All Good Stories Contain a Mystery

We've all heard the story about how Sir Isaac Newton supposedly discovered gravity by virtue of a falling apple.

Recently I finished David Berlinski's wonderful little book Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World.

I like to read physical books because I like to write in the margins.  On page 3, I wrote this at the top of the page: 

Berlinski quotes Newton's biographer, William Stukeley, who in 1662 after dinner with Newton, retired with Newton to the garden and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees. Berlinski quotes Stukeley:

Amidst other discourse, he told me he was in the same situation [sitting in the garden under the shade of the apple trees] when the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It  was occasioned by the fall of an apple as he sat in a contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth's center?

Berlinski then writes:

I have always understood the apple to have fallen on Newton's head with an invigorating boink; but I may have been misinformed. Stukeley clearly has Newton looking at the apple as it fell; but the charming thing about the story...is that like all good stories, it seems to contain a mystery at the core of its narrative marrow, the falling apple followed by a thought-inducing boink still retaining all of its old and troubling suggestiveness. An apple? Falling? Yes, but why downward? 

Why did the apple fall down and not sideways or up? Such a question is the mystery at the core of all good narratives. It's the story question. In Newton's case the answer changed the world of science, mathematics, philosophy, and industry.

---

The answer to the mystery at the core of your story must also change the world...not just for your protagonist, who has changed most dramatically, but also for your audience.

Can a farm boy from a desolate planet save the galactic rebels from an evil empire?

How can a young man save his mermaid girlfriend from the murderous government?

Can a devoutly religious, conscientious objector serve in Hitler's army?

Can a spider save a pig from slaughter?

Of course, these are all known too as story hooks...and the answer should be enlightening as well as ironic and intriguing. 

This reminds me of Gerry Mooney's Gravity poster, which I've cited before. 

Just as Isaac Newton's Law of Gravity cannot be ignored without negative consequences, so a storyteller cannot ignore the law of an intriguing and ironic story hook with a reasonable answer that changes the world of the protagonist and audience. 

Finally, as an apple passes before us, Newton's gravitational FORCE that causes two material objects to attract each other, and which keeps the moon in orbit about the earth, and the earth in orbit about the sun, et al...that FORCE, which is an intrinsic characteristic of all material objects, is not material itself. As Berlinski reminds us, 

Newtonian forces cannot be grasped at all. They act invisibly; they act at a distance; and they act at once. It is only their trace in matter than can be detected...we cannot directly observe or measure the force that controls them. That remains a real but inaccessible feature of the world.

The same is true of the emotional forces (moral values) in a story that motivate people (your characters) to say and act as they must do to create drama. Characters do not really battle against other human beings or even against the physical forces of nature. Oh, they do in an explicit way, but what causes them to move and act are not material forces, but the forces of moral values that cannot be grasped at all. Moral values act invisibly; they act at a distance; and they act at once. It is only their trace in matter (the lives of others, for instance) that can be detected. That remains a real feature of the world of narratives, and is what makes stories connect with audiences. 

Borders and Quarantines, the Essence of Successful Stories

EVERY SUCCESSFUL STORY IS ABOUT BORDERS AND QUARANTINES

Stories we love are about the reoccurring cosmic battle between order and chaos. They are about how (1) we fall off the serpentine border between the two extremes, how (2) we quarantine ourselves in one or the other, and then (3) how we get back our balance and live on the edge between them.

Thus, stories that engage us are about:

A Conflict of Values

A Life out of Balance

The Dragon and Its Gold

The Decent and Indecent

An Elephant in the Room

The Threshold into Act Two

Obstacles that Escalate Tension

A Protagonist's Impossible Dream

Our Greatest Desire and Greatest Fear.

As storytellers our current state of quarantine over fears of COVID-19 is wonderfully illustrative of the crux of all good storytelling—the Moral Premise, where characters are motivated by vice and virtue to tear down (or build up) borders or establish (or break down) quarantines. 

Storytellers should be aware that the internal conflict of values (i.e. borders & quarantines) between characters is made external through the physical conflict seen and heard on screen. What the story is really about is the internal conflict of what external borders to erect or tear down, and what quarantines to enforce or break out of.

Likewise, COVID-19, while essentially invisible, creates visible effects upon our body's normal biology. And that effective conflict extends to our homes, our communities, and our countries.

WHAT WAS SUBTEXT IS NOW ON THE NOSE

Remember when Trump was demanding walls, borders, and travel bans? Many citizens objected. They believed America was a country of immigrants and great diversity. (For the sake of illustration, I'm sidestepping the "legal" vs. "illegal" equivocation). America had values that didn't discriminate. There was a way we should do things, and we needed to stay true to the practices that made us a great nation. etc. etc. At the same time there were political battles about socialism, the organizational principle of subsidiarity, and government handouts. Notice that both sides in that conflict of values had barriers going both ways. Both sides wanted to quarantine the others.

Then, suddenly, COVID-19 changed everything, on both sides. What Trump tried unilaterally (walls, and travel bans) now governors and mayors are demanding. What Trump fought against (socialism and government handouts) now he champions.  (Why write fiction when real life is more dramatic?)

In those real-life stories there are internal and external conflicts, and there are character arcs and situation outcomes that resulted. Both sides were involved in a fight for (or against) borders and for (or against) quarantines.

A DISTANT BUT RELATABLE ILLUSTRATION

Some years ago, just after the Sundance Film Festival, I was with a few other writers and story gurus as the guest of an actor-producer at one of those large vacation rentals in the mountains above Park City, Utah.  We spent days breaking a story down on colorful four-by-six index cards taped to a glass door wall around which we sat trying to figure out how to tell the story in subtext. We were stumped about how we should show the story and not just tell it. We had worked all day and it was now 10:30 at night with no apparent solution. We gave up and went to our respective rooms for the night. The next morning, our host (the actor-producer) came down to breakfast beaming ear-to-ear. He had figured out a solution. Referring to the protagonist, our host said, "He gives a speech!"  And then he proceeded to act out the speech, which explained explicitly (presumably to the audience) what subtext couldn't. Of course! It was perfect! It worked! We had crossed a threshold, a barrier, we were no longer "quarantined" in our little subtext rooms. What we had fought against, we were suddenly for. 

ALL STORIES ARE THIS WAY...even stories about creating stories.

In Once Up a Time in Hollywood, washed-up actor Rick Dalton feels quarantined. He's always playing the heavy who gets killed in Act 3. His career is fading. One day he realizes he's living next door to Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. But there's a wall and a big iron gate that keeps him out. Then tragedy strikes (through the kindness of producer, Tarantino's, revisionist history) and Rick finds the wall/iron gate opening for him (music cue) as if by magic, and he's released from his "quarantine."

In Knives Out, the Thrombey family is quarantined in deceased Harlan Thrombey's mansion until Benoit Blanc can knock down enough walls and barriers to find the murderer. Meanwhile Marta Cabrera, Harlan's personal assistant and nurse, is psychologically quarantined thinking she killed the novelist as she hides behind a "porous wall" of deceit (and vomit).

In Elizabeth (the Shekhar Kapur directed Cate Blanchett's vehicles), the Queen is continually quarantined by her throne and responsibilities, as multiple figures of court and France attempt to tear down her walls or the walls around England.

In Midway, U.S. military characters battle the walls erected by Japan's Imperial Navy in the Pacific by self-quarantining their lives in doomed dive bombers and ships to build a wall around their country and keep the Imperial Army out of America.

In a sense, EVERYTHING is about walls, barriers and quarantines.

DAO's YING/YANG

The Dao Ying/Yang symbol illustrates several things about the conflict in stories and arcs of characters. Ironically, the ancient symbol visually represents one of the 2001: A Space Odyssey themes from Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra—that of eternal reoccurrence. To the Daoist it is a symbol of the oneness of the cosmos. In a simple way the Ying/Yang symbolizes the eternally rotating day and night, and how the earth (and our lives) forever rotates between light and dark, good and evil. That is true not just physically, but psychologically.

Therefore, a good story, as explained by The Moral Premise principle, is a conflict between the light (a particular virtue, or strength) and the dark (a particular vice, or weakness). And if you're watching a successful television series, which is eternally caught in Act 2, the conflict between that vice and virtue continues every week for years. The Ying/Yang rotates as the light chases the dark's tail, and the dark chases the light's tail, all the while the dark has some goodness to it (the white dot), and the light contains some imperfection (the black dot). This is life. This is the cosmos. There is constantly this internal and external conflict that keeps life interesting.

But there's something significant about walls and quarantine in this symbol of the cosmos. Jordan Peterson suggests that our best life is lived in the border between the light and the dark or to use his terms: between "perfect order" and "abysmal chaos."  To be quarantined inside perfect order (the white) there would be no innovation or human progress. Why? Because innovation and progress demand we take risks and step into the unknown, the chaos. And by experimenting with things unknown in the world of chaos we discover ways to enhance the order in our lives. Likewise, if we were to keep our lives absolutely pure, we risk getting a disease for which we have no antibodies....and we die. In that case our bodies have not built up knowledge of how to deal with chaos, which is dangerous. Vaccines introduce small amounts of the disease in our healthy bodies and teach our ordered lives to develop anti-bodies. 

Stories are like that. In Act 1 our protagonist lives in the ordered-balanced-lighted world. Everything is supposedly fine. But something alien enters his life and throws it into chaos. To solve the chaos and rebalance this life, he has to enter the world of chaos, the unknown, the dark, Act 2, the Special World. While in Act 2 he learns about the problem firsthand. In Act 2 he returns to his village with the elixir in hand to solve the problem for the rest of humanity. In this way, our protagonist lives on the border between order and chaos. He straddles the wall. An effective protagonist is not quarantined on either side—although in the early pages of Act 1 he may be quarantined—and by entering Act 2 he breaks out and crosses the threshold. Recall the Moment of Grace in LIAR! LIAR! when cashless Fletcher Reede stands on the fence line between the car pound and his ex-wife, Audrey, who holds the check book, and he suddenly realizes (music cue), "I'm a bad father. I'm a bad father."  And Audrey says, "You're not a bad father when you stop 'quarantining' yourself with your lies and show up." (Okay so she didn't say that exactly.)  But you get the point.

So, go quarantine yourself away and write that story. That's what I should be doing, but I'm writing this instead. I'm not sure which is the quarantine...writing or finding an excuse not to write.

Blessings,

stan

TABLES from The Moral Premise for Kindle Readers

Reader Christopher Pratt made this valuable suggestion for Kindle (and perhaps other tablet readers) who can't make out the sense of the large tables from The Moral Premise. I had nothing to do with the book's conversion to Kindle et al...nonetheless I'm sorry for the problem. So, here's a solution to those that can find this blog post. If you click on any of the images below you'll get an even larger image very readable on your screen. These images are from my original manuscript to the publisher and not the final format manuscript. So, they should be easier (even more so) to read. Let me know. Thanks for reading. I hope your writing is getting better.

Does "Catholic" get in the way of "catholic" Storytelling

The Four Cardinal Virtues and their Contrary Elements
(copied from http://csermelyblog.tehetsegpont.hu/node/25)

Today a story client asked a good question that I've never breached on this blog. She asked if my deeply held Roman Catholic values would get in the way of helping her with a screenplay that had some elements that were contrary to Roman Catholic teaching.

While this possible conundrum may be on the minds of some that have not worked with me (yet), the question offers me an opportunity to expound, again, on a universal truth: All successful stories connect with audiences BECAUSE they are universal, or "catholic" -- notice the lower case "c."

Here's how I responded, which I've edited for clarity.

Dear C: 

I’m not bothered by story elements that run counter to Roman Catholic teaching (or counter to perceived Roman Catholic teaching, which is more often the case). 

Here’s my standard on such matters: 

In order to connect with mainstream audiences you’ll face something called Natural Law. What you must realize is that audiences subliminally recognize what is natural to the universe (and their lives) and what is not. That your story resonate with such natural elements is what helps your audience connect or "get" your story. When you try to legislate a reality that is not natural to your audience, you will distance yourself from them. One of my tasks in consulting is to help you connect with a target audience, and thus be aware of Natural Law and how you represent it in your story. 

Drama stems from the conflict between what is universally natural and what is not.  The “universe” of which I write is both physical and psychological, but I focus on the psychological because that is what motivates the physical.   

Long before there was a Roman Catholic Church (or any other religion's set of propositional statements), there was nature, and the rules of such are written on all human hearts and consciences. Now, it is true that many people (or story characters) can and do harden their consciences to those natural truths....but again that's one of the sources of drama. But generally and universally human conscience is very stable…and that’s the realm in which I work.  

In my work I refer to these natural forces as "virtues (or strengthens)."  And the rejection of those truths I refer to as "vices (or weaknesses)."  

Yes, there is an alignment between Roman Catholic teaching and "catholic" universal vices and virtues.  The Roman Church claims that it's teachings are not arbitrary but are a careful articulation of how the universe and nature work, and that the development of correct theology is the consequence of thousands of years of human observation about both the physical and the psychological universe in which the human condition lives

Thus, for proper dramatic conflict that general audiences will recognize there must be catholic vices/weaknesses and catholic virtues/strengths (contrary elements), or you will not have conflict and thus you will not have drama that anyone will connect with.

That last paragraph also reads correctly this way:

Thus, for proper dramatic conflict that general audiences will recognize there must be UNIVERSAL vices/weaknesses and UNIVERSAL virtues/strengths (contrary elements), or you will not have conflict and thus you will not have drama that anyone will connect with.

STAR WARS Moral Premise and Nicomachean Value Chart

REVISED 3-14-2013

Dear Story Writers and Story Fans:

Here is a chart that a reader egged me into doing. Some of these classics should have been done years ago, but time is of an essence, as it is now.... and I don't have time to write much of an explanation. But if you read my KITE RUNNER blog I think you'll be able to understand this. Feel free to challenge and suggest other ways to express this.

I think this is the first time I've used the virtue MEEKNESS in a moral premise analysis. That's probably because I've never understood the term until recently. Culturally it has a pansy reputation, but when the Godfather says, "Let me make you an offer..." that's meekness, although a frightful kind.

Great Stories - True Premises

I lead a bifurcated life when it comes to the types of projects I work on. I find my greatest satisfaction in structuring and writing stories for myself and for my clients. My wife, Pam, and I consume a great many movies and novels; and we're mesmerized by the integrity the best stories have with respect to a true and consistently applied moral premise that informs the metaphors used to do the story telling.

But the other side of my creative life has been involved in helping others produce very didactic series for Catholic television. Yes, we're talking about "talking heads" here. There are times when I don't want anyone to know that I write, produce, direct, edit and distribute such stuff. Not because I don't believe in the messages that the series contain, because I do believe in them. I'm a devout Roman Catholic who loves the Church's teachings. But I am convinced that didactic presentations DO NOT engage audiences very well, nor do they pass on values from generation to generation as well as stories do. But the didactic stuff does explain WHY and WHAT is going on in a psychological and spiritual sense in our lives, and in the lives of characters in stories with true moral premises.

One such connection occurred to me this morning as I was writing collateral materials for a Bible Study series on the Epistle of James that I'm preparing for broadcast. The particular Bible passage that applies to storytelling so well is this:

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  (NAB, James 1:2-4)

This passage hits a particular nail on the head with what we try to do --- or rather, what we MUST DO as storytellers. Our protagonist wants to reach the goal, but to do so our hero must traverse through myriad of trials and sufferings. Why do we drag our heroes through all of that? One answer is because in real life we are dragged through it all. The tests we put our hero through (as well as the trials we go through as humans) will teach our hero (and us) about life. Experience is the best teacher, after all. And simulations (movies) are a close second. Hopefully, in a redemptive story, our protagonist will persevere through the bad stuff and in the process learn something important, so that the end result her or she will be a better person -- and goal of the story achieved.

For the protagonist the "faith" is their belief in the truth of the moral premise. Yet, for them to really, truly believe the truth of the moral premise, we have to take them through hellfire and brimstone, (the testing of their faith as gold is refined with fire), before they get enough sense knocked into them to learn how to navigate life, latch onto what's really important,  develop the nerve to remove their mask of "unbelief," and risk all to persevere through Act 3 to the goal. (Do you see the story structure in that?)

And if our heroes persevere through all that, they can be joyous. Thus, great stories are about characters that learn something that is greater than themselves and persevere against great odds to bring that truth home to themselves and those around them....including us in the theater.

Indexed Values

Recently I subscribed to a blog post called INDEXED. Occasionally the creator, Jessica (whom I suppose a wannabe atheist (*) based on some of her posts), produces a Venn diagram or graph that touches eloquently on the conflict of values that we use in creating stories. While some will claim that her interpretations of things are not universal, I think they do, for the most part, connect generally with the human condition.

I also like them because they are mostly visual, which is what movies are all about -- show, don't tell. Pictures are worth thousands of words and her little index cards are great examples of this truth.  I hope you can see protagonists and characters carrying around these cards (figuratively) in their pocket, and at a particular turning point in their story, they take the cards out and study them.

The challenge, perhaps to my students, fans, and clients is this: Take your story and create a graph or Venn diagram for the Conflict of Values your protagonist faces. Put that card in YOUR pocket, and when you're waiting in line, or stuck in traffic take the card out and imagine that your character is in your situation at that moment, sitting next to you. How would they see your current predicament in terms of the conflict of values that is illustrated on the card?

(*) I call all atheists "wannabes" because logically they have no rational basis for declaring there is no God. To do so, they would have to be omniscient... an attribute assigned to the essence that knows all things perfectly without error or contradiction. You can't claim something does not exist when your knowledge of the universe and reality is microscopically small. I'll accept agnostic, but not declarations. Every human discipline offers only a spec of knowledge of what is potentially possible. Science and theology are no exceptions to this. Some of what was known as universal truth by science 100 years ago, today is bunk... and the thousands of Protestant Christian faiths that all disagree with each other suggests a similar uneasiness. I'm Catholic for a host of reasons, not the least of which the Church does not claim to have all the answers. It has always embraced mystery as a tenet. That there is mystery in the universe/reality,  is what makes stories, in part, work. We are bounded by time and space. Stories working through our imagination allows us to see reality from a perspective that transcends space and time.

====

I wrote the above on May 20. On May 25 Ms. Hagy posted this index card:

ARISTOTLE'S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS - Mean Virtue

Back in February 2010 I wrote about how a producer I was working with had suggested that the vices of a particular story we were working on were at the two extremes of a moral continuum, with the virtue being in the middle. I had always said that any virtue taken to extreme produces a vice; but I had never diagrammed it or put it in a table until that day in the story meeting. It struck an immediate chord. You can read about that illumination at this post: EXPANDED CONFLICT OF VALUES AND THE MORAL PREMISE.

What that producer articulated was the result of some insightful thinking thousands of years earlier by Aristotle in an essay known as ARISTOTLE'S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS. (Wikipedia Article.)

I felt embarrassed to have missed such a basic piece of early literature that is reflected in the Moral Premise book. (As I have said, this is nothing I invented; but just trying to articulate it and make it useful for today's story writers).

A summary of Nicomachean Ethics and that "middle" or "mean virtue" discussed in the Feb. blog can be expressed in a table, which Aristotle constructed. Below is a simplification and expansion of his table thanks to ideas and prompting from several readers: Thank you Janet and Kit.

I have blogged several times since about this, and you can find those articles collected HERE (which is the TOPICS link in the right column).

The words in the table, like all words, contain contextual and cultural connotations that may be different from your understanding or your character's experiences. Therefore, the table should be used only as a guide or suggestion and not as a rule.

Feel free to add your comments and suggestions to the com box thread.

Click on the chart below to enlarge.

Addendum November 15, 2025

I came across two additional charts that enhance the above content. Here they are.

Romances and the Conflict of Values

A reader writes with a problem (indented).

Dear Dr. Williams:  Thank you for writing The Moral Premise and frequently updating your blog. I have learnt a great deal from both, and I'm actively trying to incorporate the methods outlined in the book into my own work. I am a novelist, and I can see how this is just as applicable to us as it is to screenwriters. My genre is 'love story' which opens up another can of worms for me as a writer. I'm having some issues when trying to understand how to apply antagonistic forces. I believe you stated somewhere that love stories would involve a co-protagonist setup and that the man and woman would be antagonists to each other. With no clear antagonist practicing the vice side of the moral statement, I am unsure how I apply the vice side throughout a love story and how the two characters should arc. If you are able to provide me with any guidance as to how a moral premise operates in a love story with two protagonists I would be very grateful.  (Signed: G.M.)

Dear G.M.: Tell me a bit about your story and how ends. Is it a love story (someone dies), a romance (a persona dies), or a romantic comedy (two egos die)?  (Stan)

[Following: GM is in black and my response is inbetween in purple. (SW)]

It's a romance as I have not envisioned a tragic ending. The story involves a man and a woman who dated when they were young and fell in love, however his work/career was extremely important to him and they amicably parted ways as she knew how much it meant to him.

Sounds a little like Nicolas Cage's FAMILY MAN.

She did not realize until later that she was pregnant with his child. By then he was career bound, and she had lost contact with him. She decided to raise the child alone but this came at the expense of her own career. When the novel essentially begins, he is driven by his career and money, and he is isolated and lonely. Conversely she has struggled to keep her daughter and herself afloat, and all three (mother, father and child) will somehow come together at some point in the story (the inciting incident and goal that will bring them together is still unknown) and priorities will have to shift if he is to learn to value love over business/money, he is to connect with his daughter, and we are to have the man and the woman fall in love again.

So, it's a remarriage, romance story.

With so many elements to the story, I’m worried that the above will not follow one set moral premise statement, and perhaps I have thought about the story in a backwards manner with the ‘moral premise’ as a step after the above plot brainstorming rather than before it.

 Based on what you've told me so far, there's not too much for even a movie.  Novels, which I have not studied in depth in terms of the moral premise, may well indeed have more than one moral premise... even as some movies do. Some other posts deal with this from some of my other readers.  But I  suspect the different moral premises need to be tightly linked on a value level. Novels can do this more easily than movies, because novels can be longer, have multiple stories interwoven, and transcend eras easier. But the novel will resonate best with readers if the story comes back to one thing about which the story ultimately reinforces.

My idea behind the story stems from putting love first as opposed to money, and as a result I have put together:

Greed and selfishness leads to isolation and hatred, but
Generosity and sacrifice leads to inclusion and love.

Yep, that is what I was going to suggest, or something very much like that.

My difficulty in getting my head around all this is due to the fact that in romances the two characters are typically opposites.

As they are even in successful marriages... opposite in some respects, but not every respect. The drama explores the opposites, not what they have in common. Perhaps you're thinking they need to be opposite in every respect. The story will assume they have much in common, but the drama and the emotional journey of the story will explore how they learn to "love" each other's differences. (I'm thinking of the Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers films. They both loved to dance, but the drama was never about the dancing.)

In a typical non-romance story this would mean one was a protagonist and one was an antagonist. Yet in a romance we have two protagonists who we want to remain opposing for conflict purposes, yet we still need both heading for the same goal with the same moral premise, and all this is with a different type of antagonistic force present. 

Moving the “normal” structure around to fit a romance is proving difficult to visualize. 

Many thanks,
G.M. 

[Now, my in depth response.]

Well, let me help you. It's not that difficult at all.

The simple answer is that each character (the man and the woman) struggles with the vice side of the moral premise in their own way, and becomes the obstacles and the antagonist for the other. 

Jeff Bridges & Maggie Gyllenhaal, CRAZY HEART (2009)

I like the way Michael Hauge explains this. He calls the two moral premise values the character's "identity" and the character's "essence." At the beginning of the story each character has an "identity" that they have given to themselves; that is they have put on a mask and are pretending to be someone they are not at their essence. But the identity, because it is false, has holes, and the romance character can see through those holes to the person's true essence. Each character falls in love with the other person's essence and are repulsed by that person's false identity. In Crazy Heart, the romance sub-plot between Blake and Jean occurs because Jean sees what Blake could be. She falls in love with his essence. But when he can't seem to fall in love with his own essence, she breaks it off.

So when the man reveals or practices his false identity the woman is turned off and repulsed. Likewise when the woman reveals or practices her false identity the man is turned off and repulsed.  But when each practices their essence, there is attraction.

In over simplified terms of the Moral Premise, the false identity is that person's vice, and their essence is their virtue. In more accurate terms, it's the moral premise vice that allows the character to hide behind their identity and camouflage their essence. And it's practicing the moral premise virtue that allows their true essence to be revealed. 

Although the man and woman may have similarities, the story is about how these two characters are different, even opposite in some ways. To be complete and happy and fulfilled, they have to be together so their essences are complimentary. 

Both may love the opera, but one likes to sit in the balcony and the other in the front row. They are both stubborn and demand their own way. Thus the drama comes out of the battle to decide where they will sit to enjoy the thing that they both love. the story is about stubbornness and forbearance --  not the opera.

Now about somethings each needs to be stubborn... justice, for instance, or if they're investors in the opera they can be stubborn about the singers being on pitch and not just looking the part. But about other things they need to drop the stubborn "identity" and be "forbearing."

Each character, at a subliminal level, longs to be complete and whole. In and by themselves they never will be. But with the right mate, they can participate in that wholeness somewhat vicariously, and by virtue of being married and (one flesh) they can participate with the other person that makes them a whole, if only by  proximity.

A personal example: my wife, Pam, and myself. I am not sentimental nor do I value nostalgia in the least. But at the right time I realize that being sentimental and nostalgic has some value. But to this day I could never express such emotion or sympathy toward others. But Pam does it so naturally. So, I can facilitate her getting to a family gathering where she can dole out the sentimentality, nostalgia and sympathy. I'll sit next to her when she does this, and I will aid her by finding money so she can buy the stupid little gifts that others love for their tacky sentimentality. (Can you tell I am not into this.) So, in that way, we are made whole. My vice (hating to be sentimental) is countered by her virtue (sentimentality.)  But my vice (arrogance) can prevent her from being sentimental and putting her down for it.

 

2. The arc from vice to virtue does not need to be wide or long, nor does it need to deal with vile or overly righteous values.  Not shown above, but imagine, the story being about moving from courage to honor (two small arrows at the right would do this). That is the moral arch of THE BLIND SIDE which deals with two virtues (one not as good as the other)  and how any fool can have courage, but not everone arrives at honor. 

In the diagram above the two yellow arrows can represent the moral arcs of a romantic couple. For their peculiar reasons each is deceptive to the other, thinking they need to lie about what they do, where they're going, or why, in order to appease the love of the other. But the other doesn't buy the lie and there's rejection. It's only when they take off their masks, and are truthful to each other that there is acceptance. 

3. Here's a variation on this theme:

The character represented by the left arrow believes (has the false identity) that they have to be deceptive to be accepted. Whereas the character represented by the right arrow is so scrupulous about telling the truth that it sounds like an over the top lie all the time. Both are vices. The virtue is graciously telling the truth. 

In these ways each protagonist becomes the antagonist for the other. So the man's goal and the woman's goal is to get together with the other. To do that he thinks he has to be God's gift to women and be arrogant and controlling. (WHAT WOMEN WANT) But that "identity" he keeps practicing turns off the woman, and thus he's rejected. At the same time she arrogantly believe she has to protect herself from such cads, and defends everything she does and puts him in his place. And that repulses him. So, they become each other's antagonists. 

4. Now, in your case, both the man and the woman have to practice a vice which will block their true essence from being regularly revealed. they are both determined to be right about what they believe, and both have to change to meet in the middle and get together. A very typical virtue and vice scenario for stories like yours is arrogance vs. humility. Or going back to your original moral premise statement:

Greed and selfishness leads to isolation and hatred, but
Generosity and sacrifice leads to inclusion and love.

The man, involved in business, is easy. But,how can you make her greedy about what she is doing? They both have to be imperfect. She can't be greedy about making money, that's his problem.  OR, perhaps she is greedy by virtue of being poor. Perhaps she's a hoarder: or perhaps she is about time. Or she could be selfish and proud about being poor. She could see "money is the root of all evil" but she only believes that because she's never had any. She's forgotten that the adage is "the LOVE of money is the root of all evil". In what ways is she NOT generous? That is her vice, and it blocks the guy's ability to see her goodness. But she does have some and by the first ten pages we know that that is.

But, if you're determined to make her the perfect person, and him the bad guy, then you have a story about HIM, not her.  If you want to make the story about both of them, they both have to be imperfect. 

Watch any Romantic Comedy that was successful in the box office and you'll see this. Take out the wild comedy, and you'll have your romance. 

Hope this helps. Let me know. 

See also this post on the Conflict of Values: http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/02/expanded-conflict-of-values-and-moral.html

Expanded Conflict of Values and The Moral Premise

UPDATE: What is discussed in this post is not some new discovery. Not much is new under a billion year old sun, even if it's continually being rediscovered. See end of this post for link to another post that reaches back a few years to something called Nicomachean Ethics.

During a recent story meeting in L.A. our well-known host and producer solved a story problem we were having by introducing a brilliant expansion of the moral premise concept as it pertains to the conflict of values. I'm sure it applies to other well-known stories once we have time to think more about it. Perhaps readers will have some suggestions.

To introduce this expanded conflict of values idea let me first review some basics from the book and my workshops.  I'll use some old and new workshop slides to illustrate.

[Clicking on any slide opens a larger vision in a new window.]

Slide A

 

All drama requires a conflict of values, principally between the protagonist and the antagonist. The values can be identified by a virtue and it's opposite vice. For instance, generosity (a virtue) is related to greed (the contrary vice).  Both of these values (generosity and greed) can be depicted in different characters to different degrees. And both protagonist and antagonist, in the telling of the story, will move along a continuum of pure greed at one end (black) and pure generosity at the other end (white.) In a redemptive story the protagonist may be a little greedy at the beginning of the story, but by the end, he will have moved toward the virtue end of the scale and become somewhat generous. 

I've made the point, illustrated by the color arrows in Slide A, that if the "greed" and the "generosity" are too far apart, the story may come off as unrealistic and artificial. In 2 hours, it's hard to envision a protagonist going from a greedy crook to a generous social worker. Some movement, please, but not too much. Keep it real. At the end of a redemptive movie, a protagonist will still be imperfect, just not as as imperfect as he or she was at the beginning. 

Slide B

So, a good movie will deal with a Vice and a Virtue that are modestly separated in degree from each other.  The antagonist will try to pull the protagonist to the dark side, and the protagonist will pull the antagonist to the light side by defending herself against the antagonist's attacks. Depending on who wins, the movie becomes a comedy or a tragedy.

Slide C

Thus, for a movie with the moral premise:

A deceptive heart leads to rejection; but
A truthful heart leads to acceptance....

...our protagonist may start somewhere in the middle of the vice-to-virtue continuum,  then during Act 1 and the first half of Act 2, move toward the vice in an effort to achieve his or her goal. But in the second half of Act 2 and Act 3, she will move to the virtue side as the goal is achieved. In the example in Slide C, the character slides toward deception before she learns to tell the truth and moves toward success. This, of course, is story with a "redemptive" end, or what I call in the book a "classic comedy" as opposed to a "tragic drama."

Slide D

The scene where our character changes tactics or methods in their pursuit of the goal is halfway through Act 2 and is called the Moment of Grace. All main characters should have moment's of grace, and they should be plotted out before the script is written.

Slide E

In a typical comedy or drama the protagonist is opposed by the antagonist and while the protagonist makes a turn for the good at her Moment of Grace, the antagonist, likewise, has a Moment of Grace, where he turns deeper to the dark side. With respect to the example in Slide E, the moral premise for the antagonist might be something like this:

A deceptive heart leads to rejection; but
A habitual lying heart leads to isolation and despair.

Slide F

In a buddy drama or romantic comedy with a redemptive ending, the two main characters are co-protagonists, and each becomes the antagonist for the other. Perhaps they are both deceiving each other at the beginning of the story, and through a singular moment of grace they both learn that it's better to tell the truth. Of course, they don't learn that lesson real quick else the movie would be over in a flash; and since none of us learn anything very quick, we are able to identify with the slow learning protagonist(s) and the movie becomes more realistic. The "A (P)" and the "P (A)" designations in the diagram reminds us that each character is both a Protagonist to themselves and an Antagonist to the other.  While each character deals with the same dipole of values, the specifics of the plot for each particular story is different.  Jane may be deceiving Jack about where she lives, and Jack may be deceiving Jane about his education.

Slide G

In a similar vein (but in the opposite direction) a story could have both characters reject the moral premise's truth, and lie to each other more at the end of the story than at the beginning. Neither would achieve the redemptive goal, but rather a goal that is tragic.

THE SMITH OBSERVATION

Now, here's the expanded concept of how the conflict of values works in an expanded way. Credit goes to Will Smith for recognizing this and how is can be used effectively in story telling. Like other natural laws of story telling this has probably been used many times, but I have not seen it artiuclated or documented until Will brought it up in our meeting. It was pretty exciting and will definitely make the movie we were working on all that much better. (Note: The examples I use below do NOT refer to the project in development.)
 
Slide H

It's common knowledge that any virtue when taken to an extreme becomes a vice. We see such characters all the time in movies, like a mother who becomes so kind that she intrudes far longer and deeper into her adult son's life than a mother should; or religious sanctity that results in delusion; or generosity that goes so far as to discard personal responsibility in the giver's life or creates slothfulness in the life of the recipient; or over protection that creates debilitating co-dependencies.

Notice that in the graphic the tradition vice (to the left) is the abandonment of the virtue, while the other end is the virtue taken to the extreme by a manic, obsessive, or repressive disorder. Where the absence of the virtue is the result of some degree of evil, the other end is the result of an extreme effort to be good.  So, how does this work when we apply them to character arcs?

Slide I

Consider the expanded moral premise statement in Slide I:

A deceptive OR scrupulous heart leads to rejection; but
A truthful and compassionate heart leads to acceptance.

Notice the whole continuum deals with the values of deception and truth-telling, either truth-telling in its absence or to the point of being repressive and hurtful.  The Bible asks us to speak the truth in love, which suggests that we can speak the truth in a way that is either hateful or harmful.

Slide H

Thus, in a buddy film or romantic comedy or drama, our co-protagonists and co-antagonists may struggle with the values either side of the virtue. Each tugs on the other to move toward the middle and toward the virtue. One character is untrustworthy because he is always lying, and the other is untrustworthy because they are being so scrupulous and manic that the truth is contaminated. (Again, as a reminder, in films of these genres each co-protagonist is the antagonist to the other. )

Slide J

Finally, Slide J suggests a structure I've not considered before, but one that probably exists in many films. A tragic film where the characters, at their moments of grace, let their pride get the best of them, and refuse to move toward truth, manically displacing themselves toward their respective vices of deception and scrupulosity. Could be a comedy... I guess.

Comments? And again, thanks to Will Smith and his constant pursuit of excellence.

(See posts on: Nicomachean Ethics, especially the advanced use of this concept that I explain in my review of THE KITE RUNNER.)