Conventional
Wisdom:
- It can be tempting to regard the entire third quarter as a
string of betrayals, reversals, and assaults, but it’s important to remember
that this is all happening now for a good reason: the hero is finally tackling
the problem head on.
What Human
Nature Says:
- As with cleaning your home, tackling the problem means that things have to get worse
before they can get better.
- Trying the hard way should not be instantly-rewarding, and
shouldn’t lead to any better results than the easy way, at first. The advantage
of trying the hard way is that it forces us to lose our illusions and leads us
to a spiritual crisis, and that crisis becomes the secret of our success.
What Writers
Should Keep in Mind:
- This is the section where the hero finds out who his or her real
friends and enemies are.
- The easiest way to drop a huge reversal on your hero is to
reveal that all of his or her seeming success was actually all a part of the
villain’s plan, but this is never a good idea. This inevitably creates huge plot holes, and makes the hero
seem way too stupid and predictable.
Instead, reversals should come about because of the hero’s blind spots
and hubris.
- It’s tempting to overmotivate the hero in this
section. Beware of the tendency to
prop up a flagging story by tacking on an additional motivation, such as
revealing that the villain also killed the hero’s family years ago. If you want to strengthen your hero’s
motivation, then simplify it instead of multiplying it.
Examples of Trying
the Hard Way:
- After pretending to be poor in the first half of Sullivan’s Travels, our hero finds out
the hard reality.
- Max in Rushmore learns to struggle through
public school.
- The prince in The
King’s Speech finally agrees to talk about the troubled childhood that
caused his stutter.
- The heroes of Fatal
Attraction and Silence of the Lambs
each admit that they lied their way through the first half of the movie.
- The heroes of Some
Like It Hot, Tootsie, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, on the other hand,
keep lying, but now they have to face the mounting consequences of those
lies.
Notable Exceptions (But Don’t Try This At Home):
- If heroes don’t try the hard way, they get horribly
depressed, as in Swingers and Bridesmaids. This is hard to make interesting, but it can be done.
- Avoid the urge to simply have a deus ex machina
swoop in and bail out the heroes at this point, as in Superbad, where the cops show up and solve a lot of their problems.
Next: The Spiritual Crisis...
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