by Blake Snyder
And yet…
I grant you there are times when having diligently followed my suggestions, and worked out your structure as I prescribe, there is unease to having it all so nice and neat. There is something about it that feels mechanical, too “clean,” or too simple. And that's no good either. If you've worked out your story but haven't started writing, it may be because you've lost the reason for writing it; the inspiration's gone, you're not feelin’ it! It might be because you know too much about your tale to be surprised when you actually put cursor to computer screen.
And if you have written a draft, you may have hit all the beats like a master, and the pieces are in place, but the emotion isn't. Your hero seems so much like an order-taking automaton that neither you, nor we, have much interest in seeing where he goes.
If any of the above applies, it feels like trouble indeed.
Whether you bridle at the idea of churning out duraflame® logs that seem so much like firewood, but aren't, or if you just plain don't get it yet, take heart. This is the chapter where we answer your structure dilemmas once and for all, so you will feel confident every time you fully flesh out any story you write.
We must start with the fact your story is not unique.
I know! I know! That sounds bad. I can see you now, in your garret, with your bowl of Top Ramen, cursing me!
But it's true.
You can break up time, as they do in Memento and Pulp Fiction; you can have anti-heroes as seen in American Psycho and Election; you can intertwine multiple stories, as in Babel and Crash; you can pull the rug out from us by saying “And then I woke up, it was all a dream!” as exploited in Atonement and Stranger Than Fiction. Yes, you can break all the rules, with varying degrees of success, but you will never evade the principles that come by conquering structure — for until we find a way to live on Earth without lessons on how to do it, we're going to be stuck with storytelling principles all writers must master.
We're going to be stuck with structure.
THE TRANSFORMATION MACHINE
As stated in the previous chapters, all we're looking for — both as writers and as audience members — is a tale that grabs us by the gonads. Our job is simple: to be astounding! And doing that is actually easy… so long as we meet only one demand:
Tell us a story about transformation.
I like to say that as we begin any story, you the audience and I the writer are standing on a train platform. You and I are getting on that train… and we're not coming back. The tale we tell is so life-altering, both for the hero and for us, that we can never look at our world the same way again. Others may be lingering on the platform, they may talk about the trip, but in truth it's only talk; they've never actually been anywhere.
It's because change is not only astounding, it's painful.
Every story is “The Caterpillar and the Butterfly.”
We start with a caterpillar living among the tall branches, eating green leaves, waving “hi!” to his caterpillar pals, little knowing that his is a life of profound deficiency. And then one day, an odd feeling comes over him that's so scary, it's like a freefall. Something strange is happening. And that something… is death. That's what the cocoon stage is. As caterpillar becomes chrysalis, he dies. He, and everything he knows, is no more. Can you imagine? But when it seems like this purgatory will never end, when things look blackest, there's another stirring; our hero sees light, and now he breaks through a weak spot in his prison, to sunlight… and freedom. And what emerges is something he never dreamed of when this all began, something… amazing!
That's every story.
And if you call that “formula”…
You're still on the train platform talking about it.
Because change hurts.
And only those who've had to change, and felt the pain of it, know that at a certain point it is also inevitable. It's like those Tom and Jerry cartoons where Jerry the mouse ties a string to Tom the cat's tail, and runs the end all over the house, then anchors it to an anvil up on the roof. With one push, the look on Tom's face tells us he knows… he's going! And there will come a moment — like it or not — when he's pulled ass-backwards through a keyhole! Overall, we'd prefer Tom to experience this sensation.
And that's why we tell stories.
There are all kinds of ways to map out this change, but never forget that's what we're charting here. We will get bored not seeing change occur. Despite all the pyrotechnics you throw our way that dazzle us so, we must experience life. And the trouble we get into as screenwriters comes when we think “The Caterpillar and the Butterfly” is too simple to apply to us.
So how do you find the transformation in your story?
In Save the Cat!, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, and chapter two of this book, I go into great detail about two different maps to chart change: the 15 beats of the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet and the 40 beats of The Board.
But in the course of teaching structure, I've found another way, a third map, that may be the easiest way to see story yet. This is the “flow chart” that shows The Transformation Machine that is change in action. It illustrates how, in the process of change, the hero dies and the person emerging at the other end is wholly new. We can actually track that change using this chart.
Are you ready for a little change yourself?
THREE WORLDS
We start with the fact there are three different “worlds” in a well-structured story. We hear these worlds called many things, including Act One, Act Two, and Act Three, but I prefer to think of them as “Thesis,” “Antithesis,” and “Synthesis.”
Thesis is the world “as is”; it's where we start. You as the writer have to set the world up for us and tell us its rules — even if you think they are obvious. Where we mostly get into trouble as screenwriters is discounting the need to stand in the shoes of the audience who know nothing of what's in our brilliant imaginations. We have to be considerate — and clear. What is the historic time period? What strata of society are we in? Is it fantasy-or reality-based? Who is our hero? Is he underdog or overlord? What is his burning desire? The world of Gladiator is different from Blade Runner and different again from Elf. When we open our eyes, what do we see, who's in charge, what are the codes of conduct? And what are this world's deficiencies?
In each of the movies cited above, there's also a systemic problem: an empire in transition, killer replicants on the loose, a human — raised by elves — who suddenly learns the truth. What we are setting up is not just a place but a dilemma. And we have to set it all up to understand where we will soon be heading.
Antithesis is the “upside-down version” of the first, and absolutely must be that. I often cite Training Day as an example to distinguish these worlds, for when Jake (Ethan Hawke) is given a choice at Minute 17 by Alonzo (Denzel Washington) to ”take a hit off that pipe or get out of my car,” and proactively says yes, Ethan leaves behind the world of “ethical” cops that is his Thesis world and enters its “funhouse-mirror reflection.”
Often characters re-appear in a different form in the Antithesis. Think how Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz, meets funhouse-mirror versions of characters she left back in Kansas. In Gladiator, Russell Crowe trades noble Marcus Aurelius (played by Richard Harris) for the moth-eaten version in the gladiator impresario played by Oliver Reed. In Elf, Will Ferrell leaves elves in the North Pole, who told him he was human, for humans pretending to be elves — to get a job as an elf at a NYC department store!
Part of the reason for making the Antithesis world an odd mirror reflection of the Thesis world is a simple truth: We can leave home and go somewhere else, but our problems are always with us. In Legally Blonde, let's face it: Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) is a sort of a pill when we meet her. Yes, she's put down for being blonde, but she kinda deserves the label. Going to Harvard forces her to change by setting her in a world where her flaws are obvious. But have no doubt, her problems haven't gone anywhere, and that's why characters from before manifest i
n different form — just as in life. It's like the person who says: “Everyone in Los Angeles is mean!” and decides to move to a new town, where he discovers that “Everybody is mean here, too!” Sooner or later, it will dawn on this person it's not the town that's the problem; it's something he's doing wrong that's causing “mean people” to always appear.
Again, good storytelling is so, because it reflects truth.
Often distinguishing these two worlds must be forced. I worked with a writer whose logline was: “A struggling artist fakes his death to raise the price of his work and hides out in the world of the homeless, only to discover his agent is actually trying to kill him.” (A fear I've had for years!) Problem was: The struggling artist lived in a cold-water flat, and was already broke when we start, so when he fakes his death and hides among the homeless, what's the difference? We changed it to make the Thesis world different, and make the poor artist successful and living in a penthouse! Now the change in worlds is more drastic, richer — and as a result the story is richer, too.
The third world is a combination of the two: Synthesis. What the hero had in Thesis, and added to in Antithesis, becomes “the third way” in the finale. Again citing Training Day, Ethan Hawke starts out as an ethical cop in Thesis, then learns a new way in the upside-down world of dirty cops. By the time Denzel Washington tries to kill Ethan by dropping him at a gang house, Ethan, metaphorically, “dies” at the hands of the gang members. In the very next scene, Ethan has a “Dark Night of the Soul” as he rides a bus around downtown L.A. and we know he can't go back to the way he was before. The old Ethan would head to the police station and tattle on Denzel: “Teacher, teacher! Denzel did a bad thing!” But Ethan is so changed by what he's learned in Act Two, he can't go back. Like our caterpillar, the old Ethan is dead. And to emerge in Act Three victorious, he has to retain his ethics, add that to what he's learned, and become a “third thing.”
These three worlds force change in a hero. We set him up, throw him in the blender, and he emerges as something brand new.
Much of the troubleshooting I do with your story is an examination of these three worlds. By looking at the process of change this way, it's easy to step back and take in the big picture of how your hero or heroes move through these phases to their final destination. What I'm always going for is: bigger — or at least clearer — ways to define the bouncing ball that is your protagonist and the various ups and downs he must go through. The biggest surprise for most writers is: You are the engineer here! You are “small g” god of this universe and can make it any way you want! Whenever I point out how minor the changes are in your hero, or how the overall arc is insufficient, writers are forever saying: But that's not how I saw it, as if the way it came out of your imagination is the only way it can be. This is why picking your Opening Image and Final Image is so vital, and why you have to keep adjusting the Alpha-Omega and make those two points as wildly opposite, and as demonstrably different, as possible.
And I know you get it because you are awesome! And I'm not just saying it because you've come with me all the way to page 50!
THE MAGICAL MIDPOINT
Given these three worlds, we can now put the 15 beats of the BS2 into the Transformation Machine and look how nicely they lay out! From left to right we see Opening Image, Theme Stated, Set-Up, Break into Two, through Midpoint, All Is Lost, Finale, and Final Image.
And each stop on our trip in some way changes the hero.
Let's start with Midpoint or what I am calling the “Magical Midpoint,” for in fact it is a very magical place. When I noted in the first Cat! book how vital Midpoint is for “breaking” a story, I had no idea how much more I'd keep learning about it.
I like to say that the Midpoint is the Grand Central Station of plot points, the nerve center. It's because so many demands intersect here. The Midpoint clearly divides every story into two distinct halves and is the “no-turning-back” part of our adventure. We've met our hero and shown his deficiencies, we've sent him to a new place, and in Fun and Games we've given him a glimpse of what he can be — but without the obligation to be that! Now at Midpoint, we must show either a false victory or a false defeat that forces the hero to choose a course of action, and by doing so, make his death and rebirth inevitable.
False victory at Midpoint is just that, the point where the hero “gets everything he thinks he wants” — and it has features that are fascinating. Many times you'll find a “party at Midpoint”: the celebration Jim Carrey is feted with in Bruce Almighty when he gets his promotion to anchorman, and even a “kiss from the girl”; check out Ironman when, fresh from the false victory of his first trial flight as a superhero, Robert Downey Jr. goes to his company party and almost kisses Gwyneth Paltrow; look at the party Dustin Hoffman attends in Tootsie, when he tries to fly as the man Jessica Lange might kiss, but gets slapped down by her instead. And even when there's not a party per se, there is often a “public coming out” of the hero as he tries on this new identity, or declares a new way of living. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio do this at the Midpoint of Titanic, when, after making love for the first time, they go up on the deck of the soon-to-be-doomed ship together for all the world to see.
False defeat is the same but opposite. The Midpoint false defeat is where the hero “loses everything he thinks he wants.” It also has a public aspect. Check out the costume party in Legally Blonde, when Elle Woods bottoms out in her bunny ears and is told by ex-love Warner he doesn't want her, and that she should leave Harvard. Note the false defeat party of Spider-Man 2 when Tobey Maguire learns Kirsten Dunst is engaged. It's the point where Richard Gere is broken in An Officer and a Gentleman, and — publicly — declares defeat by shouting to drill sergeant Lou Gossett Jr. his melodramatic secret: “I got nowhere else to go!”
Whether a false victory or a false defeat, the purpose of this Midpoint “public display of a hero” is to force that hero to announce himself as such — and up the ante of his growth. We've had some fun, we've seen you either rise to the top or crash spectacularly; you've tried out your new identity — here in the upside-down version of the world — but what are you, the hero, really gonna do about it? Are you real or are you fake?
“Stakes raised,” “time clocks” forcing his decision, the hero must decide. What's it gonna be, pal: butterfly or worm?
The Midpoint is where the hero stands up and says: Yes, I'm going through with this. Whether by dumb luck, determination, or pressure from the “Bad Guys,” he must keep going forward.
And speaking of Bad Guys, this is where they start to “close in” — and there's a good reason for that, too. Part of the risk of declaring one's self a hero is that it attracts the attention of those who most want to stop us from growing, changing, and winning. The Bad Guy/Good Guy intersection at Midpoint is key to upping the stakes of that conflict. The Midpoint is the place where “the Bad Guy learns who his rival is,” as Alan Rickman does when he first meets Bruce Willis and his cowboy persona at the false victory Midpoint of Die Hard; it's where the secret power or flaw of a hero, or his role in besting the Bad Guy, is discovered, as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when Jim Carrey's rival for Kate Winslet's affections (Elijah Wood), learns he's getting competition from Jim… still; it's also where, if the hero is hiding, or his location is unknown, “the Bad Guy learns the hero's whereabouts.” We see this when the chasers in Witness realize Harrison Ford is hiding in buttermilk country, and when Peter Coyote and his gang of key-jinglers discover E.T. is secreted somewhere in suburbia.
The Magical Midpoint has all these characteristics, but like a writer brilliantly pointed out in my workshop one weekend, it's not all on page 55! These beats are spread out, often over several scenes mid-way. To quote Gene Wilder in the dart-throwing scene of Young Frankenstein: “Nice… grouping!”
WHY BAD GUYS REALLY CLOSE IN
Having crossed the “point of no return” at Midpoint, a hero of a story begins the most difficult phase of his transformation.
Remember change is painful. Midpoint is not only the end of the Fun and Games and the glimpse of what a hero can be, it's the knowledge that he has to change. Whether a false victory or a false defeat, the lesson's not over. That's why the hero starts to fight it from here until All Is Lost. I don't wanna go! you can almost hear him cry. But like it or not, he's going!
And you as the writer have to go with him.
Part of the reason this section is so difficult to figure out is it's about stuff happening to the hero — that will lead to the ultimate when he “dies” on page 75. As writers we like our heroes to be proactive, leading the charge, always in control.
But this is the part where what the hero once believed was real, solid ground, is crumbling away, forcing him to react.
After the false victory beat in Alien when the monster attached to John Hurt's face drops off and “dies,” Sigourney Weaver and the crew of the Nostromo prepare to go back to Earth.
Hey! Let's have a party!
But once that creature splatters John's stomach all over the dinner table and skates off squealing into the darkness, the disintegration of Sigourney's world begins in earnest. Not only do her fellow crew members start getting eaten right and left, it's slowly dawning on Sigourney that her belief in the company is false… and the rules she thought would keep her safe, won't.
And that's unthinkable.
So she resists. And resists. And resists.
Until it becomes painfully obvious at All Is Lost.