The Anatomy of Story (68 page)

The most common false ending is the closed ending. The hero accomplishes his goal, gains a simple self-revelation, and exists in a new equilibrium where everything is calm. All three of these structural elements give the audience the sense that the story is complete and the system has come to rest. But that's not true. Desire never stops. Equilibrium is temporary. The self-revelation is never simple, and it cannot guarantee the hero a satisfying life from that day forward. Since a great story is always a living thing, its ending is no more final and certain than any other part of the story.

How do you create this sense of a breathing, pulsing, ever-changing story, even when the last word has been read or the last image seen? You have to go back to where we started, to the essential characteristic of a story as a
structure in time.
It is an organic unit that develops over time, and it must keep on developing even after the audience stops watching it.

Since a story is always a whole, and the organic end is found in the beginning, a great story always ends by
signaling to the audience to go back to the beginning and experience it again.
The story is an endless cycle—a Mobius strip—that is always different because the audience is always rethinking it in light of what just happened.

The simplest way to create the never-ending story is through plot, by ending the story with a reveal. In this technique, you create an
apparent
equilibrium and then immediately shatter it with one more surprise. This reversal causes the audience to rethink all the characters and actions that have led them to this point. Like a detective who reads the same signs but sees a very different reality, the audience mentally races back to the beginning of the story and reshuffles the same cards in a new combination.

We see this technique executed beautifully in
The Sixth Sense
when the audience discovers that the Bruce Willis character has been dead since the beginning. The technique is even more astounding in
The Usual Suspects
when the wimpy narrator walks out of the police headquarters and before our eyes turns into the fearsome opponent of his own invention, Keyser Soze.

The reversal reveal, while shocking, is the most limited way of creating the never-ending story. It gives you only one more cycle with the audience. The plot was not what they first thought. But now they know. There will be no more surprises. Using this technique, you don't get a never-ending story so much as a twice-told tale.

Some writers would argue that it is impossible to create the never-ending story if your plot is too powerful, too dominant over the other story elements. Even a plot that ends with a great reversal gives the audience the sense that all the doors of the house have now shut. The key turns; the puzzle is solved; the case is closed.

To tell a story that feels different over and over again, you don't have to kill your plot. But you do have to use every system of the story body. If you weave a complex tapestry of character, plot, theme, symbol, scene, and dialogue, you will not limit how many times the audience retells the story. They will have to rethink so many story elements that the permutations become infinite and the story never dies. Here are just a few of the elements you can include to create an infinite story tapestry:

■ The hero fails to achieve his desire, and the other characters come up with a new desire at the end of the story. This prevents the story from closing down and shows the audience that desire, even when it's foolish or hopeless, never dies ("I want; therefore, I am").

■ Give a surprising character change to an opponent or a minor character. This technique can lead the audience to see the story again with that person as the true hero.

■ Place a tremendous number of details in the background of the story world that on later viewings move to the foreground.

■ Add elements of texture—in character, moral argument, symbol, plot, and story world—that become much more interesting once the audience has seen the plot surprises and the hero's character change.

■ Create a relationship between the storyteller and the other characters

that is fundamentally different once the viewer has seen the plot for the first time. Using an unreliable storyteller is one, but only one, way of doing this.

■ Make the moral argument ambiguous, or don't show what the hero decides to do when he is confronted with his final moral choice. As soon as you move beyond the simple good versus evil moral argument, you force the audience to reevaluate the hero, the opponents, and all the minor characters to figure out what makes right action. By withholding the final choice, you force the audience to question the hero's actions again and explore that choice in their own lives.

The central problem I faced in this book was how to lay out a practical poetics—the craft of storytelling that exists in all story forms. It involves showing you how to create a complex living story that grows in the mind of the audience and never dies. It also means overcoming what appears to be an impossible contradiction: telling a universally appealing story that is also totally original.

My solution has been to show you the secret workings of the story world. I wanted you to discover the dramatic code—the ways human beings grow and change in a lifetime—in all its splendor and complexity. Many of the techniques for expressing the dramatic code in a powerful and original story are in
this
book. If you are wise, you will never stop studying and practicing them.

But mastering technique is not enough. Let me end with one final reveal:
you
are the never-ending story. If you want to tell the great story, the never-ending story, you must, like your hero, face your own seven steps. And you must do it every time you write a new story. I have tried to provide you with the plan: the strategies, tactics, and techniques that will help you reach your goal, fulfill your needs, and gain an endless supply of self-revelations. Becoming a master storyteller is a tall order. But if yon can learn the craft and make your own life a great story, you will be amazed at the fabulous tales you will tell.

If you are a good reader—and I have no question that you are—you are not the same person you were when you began this book. Now that you've read it once, let me suggest. . . well, you know what to do.