In July, I shared a video essay by screenwriter Michael Arndt on insanely great story endings. The 90 min presentation is a brilliant excavation of how narrative works, and how crisis and catharsis interweave to create ‘insanely great’ story endings.
The Oscar winning screenwriter of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and ‘Toy Story 3’ has also created a shorter lecture on story beginnings.
Here are the key steps Arndt identifies set up a good story beginning:
Step 1: Show Your Hero Doing What They Love Most
The first step to setting up a story is to identify the protagonist or hero’s ‘grand passion’. This is their defining trait, the centre of their universe. As you introduce the character the universe they live in, you show your hero doing the thing they love to do the most.
Step 2: Add a Flaw
The character’s grand passion however, contains a flaw. Usually it’s the dark side of their natural love, a good thing that’s taken too far, a fear or a weakness. What is key however, is that the hero’s flaw is tied to their deepest love and desires.
Step 3: Add a Storm
In the early stages of the story, usually around page 10 of a screenplay, you want to establish ‘storm clouds’ on the horizon of the main character’s world. Your character is walking down the road of life, on a nice bright sunny day, and then BABOOM! ~ something comes and totally blows their joyous life apart and irrevocably changes the path they are on.
Step 4: Add Insult to Injury
This bolt from the blue not only interferes with your character’s life but skewers them through their grand passion to their deepest flaw. This wound, changes their whole sense of what their future is going to be. To increase the stakes at this early point in the story, add insult to injury, making the whole world seem a little bit beyond unfair.
Step 5: Make Your Character Pick the Unhealthy Choice
All of this serves to set up the character journey of your protagonist for the rest of the story. Your hero’s grand passion has been taken away, the world is revealed to be unfair and he or she comes to a fork in the road, and they have to make a choice on how to deal with their new reality.
There is a high road to take, a healthy responsible choice, or a low road to take. As the audience, we are barracking for the hero to do the unhealthy, irresponsible thing, because we feel his or her pain.
Bring It Home
To put everything right, your character must make a journey that is the rest of the story. By the end of this journey, hopefully, not only will they get back what they lost, but they will have healed the flaw they had which was tied to this deep passion and desire.
The key point of Arndt’s analysis is that the essence of your story, comes out of your character’s deepest desire and darkest fears. The thing they love gets stolen away from them, and the world is revealed to be unfair. Their journey to reclaim their lost passion, heals their deepest fears, their wound and flaw and re-establishes equilibrium and peace.
And this is what makes insanely good story beginnings.
Great resource for English teachers!