Read Online Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble For... by Blake Snyder - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Blake Snyder
Ads: Link
troubleshooting I do with your story is an examination of these three worlds. By looking at the process of change this way, it's easy to step back and take in the big picture of how your hero or heroes move through these phases to their final destination. What I'm always going for is: bigger — or at least clearer — ways to define the bouncing ball that is your protagonist and the various ups and downs he must go through. The biggest surprise for most writers is: You are the engineer here! You are “small g” god of this universe and can make it any way you want! Whenever I point out how minor the changes are in your hero, or how the overall arc is insufficient, writers are forever saying:
But that's not how I saw it
, as if the way it came out of your imagination is the only way it can be. This is why picking your Opening Image and Final Image is so vital, and why you have to keep adjusting the Alpha-Omega and make those two points as wildly opposite, and as demonstrably different, as possible.
And I know you get it because you are awesome! And I'm not just saying it because you've come with me all the way to page 50!
THE MAGICAL MIDPOINT
Given these three worlds, we can now put the 15 beats of the BS2 into the Transformation Machine and look how nicely they lay out! From left to right we see Opening Image, Theme Stated, Set-Up, Break into Two, through Midpoint, All Is Lost, Finale, and Final Image.
And each stop on our trip in some way changes the hero.
Let's start with Midpoint or what I am calling the “Magical Midpoint,” for in fact it is a very magical place. When I noted in the first
Cat!
book how vital Midpoint is for “breaking” a story, I had no idea how much more I'd keep learning about it.
I like to say that the Midpoint is the Grand Central Station of plot points, the nerve center. It's because so many demands intersect here. The Midpoint clearly divides every story into two distinct halves and is the “no-turning-back” part of our adventure. We've met our hero and shown his deficiencies, we've sent him to a new place, and in Fun and Games we've given him a glimpse of what he can be — but without the obligation to be that! Now at Midpoint, we must show either a false victory or a false defeat that forces the hero to choose a course of action, and by doing so, make his death and rebirth inevitable.
False victory at Midpoint is just that, the point where the hero “gets everything he thinks he wants” — and it has features that are fascinating. Many times you'll find a “party at Midpoint”: the celebration Jim Carrey is feted with in
Bruce Almighty
when he gets his promotion to anchorman, and even a “kiss from the girl”; check out
Ironman
when, fresh from the false victory of his first trial flight as a superhero, Robert Downey Jr. goes to his company party and almost kisses Gwyneth Paltrow; look at the party Dustin Hoffman attends in
Tootsie
, when he tries to fly as the man Jessica Lange might kiss, but gets slapped down by her instead. And even when there's not a party per se, there is often a “public coming out” of the hero as he tries on this new identity, or declares a new way of living. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio do this at the Midpoint of
Titanic
, when, after making love for the first time, they go up on the deck of the soon-to-be-doomed ship together for all the world to see.
False defeat is the same but opposite. The Midpoint false defeat is where the hero “loses everything he thinks he wants.” It also has a public aspect. Check out the costume party in
Legally
Blonde
, when Elle Woods bottoms out in her bunny ears and is told by ex-love Warner he doesn't want her, and that she should leave Harvard. Note the false defeat party of
Spider-Man 2
when Tobey Maguire learns Kirsten Dunst is engaged. It's the point where Richard Gere is broken in
An Officer and a Gentleman
, and — publicly — declares defeat by shouting to drill sergeant Lou Gossett Jr. his
But that's not how I saw it
, as if the way it came out of your imagination is the only way it can be. This is why picking your Opening Image and Final Image is so vital, and why you have to keep adjusting the Alpha-Omega and make those two points as wildly opposite, and as demonstrably different, as possible.
And I know you get it because you are awesome! And I'm not just saying it because you've come with me all the way to page 50!
THE MAGICAL MIDPOINT
Given these three worlds, we can now put the 15 beats of the BS2 into the Transformation Machine and look how nicely they lay out! From left to right we see Opening Image, Theme Stated, Set-Up, Break into Two, through Midpoint, All Is Lost, Finale, and Final Image.
And each stop on our trip in some way changes the hero.
Let's start with Midpoint or what I am calling the “Magical Midpoint,” for in fact it is a very magical place. When I noted in the first
Cat!
book how vital Midpoint is for “breaking” a story, I had no idea how much more I'd keep learning about it.
I like to say that the Midpoint is the Grand Central Station of plot points, the nerve center. It's because so many demands intersect here. The Midpoint clearly divides every story into two distinct halves and is the “no-turning-back” part of our adventure. We've met our hero and shown his deficiencies, we've sent him to a new place, and in Fun and Games we've given him a glimpse of what he can be — but without the obligation to be that! Now at Midpoint, we must show either a false victory or a false defeat that forces the hero to choose a course of action, and by doing so, make his death and rebirth inevitable.
False victory at Midpoint is just that, the point where the hero “gets everything he thinks he wants” — and it has features that are fascinating. Many times you'll find a “party at Midpoint”: the celebration Jim Carrey is feted with in
Bruce Almighty
when he gets his promotion to anchorman, and even a “kiss from the girl”; check out
Ironman
when, fresh from the false victory of his first trial flight as a superhero, Robert Downey Jr. goes to his company party and almost kisses Gwyneth Paltrow; look at the party Dustin Hoffman attends in
Tootsie
, when he tries to fly as the man Jessica Lange might kiss, but gets slapped down by her instead. And even when there's not a party per se, there is often a “public coming out” of the hero as he tries on this new identity, or declares a new way of living. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio do this at the Midpoint of
Titanic
, when, after making love for the first time, they go up on the deck of the soon-to-be-doomed ship together for all the world to see.
False defeat is the same but opposite. The Midpoint false defeat is where the hero “loses everything he thinks he wants.” It also has a public aspect. Check out the costume party in
Legally
Blonde
, when Elle Woods bottoms out in her bunny ears and is told by ex-love Warner he doesn't want her, and that she should leave Harvard. Note the false defeat party of
Spider-Man 2
when Tobey Maguire learns Kirsten Dunst is engaged. It's the point where Richard Gere is broken in
An Officer and a Gentleman
, and — publicly — declares defeat by shouting to drill sergeant Lou Gossett Jr. his
Similar Books
