Directing, Writing

What are the bare-bones essentials of a good story?

[Podcast discussion of this topic now available here.]

What makes for a good story? When you start writing a screenplay or other story, you quickly learn that it isn’t as easy as it looks.

There are dozens of books on screenwriting. There are dozens of tips given on how to structure a story, what a story needs, and so on. It’s hard to filter out what matters most.

However, I was recently reading “The Working Film Director” by Charles Wilkinson, and something he said really stuck with me.

This is one of the clearest explanations of good storytelling I’ve ever heard:

“Here’s what Aristotle said about the basics of Western-style storytelling. You need a sympathetic hero on a vital quest against insurmountable obstacles. In addition, the ending needs to be surprising, but inevitable.” (Charles Wilkinson)

I thought about all the books and material I’d read on long-form storytelling and screenplay writing. It all seemed to fit into that neat little sentence.

So if you’re working on a feature film (or maybe a novel or long short film), measuring your story against the above standard is a great start.

Does your story meet all of those elements? If so, is it weak in one area? Could it be strengthened?

So what does it mean to have a “sympathetic hero on a vital quest against insurmountable obstacles”, and to have an ending that is “surprising, but inevitable”?

Let’s break it down.

1. A Sympathetic Hero

Having a ‘save the cat’ moment can help you create a sympathetic character. This ‘save the cat’ term was coined and popularized by writer Blake Snyder.

Here’s what it means. “The “Save the Cat!” beat in any movie, novel, or story is that moment when we meet its hero and he does something “nice” — like save a cat — that makes us like him and want to root for him.” (Blake Snyder)

A sympathetic character is one who may not be ‘good’, but has admirable qualities. They can be respectable or likeable, but at least need to be relatable.

A good example of this is the character Lou Bloom from the film Nightcrawler. As Michael explains in this video, Lou isn’t a good person. He’s exploitative, cold, calculating, and selfish. But he also has admirable, relatable qualities; he’s hard-working, persistent, and clever.

Ultimately, the audience must care what happens to this character, or the stakes, challenges, journey, victory – everything – will be meaningless.

2. A Vital Quest

It’s no joke. There are real stakes to this quest.

This isn’t a lovely trip to get groceries.

Instead, it’s a quest to find a cure for the hero’s dying child. Maybe the cure is at the grocery store pharmacy – but only if there are assassins pursuing the hero, and he has to make it to the pharmacy and back alive with his child’s medicine.

The key thing there is not the hero’s physical danger. It’s the hero’s dying child.

Why?

If this hero is bold and willing to charge into danger to save his child…

Then getting hurt isn’t consequential enough. If he gets hurt – even badly – it’s expected.

Physical consequences aren’t enough.

The emotional stakes have to matter to the main character. The emotional or spiritual consequences of failure must be significant.

If the stakes really matter to the hero, and the audience cares about them (which you did by making them sympathetic earlier), then the audience will care about your stakes.

Again, if the character doesn’t fear death, and no one will be harmed by his death, then his death holds no weight.

Similarly, if your hero is cold as ice (and never changes), and his girlfriend breaking up with him will be the consequence of him failing his quest, then no one will care because the stakes don’t matter.

In the film Dan in Real Life, Dan’s biggest pain is that – despite having 3 daughters and a large family – he is incredibly lonely. His stakes are he risks losing a potential new love if he doesn’t step up to the plate and change his passive behavior.

The bottom line…

If your hero doesn’t care, why should we?

3. Insurmountable Obstacles

It seems impossible for the hero to achieve victory, at least as he is now.

The deck is stacked against the hero. The enemy is too strong, too numerous, and too clever. The hero’s own flaws seriously hamper his ability to achieve victory, most likely due to a moral flaw, lack of courage, or other deeply ingrained weakness.

He is unwilling or unable to make the difficult decisions needed to achieve victory.

Perhaps the hero seems to lack the ability to go on the quest for one reason or another. He’s too weak, too stupid, too poor, crippled, blind, or too broken. Or, the hero doesn’t believe he can or should take on the quest.

There are many ways you can create ‘insurmountable obstacles’. One way to make them tower over your hero is by pitting him or her directly against their greatest weakness.

If your hero is timid and never takes charge, he or she must forced to become a leader at school/work/church/volunteer group.

If your hero is incredibly selfish, he or she must be forced to live a life of pure, selfless servitude for 6 months.

If you hero is a pathological liar, he must be forced to live one day where he can only tell the truth. (This is the plot of Liar, Liar – a great comedy starring Jim Carrey.)

You can get creative with these.

4. Surprising Ending

Ingenuity and creativity sees the hero achieve victory through unusual means, finding help in unexpected places or with unexpected allies.

The hero achieves a spiritual victory, but suffers consequences; perhaps winning the war, but losing the final battle with death, loss, or disfigurement as the price of success.

The damage could be emotional instead of physical.

The hero overcomes a great weakness to accomplish what he otherwise would have found impossible to do. He makes the decision he would have been least likely to make at the beginning of the story, and it wins him the day.

Because the hero’s obstacle was pitted directly against his greatest weakness, it seems unlikely he will succeed. But when he goes against his worst nature, faces his fears, and comes out on top, it’s a pleasant surprise.

5. Inevitable Ending

The ending is logical. It seems obvious after-the-fact that it would end as it did.

Hindsight says there weren’t many other ways it could have turned out. The character’s flaws would have otherwise prevented victory, but his overcoming of them made it plausible for him to succeed. Subsequently, since you made clear in your story what the hero’s goal was, when the hero overcame his flaws, it was clear he had a real shot at winning.

Additionally, since you aren’t throwing random elements into the mix – like a Deus Ex Machina with no setup – this makes your ending seem more inevitable.

A Deus Ex Machina is “is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and seemingly unlikely occurrence” (Wikipedia)

To be clear, a surprising ending can also be inevitable…

Perhaps someone does swoop in to help your hero. But by setting it up clearly earlier in the film, when the audience sees this person swoop in to help win the day, they won’t be left thinking, ‘well, that was random’.

Instead, they’ll be thinking, ‘oh, I see how that worked out – I should have seen that all along’.

Surprising. Yet, inevitable.

This is the tip of the iceberg

I hope these thoughts on what makes a story work are helpful and get you thinking.

Like you, I’m always looking to understand storytelling better every day. It’s difficult to tell a great story!

There are plenty of great resources out there to help learn storytelling. Some of them I recommend in my article on books directors should read.

Get out there, learn, and make great films!