The Anatomy of Story (15 page)

become independent." Applying the rule of the specific moment, when does someone become independent in life? When he leaves home for the first time? When he gets married? When he gets divorced? There is no specific moment when someone becomes independent. Dependence or independence has more to do with need and makes a very poor desire. 3. The desire should be accomplished—if at all—near the end of the story. If the hero reaches the goal in the middle of the story, you must either end the story right there or create a new desire line, in which case you have stuck two stories together. By extending the hero's desire line almost to the end, you make your story a single unit and ensure that it has tremendous narrative drive.

The desire line in each of the following films meets all three criteria:

■ Saving Private Ryan:
to find Private Ryan and bring him back alive

■ The Full Monty:
to make a lot of money by performing naked in front of a roomful of women

■ The Verdict:
to win the case

■ Chinatown:
to solve the mystery of who killed Hollis

■ The Godfather:
to take revenge on the men who shot Vito Corleone

Creating Your Hero, Step 4: The Opponent

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the trick to defining your hero and figuring out your story is to figure out your opponent. Of all the connections in the character web, the most important is the relationship between hero and main opponent. This relationship determines how the entire drama builds.

That's why, as a writer, you should love this character, because he will help you in countless ways. Structurally the opponent always holds the key, because your hero learns
through
his opponent. It is only because the opponent is attacking the hero's great weakness that the hero is forced to deal with it and grow.

KEY POINT: The main character is only as good as the person he fights.

To see how important this principle is, think of your hero and opponent as tennis players. If the hero is the best player in the world but the opponent is a weekend hacker, the hero will hit a few shots, the opponent will stumble around, and the audience will be bored. But if the opponent is the second-best player in the world, the hero will be forced to hit his best shots, the opponent will hit back some spectacular shots of his own, they'll run each other all over the court, and the audience will go wild.

That's exactly how good storytelling works. The hero and the opponent drive each other to greatness.

The story drama unfolds once you have set the relationship between hero and main opponent. If you get this relationship right, the story will almost certainly work. If you get this relationship wrong, the story will most definitely fail. So let's look at the elements that you need to create a great opponent.

1. Make the opponent necessary.

The single most important element of a great opponent is that he be necessary to the hero. This has a very specific structural meaning. The main opponent is the one person in the world best able to attack the great weakness of the hero. And he should attack it relentlessly. The necessary opponent either forces the hero to overcome his weakness or destroys him. Put another way, the necessary opponent makes it possible for the hero to grow.

2. Make him human.

A human opponent is not just a person as opposed to an animal, an object, or a phenomenon. A human opponent is as complex and as valuable as the hero.

Structurally, this means that a human opponent is always some form of double of the hero. Certain writers have used the concept of the double (also known as a doppelganger) when determining the specific characteristics of the opponent, who is extremely similar to the hero. But it is really a much larger technique, one of the major principles to use for creating any hero and opponent pair. The concept of the double provides a number of ways that the hero and the opponent should compare with, contrast with, and help define each other:

■ The opponent-double has certain weaknesses that are causing him to act wrongly toward others or act in ways that prevent the opponent from having a better life.

■ Like the hero, the opponent-double has a need, based on those weaknesses.

■ The opponent-double must want something, preferably the same goal as the hero.

■ The opponent-double should be of great power, status, or ability, to put ultimate pressure on the hero, set up a final battle, and drive the hero to larger success (or failure).

3. Give him values that oppose the values of the hero.

The actions of the hero and the opponent are based on a set of beliefs, or values. These values represent each character's view of what makes life good.

In the best stories, the values of the opponent come into conflict with the values of the hero. Through that conflict, the audience sees which way of life is superior. Much of the power of the story rests on the quality of this opposition.

4. Give the opponent a strong but flawed moral argument.

An evil opponent is someone who is inherently bad and therefore mechanical and uninteresting. In most real conflict, there is no clear sense of good and evil, right and wrong. In a well-drawn story, both hero and opponent believe that they have chosen the correct path, and both have reasons for believing so. They are also both misguided, though in different ways.

The opponent attempts to justify his actions morally, just as the hero does. A good writer details the moral argument of the opponent, making sure it is powerful and compelling, but ultimately wrong (I'll discuss how in the next chapter, "Moral Argument").

5. Give him certain similarities to the hero.

The contrast between hero and opponent is powerful only when both characters have strong similarities. Each then presents a slightly different approach to the same dilemma. And it is in the similarities that crucial and instructive differences become most clear.

By giving the hero and the opponent certain similarities, you also keep the hero from being perfectly good and the opponent from being completely evil. Never think of the hero and opponent as extreme opposites. Rather, they are two possibilities within a range of possibilities. The argument between hero and opponent is not between good and evil but between two characters who have weaknesses and needs.

6. Keep him in the same place as the hero.

This runs counter to common sense. When two people don't like each other, they tend to go in opposite directions. But if this happens in your story, you will have great difficulty building conflict. The trick is to find a natural reason for the hero and opponent to stay in the same place during the course of the story.

A textbook example of how an opponent works on a hero is the Hannibal Lecter character in
The Silence of the Lambs.
Ironically, in this film, Lecter is not a true opponent. He is the fake-opponent ally, a character who appears to be Clarice's opponent but is really her greatest friend. I like to think of Lecter as Yoda from hell; the training he gives Clarice, though brutal, is far more valuable than anything she learns at the FBI Academy.

But in their first meeting, Lecter shows us, in miniature, how an opponent relentlessly attacks the hero's weaknesses until she fixes them or falls. Clarice visits Lecter in his cell to get some insights about the serial killer Buffalo Bill. After a promising start, she overplays her hand and insults Lecter's intelligence. He goes on the attack.

lecter
: Oh, Agent Starling, you think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?

clarice
: No, I thought that your knowledge . ..

lecter
: You're so ambitious, aren't you? You know what you look like to me with your good bag and your cheap shoes. You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube. With a little taste. Good nutrition's given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash. Are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed, pure West Virginia. Who's your father, dear, is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp? And oh how quickly the boys found you. All those tedious, sticky fumblings in the

back seats of cars. While- you could only dream of getting out, getting anywhere, getting all the way to the FBI.

Let's look at some examples of opponents in storytelling, noting that each is not so much a separate individual as the one best opponent for that hero.

Othello

(by William Shakespeare, 1604)
Othello is a warrior-king, always going straight through the front door, all force with no guile. A lesser writer, believing the conventional wisdom that "drama is conflict," would have created another warrior-king to oppose him. There would have been lots of conflict but not much of a story.

Shakespeare understood the concept of the necessary opponent. Starting with Othello's great weakness, his insecurity about his marriage, Shakespeare created Iago. Iago isn't much of a warrior. He doesn't attack well from the front. But he is a master of attacking from behind, using words, innuendo, intrigue, and manipulation to get what he wants. Iago is Othello's necessary opponent. He sees Othello's great weakness and attacks it brilliantly and ruthlessly until he brings the great warrior-king down.

Chinatown

(by Robert Towne, 1974)
Jake Gittes is a simple detective who is overconfident and too idealistic, believing he can bring justice by discovering the truth. He also has a weakness for money and the finer things in life. His opponent, Noah Cross, is one of the richest, most powerful men in Los Angeles. He outsmarts Jake and then uses his wealth and power to bury Jake's truth and get away with murder.

Pride and Prejudice

(by Jane Austen, 1813)
Elizabeth Bennet is a smart, charming young woman who is too pleased with her own intelligence and too quick to judge others. Her opponent is Mr. Darcy, who is guilty of extreme pride and a disdain for the lower

classes. But it is because of Dairy's pride and prejudice and his efforts to overcome them for her that Elizabeth finally becomes aware of the pride and prejudice in herself.

Star Wars

(by George Lucas, 1977)
Luke Skywalker is an impetuous, naive young man with a desire to do good and a tremendous but untrained ability in the use of the Force. Darth Vader is a grand master of the Force. He can outthink and outfight Luke, and he uses his knowledge of his son and of the Force to try to lure Luke to the "dark side."

Crime and Punishment

(by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1866)
Raskolnikov is a brilliant young man who commits a murder just to prove the philosophy that he is above the law and the common man. His opponent, Porfiry, is a petty bureaucrat, a lowly police detective. But this common man of the law is smarter than Raskolnikov and, more important, wiser. He shows Raskolnikov the error of his philosophy and gets him to confess by showing him that true greatness comes from self-revelation, responsibility, and suffering.

Basic Instinct

(by Joe Eszterhas, 1992)
Nick is a sharp, tough police detective who is guilty of using drugs and killing without sufficient cause. Catherine, who is just as smart, challenges him at every turn and uses Nick's weakness for sex and drugs to lure him into her lair.

A Streetcar Named Desire

(by Tennessee Williams, 1947)
Blanche, a faded beauty with a fragile hold on reality, has lied and used sex to defend herself against her crumbling situation. Stanley is a brutal, competitive "top dog" who refuses to let Blanche get away with her tall tales. Thinking she is a lying whore who has tried to swindle him and fool

his friend Mitch, he jams the "truth" in her lace so relentlessly that she goes mad.

Vertigo

(novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, 1958)
Scottie is a decent guy but is a bit naive and suffers from vertigo. His college friend, Gavin Elster, uses Scottie's weaknesses to concoct a plan to murder Elster's wife.

BUILDING CONFLICT

Once you set up a hero and an opponent competing for the same goal, you must build the conflict steadily until the final battle. Your purpose is to put constant pressure on your hero, because this is what will force him to change. The way you build conflict and put pressure on your hero depends primarily on how you distribute the attacks on the hero.

In average or simple stories, the hero comes into conflict with only one opponent. This standard opposition has the virtue of clarity, but it doesn't let you develop a deep or powerful sequence of conflicts, and it doesn't allow the audience to see a hero acting within a larger society.

KEY POINT: A simplistic opposition between two characters kills any chance at depth, complexity, or the reality of human life in your story. For that, you need a web of oppositions.