to attack. This attack will come soon, either from without or within.
Meet Me in St. Louis
and
The Deer Hunter
have this warm, communal opening.

Running Start

This classic opening, designed to catch the reader in the first few pages, is actually made up of a number of structural elements. The hero has a strong ghost. He lives in a world of slavery, has a number of serious weaknesses, has both a psychological and a moral need, and faces one or more problems. Most good stories use this opening.

Slow
Start

The slow start is not one in which the writer simply fails to include all the structure steps of the running start. Rather, the slow start involves stories with a purposeless hero.

Purposeless people do of course exist. But stories about them are extremely sluggish. Because the hero's self-revelation is to learn his true desire (and thereby gain a purpose), the first three-quarters of the story have no goal, and the story has no narrative drive. Very few stories are able to overcome this huge structural flaw, but
On the Waterfront
and
Rebel Without a Cause
are two that do.

4. Inciting Event

This is an event from the outside that causes the hero to come up with a goal and take action.

The inciting event is a small step, except for one thing: it connects need and desire. At the beginning of the story, when weakness and need are being established, the hero is typically paralyzed in some way. You need some kind of event to jump-start the hero out of his paralysis and force him to act.

KEY POINT:
To find the best inciting event for your story, keep in mind the

catchphrase "from the frying pan into the fire."

The best inciting event is one that makes your hero think he has just overcome the crisis he has faced since the beginning of the story. In fact, due to the inciting event, the hero has just gotten into the worst trouble of his life.

For example, in
Sunset Boulevard,
Joe is an unemployed screenwriter.

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

P
art 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

I
n 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