Four Elements of The Perfect Story

Complete Characters

People (myself included), often make the mistake of saying that you need “relatable” characters. Being able to see yourself in a character is VITAL to enjoying a good story… that said, you don’t have to be a serial killer to appreciate Hannibal Lecter – you just have to be able to understand him.

Hannibal’s brilliant mind (in Red Dragon especially, but also in the film Silence of the Lambs), leads him to make horrible conclusions on society as a whole, and to do horrible things… but given his past and the way his mind works, we can understand how he functions. The scary thing about him comes when we see parts of our own mindset wrapped up inside him.

He is well-crafted. He is complete.

Structure

In screenplays, there exists a perfectly defined pre-determined structure. The average screenplay is about 110 pages (this has changed over time, but is basically universally agreed upon). It contains a beginning of about 27 pages, a middle of about 56 pages and an end of about 27 pages.

Well, in novels, it isn’t that simple. That said, books without structure are obvious to almost everyone. Characters often find themselves stumbling across things - purely by chance - that resolve difficult plotlines. They go pages and pages without doing anything ultimately relevant to the book.

Note: On the subject of relevance, let’s say the main character breaks her car and then fixes it… well, if it had never broken, we would be left exactly we are. Or, let’s say they get lost in the woods and find their way out… if they hadn’t gotten lost, again, we would be left where we are.

The structure is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING when it comes to your readers completing your story or book. It is the guiding light. When we put down our book and think, “I wonder if Jimmy will be able to tell Sally how he feels”, that is the structure keeping us involved. Something should always be left unresolved until the final pages. At any given moment, we should be able to put down the book, and be in the middle of something that needs to be resolved.

Surprise!

The structure is the guiding leash that pulls us along. That said, if Frodo must destroy the ring of power, and everything goes as planned, we have an incredibly boring story. He sneaks in without trouble, plops the ring in the fire, and everyone is saved. Hurray!

…

Except the path is too direct. When things are too easy, it’s hard for us to get invested in the wonderful characters that exist, or in the beautiful theme that is laid out before us. We need to have our emotions toyed with. We need the possibility of failure. We need Surprise.

Don’t imagine that surprise is the opposite of structure. It is NOT. Surprise allows you to shift your story (See Story at the bottom of the Theme section). This means, new things happen. New opportunities present themselves. Still, the overall structure remains.

Imagine that you’ve created a maze for your readers. The maze leads to a wonderful, riveting conclusion that you’ve had planned for quite some time. Your structure is the maze as a whole. When you introduce surprise, you are simply shifting a wall in the maze; your character can no longer go the way that your reader imagined... but that’s okay because, when you shift a wall, another way opens. Regardless of how many walls you shift, eventually, the path will lead to the center.

Theme

Hansel and Gretel shouldn’t have gone into a stranger’s house. That is why they’re eaten.  That’s the theme of the story. That’s why it exists. That’s what the story, at its core, is about.

This doesn’t mean that the perfect story must always have a MORAL (though there is nothing inherently wrong with a moral). It does, however, need a message. It is quite likely that ALL of your favorite books have a message. Good books that seemingly have no message, typically have an atypical message; eg. “There’s no meaning to the universe. Everything is random and pointless.”

Don’t confuse STORY and THEME.

Your story is what happens: Hansel and Gretel leave a trail of breadcrumbs. The birds eat the breadcrumbs and they get lost. They see a house of candy. A woman invites them inside. She turns out to be a witch. They get eaten.

The Theme is WHY the story exists.

You should always have a general theme in your mind when writing a book – even on page one.

On Character Arcs: Part 2, Be A Sadist

“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”

-Kurt Vonnegut
 

As I said in my last post, On Character Arcs: Part 1, The Psychology of Character Arcs, when a character changes in response to an event, it is incredibly important because, very often, it is the change that shows the importance of an event in the first place. What I didn’t say is that, if your character’s arc is a direct result of the events alone, it is going to be incredibly weak - even if the events themselves are strong.

Here are other important points to consider when creating your character--

An Active Arc Is Better Than a Reactive Arc

A character arc that is based solely on reactions is a generic arc because it is one that any character would have in that given situation. If you, personally, were running from assassins for the course of 300 pages, you too would be wary and mistrusting of those around you… it’s what’s expected! When a character is directly shaped by events, he is part of a reactive character arc. That’s not what you want. You want to show off your character’s most interesting traits and remind your audience why he or she is worth writing about in the first place. An active character arc does exactly that. It shows a way of being different from the way most people live their lives - and it is difference in writing that stands out.

Your Character Is Driven By Motivation

To quote Kurt Vonnegut a second time, “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” Ask questions before you begin writing a story. What does my character want? How will their motivations change as the story progresses? Your motivation drives your character into the obstacles that change him. Frodo’s desire to protect the shire is what causes him to volunteer to destroy the ring. It is what drives him to say ultimately, “We set out to save the shire, Sam, and it has been saved - but not for me.”

This is an important distinction because it means that motivation is the best tool for bringing about character change! If my character wants to get that water really badly, he will go through some pretty nasty things to get it - and that can cause him to question the value of life in the first place.

JUST REMEMBER: Motivation can only drag your character through these obstacles. How they adapt to these obstacles is what makes them unique.

Personal Growth Isn’t Always One-Sided

Too often characters finish a story by rising to the top by overcoming all adversity and becoming the best version of themselves. That’s fine, but the best fiction emulates life. Very rarely do people become simply “better”. A person’s growth is a multi-faceted thing. A nerd might become good with women by caring less about them than he did before. Uplifting stories are great, but not every story is a story of victory. It’s more important to write something genuine than something peppy.

Your Character’s Personality Should Shape Their World

The strongest of stories intertwine story and character. As I talked about briefly in my post What Could Go Wrong, characters are the driving force of tragic plays. It is Hamlet’s inability to take action is what keeps him spiralling to his doom. Had he taken arms against his sea of troubles and killed his uncle/stepfather, Claudius, as he knelt in prayer, the play would have simply ended. If Hamlet were replaced with John McClane from Die Hard, the play would have ended very differently.

Your Characters Are Made for Their Stories

A character arc should reflect the essence of the story. Take The Godfather for instance. One of the key points of the story is, “You can’t turn your back on family”. The irony is that, in Michael’s attempts to protect his family, he hardens his heart to the point that his wife becomes afraid of him and leaves. Not everyone would become as cold as Michael does throughout the story, but his transformation is perfect for adding a touch of irony into the film.

Guide your characters toward the conclusion that resonates the most profoundly with your readers. Do it elegantly and in a way that shows off your character’s unique personality, and your work might stand the test of time!

On Character Arcs, Part 1: The Psychology of Character Arcs

"'There are rules for artificials, but there are no rules for humans - not for things that matter. We just go around wishing and hoping, putting our love in the wrong places, forming ideas based on other people's ideas and sticking with them regardless of what happens or what we learn. I don’t know why you’d want to be a part of that.'"

-Alan Turner, Tiny Instruments

Note: This is a short, but extremely complicated post that ties in my two favorite fields of study, philosophy and psychology. Please re-read as needed to fully grasp the importance of what is being said.

Good characters go through cycles. People have been analyzing these cycles since the beginning of fiction, but they aren’t as complex as most books would have you believe. Of course character arcs exist! If characters aren’t changed by the events around them, the events obviously aren’t important are they? If, for instance, a monk blessed by inner peace finds himself involved in a series of incredible events, but is never EMOTIONALLY involved in those events, we, the readers, will care just as little as he does… but why?

Before I get into that, let’s ask an even greater question: what is the goal of all fiction, everything from novels and poems to film and theatre? What is its purpose? Simply put, it is to trigger emotions in people who would not otherwise experience them. The only way to do this is through allowing your audience to identify with the fictional people the world has dubbed, “characters”.

So, from a psychological standpoint, in order for me, as a writer, to make you feel an emotion - let’s say, anger - I have to trigger your own natural sense of anger. I need to hijack your own natural response. If I write a story about a good man who worked and bled for his family, but still, despite countless sacrifices and endless loving devotion, his wife carried on a heartless affair behind his back - that might make you angry. The reason is because, through writing this character, I am offering you to step inside him and see for yourself how unjust his world is. Would you be angry if you gave everything you were to someone and they betrayed your trust? If the answer is “Yes”, you’ll get angry reading about it. If it’s “No”, you don’t. As with the monk, the importance of an event is seen through the eyes of our characters.

Most authors will give you this basic “formula” to explain your character’s arc--

Base Character

Your character is a person shaped by their past lives. They start out with a unique perspective on life.

Character in Turmoil

Many if not most of your character’s beliefs are called into question. They try to use their various perspectives to confront their various problems.

Changed Character

Your character, having found that many of his beliefs were either wrong, or were simply not ideal for survival in the world, has now changed.

I often see this model peddled as the quintessential piece of information needed to create a successful character arc… but the people who peddle it are wrong. Maybe some of them are good writers (I really have no idea), but they lack a fundamental knowledge of how character arcs work.

Change, the thing that defines a character arc, is important because it is a representation of emotional trauma. Again, from a psychological standpoint, we don’t change our perspectives unless we have reason to believe that what we’re doing isn’t working. It is something that we can relate to at a deep subconscious level. Growing up, you might have thought it was okay to steal until you realized that your actions might harm others. The truth is, you believed a great many things that changed as you had the experiences that made you who you are.

Change, therefore, is not some necessary part of a magic formula - it is what separates a character from a person. The “character arc” that your creation conforms to is actually what gives them life. With each change, you are inviting your readers deeper into the subconscious of a living being - which is what allows you to incite their emotions in the first place. It is an endless circle that you would do well to familiarize yourself with.

For similar posts, see creating characters and on adding dimensions to your characters.