The Anatomy of Story (47 page)

The opponent is the character who wants to prevent the hero from reaching his goal. The relationship between this character and your hero is the most important in your story. If you set up the opposition properly, your

plot will unwind just as it should. If you don't, no amount of rewriting will make any difference.

The best opponent is the
necessary
one: the character best able to attack the great weakness of your hero. Your hero will be forced either to (welcome that weakness and grow or else be destroyed. Look again at (Chapter 4 on character for all the elements needed for a great opponent. There are two main reasons opponent and mystery are closely related:

1. A mysterious opponent is more difficult to defeat. In average stories, the hero's only task is to defeat the opponent. In good stories, the hero has a two-part task: uncover the opponent and then defeat him. This makes the hero's job doubly difficult and his success a far greater accomplishment.

For example, Hamlet doesn't know that the king really killed his father, because he heard it from a ghost. Othello doesn't know that Iago wants to bring him down. Lear doesn't know which daughter really loves him.

2. In certain kinds of stories, like detective and thriller, there must be a mystery to compensate for a missing opponent. Since detective stories purposely hide the opponent until the end, the audience needs something to replace an ongoing conflict between hero and opponent. In this kind of story, you introduce a mystery at about the time you would normally introduce the main opponent.

Before introducing your main opponent, ask yourself these key questions:

■ Who wants to stop the hero from getting what he wants and why?

■ What does the opponent want? He should be competing for the same goal as the hero.

■ What are the opponent's values, and how do they differ from the hero's? Most writers never ask this question, and it's a big mistake. A story without a conflict of values, as well as characters, cannot build.

Casablanca

Because
Casablanca
is essentially a love story, Rick's first opponent is his lover, Ilsa Lund. A woman of mystery, she has not told Rick that she was,

and still is, married to Victor Laszlo. Rick's second opponent is Ilsa's competing suitor, Laszlo, the great man who has impressed half the world. Though both men hate the Nazis, Rick and Laszlo represent two very different versions of a great man. Laszlo is great on the political and societal level, whereas Rick is great on the personal level.

Major Strasser and the Nazis provide the outside opposition and the danger that move the stakes of the love story to a much higher level. Strasser is not mysterious in any way, because he doesn't need to be; in Casablanca, he is all-powerful.

Tootsie

Because
Tootsie
uses the farce form (along with romantic comedy) for its structure, it does not use the mysterious opponent technique. Farce has more opponents than any other form and works by having a lot of opponents attack the hero at a progressively faster rate of speed. These are the main opponents who attack Michael's weaknesses:

1. Julie forces Michael to confront how he has mistreated and abused women.

2. Ron, the arrogant director, doesn't want Dorothy (Michael) for the role and remains hostile toward her.

3. Les, Julie's father, unknowingly shows Michael the effects of his dishonesty when he becomes attracted to Dorothy.

4. John, another actor on the show, makes unwanted advances toward Dorothy.

PLOT TECHNIQUE: THE ICEBERG OPPONENT

M
aking the opponent mysterious is extremely important, no matter what kind of story you are writing. Think of the opponent as an iceberg. Some of the iceberg is visible above the water. But most of it is hidden below the surface, and that is by far the more dangerous part. There are four techniques that can help you make the opposition in your story as dangerous as possible:

1. Create a
hierarchy
of opponents with a number of alliances. All of the opponents are related to one another; they are all working together

to defeat the hero. The main opponent sits at the top of this pyramid, with the other opponents below him in power. (See our discussion of four-corner opposition in Chapter 4. An example of this technique as used in The Godfather can be found at the end of this chapter.)

2. Hide the hierarchy from the hero and the audience, and hide each opponent's true agenda (true desire).

3. Reveal all this information in pieces and at an increasing pace over the course of the story. This means you'll have more reveals near the end of the story. As we shall see, how you reveal information to hero and audience is what makes or breaks your plot.

4. Consider having your hero go up against an obvious opponent early in the story. As the conflict intensifies, have the hero discover attacks from a stronger hidden opposition or attacks from that part of t he opponent that has been hidden away.

8. Fake-Ally Opponent

The fake-ally opponent is a character who appears to be an ally of the hero but is actually an opponent or working for the main opponent.

Plot is driven by reveals, which come from the steps the hero takes to uncover the true power of the opposition. Every time a hero discovers something new about an opponent—a revelation—the plot "turns," and the audience is delighted. The fake-ally opponent increases the opponent's power because the fact of his opposition is hidden. The fake-ally opponent forces the hero and the audience to dig below the tip of the iceberg and find what the hero is truly up against.

The fake-ally opponent is also valuable because he's inherently complex. This character often undergoes a fascinating change in the course of the story. By pretending to be an ally of the hero, the fake-ally opponent starts to feel like an ally. So he becomes torn by a dilemma: he works for the opponent but wants the hero to win.

You usually introduce the fake-ally opponent after the main opponent, but not always. If the opponent has come up with a plan to defeat the hero before the story even begins, you may introduce the fake-ally opponent first.

Casablanca

Although he is always charming and friendly to Rick, Captain Renault protects himself by working for the Nazis. Renault is much more open in his opposition than most fake-ally opponents, who work undercover. At the very end, Renault flips to become Rick's true ally. This is one of the biggest kicks of the story and is a good example of the storytelling power that comes from switching a character from ally to opponent or from opponent to ally.

Tootsie

Sandy is not the usual fake-ally opponent either, fooling the hero and the audience from the beginning. She starts off as an actress friend of Michael's. She becomes a fake-ally opponent when Michael dresses up as a woman to try out for a part in a soap opera that Sandy wants for herself. When she catches him trying on her clothes, he must extend the deception even further by pretending he has fallen in love with her.

9. First Revelation and Decision: Changed Desire and Motive

At this point in the story, the hero gets a revelation—or reveal—which is a surprising piece of new information. This information forces him to make a decision and move in a new direction. It also causes him to adjust his desire and his motive. Motive is why the hero wants the goal. All four of these events—revelation, decision, changed desire, and changed motive—should occur at the same time.

The reveals are the keys to the plot, and they are usually missing in average stories. In many ways, the quality of your plot comes down to the quality of your revelations. Keep these techniques in mind:

you have started a new story. You want to adjust, intensity, and build the original desire line. 3. Each revelation must be explosive and
progressively stronger than the one that preceded it.
The information should be important, or it won't pop the story. And each reveal should build on the one before it. When we talk about the plot "thickening," this is what is actually happening. Think of the revelations as the gears in a car. With each reveal the car (story) picks up speed until at the final one the vehicle is zooming. The audience has no idea how they ended up moving so fast, but they sure are having a good time.

If your revelations don't build in intensity, the plot will stall or even decline. This is deadly. Avoid it at all costs.

Note that Hollywood has become more plot-conscious in recent years, and that makes many screenwriters' reliance on three-act structure even more dangerous. Three-act structure, you will recall, requires that your story have two or three plot points (reveals). Aside from the fact that this advice is just plain wrong, it will give you a lousy plot with no chance of competing in the real world of professional screenwriting. The average hit film in Hollywood today has seven to ten major reveals. Some kinds of stories, including detective stories and thrillers, have even more. The sooner you abandon three-act structure and learn the techniques of advanced plotting, the better off you will be.

Casablanca

■ Revelation
Ilsa shows up at Rick's bar later that night. ■
Decision
Rick decides to hurt her as deeply as he can. ■
Changed Desire
Until Ilsa arrived, Rick simply wanted to run his bar, make money, and be left alone. Now he wants her to feel as much pain as he feels. ■
Changed Motive
She deserves it for breaking his heart in Paris.

Tootsie

■ Revelation
Michael realizes he has real power when "Dorothy" acts like a bitch at the soap opera audition and gives Ron, the director, a piece of her mind.

■ 
Decision
Michael, as Dorothy, decides to behave like a no-nonsense, powerful woman.

■ 
Changed Desire
No change. Michael still wants the job.

■ 
Changed Motive
Now he sees how to have the job on
his
terms.

TWENTY-TWO STEPS TECHNIQUE: ADDED REVELATIONS

T
he more revelations you have, the richer and more complex the plot. Every time your hero or audience gains new information, that's a revelation.

KEY POINT:
The revelation should be important enough to cause your hero to make a decision and change his course of action.

Tootsie

■ 
Revelation
Michael realizes he is attracted to Julie, one of the actresses on the show.

■ 
Decision
Michael decides to become friends with Julie.

■ 
Changed Desire
Michael wants Julie.

■ 
Changed Motive
He is falling in love with her.

10. Plan

The plan is the set of guidelines and strategies the hero will use to overcome his opponent and reach the goal.

KEY POINT:
Beware of having your hero simply play out the plan. This gives you a predictable plot and a superficial hero. In good stories, the hero's initial plan almost always fails. The opponent is too strong at this point in the story. The hero needs to dig deep and come up with a better strategy, one that takes into account the power and weapons at the opponent's disposal.

Casablanca

Rick's initial plan to win Ilsa back is both arrogant and passive: he knows she will come to him, and he tells her so. His main plan, which he figures

out relatively late in the story, is to use Ugarte's exit visas to help Ilsa and Laszlo escape the Nazis. The advantage of having such a late plan is that the plot twists (reveals) near the end are rapid and breathtaking.

Tootsie

Michael's plan is to maintain his disguise as a woman while convincing Julie she should free herself from her boyfriend, Ron. He also has to fend off the advances of Les and John without their finding out that Dorothy is a man. And he must deceive Sandy about his interest in her and his role on the soap opera.

PLOT TECHNIQUE: TRAINING

M
ost heroes are already trained to do what they must do to succeed in the story. Their failure in the early part of the plot comes because they have not looked within and confronted their weaknesses.

But training is an important part of certain genres, and in these stories, it is often the most popular part of the plot. Training is most common in sports stories, war stories (including the suicide mission, as in
The
Dirty Dozen),
and caper stories (usually involving a heist, as in
Ocean's Eleven
). If you include training in your story, it will probably come right after the plan and before the main action and conflict lines kick in.