She’s rejected and humiliated even though Elle shows a warm and caring heart and goes out of her way to help people. Elle now stands in for all of us who have ever seen ourselves as misunderstood and undervalued… which is just about everybody.
Elle’s quest after Warner becomes a battle to resolve for a lifetime her own worth as a person, her spiritual life or death.
See the difference that high stakes make between these two stories?
Also note the character sympathy tools used in Legally Blonde to connect us emotionally to the hero. All nine sympathy enhancers are employed: Courage, Unfair Injury, Skill, In Danger, a Nice Person, Funny, Loved by Others, Hard Working, and Obsessed.
ONLY THE HERO CAN MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN
Change is certainly critical in each screen story, but the source of energy pressing to make that change happen is key as well. It must come from the hero and no one else.
To be special, to be brave, to be a cut above ordinary folks, your hero must seize his own fate and actively work for a solution to the conflict he faces. If anyone else solves your hero’s problem for him, your movie will fizzle.
Elle Woods in Legally Blonde begins her journey as a young woman who plans to make a career out of living for surfaces; getting her nails and hair done, and designing the perfect pink wardrobe. This is all that’s ever been expected of Elle.
But when Warner dumps her and goes off to law school, our hero is suddenly losing forever the one man who defines her life.
So the hero musters all her courage and fights back.
That’s how every good movie begins. Into the life of a sympathetic hero plops a Big Problem, igniting in the hero a strong desire to create a change that will solve the problem. The lead sucks up her courage and sets out to beat the Big Problem or die trying, physically or metaphorically.
By the end of Legally Blonde, Elle Woods has altered her whole world. No one thinks Elle a dumb blonde anymore. She single-handedly wins an important criminal case, graduates at the top of her law school class, and she bags Warner, who by now is groveling to get her back.
But Elle’s inner world has matured as well. She at last sees clearly that what she wanted at the beginning of the movie, Warner, isn’t really worth wanting at all. By the end she no longer desires to be just an ornament on some man’s arm. She’s become ambitious and respected. Elle tells Warner that if she’s going to make law firm partner by 30, she needs a boyfriend who isn’t such a complete bonehead.
Oh, how Elle has changed.
But here’s the key reason we’re so entertained as we watch this hero achieve her transformation. She does it through her own willpower and actions.
When we observe bad things happen to a hero who just stands there and doesn’t fight back, it’s only interesting for a short while. When we see a character create his own destiny through personal choices and strong efforts, we remain enthralled to the end.
Part of the great value of Hero Goal Sequences® is that they will ensure your hero never becomes passive. Every screenwriter must learn how to spot passive central characters because they sink scripts faster than concrete shoes sink gangsters.
House of Sand and Fog tells the story of Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), a young woman evicted from her recently inherited home because the city has made a mistake about unpaid taxes. Her house gets auctioned off to a refugee Iranian, Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley), who sees the bargain-priced dwelling as a last hope for his struggling family. Kathy tries to tell everyone that a mistake has been made. Colonel Behrani fights back.
In its initial theatrical release this film did very little business at the box office. I believe there are two primary reasons.
First, the lead character of Kathy, as written, is not sympathetic. She’s churlish, ungrateful, stupid, uncourageous, self-pitying, and bad at the most basic tasks in life. On the other hand, Kathy’s adversary Colonel Behrani possesses the qualities of courage, love, strength, kindness, and charm. Our emotional sympathies are completely out of whack. We like the adversary and don’t like the hero. Trouble ahead.
Secondly, the hero is passive. When the going gets tough, Kathy’s solution is to attempt suicide. But she proves as incompetent at suicide as she is at everything else. When that doesn’t work out for her, she just slumps into a state of complete passivity and stops taking any action at all. Throughout the entire third act the hero of House of Sand and Fog is either unconscious or wandering in an aimless daze. Literally.
Since Kathy does nothing to resolve her own conflict, it becomes the action of the hero’s married boyfriend, a demented cop we also dislike, that drives the movie forward to a climax.
The coffin nails for House of Sand and Fog are an unsympathetic hero, and a passive hero. The heroes we want to watch are active, not reactive.
SUMMING UP
• Audiences enjoy movies that give them what they often avoid in life: change. The emotionally loaded experience screenwriters seek to create in a film story is always built around a concept of constant dramatic plot evolution.
• The big change in a screen story, from the hero’s situation at the start of the movie to his very different situation at the end, is constructed from a series of smaller changes that take place step by step through the movie. The exact number and content of these actions are predictable and have been named Hero Goal Sequences®.
• High stakes are essential for dramatic change to be effective. The only story stakes powerful enough to grip an audience throughout a film are literal life or death, or metaphorical life or death — when the hero risks losing something life-defining like true love, self-worth, or personal fulfillment.
• Only the actions of the hero can successfully push story change forward. Responsibility for making things happen in the plot of a movie cannot be turned over to any other character.
• Passive Heroes who do not take action to solve their own problems must be avoided.
EXERCISE:
Choose any two commercially successful American movies that have one hero in the story. First, read the questions below so you know what to look for, then watch the first twenty minutes and last twenty minutes of both films carefully. Answer the following questions:
1. What is the hero’s ordinary life situation at the start of each story? Be specific and include geography, friends, conflicts, work world, housing, attitude, dreams, happiness/unhappiness with a mate (or the lack of one), what’s wrong in her society, disappointments and joys, emotionally guarded or not, etc.
2. What is the hero’s life situation at the end of each movie? As compared to his ordinary life at the beginning, how has the HERO’S EXTERIOR WORLD CHANGED? How has HIS INNER PERSONAL LIFE CHANGED?
3. How is the hero personally instrumental in making this CHANGE come about?
4. What’s AT STAKE for the hero in accomplishing the goal that drives each story? Are those stakes life or death — either literally or metaphorically?
5. How many clear, individual moments of CHANGE in the hero’s circumstances do you see unfolding as the story progresses in those parts of the films?
chapter four
CONFLICT IS KING
All screen story structure exists to drive some worthy hero onward through ever more daunting conflict toward an important goal. There’s just no tale to tell