The Anatomy of Story (8 page)

Let's look at some story examples to see the crucial difference between need and desire.

Saving Private Ryan

■ Need
Hero John Miller must do his duty in spite of his fear (psychological and moral).

■ Desire
He wants to find Private Ryan and bring him back alive.

The Full Monty

■ Need
Each of the men in the group needs to regain his self-respect (psychological).

■ Desire
They want to make a lot of money by performing naked in front of a roomful of women.

The Verdict

■ Need
The hero must regain his self-respect (psychological) and learn to act with justice toward others (moral).

■ Desire
As in all courtroom dramas, he wants to win the case.

Chinatown

■ Need
Jake must overcome his cocky arrogance and learn to trust others (psychological). He also has to stop using people for money and bring a murderer to justice because it is the right thing to do (moral).

■ Desire
As in all detective stories, Jake's desire is to solve a mystery— in this case, to find out who killed Hollis and why.

KEY POINT: Your hero's true desire is what he wants
in this story,
not what he wants in life.

For example, the hero in
Saving Private Ryan
wants to stop fighting, go home, and be with his family. But that isn't what tracks this particular story. His goal in this story, requiring him to take a series of very specific actions, is to bring back Private Ryan.

SEVEN-STEPS TECHNIQUE: STARTING WITH DESIRE

W
riters who know that the story doesn't galvanize the audience until the hero's desire kicks in sometimes get a little too smart for their own good. They think,
"I
'll just skip the weakness-and-need step and start with desire." They've just made a pact with the devil.

Opening with desire does give your story a quick start. But it also kills the payoff, the ending of the story. Weakness and need are the foundation of any story. They are what makes it possible for your hero to change at the end. They're what makes the story personal and meaningful. And they're what makes the audience care. Don't skip that first step. Ever.

3. OPPONENT

Writers often mistakenly think of the opponent, also known as the antagonist, as the character who looks evil, sounds evil, or does evil things. This way of looking at the opponent will prevent you from ever writing a good story.

Instead you must see the opponent structurally, in terms of his function in the story. A true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from achieving his desire but is
competing with the hero for the same goal.

Notice that this way of defining the opponent organically links this step to your hero's desire. It is only by competing for the same goal that the hero and the opponent are forced to come into direct conflict and to do so again and again throughout the story. If you give your hero and opponent two separate goals, each one can get what he wants without coming into direct conflict. And then you have no story at all.

If you look at a number of good stories, it often appears, at first glance, that hero and opponent are not competing for the same goal. But look again. See if you can spot what they are really fighting about. For example, in a detective story, it appears that the hero wants to catch the killer and the opponent wants to get away. But they are really fighting over which version of reality everyone will believe.

The trick to creating an opponent who wants the same goal as the hero is to find the deepest level of conflict between them. Ask yourself "What is the most important thing they are fighting about?" That must be the focus of your story.

KEY POINT:
To find the right opponent, start with your hero's specific

goal; whoever wants to keep him from getting it is an opponent.

Note that writers often talk about having a hero whose opponent is himself. This is a mistake that will cause all kinds of structural problems. When we talk about a hero fighting himself, we are really referring to a weakness within the hero.

Let's look at some opponents.

The Godfather

Michael's first opponent is Sollozzo. However, his main opponent is the more powerful Barzini, who is the hidden power behind Sollozzo and wants to bring the entire Corleone family down. Michael and Barzini compete over the survival of the Corleone family and who will control crime in New York.

Star Wars

Luke's opponent is the ruthless Darth Vader, and each is competing over who will control the universe. Vader represents the evil forces of the tyrannical Empire. Luke represents the forces of good, comprised of the Jedi Knights and the democratic Republic.

Chinatown

Luke any good detective story,
Chinatown
gives us a unique and tricky opponent who remains hidden until the very end of the story. Jake's opponent turns out to be the rich and powerful Noah Cross. Cross wants to control the future of Los Angeles with his water scheme. But he is not competing with Jake about that. Because
Chinatown
is a detective story, he and Jake are actually competing over whose version of the truth will be believed. Cross wants everyone to believe that Hollis drowned accidentally and that Evelyn's daughter is his granddaughter. Jake wants everyone to believe that Cross killed Hollis and raped his own daughter.

4. PLAN

Action is not possible without some plan, in life and in storytelling. The plan is the set of guidelines, or strategies, the hero will use to overcome the opponent and reach the goal.

Again notice that the plan is organically linked to both desire and the opponent. The plan should always be specifically focused toward defeating the opponent and reaching the goal. A hero may have a vague plan. Or an certain genre stories like the caper or the war story, the plan is so complex that the characters may write it down so that the audience can see it.

Chinatown

Jake's plan is to question those who knew Hollis and track the physical evidence connected to Hollis's murder.

Hamlet

Hamlet's plan is to put on a play that mimics the murder of his father by the current king. He will then prove the king's guilt by the king's reaction to the play.

The Godfather

Michael's first plan is to kill Sollozzo and his protector, the police captain. His second plan, near the end of the story, is to kill the heads of the other families in a single strike.

5. BATTLE

Throughout the middle of the story, the hero and opponent engage in a punch-counterpunch confrontation as each tries to win the goal. The conflict heats up. The battle is the final conflict between hero and opponent and determines which of the two characters wins the goal. The final battle may be a conflict of violence or a conflict of words.

The Odyssey

Odysseus slays the suitors who have tormented his wife and destroyed his home.

Chinatown

A cop kills Evelyn, and Noah gets away with Evelyn's daughter while Jake walks off in despair.

The Verdict

Frank defeats opposing counsel by using brilliant lawyering and persuasive words in the courtroom.

The battle is an intense and painful experience for the hero. This crucible of battle causes the hero to have a major revelation about who he really is. Much of the quality of your story is based on the quality of this self-revelation. For a good self-revelation, you must first be aware that this step, like need, comes in two forms, psychological and moral.

In a psychological self-revelation, the hero strips away the facade he has lived behind and sees himself honestly for the first time. This stripping away of the facade is not passive or easy. Rather, it is the most active, the most difficult, and the most courageous act the hero performs in the entire story.

Don't have your hero come right out and say what he learned. This is obvious and preachy and will turn off your audience. Instead you want to suggest your hero's insight by the actions he takes leading up to the self-revelation.

Big

Josh realizes he has to leave his girlfriend and life at the toy company and go back to being a kid if he is to have a good and loving life as an adult.

Casablanca

Rick sheds his cynicism, regains his idealism, and sacrifices his love for Ilsa so he can become a freedom fighter.

Chinatown

lake's self-revelation is a negative one. After Evelyn's death, he mumbles, "As little as possible." He seems to believe that his life is not only useless hut also destructive. Once again, he has hurt someone he loves.

Dances with Wolves

Dunbar finds a new reason to live and a new way of being a man because of his new wife and his extended Lakota Sioux family. Ironically, the Lakota way of life is almost at an end, so Dunbar's self-revelation is both positive and negative.

If you have given your hero a moral need, his self-revelation should be moral as well. The hero doesn't just see himself in a new light; he has an insight about the proper way to act toward others. In effect, the hero realizes that he has been wrong, that he has hurt others, and that he must change. He then proves he has changed by taking new moral action.

Tootsie

Michael realizes what it really means to be a man—"I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man. I just gotta learn to do it without the dress"—and he apologizes for hurting the woman he loves. Notice that even though the hero comes right out and says what he learned, he says it in such a clever and funny way that it avoids sermonizing.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck realizes he has been wrong in thinking of Jim as less than human and declares that he would rather go to hell than tell Jim's owner of his whereabouts.

Structurally, the step with which self-revelation is most closely connected is need. These two steps communicate the character change of your hero (we'll explore this in more detail in the next chapter). Need is the beginning of the hero's character change. Self-revelation is the end-point of that change. Need is the mark of the hero's immaturity at the beginning of the story. It is what is missing, what is holding him back. Self-revelation is the moment when the hero grows as a human being (unless the knowledge is so painful it destroys him). It is what he learns, what he gains, what allows him to live a better life in the future.

7. NEW EQUILIBRIUM

At the new equilibrium, everything returns to normal, and all desire is gone. Except there is now one major difference. The hero has moved to a higher or lower level as a result of going through his crucible. A fundamental and permanent change has occurred in the hero. If the self-revelation is

positive-the hero realizes who he truly is and learns how to live properly in the world —he moves to a higher level. If the hero has a negative revelation-learning he has committed a terrible crime that expresses a corrupt personal flaw—or is incapable of having a self-revelation, the hero falls or is destroyed.

Let's look at some examples in which the hero rises.
Die Hard

John has defeated the criminals, saved his wife, and reaffirmed their love.
Pretty Woman

Vivian has left the world of prostitution behind and is with the man she loves (who, fortunately, is a billionaire).

The Silence of the Lambs

Clarice has brought Buffalo Bill to justice, has become an excellent FBI agent, and has apparently conquered her terrifying nightmares.