The Anatomy of Story (9 page)

The following document the fall of the hero.

Oedipus the King

Oedipus gouges out his eyes upon learning that he has killed his father and slept with his mother.

The Conversation

The hero discovers he has contributed to someone's murder and ends up a shell-shocked man desperately tearing up his apartment to find a listening device.

Vertigo

The hero drags the woman he loves to the top of a tower to get her to confess to a murder and then looks down in horror when the woman, overcome by guilt, accidentally falls to her death.

How
to
U
se the
S
even
S
teps—
W
riting
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xercise 2

You've seen what the seven major steps of story structure mean. Here's how to use them in your story.

■ Story Events
Write down some story events, describing each in a single sentence.

The seven steps are not imposed from the outside; they are embedded in the story idea itself. That's why the first thing you need to do to figure out the seven steps is to
list
some of the events that might be in your story.

Usually, when you get an idea for a story, certain events immediately pop into your mind. "This could happen, and this could happen, and this could happen." Story events are usually actions taken by your hero or opponent.

These initial thoughts about story events are extremely valuable, even if none of them ends up in the final story. Write down each event in one sentence. The point here is not to be detailed but to get down the basic idea of what happens in each event.

You should write down a minimum of five story events, but ten to fifteen would be even better. The more events you list, the easier it is to see the story and find the seven steps.

■ Order of Events
Put the story events in some rough order, from beginning to end. Recognize that this will probably not be your final order. What's important is to get a look at how the story might develop from beginning to end.

■ Seven Steps
Study the story events, and identify the seven structure steps.

KEY POINT: Start by determining the self-revelation, at the end of the story; then go back to the beginning and figure out your hero's need and desire.

This technique of starting at the end and going hack to the beginning is one we will use again and again as we figure out character, plot, and theme. It's one of the best techniques in fiction writing because it guaran-tees that your hero and your story are always heading toward the true end-point of the structural journey, which is the self-revelation.

■ Psychological and Moral Self-Revelation
When figuring out the self-revelation, try to give your hero both a psychological and a moral revelation.

Be specific about what your hero learns. And be flexible and ready to change what you have written as you figure out the other six steps and as you continue through the entire writing process. Figuring out the seven steps, as well as many of the other parts of your story, is much like doing a crossword puzzle. Some parts will come easily, others only with great difficulty. Use the parts that come easily to figure out the tough parts, and be willing to go back and change what you first wrote when later material gives you a new take on your story.

■ Psychological and Moral Weakness and Need
After figuring out the self-revelation, go back to the beginning of the story. Try to give your hero both a psychological and a moral weakness and need.

Remember the key difference. A psychological weakness or need affects just the hero. A moral weakness or need affects others.

Come up with not one but many weaknesses for your hero. These should be serious flaws, so deep and dangerous that they are ruining your hero's life or have the real possibility of doing so.

■ Problem
What is the problem, or crisis, your hero faces at the beginning of the story? Try to make it an outgrowth of your hero's weakness.

■ Desire
Be very specific when giving your hero a desire.

Make sure your hero's goal is one that will lead him to the end of the story and force him to take a number of actions to accomplish it.

■ Opponent
Create an opponent who wants the same goal as the hero and who is exceptionally good at attacking your hero's greatest weakness.

You could create hundreds of opponents for your hero. The question is, who's the best one? Start by going back to that crucial question: What is the deepest conflict the hero and opponent are fighting about? You want your main opponent to be just as obsessed with winning the goal as the hero. You want to give your opponent a special ability to attack your hero's greatest weakness, and to do so incessantly while he tries to win the goal.

■ Plan Create a plan that requires the hero to take a number of actions but also to adjust when the initial plan doesn't work.

The plan generally shapes the rest of the story. So it must involve many steps. Otherwise you will have a very short story. The plan must also be unique and complex enough that the hero will have to adjust when it fails.

■ Battle Come up with the battle and the new equilibrium.

The battle should involve the hero and the main opponent, and it should decide once and for all who wins the goal. Decide whether it will be a battle of action and violence or a battle of words. Whatever kind of battle you choose, make sure it is an intense experience that puts your hero to the ultimate test.

Let's look at a seven-step breakdown from a single story,
The Godfather,
so that you can see what such a breakdown might look like for your own story.

The Godfather

(novel by Mario Puzo, screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

■ Hero
Michael Corleone.

■ Weaknesses
Michael is young, inexperienced, untested, and overconfident.

■ Psychological Need
Michael must overcome his sense of superiority and self-righteousness.

■ Moral Need
He needs to avoid becoming ruthless like the other Mafia bosses while still protecting his family.

■ Problem
Rival gang members shoot Michael's father, the head of the family.

■ Desire
He wants to take revenge on the men who shot his father and thereby protect his family.

■ Opponent
Michael's first opponent is Sollozzo. However, his true 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.

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

■ Battle
The final battle is a crosscut between Michael's appearance at his nephew's baptism and the killing of the heads of the five Mafia families. At the baptism, Michael says that he believes in God. Clemenza fires a shotgun into some men getting off an elevator. Moe Green is shot in the eye. Michael, following the liturgy of the baptism, renounces Satan. Another gunman shoots one of the heads of the families in a revolving door. Barzini is shot. Tom sends Tessio off to be murdered. Michael has Carlo strangled.

■ Psychological Self-Revelation
There is none. Michael still believes that his sense of superiority and self-righteousness is justified.

■ Moral Self-Revelation
There is none. Michael has become a ruthless killer. The writers use an advanced story structure technique by giving the moral self-revelation to the hero's wife, Kay, who sees what he has become as the door slams in her face.

■ New Equilibrium
Michael has killed his enemies and "risen" to the position of Godfather. But morally, he has fallen and become the "devil." This man who once wanted nothing to do with the violence and crime of his family is now its leader and will kill anyone who betrays him or gets in his way.

T
OOTS
IE WAS A HUGE HIT because its main character, played by Dustin Hoffman, dressed up as a woman. Right? Wrong. What made that character funny, and what made the entire story work, was the
web
of characters that helped define the hero and
allowed
him to be funny. Look below the glossy surface of Dustin Hoffman in a dress and you will see that each character in that story is a unique version of the hero's central moral problem, which is how men mistreat women.

Most writers come at character all wrong. They start by listing all the traits of the hero, tell a story about him, and then somehow make him change at the end. That won't work, no matter how hard you try.

We're going to work through a different process that I think you will find much more useful. These are the steps:

1. We'll begin not by focusing on your main character but by looking at
all
your characters together as part of an interconnected web. We'll distinguish them by comparing each to the others according to story function and archetype.

2. Next we'll individualize each character based on theme and opposition.

3. Then we'll concentrate on the hero, "building" him step-by-step so that we end up with a multilayered, complex person that the audience cares about.

4. We'll create the opponent in detail, since this is the most important character after your hero and, in many ways, is the key to defining your hero.

5. We'll end by working through the character techniques for building conflict over the course of the story.

The single biggest mistake writers make when creating characters is that they think of the hero and all other characters as separate individuals. Their hero is alone, in a vacuum, unconnected to others. The result is not only a weak hero but also cardboard opponents and minor characters who are even weaker.

This great mistake is exacerbated in scriptwriting because of the huge emphasis placed on the high-concept premise. In these stories, the hero seems to be the only person who matters. But ironically, this intense spotlight on the hero, instead of defining him more clearly, only makes him seem like a one-note marketing tool.

To create great characters, think of all your characters as part of a web in which each helps define the others. To put it another way, a character is often defined by who he is not.

KEY POINT: The most important step in creating your hero, as well as all

other characters, is to connect and compare each to the others.