“In fact, one of the great principles of storytelling is that structure doesn’t just carry content; it is content. And it is far more powerful than what your characters say. Nowhere is this principle more accurately expressed than in theme.”
— John Truby, The Anatomy of Story
Having figured out your hero’s Moral Argument and Moral Weakness, John Truby recommends using several techniques to elaborate how your Theme and your Moral Argument are expressed through your various characters.
Towards the end of Chapter 5: Moral Argument in John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story he describes one story form, Tragedy:
- The community is in trouble.
- The hero has great potential but also a great flaw.
- The hero enters into deep conflict with a powerful or capable opponent.
- The hero is obsessed with winning and will perform a number of questionable or immoral acts to do so.
- The conflict and competition highlight the hero’s flaw and show him getting worse.
- The hero gains a self-revelation, but it comes too late to avoid destruction.
Wow! I had a very cool thing occur to me as I was quoting this from John’s book. A plot point occurred to me. I should consider one of the questionable or immoral acts to be that Sam tortures someone to learn the whereabouts of her kidnapped fiancé. Of course, since he’s already dead, that kind of puts that torture scene in a different light. Eenteresting… As a possible story development and plot point I like that a lot.
Cool.
Anyway, the Tragedy story form seems to be exactly what I’ve written.
- The community is in trouble.
It certainly is in so far as any community dealing with a running war (2 actually) is hurting. Moreover, given the fraudulent cases made for invading Iraq, our country is struggling with huge issues of accountability, integrity and national identity. Sounds troubled to me.
- The hero has great potential but also a great flaw.
Sam is a wrong young woman and has been trained in the Army. But she’s also in very deep denial over abuses she’s suffered as a child, teenager and, more recently, adult. So, she’s blinding herself to the events and actions in the world around her, including those she’s participating in or contributing to.
- The hero enters into deep conflict with a powerful or capable opponent.
Fighting a multi-national private security firm to rescue her kidnapped fiancé sounds like a deep conflict with a powerful opponent.
- The hero is obsessed with winning and will perform a number of questionable or immoral acts to do so.
Sam’s psychotic break, her rampage across the city in search of Carl, is questionable at best.
- The conflict and competition highlight the hero’s flaw and show him getting worse.
As Sam gets more desperate to rescue Carl she starts to act like those who abused her and those she’s fighting.
- The hero gains a self-revelation, but it comes too late to avoid destruction.
Sam’s self-revelation is that she in fact has been mistaken about some key points, Carl not being alive and not having been kidnapped being the main one and the quality and magnitude of the response against her along with her overkill reaction to that response adding to the whole thing. This realization leads her to her moral choice, take responsibility for her actions — which requires her to face what she’s been denying — or escape yet again.
Sound pretty good so far. Pretty solid.
Next up is detailing how Sam’s Moral Argument varies from character to character, from Kevin to Bats to Reggs and so on, elaborating on the overall Theme.
Stay tuned….
© The Trubyphiles and “Blunt Force” Copyright 2009 Melton Eduardo Cartes. All other copyrights are those of their respective owners.
