“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith; Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”

– Reinhold Niebuhr

THIRD ACTS ARE A BITCH: REFRAMING THE PROTAGONIST’S GOAL

Whether you’re writing a screenplay or a novel, every well-told story contains this crucial element: somewhere toward the end of the second act, the protagonist experiences a surrender, a death of his old identity.

The purpose of story is to reveal a transformation. We must die in order to be reborn. Most stories begin with the protagonist wanting something. The stakes are life and death; if he doesn’t achieve his goal his life will be unimaginable. At the end of Act Two he recognizes the impossibility of achieving his goal and he experiences a death of the meaning he’s attached to it.

Whether his goal is to leave Bedford Falls like George Bailey, or to amass enough fortune to gird himself from the vagaries of life, like Citizen Kane, or to hold onto his youthful irresponsibility, like Seth Rogen in Knocked Up, the end of Act Two is the moment when the protagonist becomes awake to the dilemma he’s confronting, thus realizing the impossibility of achieving his goal.

This does not mean that he longer wishes to achieve his goal, but rather, he recognizes that his attempts at achieving it have, in fact, prevented its success. It is as a result of his surrender that he reframes his relationship to the meaning he attached to it. Perhaps he realizes that what he had taken personally was not personal. Perhaps he discovers that his idea about himself was misguided.

As James Joyce states in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, our job is to toil in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. He is saying that we are pioneers. This takes courage, as we are forever pressing up against our doubt. We are being asked to create something that is bigger than we are, which, on a practical level is impossible. The problem arises the moment our brain registers the potential for failure. It sounds the distress signal, wanting to protect our ego from a fatal blow.

This is what happens when our limiting ideas clash with our sense of our hero transformed. We get into our heads and try to figure out a satisfying ending to the story. I’m not sure it’s possible to figure it out. I believe that our role is as co-creators, and what we must do is become curious as to how our protagonist arrives at this new understanding. When we do this, images and ideas emerge that gradually reveal this shift in perception. We can’t do this if we’re holding so tightly to our idea of our ending that we don’t allow for a wider perspective.

Our protagonist’s self-will no longer works in Act Three, and neither does our own. Since the desire to create is connected to the desire to evolve, we are in some way the embodiment of our hero. When he recognizes the impossibility of getting what he wants, we experience that jeopardy on some level as well.

Story structure is an immutable paradigm for a spiritual transformation. If this sounds too new-agey, think of it as simply a shift in perception. Since this is not something that can be figured out, we are naturally going to experience fear and doubt. Writing is an act of faith, but not an act of blind faith. We can have faith in structure.

If you’re struggling with Act Three, be curious about how your protagonist reframes his relationship to the meaning he’s attached to his goal. Notice how he recognizes the nature of his struggle as opposed to the appearance of a struggle. Allow images to emerge. Hold them loosely and gradually you will begin to see that although his situation may not have changed, he has altered his relationship to the situation, and can then move forward from an empowered place.

Until next month, Al

BANISHING REDUNDANCIES

redundant: 1 a: exceeding what is necessary or normal : superfluous b : characterized by or containing an excess; specif : using more words than necessary.

Redundancy is not only a sign of lazy writing; it can also pull us out of the story by interrupting the narrative flow.  There are many types of redundancies in writing, from rehashing story information, to repeating themes unnecessarily, to using the same word or phrase within close proximity. Some words are like suntan lotion: a little goes a long way. If you’re going to use the word eidolon, fine, but only use it once.

When we read our work out loud we can catch most of the redundancies at the level of words, and find ways to remove them. Let’s try an exercise.

Read the following short paragraph.

         “Bob drove to work early. He worked six blocks from home, and when he got tired of working in his office, he did his work from the donut shop next door.”

Can you convey all the information and only use the word work once?

“Bob drove six blocks to his office. When he got tired of staring at the same four walls, he worked from the donut shop next door.”

Well done.

Now let’s look at a common problem: how to prevent exposition from becoming redundant. For example: sometimes a character must repeat information to another character. How can we avoid redundancy if the reader already knows the information?

Perhaps we could just show the other character’s response. Or maybe it could be dramatized and the second character could demand to know the story, and we could see the story told again, but from a new perspective, thus revealing new information about the characters’ relationships.

It is common for novice writers to repeat information ad nauseum. It’s the author’s job to find creative ways to keep the narrative moving forward.

A close cousin of this redundancy is beginning the story long before anything actually happens. Unless you’re F. Scott Fitzgerald, we probably don’t want to read twenty pages of backstory in order to get up to speed on the characters. Try to find ways to begin the action immediately, and creative ways to convey necessary information as the story proceeds.

Which leads us to structural redundancy; sometimes a beat can be played out repeatedly through varying situations, and the redundancy isn’t at the level of words or situations, but rather, of tension. The story is not building through rising stakes. This may be a structural problem, and it can be solved by first recognizing the redundancy.

It’s a dark day for the writer when the structure isn’t working, but as Ernest Hemingway said, “Every writer needs a good bullshit detector.” Though I’m pretty sure those were not his last words.

Here are a couple of ideas if the story feels like it’s moving sideways without building in tension: consider tearing out scenes that feel emotionally similar but add little new information – and/or be curious as to how the stakes might be raised by exploring the dilemma at the heart of the scene.

Fiction is different than real life. Real life is mundane. We eat, we work, we laugh, we cry, we sleep – we do it again. The purpose of fiction is to imbue these events with meaning. We’re not interested in the appearance of eating and sleeping; we’re interested in the underlying meaning that is being expressed through these incidents.

It is through inquiring into why a particular passage has been written that we begin to understand precisely what we were attempting to express, and the scene springs to life, thus raising the stakes.

Until next month, Al

“Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.”

-James Baldwin

The Dilemma At The Heart Of Your Story

OK. We want to write something. We have something to say, but we don’t know exactly what it is. It’s just a feeling, or maybe it’s an idea, but it’s alive in us. It won’t go away. Sometimes it’s this thing that’s been knocking around in our head for years, decades even.

To write it down would make it real. What if we don’t get it right? What if it isn’t so damn special? What if it was just a stupid idea to begin with? What would that mean about ourselves? About our existence? The risk is too great.

So we just live with it, like an itch we can’t scratch.

But it doesn’t go away. The thought is, “what if?” What if it is a good idea? What if I wrote this thing and it turned out to be amazing? What if it was what everyone had been waiting for? What if I do have something to say?

Then I’d have to do it again. And what if I failed? What if I only have one in me?

Ahhhhhhh. It never ends.

Our mind tortures us. Our ego wants to keep us in the same spot.

But here’s the lie that we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves that we have to solve this riddle before we can begin writing.

We don’t. We just have to acknowledge that this struggle lives within us.

I work with writers every day, and the one thing that separates working writers from the ones who are still struggling with resistance is that the latter interpret their fear as evidence that they are not uniquely qualified to tell their story.

It doesn’t matter that this is not true. It feels true. And further inquiry feels too uncomfortable to pursue.

What if you got excited about your fears, rather than withdrawing?

What if you let them turn you on?

What if you threw your ego on the fire and said, “I’m going to write this thing for me, and even if I never show it to anyone, I am going to conquer it once and for all.”

One simple paradigm shift can literally change our life. And here it is: what if we recognized the situation for what it really is — a dilemma.

So many would-be writers spend their lives waiting for their problems to be solved, only to discover that there isn’t one – there’s a dilemma.

A dilemma is a problem that cannot be solved without creating another problem. Notice how this mirrors the protagonist in the story you’re writing. If you disagree, keep inquiring, because I promise you this is true in every single story ever written from Dr. Seuss to Camus.

Problems are solved. Dilemmas are resolved through a shift in perception.

The purpose of story is to help us see things in a new way, through a shift in perception.

When we begin to recognize that at the heart of every story is a dilemma, we become emotionally engaged with our characters. Focusing on the plot was actually pulling us away from what our story was about.

When we inquire into the nature of the dilemma, our story starts to wake up. We become less concerned with the result and more interested in the process.

The dilemma is the source of our story. Its manifestations are endless.

The dilemma takes us out of our limited ideas of who these characters are, and into a world that is messy and dangerous.

The dilemma shakes up our fixed ideas on how the plot should go.

The dilemma takes us to the heart of the tension in our story. Our characters aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’. They aren’t ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. They are all simply struggling with various aspects of the same dilemma.

The reader, or the viewer, is always unconsciously wondering what is going to happen next. How are these people going to resolve this seemingly impossible situation?

As writers, by understanding that it is not our job to solve our hero’s problem (it’s unsolvable!) but rather, to inquire into the resolution of the dilemma, our story becomes instantly dynamic. Our focus shifts, and we begin to see the story in a whole new way.

Here are some examples of dilemmas.

* I want intimacy, but can’t tell you my secrets.

* I want my abuser to love me.

* I want success, but I can’t risk failure.

Let go of the idea that your hero has a difficult problem. Your hero only thinks he has a problem. He doesn’t! He has a dilemma. He may not know it. It’s likely unconscious to him, at least for (probably) the first two-thirds of the story, but gradually it becomes apparent. As it dawns on him that he is confronting a dilemma, he surrenders the possibility of ever getting what he wants.

Why? Because human beings only surrender when they have exhausted all their choices.

It is the paradox of life that in surrendering our desire we become instantly powerful. We have nothing left to lose.

Our hero is reborn, and is able to take action toward giving himself what he needs.

He makes a new choice, proving to the gods that he has earned his ‘shift in perception.’

And through this choice, the dilemma is resolved…and our hero is returned home.

Be curious about the dilemma at the heart of your story. Don’t try and ‘figure it out.’ It’s not a math problem. Inquire into its myriad manifestations and it will reveal to you the plot that has been eluding you.

Until next month. Your fellow writer,

Al