by The Anatomy of Story- 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (mobi)
1. Write your simple premise line. (Be open to modifying this premise line once you discover the character change.)
2. Determine the basic action of your hero over the course of the story.
3. Come up with the opposites of A (the basic action) for both W (the hero's weaknesses, psychological and moral) and C (changed person).
Going to the opposites of the basic action is crucial because that's the only way that change can occur. If your hero's weaknesses are similar to the basic action he will take during the story, he will simply deepen those weaknesses and remain who he is.
KEY POINT: Write down a number of possible options for the hero's weaknesses and change.
Just as there are a number of possibilities for developing your premise, there are many options for both the weaknesses and the changed person your hero will become. For example, let's say that the basic action of your hero is to become an outlaw during the story.
Starting with this basic action, you might come up with these opposites for possible weaknesses and changes. Notice that each weakness and change is a possible opposite of the basic action.
■ An uptight, henpecked man becomes involved with a gang of outlaws and gets a divorce.
W—weaknesses at the beginning: uptight, henpecked man A—basic action: becomes involved with a gang of outlaws C—changed person: gets a divorce
■ An uptight, haughty banker becomes involved with a gang of outlaws and gives aid to the poor.
W—weaknesses at the beginning: uptight, haughty banker
A—basic action: becomes involved with a gang of outlaws C—changed person: gives aid to the poor
■ A shy, timid man becomes involved with a gang of outlaws and gets drunk with fame.
W—weaknesses at the beginning: shy, timid man A—basic action: becomes involved with a gang of outlaws C—changed person: gets drunk with fame
Any of these are possible character changes that you can glean from an initial one-line premise about a man becoming an outlaw.
Let's work through this technique for a couple of familiar stories.
Star Wars
■ Premise When a princess falls into mortal danger, a young man uses his skills as a fighter to save her and defeat the evil forces of a galactic empire.
W—weaknesses at the beginning: naive, impetuous, paralyzed,
unfocused, lacking confidence A—basic action: uses his skills as a fighter
C—changed person: self-esteem, a place among the chosen few, a fighter for good
Luke's initial weaknesses are definitely not the qualities of a fighter. But when constantly forced to use skills as a fighter, he is strengthened into a confident fighter for the good.
The Godfather
■ Premise The youngest son of a Mafia family takes revenge on the men who shot his father and becomes the new Godfather.
W—weaknesses at the beginning: unconcerned, afraid, mainstream,
legitimate, separated from the family A—basic action: takes revenge
C—changed person: tyrannical, absolute ruler of the family
The Godfather is a perfect example of why you want to go to the opposites of the basic action to determine the weaknesses and change of your hero.
If Michael begins the story as a vengeful man, raking revenge on the men who shot his father will only make him seem more of the same. There's no character change. But what if he starts off the opposite of vengeful? An unconcerned, afraid, mainstream, legitimate man, separated from his Mafia family, who then takes revenge could become the tyrannical, absolute ruler of the family. This is a radical change, no doubt. But it is a totally believable one.
Note that what you end up with using this technique are only possible character changes for your story. Premise work, especially concerning character change, is extremely tentative. Be open to considering different character changes as you work through the writing process. We will explore this crucial story element in much greater detail in the next two chapters.
Step 9: Figure Out the Hero's Possible Moral Choice
The central theme of a story is often crystallized by a moral choice the hero must make, typically near the end of the story. Theme is your view of the proper way to act in the world. It is your moral vision, and it is one of the main reasons you are writing your story.
Theme is best expressed through the structure of the story, through what I call the moral argument. This is where you, the author, make a case for how to live, not through philosophical argument, but through the actions of characters going after a goal (for details, see Chapter 5, "Moral Argument"). Probably the most important step in that argument is the final moral choice you give to the hero.
A lot of writers make the mistake of giving their hero a fake choice. A fake choice is between a positive and a negative. For example, you may force your hero to choose between going to prison and winning the girl. The outcome is obvious.
KEY POINT: To be a true choice, your hero must either select one of two positive outcomes or, on rare occasions, avoid one of two negative outcomes (as in Sophie's Choice).
Make the options as equal as possible, with one seeming only slightly better than the other. A classic example of a choice between two positives is
between love and honor. In A Farewell to Arms, the hero chooses love. In The Maltese Falcon (and almost all detective stories), the hero chooses honor.
Again, notice that this technique is about finding possible moral choices. That's because the choice you come up with now may change completely by the time you have written the full story. This technique simply forces you to start thinking, in practical terms, about your theme from the very beginning of the writing process.
Step 10: Gauge the Audience Appeal
When you've done all your premise work, ask yourself one final question: Is this single story line unique enough to interest a lot of people besides me?
This is the question of popularity, of commercial appeal. You must be ruthless in answering it. If you look at your premise and realize that the only people who will want to see your story are you and your immediate family, I would strongly caution you against using that premise as the basis for a full story.
You should always write first for yourself; write what you care about. But you shouldn't write only for yourself. One of the biggest mistakes writers make is to fall into the trap of either-or thinking: either I write what I care about, or I write what will sell. This is a false distinction, born of the old romantic notion of writing in a garret and suffering for your art.
Sometimes you get an idea that you simply must write. Or you get a great idea and you have no idea whether an audience will like it. But remember, you will have many more ideas in your life than you can possibly develop as full stories. Always try to write something that you care about and also think will appeal to an audience. Your writing should mean a lot to you personally. But writing for an audience makes it a lot easier to do what you love.
Creating Your Premise—Writing Exercise i
■ Premise Write down your premise in one sentence. Ask yourself if this premise line has the makings of a story that could change your life.
■ Wish List and Premise List Write down your wish list and your premise list. Study them together to identify the core elements of what you care about and enjoy.
■ Possibilities Look for what is possible in the premise. Write down options.
■ Story Challenges and Problems Describe as many of the story challenges and problems that are unique to your idea as you can think of.
■ Designing Principle Come up with the designing principle of your story idea. Remember that this principle describes some deeper process or form in which the story will play out in a unique way.
■ Best Character Determine the best character in the idea. Make that character the hero of your premise.
■ Conflict Ask yourself "Who is my hero fighting, and what is he fighting about?"
■ Basic Action Find the single cause-and-
effect pathway by identifying a basic action that your hero will take in the story.
■ Character Change Figure out the possible character change for your hero, starting with the basic action (A) and then going to the opposites of the basic action to determine his weaknesses (W) at the beginning and his change (C) at the end.
■ Moral Choice List a moral choice your hero may have to make near the end of the story. Make sure it's a difficult but plausible choice.
■ Audience Appeal Ask yourself if your premise is likely to appeal to a wider audience. If not, go back to the drawing board.
Let's look at Tootsie so you can see how you might work through the
premise process.
Toots ie
(by Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal, story by Don McGuirc and Larry Gelbart, 1982)
■ Premise When an actor can't get work, he disguises himself as a woman and gets a role in a TV series, only to fall in love with one of the female members of the cast.
■ Possibilities You could take a funny look at the modern dating dance, but also dissect the deep immorality that underlies how men and women act toward each other in the most intimate part of their lives.
■ Story Challenges How do you show the effect of men's immoral actions against women without seeming to attack one entire gender while making the other gender look innocent?
■ Problems How do you make a man believable as a woman, weave several man-woman plots together and make them one, end each plotline successfully, and make an emotionally satisfying love story while using a number of farce techniques that place the audience in a superior position?
■ Designing Principle Force a male chauvinist to live as a woman. Place the story in the entertainment world to make the disguise more believable.
■ Best Character Michael's split between dressing as both a man and a woman can be a physical and comical expression of the extreme contradiction within his own character.
■ Conflict Michael fights Julie, Ron, Les, and Sandy about love and honesty.
■ Basic Action Male hero impersonates a woman.
■ Character Change
W— Michael is arrogant, a liar, and a womanizer. C—By pretending to be a woman, Michael learns to become a better man and capable of real love.
■ Moral Choice Michael sacrifices his lucrative acting job and apologizes to Julie for lying to her.
THE GODFATHER is a long, complex novel and film. Toot-sie is a highly choreographed whirl of unrequited love, mistaken identity, and farcical missteps. Chinatown is a tricky unfolding of surprises and revelations. These very different stories are all successful because of the unbreakable organic chain of seven key structure steps deep under each story's surface.
When we talk about the structure of a story, we talk about how a story develops over time. For example, all living things appear to grow in one continuous flow, but if we look closely, we can see certain steps, or stages, in that growth. The same is true of a story.
A story has a minimum of seven steps in its growth from beginning to end:
1. Weakness and need
2. Desire
3. Opponent
4. Plan
5. Battle
6. Self-revelation
7. New equilibrium
The seven steps are not arbitrarily imposed from without, the way a mechanical story structure such as three-act structure is. They exist in the story. These seven steps are the nucleus, the DNA, of your story and the foundation of your success as a storyteller because they are based on human action. They are the steps that any human being must work through to solve a life problem. And because the seven steps are organic—implied in your premise line—they must be linked properly for the story to have the greatest impact on the audience.
Let's look at what each of these steps means, how they are linked one to another below the surface, and how they actually work in stories.
1. WEAKNESS AND NEED
From the very beginning of the story, your hero has one or more great weaknesses that are holding him back. Something is missing within him that is so profound, it is ruining his life (I'm going to assume that the main character is male, simply because it's easier for me to write that way).
The need is what the hero must fulfill within himself in order to have a better life. It usually involves overcoming his weaknesses and changing, or growing, in some way.
Tootsie
■ Weaknesses Michael is arrogant, selfish, and a liar.
■ Need Michael has to overcome his arrogance toward women and to stop lying and using women to get what he wants.
The Silence of the Lambs
■ Weaknesses Clarice is inexperienced, suffering from haunting childhood memories, and a woman in a man's world.
■ Need Clarice must overcome the ghosts of her past and gain respect as a professional in a man's world.
I can't emphasize enough how important the need is to your success. Need is the wellspring of the story and sets up every other step. So keep two critical points in mind when you create your hero's need.
KEY POINT: Your hero should not be aware of his need at the beginning of
the story.
If he is already cognizant of what he needs, the story is over. The hero should become aware of his need at the self-revelation, near the end of the story, only after having gone through a great deal of pain (in a drama) or struggle (in a comedy).
KEY POINT: Give your hero a moral need as well as a psychological need.
In average stories, the hero has only a psychological need. A psychological need involves overcoming a serious flaw that is hurting nobody but the hero.
In better stories, the hero has a moral need in addition to a psychological need. The hero must overcome a moral flaw and learn how to act properly toward other people. A character with a moral need is always hurting others in some way (his moral weakness) at the beginning of the story.
The Verdict
Frank's psychological need is to beat his drinking problem and regain his self-respect. His moral need is to stop using other people for money and learn to act with justice. We know Frank has a moral need when we see him lie his way into a funeral of strangers in order to get business. He doesn't care if he upsets the family. He just wants to make money off of them.
One reason it is so important to give your hero a moral as well as a psychological need is that it increases the scope of the character; the character's actions affect others besides him. This moves the audience in a more powerful way.
The other reason you want to give your hero a moral need is that it prevents him from being perfect or being a victim. Both of these are the kiss of death in storytelling. A perfect character doesn't seem real or believable.
When a character has no moral flaws, the opponent, who does, typically dominates the hero, and the story becomes reactive and predictable.
Also present from page one of your story, but much less important than weakness and need, is the problem. All good stories begin with a kick: the hero is already in trouble. The problem is the crisis the hero finds himself in from page one. He is very aware of the crisis but doesn't know how to solve it.
The problem is not one of the seven steps, but it's an aspect of weakness and need, and it is valuable. Crisis defines a character very quickly. It should be an outside manifestation of the hero's weakness. The crisis highlights that weakness for the audience and gives the story a fast start.
KEY POINT: Keep the problem simple and specific.
Sunset Boulevard
■ Weakness Joe Gillis has a fondness for money and the finer things in life. He is willing to sacrifice his artistic and moral integrity for his personal comfort.
■ Problem Joe is broke. A couple of guys from the finance company come to his apartment to repossess his car. He makes a run for it.
Tootsie
■ Weaknesses Michael is arrogant, selfish, and a liar.
■ Problem Michael is an excellent actor, but he's so overbe
aring that no one will hire him. So he's desperate.
SEVEN-STEPS TECHNIQUE: CREATING THE MORAL NEED
Writers often think they have given their hero a moral need when it is just psychological. Remember the simple rule of thumb: to have a moral need, the character must be hurting at least one other person at the beginning of the story.
Two good ways to come up with the right moral need for your hero are to connect it to the psychological need and to turn a strength into a weakness. In good stories, the moral need usually comes out of the psychologi-
cal need. The character has a psychological weakness that leads him to take it out on others.
To give your character a moral as well as a psychological need and to make it the right one for your character,
1. Begin with the psychological weakness.
2. Figure out what kind of immoral action might naturally come out of that.
Identify the deep-seated moral weakness and need that are the source of this action.
A second technique for creating a good moral need is to push a strength so far that it becomes a weakness. The technique works like this:
1. Identify a virtue in your character. Then make him so passionate about it that it becomes oppressive.
2. Come up with a value the character believes in. Then find the negative version of that value.
2. DESIRE
Once the weakness and need have been decided, you must give the hero desire. Desire is what your hero wants in the story, his particular goal.
A story doesn't become interesting to the audience until the desire comes into play. Think of the desire as the story track that the audience "rides along." Everyone gets on the "train" with the hero, and they all go after the goal together. Desire is the driving force in the story, the line from which everything else hangs.
Desire is intimately connected to need. In most stories, when the hero accomplishes his goal, he also fulfills his need. Let's look at a simple example from nature. A lion is hungry and needs food (a physical need). He sees a herd of antelope go by and spots a young one that he wants (desire). If he can catch the little antelope, he won't be hungry anymore. End of story.