"Let Me Apologize In Advance"

We’ve been telling stories for millennia. The first stories were told 40,000 years ago via primitive art--cave paintings akin to murals, which depicted short, ritualistic events, usually the hunt. Exciting stuff, no doubt, but what was its purpose? Was it meant solely to increase the heart rate of the intended viewing audience? Was it to bookmark our ancestors’ existence in a specific moment in time? Or was it to woo that cute Neanderthal girl you’ve had your one good eye on? At its core, storytelling is meant to entertain and educate, preserve tradition, history, and culture, all while instilling moral values and a sense of community.

STORYTELLING…40,000 BC

ICE AGE MOVIE FRANCHISE (LATEST STORY INSTALLMENT 2019)

Amazingly, after all that time, we’re still talking about a Wooly Mammoth. Either he’s the most memorable and charismatic Wooly Mammoth to ever grace God’s green Earth, or more likely, we’re forced to come to another logical conclusion: storytelling has not evolved as much as we have thought. Out of all the storylines possible, we gravitate towards, and wholeheartedly recommend stories that resonate with us, as a species. We recommend and embrace what we love, that with which we identify. However, what most of us fail to see is the underlying science of storytelling, the formula behind it. The “secret sauce” that made us talk about that Wooly Mammoth so many millennia ago, and still to present day. While movies have evolved with the technology of the times, we must realize that the structure of their storylines has remained largely unchanged. A screenplay from the 1940’s does not differ that much in appearance from one of today’s time. There’s a tried and true method to the storytelling process. After extensive and laborious research, combing every mathematical-movie textbook I could find, I came across a mathematical formula that best illustrates this hypothesis. Again, as mentioned in our title, let me apologize in advance, because this will forever change the way you see and experience stories and movies, from this day forward:

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Ĭᶊ tɦƐ (ṨąΜƐ)

Yes friends, the cold, hard truth: So, it seems every movie is the same--structurally that is, for the most part. If this is true, then now what? You’re telling me I’ve seen and recommended the same movie over and over again? Well, yes. Most movies, regardless of genre, at its core, follow the same blueprint, hit the same “beats”, and adhere to an ironclad, proven structure that, when used properly, can evoke every spectrum of human emotion. This is what we respond to in the theater, this is why we recommend movies wholeheartedly to family and friends, this is the “structural secret sauce” of any movie which is successful in hearkening back to those ancient storytelling techniques. Let’s explore them…

Joseph Campbell. The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949)

Joseph Campbell was an American author who studied comparative mythology. He studied the myths and stories across different cultures of the world and found that the narratives frequently shared a fundamental structure. Campbell discovered that they are all basically the same story, retold endlessly in infinite variations. His research culminated in the writing of his famous book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. In the book, he details the structure of the Monomyth, or as we know it today, The Hero’s Adventure. It will sound familiar, so here it is in a nutshell...

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons (a benefit) on his fellow man.”

“The hero is introduced in his ORDINARY WORLD where he receives the CALL TO ADVENTURE. He is RELUCTANT at first to CROSS THE FIRST THRESHOLD where he eventually encounters TESTS, ALLIES and ENEMIES. He reaches the INNERMOST CAVE where he endures the SUPREME ORDEAL. He SEIZES THE SWORD or the treasure and is pursued on the ROAD BACK to his world. He is RESURRECTED and transformed by his experience. He RETURNS to his ordinary world with a treasure, boon, or ELIXIR to benefit his world.

Stories built on the model of the hero myth have an appeal that can be felt by everyone, because they spring from a universal source in the collective unconscious, and because they reflect universal concerns. They deal with the child-like but universal questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where will I go when I die? What is good and what is evil? What must I do about it? What will tomorrow be like? Where did yesterday go? Is there anybody else out there?” (Vogler, C. "A Practical Guide to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' 1985.)

We put ourselves in the hero’s place as we watch a movie. We identify with the hero and we want that hero to endure ordeals to eventually have them grow, or change. A satisfying character arc. If the hero on the screen can change, we as the audience, can too.

Here’s a look at five (5) popular movies which follow the Hero’s Journey:

Harry Potter (2001)

Star Wars (1977)

The Matrix (1999)

Spiderman (2002)

The Lion King (1994)

Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)

Different movies, different genres, same path. After the success of the Monomyth or The Hero’s Journey, other people threw their hat into the ring, putting their own spin on the storytelling world. They include:

1. The Blake Snyder Beat Sheet (from Save the Cat, 2005):

This very popular list amongst screenwriters provides 15 points, or beats, that most movies follow in their story structure. They are:

2. Dan Harmon’s Story Circle (2013) (yes, Rick and Morty, Community. Guy’s a genius.)

Harmon distilled Joseph Campbell’s structure of the Monomyth into a simple, eight step process that would reliably produce coherent stories.

There are many other superb story structure guideline gurus as well. Some of note are:

3. Michael Hague: Six Stages of Character Development (2016)

4. John Truby, The Anatomy of Story (2007)

In this book, Truby shares his secrets for writing a compelling script and the hero’s moral and emotional growth. According to Truby, a story walks on two legs: "acting and learning." The hero acts, learns, readjusts, and then acts again. Each time the hero “learns”, he is having a revelation that helps him further understand the best way to go about getting his desire.

5. Syd Field, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979)

Generally considered the blueprint for salable screenplays, Field wrote numerous books and has given countless lectures on screenwriting. Producers today still use Field’s ideas on story structure to measure the potential of screenplays.

As you can now see, each storyline structure follows the same general path. A character in their ordinary, comfortable world, is presented with an opportunity, but they are reluctant to act, due to an internal flaw, but decide to do so anyway. They face challenges, meet mentors, and their antagonist. They adapt to their environment, search for what they’re looking for, ultimately find it, but pay a heavy price for it. They learn a lesson, utilize it, defeat their foe and their flaw, and return home, having changed. That’s it. That’s millennia of stories encapsulated into a paragraph.

For a story to be successful, or for it to resonate with us, it usually hits on and follows these beats. As compelling as the story structure is, there is however another important piece of the puzzle of stories to which we must relate, and that is the characters themselves. Character development is a huge part of making a story relatable, lovable, memorable, and one that we’d want to recommend to our friends and family.

Characters need depth, motivation, personality, and a struggle. These struggles, or actions and experiences, provide a way for the character to change, to evolve, and we as an audience, love this to bits. What we don’t often realize however, is that the characters we watch lie. They lie to themselves. They have a flaw, an internal wound, they’re screwed up in some way. It’s this flaw that prevents them from living their best life. Usually characters just want to be “happy.” They have this external goal they want to achieve. What propels the story forward is this need. They actively seek something, or at times, avoid something. The problem is however, oftentimes what the characters “want” is not at all what they “need.” They believe that if they just attain their external goal, all will be right in the world, but they’re wrong. They need to fix their internal flaws. They need to change their perception of themselves and their world. They need to realize that true happiness comes from within. Gaining their external goal is meaningless without having themselves undergo meaningful change that can correct their flaws and fill their emptiness, on their path to a happy life. Some examples from the 15 Minute Movie Method:

To define an internal struggle, start with the hero’s lie like this:

The hero believes in a lie (which traps the hero in a dead end situation)

The hero learns to change in a new world, but fails to acknowledge this lie

The hero starts changing and eventually loses everything to confront admit this lie

Freed from this lie, the hero can now change and defeat the villain

In “Star Wars,” Luke’s lie is his belief that he can’t live his own life. Instead, he must stay on his uncle’s farm despite his own desire to live an adventurous life.

Luke doesn’t trust himself to live his own life

By following Obi-wan, Luke learns about a new world but is still more passive than active

Luke starts changing by taking charge to rescue Princess Leia, but eventually sees Darth Vader kill Obi-wan

Still unsure of himself, Luke listens to Obi-wan and trusts himself, and thus defeats the Death Star and Darth Vader

In “La La Land,” Mia, the hero, is an actress struggling to succeed in Hollywood. Her big lie is that she doesn’t believe she has talent.

Mia is stuck working a dead end job and getting turned down for auditions while secretly believing she can’t succeed

With the help of jazz musician, Sebastian, Mia reconnects with her passion for acting

Sebastian convinces Mia to write and perform in a one-woman play that forces Mia to give up, believing her lie that she can’t succeed

Sebastian drives Mia back to LA for an important audition that she got from someone who saw her one-woman play, and Mia sings about her aunt who inspired her to go into acting, and she finally succeeds in Hollywood

In “The Edge of Seventeen,” Nadine, a seventeen-year old girl, is convinced her life is horrible.

Nadine can only focus on how horrible her life is both present and past

Nadine breaks off her friendship with her best friend and starts a relationship with a boy who likes her

Nadine learns how her behavior has negatively affected the lives of those around her, and she’s forced to confront how her behavior hurts others

Nadine learns to give up her belief that life sucks, and she makes up with her best friend and finds hope and love with a boyfriend

The pattern of change in the hero follows the four Acts of a screenplay:

Act I — The hero has a lie and simultaneously desires a goal yet is held back from that goal by a lie he or she believes

Act IIa — The hero enters a new, unfamiliar world and life gets better, but the hero still believes in a lie

Act IIb — The hero’s life starts to fall apart until the hero is forced to confront and admit the lie to him or herself

Act III — The hero starts to lose but finally frees him or herself from the lie, allowing the hero to change and defeat the villain.

Act I — Introduce the hero’s dead end life and dream

Act IIa — The hero enters a new world and learns about the story’s theme

Act IIb — The hero becomes more proactive

Act III — The hero must change to defeat the villain

In Act I, your hero must start in a dead end life. Then in Act III, we must see how the hero has changed for the better, usually by living the opposite of where he or she began. For example, in romantic comedies, the hero begins Act I lonely and single. By Act III, the hero has found true love and is happy.

While it’s easy to see how the hero can dramatically change in a romantic comedy, it also applies when the hero changes in any story. In a horror film like “Don’t Breathe,” the hero is a burglar with her two friends, but she wants to protect her little sister from her less than ideal mother. In Act I of “Don’t Breathe,” the hero is a thief and wants to give her little sister a better life. By Act III, the hero likely will never be a thief again and has found a way to give her little sister a better life.

In an action story like “Die Hard,” the hero changes from an arrogant man to a more humble one who admits that it’s his fault he and his wife are not together. In Act I, he’s still the same arrogant but nice buy. By Act III, he’s changed to understand his own role in breaking up his marriage.

In every story, there must be at least one major scene that highlights the hero’s change:

Act I — The hero has an initial problem that’s clearly visible to the audience

Act IIa — The hero takes action to achieve his or her dream

Act IIb — The hero takes charge of his or her own destiny

Act III — The hero remembers something from the mentor to help change into a better person

Think of “The Karate Kid” where in Act I, the hero is clearly bullied. In Act IIa, the hero fights back against the bullies, but winds up getting nearly beaten to a pulp as a result. In Act IIb, the hero diligently practices the martial arts to prepare for a tournament. In Act III, the hero remembers a unique fighting style to help defeat the villain. Think of the four changes of your hero like this:

Act I — Show the hero emotionally downtrodden but with a goal

Act IIa — Show the hero taking action towards a goal

Act IIb — Show the hero being more responsible for his or her future

Act III — Show the hero embracing the story theme to defeat the villain

Plot the four major changes of your hero and you’ll be a long way towards creating an emotionally engaging story no matter what genre your screenplay may be targeting.

In every good movie, the hero changes emotionally. That means the hero starts out in a dead end life and winds up in a better life by the end. Since the hero must start out in a dead end life, you must be absolutely clear on what your hero’s dead end life looks like right from the start. Then from that moment on, every conflict stems from keeping the hero from achieving what he or she needs the most.

In “WALL-E,” WALL-E wants to find love. That’s his main goal from the start and by the end, he finally gets it. In between, his desire for love creates conflict:

WALL-E wants love, but the conflict is that he’s alone on an abandoned planet

WALL-E finds Eve to love, but she’s nearly kills him by mistake and he’s afraid to get too close to her

WALL-E finally befriends Eve but then she mysteriously shuts down

A strange rocket shows up and takes Eve so WALL-E stows away on that rocket

WALL-E winds up in a huge spaceship and chases after Eve to stay with her

WALL-E finally reunites with her but the plant is gone and Eve thinks WALL-E took it

Eve tries to send WALL-E home but they discover that the villain took the plant and is trying to destroy it

After rescuing the plant, the villain damages WALL-E and dumps WALL-E and Eve in the trash to be sucked out into space

Because WALL-E is damaged, he can only survive if he can get spare parts back on Earth so they must get the plant to activate the return home

Once WALL-E gets his replacement part, he loses his memory

Finally Eve kisses WALL-E and activates his memory so he can fall in love with Eve at last

Notice how every step of the way, all conflict centers on keeping WALL-E from getting his initial goal, which is to find love. Every story poses an initial question and all conflict stems from keeping the hero from achieving his or her goal.

So there you have it, kiddies. A history of effective storytelling from the dawn of time until today. From now on, when we recommend a movie to someone, we can understand why that particular movie resonated with us so deeply, we can understand the ancient patterns at work, and we can now appreciate the connection between the newest and best on the screen, to the oldest and wisest story structures from the past, that are still very much alive and in use today. So the next time you find yourself telling your friend, “if you liked that movie, then you’re gonna love this…,” you’ll now have a deeper understanding of not just the recommendation correlation, but the inner workings of why, on both a mythical and terrestrial level, that movie even resonated with you in the first place. Keep writing, keep reading, keep growing, and keep watching and recommending movies. Godspeed. Excelsior!