The Anatomy of Story (19 page)

The Hero's Moral Decision

In the hero's moral development, the endpoints are your hero's moral need at the beginning of the story and his moral self-revelation, followed by his moral decision, at the end. This line is the moral frame of the story, and it tracks the fundamental moral lesson you want to express.

The classic strategy for dramatizing the hero's moral line is to give him a moral flaw at the beginning and then show how his desperation to beat the opponent brings out the worst in him. In short, he has to get worse before he gets better. Slowly but surely, he becomes aware that his central moral problem comes down to a choice between two ways of acting.

No matter how complex the actions of the characters over the course of the story, the final moral decision brings everything down to a choice between two. And it is final. So the moral decision is the narrow part of the funnel for your theme. The two options are the two most important moral actions your hero can take, so they provide you with the primary thematic opposition for the entire story.

This great decision usually comes just after the hero has his moral self-revelation, which shows him which choice to make. On rare occasion, the choice comes first, and the hero's self-revelation is a recognition that he made either the right or the wrong choice.

KEY POINT:
Since the endpoint of the hero'
s
moral line is his final choice, you want to begin figuring out the moral oppositions using that choice.

■ Casablanca:
When Rick's ex-love, Ilsa, returns to him, he can use two exit visas to escape with her to America. Rick chooses fighting the Nazis over his love for Ilsa.

■ The Maltese Falcon:
Detective Sam Spade discovers that Brigid O'Shaughnessy murdered his partner. When the police show up, Spade chooses justice over the woman he loves.

■ Sophie's Choice:
Sophie tells a young American writer about her past as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp. When she arrived, she had to choose between two negatives: Which child would she let the Nazis kill? (You could argue that this is not a true choice.)

■ The
Iliad:
In a final showdown, Achilles kills Hector, the great warrior of the Trojans, and then drags Hector's body behind his chariot. Achilles lets Hector's father, Priam, take the body so that it can receive a proper burial.

■
Vertigo:
Scottie finds out that his lover, Madeleine, helped a man murder his wife. His moral decision at the end comes before his self-revelation. He decides not to forgive Madeleine and so is destroyed when he realizes that his wrong decision has killed the woman he loves.

Characters as Variations on a Theme

Once you have figured out the deepest moral opposition by looking at the

hero's final moral choice, you detail this opposition through the character web by making each of the major characters a variation on the theme.

Here is the sequence for making this technique work:

1. Look again at the final moral decision and your work on the premise line so you are clear about the central moral problem your hero must deal with in the story.

2. Make sure each of the major characters deals with the same moral problem, but in a different way.

3. Start by comparing the hero and the main opponent, since these characters personify the primary moral opposition you detail in the story. Then compare the hero to the other opponents. 4. Over the course of the story, each of the major characters should make a moral argument
in dialogue
justifying what they do to reach the goal. (Good moral argument is done primarily but not solely through structure. We'll discuss how to write moral dialogue in Chapter 10, "Scene Construction and Symphonic Dialogue.")

T
ootsie

(by Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal, story by Don McGuire and Larry Gelbart, 1982) Tootsie
is the tale of an actor who disguises himself as a woman in order to get work on a TV show. But then he falls in love with an actress on the show, and various men are attracted to him as a woman.

The hero's central moral problem in the story is how a man treats a woman in love. Each opponent and ally is a variation of how men treat women or how women allow themselves to be treated by men.

L.A. C
onfidential

(novel by James Ellroy, screenplay by Brian Helgeland & Curtis Hanson, 1997)

In
L.A. Confidential,
three police detectives investigate a mass murder. All three are main characters, and each must deal with the central moral problem of administering justice. Bud is a cop who takes the law into his own hands, acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Jack has forgotten why he became a cop and arrests people for money. Ed wants to bring the guilty to justice, but he has become more interested in playing the political game of justice and rising to the top of the profession. All the other major characters exemplify a different version of the corruption of justice.

D
ances with
W
olves

(novel and screenplay by Michael Blake, 1990) Dances with Wolves
follows the exploits of an army officer in the American West during the late 1800s. Gradually he is drawn to take up the life of the Sioux Indians he thought were his enemy.

The hero's central moral problem is how he treats another race and culture and how he lives with animals and the land. Each opponent and ally takes a different approach to this problem.

The Characters' Values in Conflict

Using your character web, now place the values of each of the major characters in conflict as these people compete for the same goal.

1. Identify a set of values for your hero and each of the other major characters. Remember, values are deep-seated beliefs about what makes a good life.

2. Try to give a cluster of values to each character.

Make each set of values as different from the others as possible. 4. As your hero and his opponents fight over the goal, make sure their values come into direct conflict.

I
t's a
W
onderful
L
ife

(short
story
"The Greatest Gift" by Philip Van Doren Stern, screenplay by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, 1946)
Frustrated by living in a small town ruled by a tyrant, George Bailey is about to commit suicide until an angel shows him what the world would be like if he had never lived.

The hero and the opponent in this story compete over the town in which they live, based on the very different values each holds.

■
George Bailey (Bedford Falls): Democracy, decency, kindness, hard

work, the value of the common workingman
■
Mr. Potter (Pottersville): One-man rule, money, power, survival of the fittest

T
he
C
herry
O
rchard

(by Anton Chekhov, 1904)
In
The Cherry Orchard,
an aristocratic but poor family returns to their family estate, which is deep in debt, to try to save it.

These characters compete over who will control the estate. The focus

of this competition is the value of the cherry orchard. Madame Ranevsky and her family value it for its immense beauty and its evocation of their past. Lopakhin values it only for its practical, monetary value; he wants to cut it down so he can build cottages he can rent.

■ Madame Ranevsky: Real love, beauty, the past

■ Lopakhin: Money, status, power, practicality, the future
■
 Varya: Hard work, family, marriage, practicality

■ Trofimov: The truth, learning, compassion, higher love
■
 Anya: Her mother, kindness, higher love

Field of Dreams

(novel
Shoeless Joe
by W.P. Kinsella, screenplay by Phil Alden Robinson, 1989) Field of Dreams
is an American version of
The Cherry Orchard
in which the "orchard" wins. The competition in this story is over the value of the farmland that Ray has turned into a baseball diamond.

■
Ray: Baseball, family, passion for your dreams
■
Mark: Money, practical use of the land

With characters as variations on a theme and opposition of values, you may want to use the technique of four-corner opposition, explained in Chapter 4. In four-corner opposition, you have a hero and a main opponent and at least two secondary opponents. This gives even the most complex story an organic unity. Each of the four main characters can represent a fundamentally different approach to the same moral problem, and each can express an entire system of values, without the story collapsing into a complicated mess.

KEY POINT: Your moral argument will always be simplistic if you use a two-part opposition, like good versus evil. Only a web of moral oppositions (four-corner opposition is one such web) can give the audience a sense of the moral complexity of real life.

Notice that all three of these techniques guarantee that the theme is not imposed on the characters but rather is expressed through the charac-

ters. This ensures that the story doesn't come across as preachy. Notice also that the story has more depth because the opposition between the characters is not just based on plot, on people competing for a goal. Entire ways of living are at stake, so the emotional impact on the audience is huge.

Moral argument doesn't mean your hero and opponent appear in the first scene and engage in a verbal argument about morality. Moral argument in a story is an argument of action you make by showing your hero and opponent taking certain means to reach a goal. This is how you weave theme through the story structure instead of preaching to the audience in the dialogue.

In fact, one of the great principles of storytelling is that structure doesn't just carry content; it
is
content. And it is far more powerful content than what your characters say. Nowhere is this principle more accurately expressed than in theme.

In a good story, the story structure converges near the end at the same time that the theme expands in the mind of the audience. How does a converging story structure cause the theme to expand? A diagram of good structure and theme might look like this:

At the beginning of the story, you set the hero and opponent in opposition. But the conflict is not intense, and the audience doesn't yet know

how the values of each come into conflict. So they have almost no sense of the theme of the story.