Every story needs a hero

Call it the hero's journey or the three-act structure. The classic way of storytelling as brought forth by the Greek has stuck with us through the millennia ... because it works.

The classic story structure is something that can drive you nuts when you initially get into screenwriting and read all the how-to books. It may feel confusing and restrictive and a great many gurus have their own terminology. After a few years in the marvelously mad world of screenwriting, you know all the terms, you know about structure, you know what they want to hear in meetings and you know how to get it across. 

Years ago I came across below chart by Ingrid Sundberg - with one clear page she brings it all together, the language of Campbell and McKee, Field and Snyder, Vogler, Hauge and more. The page is worth perusing, and worth keeping.

Eventually, all of the above will be internalized - you don’t think about it anymore, it’s become part of who you are. You’re also in a place where you’ll want to go your own creative ways, challenge yourself, break a few rules - and you can do all of that because you know the essentials inside out.

In below clip, script guru Michael Hauge talks about script structure. His structure comes with percentages - and I can’t stand that because I don’t like numbers and I most certainly don’t think of scripts in percentages. However, the man’s got a point. The film business is just that, a business. And if those business leaders, the producers, think and talk in percentages, then it is essentially that you understand and speak their language, too.

In another clip, Hauge talks quite candidly about Hollywood and the five key elements any story needs to be successful. He argues that every story has a far greater chance of ever being turned into a film and reaching an audience if these universally applicable elements are there. I think he makes some interesting observations on why the Hollywood-style of storytelling works across the globe.

Here’s the transcript (find the clip at the end):

“... The key things that any story has to have if it’s going to be a movie, if it’s going to have a chance of being produced, of reaching an audience:

The first is, it's gotta have a hero. It's gotta have a protagonist, somebody we’re rooting for, some main character who’s driving that story, who’s the focus of our attention.

The second thing - we have to empathize with that character. We have to put ourselves inside that character psychologically. So we like them, or we feel sorry for them or we worry about them - but in some way we become that character on a psychological level.

The third thing - the character has to be pursuing some goal, some desire. That hero has to desperately want something. Desperately want it, not just mildly want it.

Fourth - it has to seem impossible to get. There has to be conflict, because the goal of any movie ultimately and the thing that makes a successful movie successful is - it creates an emotional experience for the audience. That’s what you gotta do as a writer or a filmmaker. And the emotion primarily grows out of conflict. So the bigger the obstacles you throw in your hero’s way, the more emotion there’s gonna be.

And the fifth quality is courage. You want to write stories where, whatever the hero wants, in order to get it they have to put everything on the line. In a thriller their putting their lives on the line - or in an action movie. But it might not be that. But it might be their sense of who they are, their own identity, or risking embarrassment or rejection or something that they’ve been afraid of. But they have to risk a great deal.

I think if any one of those are missing from a story idea or a script, it has a very very slim chance of getting made, let alone reaching an audience. Because, I guarantee, cause I’ve done it, if you look at the top 100 movies of every year - take away the documentaries and stuff - although most good documentaries have those qualities, too, actually - but for fictional films you look at the top 100 coming worldwide at the box office - every one will have those five qualities.

What my belief is, except for maybe Indian cinema in India, Hollywood filmmaking is the most popular in the world. I recently, before coming here, I looked at the box office returns in Sweden for the last few years and, in any given week, there’s always a Swedish movie or two in the top ten, it's usually not number one - but most of the movies are the same movies in about the same position they were in in the United States when they were released there.

And I don't think it’s just because Hollywood has more money to spend. Because some of those popular Hollywood movies have budgets that are no bigger than Swedish movies or Australian movies or whatever. I think it’s because Hollywood has developed a set of principles of storytelling that really reach the mass audience effectively.

And because we’ve been watching Hollywood movies for over a hundred years, it’s also molded the  expectations of the audience worldwide. So given that those principles have proven the most successful at reaching the mass audience - then I’m comfortable saying that that’s what I bring to the party. I have found that, certainly in seeing the Swedish films I’ve seen, or the Australian films, there’s certainly cultural differences. There’s certainly tonal differences. There’s different subject matter. Humor is different in different places, somewhat. But again, I'm not really, my expertise is not in what those differences are.

And what I do with the lecture that I’m doing here - or whenever I lecture in a country other than the US, it’s pretty much the same lecture, because I say - If you can take these principles and apply them to your story idea, even if the idea might be uniquely Swedish - ehm, it’s about a celebration, a holiday that isn’t celebrated anywhere but Sweden, that’s fine. But the principles on how you create empathy, the principles of structure, the principles of what makes a love story work or not work - those are universal.”

There’s a great deal more you’ll find online from Michael Hauge and every other screenwriting guru. The above five principles are clear and useful. A great deal of what those gurus share can lead you astray, however, it can actually stop you from doing what you’re supposed to be doing: Writing!

The above chart I’ve shared is useful - print it, stick it somewhere near your computer screen and, with that, you’re in a good place. Now get back to your story.