How Subplots Enrich Your Story

Here's fresh insight that will refine your subplots and reinforce your story's main physical and psychological spines.

But first let's set the stage.

In other places I explain how a story's subplot can be devised and used to reinforce the Moral Premise of the story. In short, those explanations have focused on these traits:

1. Each subplot follows a particular character in their pursuit of a specific goal.

2. Each subplot has fewer dramatic beats than the story's physical spine.

3. The psychological arc of every character in every subplot lies someone along the arc between the opposing values anchored by the Moral Premise Statement.

For example, let's say we have a story titled HOT WATER. Our story's main plot (or physical spine) centers on a protagonist—an elderly but persistent widow—who battles a secretive landlord who refuses to provide more than 65/F of heat to the hot water heating system during the winter months.  The widow's goal of the main plot is to sue the landlord to reveal how much profit he's making by keeping the temperature at 65/F, and thus force him raise the temperature.

But the landlord's position is that his financial records are private, and he further argues the tenant agreement specifically states that the maximum temperature that he needs to provide tenants is 65/F, not a degree more.

Let's say the Moral Premise Statement for our story is:

Causes of a Bad Movie

HOW DO YOU TELL IF A BAD MOVIE IS THE RESULT OF POOR DIRECTING, ACTING, SCREEN WRITING, OR SOME OTHER REASON? That was the question on Quora. I dared an answer. But it was also a learning moment, so I'm editing it bit and posting it here.

To answer such a question we have to first rid it of equivocations.  What do we mean by "bad"? Is that a pejorative or a compliment?  Assuming it's a pejorative, what or who claimed the movie was bad? A critic? Box office gross? Awards season?  A niche audience?  Let's assume it's the box office. That means the movie did not connect with audiences, or it was poorly marketed.  But let's generally say that it was marketed well, but audiences refused to give it word of mouth promotion—yes, it was a bad movie. So, why was is DOA?

Let’s look at 7 reasons, any one of which can minimize a movie’s success or ‘add’ to its failure, but only one of these will kill it directly

The Philosophical Basis of How Stories Connect with Audiences

"It sort of makes you stop and think, doesn't it?"

Rule No. 1: Audiences connect best with characters when you tell a story that the audience believes is universal, logical, and organic. 

• Universal means the story centers on a universal values that the audience believes are universally true...that means what is right vs. what is wrong.  In 90 minutes you can't change the audience's moral values more than a smidgen, so you better start and end where the audience generally is. You can nudge people, but you can't convert them. If you want to convert people produce a documentary and present the most biased interviews and visuals you can find. But don't figure you can figure which way the conversion will flop. A pro-Trump doc may just turn people against him, as Dinesh D'Souza has probably discovered, and a anti-Trump doc may create more Republican voters...as Michael Moore has discovered. 

• Logical means the story's cause and effect elements are logically consistent with Natural Law. Now, there are two kinds of natural laws. There is physical kind, e.g. gravity, momentum, inertia, etc.; and there are psychological kind, e.g. guilt, generosity, lust, envy, etc.   You violate one and there will be natural consequences to answer to. 

• Organic means the filmmaker's ability to surreptitiously foreshadow events... while still being universal and logical.  

Rule No. 2: Every one of the universal, logical and organic elements consistently conforms to a single Moral Premise Statement:

[some moral vice] leads to [some physical detriment], but

[some moral virtue] leads to [some physical betterment].

To expand: The vice and the virtue in the statement need to be universal values that most everyone in a general audience will understand at some level, e.g. greed vs. generosity, selfishness vs selflessness, arrogance vs. humility, etc.

The detriments and betterments are logically the natural consequences of the vice or virtue. Greed leads to isolation, generosity leads to friendship. In the political arena, arrogance (both Trump and the Acosta) leads to distrust, but humility (Jordan Peterson) leads to respect. 

This is one of my Big Problems — s.w.

Rule No. 3: Avoid parochial content and jargon...unless your audience is parochial and expects you to use jargon. For instance, Christian faith films often lapse into trite visuals, scenes, and jargon, the meaning of which is obscured to the non-believer. Someone asked Jordan Peterson once, "Are you a believer?" Peterson's logical response was, "I believe a lot of things." 

Rule No. 4: Tell the Truth.

Seems simple, but here's what it means.

When you set up a conflict between a flawed character and a universal vice and universal virtue, remember these three things:

1. Things Don't Happen by Accident. Either nature delivers, or your character is motivated by some value. 
2. The Universe is run by the Eternal Purposes of God. Generally, that means Natural Law is benevolent toward humans, unless humans ignore what is benevolently given them.
3. Novel and unexpected events (e.g. a miracle) occur to accomplish the universe's larger purpose. In such an event, it may appear that Natural Law is violated, but to the clever writer the event is always natural. 

How to Emotionally Connect a Protagonist to Your Audience.

 This is an updated post from 2010.

Our full house at EXTRAORDINARY's premiere

A  recent workshop attendee who works with teen filmmakers asked this question:

What are the major events in a story that a protagonist must face and overcome to make sure the audience emotionally connects with the character?

That question tells me the filmmakers believe it's the external (or visible) story EVENTS or ACTIONS that connect the audience to the character. But that's only half the truth.

The action a character takes is valued by the audience only because of said character's motivation to take said action. If the protagonist kills another character, the event will be judged differently by the audience depending on whether the killing is pre-meditated murder or self-defense. That is, what's important to the audience is WHY the character took said action. And that is all about who the character is internally. It's the character's internal values that mostly dictate the emotional connection of the audience.

The way the audience discovers those values is the work of the plot and how the character responds to the beats of the plot. More about the plot beats below, but first let's look at how the audience will come to recognize the character's internal values. This is how it works in real life, too.

This diagram from a workshop I give will help. On the left side of the circle, items 2, 3 and 4 happen internally to a character. In a motion picture the audience does not see these unless the character shares his thinking with another character. In a novel, internal monologue often supplies these points.  But everything on the right side of the circle, items 1, 5, and 6 are in the visible, physical realm which the audience sees.

So, let's begin with No. 1. Here our character observes a situation in the external world.

2. Almost immediately the character compares what he observes to his own value system.

3. Let's assume that there is an internal value conflict between what he observes and his own value system. That leads to:

4. The character deciding upon a course of action to remediate the situation, and try to change the external situation to be more in line with his own internal values.

5. The character's thoughts morph into the physical realm and he takes some action.

6. As a direct consequence of the action some natural consequence occurs that is totally outside the character's control. Nature has the upper hand now, and some physical conflict may occur.  This physical conflict is a metaphor of the internal conflict from step 3.

And the cycle repeats itself, as the character...

1. Observes the new situation created by his intervening action, and

2. Evaluates....

If the Natural Consequence is evaluated as good in the character's mind, then his original internal value is reinforced. If the Natural Consequence is evaluated as bad, then the character may revisit and revise their original internal value....and transform.

TURNING  POINTS AND BEATS

Now this sort of logic appears most dramatically at a story's TURNING POINT or at Major Beats of a story. I discuss these beats in various places in this blog. But here's a starting point: 13 Major Beats.

So, this goes back to the original question.

What are the major events in a story that a protagonist must face and overcome to make sure the audience emotionally connects with the character?

The answer in an external sense are the dramatic story beats reflected in the 13 Major Beats link above. But the key to those beats emotionally connecting with audiences all depends on whether or not the internal value arc of the character's transformation coincides with or diverges from the audience's values.

And that is where the Moral Premise comes in. The decisions and actions that the character makes, if you're going to have a successful story, must all coincide with the moral and physical arc described by the moral premise statement, which we are assuming is true and in compliance with Natural Law.

NOAH: Book from Rizzoli on Aronofsky's Masterpiece

A picture book with a screenplay in the back is available from Rizzoli, New York.
A quick review is in order.

As you may know from my longer posts on Aronofsky's NOAH (contributed over several weeks when the movie came out) I found the movie, from a Moral Premise standpoint, good and challenging in many ways.

So I bite my lip and paid for the book and the novelization. I'm not into novelizations, but since I coach writers a lot, I thought this one might be interesting to look at sometime in the future. But first the picture book. It's worth a few comments.

THE ONLY TEXT IS SCRIPTURE

No doubt, in part a dig at Aronofsky's "Christian" critics who claimed the movie was not Biblically accurate, the editors chose to use ONLY Scripture as textual explanations in the picture portion. Insistent critics will no doubt point out that the Scripture text used is not from any modern translation but rather a "translation" or "paraphrase" by Aronofsky and Handel found in their screenplay. Such criticism is disingenuous, however, because no modern day translation is inerrant or infallible—
labels that can only be assigned to the original manuscripts none of which exist. And, if a Christian writer were to paraphrase a passage of Scripture to make a point, his work would be accepted as inerrant or infallible, e.g. Peterson's THE MESSAGE from Navpress.

But the presence of only Scripture in the picture book reinforces the effort Aronofsky and Handel have repeatedly claimed, that their intent was to take the Biblical record as true and authentic and to then fill in
the gaps of the record with gleanings from other oral and written traditions, being careful never to step on the literal Scriptures. Much of the argument against the film by Christians concerned the incorporation of such material, as if it could never be true. But, as my longer post points out, Aronofsky has proven to be the more honest Biblical scholar and not given in to those Evangelical ideologies not found in the Bible.  The vast differences in Protestant doctrine, supposedly all based on the Bible, creates a vacuum for such arguments. The movie is based on the Bible and here the writers and publishers remind us of that.        

PICTURE REPRODUCTION QUALITY

Normally, in this blog, I'd have nothing to say about "print quality." I try to stand apart from commenting on aesthetic elements and stick with story structure. But that is what I'm doing here. It's clear that the editors/producers of the book made a decision that their creation would reflect the tone, arc, and structure of the movie by how they printed the inside pages. I got a kick out of this because I've said from the beginning of writing The Moral Premise, that the concept applies to ALL aspects of a story, right down to the marketing,... and now I can say it can apply to the printing techniques of the ancillary picture book.

The beginning and end of the book is printed with glossy stock that allows the ink to lie on top of the paper providing sharp edges, and  rich color as the light is able to reflect it all back to the eye. But the center of the book is printed on drab, ink-absorbing, matt. The photos are washed out, lacking in color and sharpness. The contrast is low, and the blacks are gray. The center is truly ugly and depressing to look at.

But this was on purpose. It's not a budget consideration. Indeed, the turning point up front, is a spread that changes from beautiful to ugly. It is in a section where Noah and his family (particularly Ham) come to grip with the sin and ugliness of the world around them. In the photo below, compare the left page with the right. The left is bright and glossy and the right is dull and matt.

This is the spread that follows Noah reflecting on the world's condition as described by this Scripture:

 The World was filled with violence. And the Creator looked upon the World and saw it was corrupt for all flesh and corrupted his way upon the World. Genesis 6:11

The spread above shows Ham and the girl he tries to rescue from the World's violence and from a mass grave. But as the story unfolds in the minutes that follow, the girl is lost to the mob and Noah pulls Ham to safety and the ark.  This is the ugly side of humanity...it seems that all is lost.

Near the end of the story, the ugly pages end and transform back to the beautiful pages. This spread occurs precisely at Noah's Moment of Grace, where he realizes and accepts the truth of the Moral Premise. Examine the photo below. Notice the transition from dull and matt (left) to bright and glossy (right). This too, on the right, more viscerally reveals the blood that has flowed to the surface of Noah's skin.

The center of this spread is Noah's Moment of Grace, when he finally figures out that God does not want to destroy all humanity, but rather give humanity a second chance by saving Noah's family and his off-spring. The pages on the left will be re-created later by Abraham when Abraham believes that God wants him to kill his only son, Isaac with a knife upon an altar of wood. And here is Noah, foreshadowing that later scene. On the left, because Noah is righteous he is determined to obey God. His righteous does not come from omniscience and understanding God, but from obeying what he understands. And so, Noah, like Abraham, prepares to sacrifice the two baby girls on an altar of wood (the top of the ark). 

But right in the middle of this spread (and I think the middle two pictures are actually a single frame), is the moment when Noah looks at the babies and (later explains): "I looked down on those girls and all I had in my heart was love." He puts down the knife and kisses the babies with his blessing. This scene can only remind us of the anguish that Abraham must have experienced in preparing to follow God's command to sacrifice Isaac. 

Now, notice again, what the editor did with the printing. The left is the last of the ugly pages in the book. And on the right we have the bright, glossy beauty restored. This is the moral premise realized in the books' production:

Justice without mercy leads to dread, death, and annihilation (UGLY); but

Justice with mercy leads to hope, life, and a new creation (BEAUTY).

THE SCREENPLAY

The included screenplay is a big disappointment, although it is smaller than normal (6.5" x 8.5") and is cleverly inserted in a box built into the back cover.

The disappointed is due to its violation of many screenplay formats rules that the industry demands for practical reasons of reading, scheduling and budgeting.  And because those of us in the industry read so many screenplays, picking up this small monstrosity is distracting and provides a wrong role model for aspiring screenwriters.

Among the violations:

• The slug lines are CENTERED and BLUE.
• The transitions are CENTERED and STRUCK THROUGH
• The action lines are nearly the same width as dialogue making it difficult for the eye to quickly distinguish the difference. It's easy to confuse the two.
• The action lines are fully justified, creating awkward gaps between words.
• The dialogue lines are centered.
• The character tags are centered. 
• The page numbers are at the bottom of each page and centered.
• The page is 23% smaller than normal. Not easy to read. 
• But HEY, the font looks like Courier. (what a concept).

My advice to Rizzoli, whoever made this decision, correct them. We want real looking screenplays that we can share with students. What you published is very much in keeping with the ugly world of Noah that needed to be destroyed. In Hollywood vernacular you "sinned."

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln loved the play. 

A Great Summary of The Moral Premise

Karen Schravemade

@TaraGoedjen included @MoalPemise in a tweet with a link. I followed the link and came across two comprehensive blog posts by Aussie Author-Blogger-Mother Karen Schravemade about The Moral Premise book.

Karen has done an excellent job of summarizing Part 1 and Part 2 of the book.  I suggest that she may understand the book better than the author. Her posts remind me of a few things that I didn't even think were in the book, but had always wished were. Duh! Maybe I ought to reread what I wrote. Thanks, Karen for doing that for me. Here are links to her helpful summaries.

The Moral Premise - Part 1

Applying the Moral Premise to your Story (Part 2)

She also did a great job of analyzing FINDING NEMO and articulating a moral premise statement which I will post on the Moral Premise Statements Page of my main site. I may have to use her explanation of the Moment of Grace in NEMO in my workshop. Gotta watch the  movie again, just for the "You just have to let go!" line.

Karen is one of the contributors to the writer's blog, The Writers Alley: Inspirational Tips Write Up Your Alley.

Are Super & Myth Movies Only about FIGHT v. FLIGHT?

A Screenwriter Asked:

Hey, Stan, 

I find myself thinKing about your stuff; the thing I like best about “Moral Premise” is it’s the book to turn to when you’re suddenly asking, “Why am I writing this again?”   

It seems to me that all the “myth” movies, from Superman to Spiderman to Batman to Iron Man to Gladiator to Matrix all are about the responsibility of saving everyone when you have the power.   

I just read an outline for Gladiator, and I could see that Maximus (Russel Crowe) wants “nothing to do with politics” but gets pulled into a battle with evil.  It’s like the Edmund Burke quote: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”  Is this the point of all these movies?   

Is my moral premise: 

 “Running away from evil leads to disaster and isolation; but  

Facing and fighting evil leads to victory and freedom and togetherness”? 

I guess my question is, do I have no wiggle room here?  Should I embrace that moral premise, and stop wondering why I’m writing this??? 

Thanks,  Mike

Dear Mike:

I think most of the “super” stories can be defined by a moral premise that you articulated. But in such clear cut hero/villain stories I think there are dual moral premises that are related to a foundational one, like what you suggest. We might call these “secondary” moral premise statements, which are organically related to the foundational one. But it’s the secondary premise that is more likely to connect to non-super human audiences.

But in both cases the values in conflict must be universal … if you want to avoid niche audiences.

What you wrote:

Running away from evil (isolationism) as a value to find happiness vs. Fighting evil (engagement) as a value that leads to happiness...

...is the proverbial FLIGHT v FIGHT dilemma. It is definitely a universal concept that appears at all levels of the humanity condition.  It's evident in (a) a confrontation I witness on a street corner between a pimp and a whore, or (b) the Bush Foreign Policy Doctrine vs. the Obama Foreign Policy Doctrine. Fight or flight is everywhere and the answers are not easily answered.

You are perfectly safe keeping this simple and direct moral premise as the heart of your story, if that is what you focus on.

But you can give your story more personal and human death by looking deeper into the “human” story that exists in the “super human” diegesis.

For instance:

THE INCREDIBLES is also about:

Battling adversity alone leads to weakness and defeat; 

but Battling adversity as a family leads to strength and victory. 

BLIND SIDE (yes it’s about fight vs. flight) is also about:

Courage to do what is difficult but foolish leads to dishonor;  but

but Courage to do what is difficult and wise leads to honor.

SUPERMAN II (1980) is also about:

Pretending to be someone we’re not leads to fragility; but

Being whom we were made to be leads to superlatives.

DARK KNIGHT (2008) is also about:

Revengeful, self-service leads to nihilistic  desperation; but

Sacrificial public service leads to purposeful hope.

And there are manny other examples.

So, I think your fight or flight is a good place to start, but I think you can also go deeper, to another layer, that will give the basic “super” movie an even more “human” connection that everyone in the audience will get. Not everyone will get “saving the world” because they can’t. But the secondary moral premise (exampled above) are value dilemmas we all deal with.

This moral identification is one of the  20+ techniques filmmakers and authors use to get audiences/readers to identify with their characters on a physical, emotional, and moral level.

Since you have been writing "short" stories for years, and your material is well accepted by the mainstream public, (if I were you at this point), I’d just write it and see if a moral premise (at the secondary level) doesn’t pop out later on. Don’t feel you have to figure it out beforehand. That can be a hinderance. Trust your instinct.

stan

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.

Stories and Premises in Medieval Art

On August 20 the small class of classically trained teens that I teach screenwriting to, will accompany me to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) for a lesson in visual story telling by the masters -- centuries before photography and cinema. But the stories, along with their physical and moral premises, are nonetheless poignant and relative even for today. (all photos via my iPhone, today)

For those of you outside of Detroit, the DIA is perhaps best known for Rivera's Court, where Diego Rivera's renoun frescoes tell the unblemished story of the industrial revolution, and the moral struggle involved in balancing the values of labor, capital, product, and economy. The Rivera Court is particularly attractive because of the bold, bright skylight that illuminates the work of the controversial Mexican artist.

But on the day we visit we'll not spend but a few minutes in Rivera's Court. Instead, we'll head for the galleries either side of it. To the Southwest are the European: Medieval and Renaissance galleries, and to the  Northwest is one particular room in the American collection.

The roots of Western Civilization (e.g. American civilization) came from Medieval Europe, that  culturally was dominated by Roman Catholicism. It was the Catholic institution that saved literature, fostered agriculture, established education, embraced parts of the Renaissance that didn't threaten it's teachings,  encouraged scientific discovery(*), and promoted the arts. This was during a time when the populace could not read, and if they could there were no books.  It was through the visual arts (as movies principally are) that the Church and its constituents communicated stories. Among the hundreds of artifacts on display at the DIA, we'll see how visual story telling hasn't really changed that much in hundreds of years.

TWO CLASS ASSIGNMENTS are below -- my students should keep reading.

FROM A PLACARD IN THE GALLERY:

"In much of the 15th-century Europe, saints were an integral part of everyday life. People imitated them, honored them, and called upon them in times of need. Churches, guilds, cities, and nations all had patron saints.

"At the time, believers often felt unworthy to appeal to God directly and prayed to saints to intercede with God for them.

"The Catholic church recognizes as saints virtuous people to whom miracles are attributed.

"The mother of Jesus has a special role. Many Christians hold Mary in special regard, above even the saints. Believers consider her, as the mother of Jesus, the closest to God and the most important assistance in communicating their prayers." (to Jesus and God.) 

"This room is filled with sculpted and painted images of saints and Mary that helped 15th-century Christians in prayer. A believer might have lit a candle or laid flowers in front of an image in respect and honor."

FROM ANOTHER PLACARD IN ANOTHER GALLERY: 

"In this gallery you will find works of art created in Western Europe during the latter Middle Ages. You will see some of the materials and artistic techniques prized during the period: ivory carving, enameled metalwork, tempera painting, and stained glass." (At right: Diptych with Scenes of the Lives of Christ and the Virgin, about 1320. Carved from Ivory by an unknown Parisian artist.)

"Most of these objects have religious themes, reflecting the importance of prayer and devotion in the daily life of a medieval Christian. Many objects performed a particular function, whether it was a chalice to hold during during Mass or a sculpture of a revered religious figure to adorn a church altar.

"The medieval collection of the DIA is one of the most important of the country, notable for the excellent quality of the objects."



 

THE FIRST ASSIGNMENT for my class during our visit.

Take an hour to wander through the 10 galleries of the Medieval and Renaissance collection.  Note that EACH work of art features the elements of drama that we've been studying present in motion pictures, yet at at no time are words used. (The best cinema still uses very little dialogue. SHOW don't TELL is the rule, even in contemporary novels.) Considering principally the elements of a log line  (i.e. a protagonist, a verb, an antagonist, a goal, and stakes) select TWO works of art and for each list the following:

A. Name of the work.
B. Artist's name.
C. Type of media.
D. Year of it's creation.
E. The protagonist.
F. The battling verb.
G. The antagonist.
H. The protagonist's goal.
I. The stakes.
J. The virtue at work in the story.
K. The vice at work in the story.
L. The moral premise of the work.
M. The most striking emotional element of the work. (That is, what tugs at your heart and pulls you into the work emotionally?)

You'll obviously have to use your knowledge about some stories apart from the exhibit, just as the Christians of the period listened to sermons and teachings that explained what the works were about.

Try not to select the same work that others select. Let's get a good variety.  After we're done we will let each of you take us to one of the works you selected and describe your observations to us as a class. (typically the DIA is not busy on Saturday so we don't be disturbing anyone.)

THE SECOND ASSIGNMENT is this:

As a group we will take our stools (provided by the DIA) and enter one of the American collection galleries, and sit before American Rembrandt Peale's 12-ft by 24-ft oil-on canvas painting "The Court of Death," which he completed in 1820.

It's the big screen of the 19th century, and like movies today it carries a powerful moral premise about virtue and vice and their physical consequences as one approaches death.

The painting depicts eight principal characters and a number of minor characters, not including Death who sits on a central throne...holding court. (There's a webpage dedicated to this painting. HERE.)

When my class arrives in this gallery we will cast lots and match up each of the students with one of the principal characters in the painting.  Then we will sit on our stools before the painting and write a short and dramatic life story of the character we've been assigned. The ending of our story will place them in Peale's painting. Taken altogether we will have a powerful piece of explicit story telling that the painter intended for us to imagine.

Needless to say, bring a good pad of paper (your journal will do if you have pages left) and some good writing instruments.

I will post links here to the results, after they are edited.  (Thanks WB for the suggestion.)

==============

(*) Story telling is much like scientific discovery in one respect. They are both based on the assumption that there is a natural law of rationally ordered cause and effect. In scientific discovery the cause and effect are both physical. In storytelling, while there is the same physical cause and effect relationship as in science, there is also, and more importantly, a cause and effect between the psychological (cause) and the physical (effect, or consequence) as described in my book, The Moral Premise.

The success of story telling is much the result of most religions' assumption (and science's fundamental assumption) that the universe is ordered and not random

Thus, the Church was principally (although indirectly) responsible for the scientific discoveries of the Renaissance. Catholic teaching assumes that the natural laws of the universe are ordered, structured predictable through rational investigation. The scientific method (1. observation 2. hypothesis. 3. Test. 4. Law) is dependent upon a observation that can predict cause and effect based on order that is a benefit to man's existence. If physical phenomenon were based on random events, or some set of laws that did not have mankind's survival as it's primary purpose, the scientific method would be useless -- and a box of dice might be as good as anything.  Thus, it was, that many of the great discoveries in science were made by devout Catholic men...including Galileo. And thus, it was, that almost all of the great artists of the time, who could have been movie directors if alive today, were devout Catholics as well. And, you'll discover, that not a few of Hollywood's best directors have Catholic backgrounds and understanding.

INCEPTION: Can Dreams Become Reality? Should They?

How INCEPTION WORKS, and why it reveals that filmmaking is an act of inception. Indeed, Christopher Nolan tells us a tale of Dom Cobb that is clearly autobiographical.

This is a MORAL PREMISE ANALYSIS of the mega-hit INCEPTION.  ($160MM Budget / $289MM domestic box office.)

Writer-Producer-Director - Christopher Nolan
Length:140 min excluding credits (length used for analysis)

The analysis is based on two viewings of the film by two pairs of eyes, a lot of note taking with a stopwatch, and finally the published INSIGHT EDITION from Warner Bros of the Shooting Script (available through Amazon). The DVD was not yet available. Where my notes were incomplete I referred to the published script.

LOG LINE:  "In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a highly skilled thief is given a final chance at redemption, which involves executing his toughest and most risky job to date."

Is the Moral Premise a Misnomer?

The more time I spend time explaining things, on topics which I am supposedly an expert, the more I discover I'm not the expert -- or at least I don't know today, what I thought I clearly understood yesterday. Which reminds me again, that some of what experts believed 100 or 1,000 years ago about their discipline,  are utterly false today.

So, here is what occurred to me a few minutes ago.

The "Moral Premise" of a story, which I have been describing as enshrined in a "Moral Premise Statement" is a misnomer.

Sorry about that.

It might be better referred to as the "Moral-Physical Premise Statement (MPPS)". But that is awkward.

Here's an explanation...of what I understand today. All bets are off regarding tomorrow.

There is the "physical" arc of the story, which is also identified as the physical "hook," or the outward journey of the protagonist, or the physical spine, or  THE PHYSICAL PREMISE.

That physical story arc is paralleled by (or is a metaphor for) the psychological story arc, which is also identified as the inner journey, the moral dilemma, or spiritual journey, or moral spine, or (precisely) THE MORAL PREMISE.

What captures the audience's (or reader's) attention is the physical spine (what the story is ABOUT). But what motivates the protagonist and gives meaning to the story for the audience, is the moral spine (what the story is REALLY ABOUT).

What I have been calling the MORAL PREMISE STATEMENT (MPS) is actually a statement that marries the PHYSICAL PREMISE with the MORAL PREMISE.  E.g.:

[psychological vice] leads to [physical detriment]; but

[psychological virtue] leads to [physical betterment].

It is more accurate to describe this formula: "THE MORAL-PHYSICAL PREMISE STATEMENT (MPPS)." But I'm rebelling at the awkwardness of that, and prefer the simpler focus of the story's psychological and motivational arc - the MPS.

Why? Aside from the brevity of it, the "moral premise" is what the story is REALLY about. It is also the one aspect of the story that MUST BE true, if it's to resonate with audiences. Everything about the physical premise can be fiction; audiences don't really care about it's truth. (Just recognize the popularity of myths, or watch a Michael Moore documentary.)  It is the moral story that motivates every action of the character in the physical world. The physical world is simply symbolic, a metaphor, for what is going on beneath the surface, psychologically-morally-spiritually-emotionally. (And that's why, in part, Moore's documentaries can work with some people. The moral motivation behind his rants fundamentally seem valid and true.)

So, in that sense, putting the emphasis on the term "moral premise" is accurate. Stories really are about moral issues. It is the physical premise that brings us outward joy and entertainment -- explicitly, but it is the psychological premise that brings us inward meaning and entertainment -- implicitly. And it's the latter than sticks with us, and informs and guides our personal lives -- which are real.

So, for the time being, I will use MPS and MPPS interchangeably. They mean exactly the same thing. I proclaim them to be equivocal and the former a misnomer. "Forgive me father for I have grammatically faulted."

==== Some further thoughts ====

In an 10-20-10 email dialgoue with my student Ethan, I wrote this, which adds to this post:

The problem with what "words" to use to describe all this is that in Hollywood some of these terms are used day-in and day-out, and many are synonymous with others. You'll read or hear executives, directors, writers, gurus, et al... use the following words, and they're all referring to the same thing: hook, premise, outward story, spine, arc, hero's journey.   And a few others.

The original reason I came to the term "moral premise" is because Lajos Egri (my book is a sequel to his) wrote all about the "premise." But his use of the word in the 1940s when he wrote THE ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING was and still is confusing without a qualifier. To most the term "physical premise" refers to the physical journey, or hook. But Egri was speaking of the moral or psychological journey, not the physical one. Thus I chose the word "moral premise" to differentiate between what I (and Egri) were writing about and what most of Hollywood means when it uses the term "premise." 

But then I erred. I came up with the MPS statement, which is NOT JUST the moral premise, but is also the physical premise in general terms. The physical side of the MPS (the last terms in the two lines) is NOT the hook, or the TV guide log line, but only a very general, universal description of the arc.

Reading vertically along the left side, we have the psychological journey (or the moral premise), and reading vertically along the right side we have the physical journey (or physical premise)....in general terms. Reading left to right on the top line we have the moral to physical journey before the MOG (e.g. the protag's motivation and consequence), and reading left to right on the bottom line we have the moral to physical journey AFTER the MOG.  Altogether it's ... it's.... it's....???????  I think I need a naming contest.

Finally, the HOOK, or the LOG LINE, are very specific descriptions of the story. Whereas the Physical Premise (in the MPS) is very general.

Ideas anyone?

Chivalry vs. Rashness

Discovering what your story is really about, at the moral premise level, is always a challenge. Here's a short (edited) email exchange that can shed some light on the matter.  A reader writes:

Stan,

Good morning!  I have read most of your book over the weekend and now am trying to apply the steps. But I'm stuck.

I'm working on a romantic comedy and the theme is Chivalry. Now this is where it gets confusing: I have CHIVALRY as my Virtue and IMPOLITENESS as my Vice.

My moral premise is this:
IMPOLITENESS leads to LONELINESS, but
CHIVALRY leads to SOMEONE TO SHARE LIFE with.

My hero has RASHNESS as his assigned vice and the villain has LOVE as his assigned virtue.

Am I headed in the right direction???

John Conley

Before I share my response to J.C. let me help the reader see what J.C. has done.

Notice he wants to relate to each other the virtues of CHIVALRY and LOVE.

And he wants to relate IMPOLITENESS and RASHNESS.

Now, let's go to my reply.


Dear John:

You are close.

But, you'll have to be settled in your mind that IMPOLITENESS and RASHNESS are the same thing, just different examples of it; and that CHIVALRY and LOVE are likewise the same thing and just different examples of the same virtue. But to me (and I think to your audience) they're not the same. Let me give you some examples of how I'd go about this.

"Love" is too general in my opinion to be a good core virtue. "Sacrificial love" makes more sense, because it can't be confused with "lust"... a vice. So the terms you choose need to be specific enough that they can't be confused in your mind or your audience's mind. And while you may never state the moral premise in dialogue, the ideas will come across clearly in the subtext. So you have to be careful.

Second, "chivalry" is not necessarily the same thing as "love".

In my Rodale Synonym Finder, "chivalry" is associated with these terms: brave, valor, fearlessness, daring, tenacity, justness, magnanimity, grit. (all of which surprise me because I thought "chivalry" meant "being a gentlemen and opening doors for ladies".  (My Rodale is dog eared for reasons such as this.)

Likewise, Rodale associates "rashness" with: unduly quick, hasty, reckless, careless, thoughtless, over bold, impulsive, harebrained, etc. (there's also the physical aspect of "rash" which means a skin eruption. Hmmm? Might be something to use as a metaphor.)

So, it is possible for a character to be both rash and chivalry, or rash and a good lover (either in the sacrificial or the lustful sense) -- as in "He recklessly pursued the crook with tenacity;" or "He was rashly chivalrous;" or "He was rash in his demonstration of his love for her."

Also, "impoliteness" implies a lack of concern for others, or courtesy for others, as well as being imprudently bold, or not understanding protocol or good manners. Well, maybe your character understands what good manners are but he ignores them out of selfishness or laziness.

So, open up a synonym finder and find truly opposing virtues and vices.

Good Luck,
Stan

Dear Stan,

I just finished rereading your book.  This time through I made sure to look up in the dictionary all the words that I did not know.  BIG IMPROVEMENT.  I can now apply the knowledge in your book.  Here is the moral premise for a TV show idea I'm working on.  The overall theme is "service".

"Serving others leads to prosperity; but serving one's self leads to suffering."

OR

Serving leads to prosperity; not serving leads to suffering.

What do think?!  Do I have it?

Also I picked up a copy of Rodale's Synonym Finder.  Thanks for listing it as a resource.

One last question.  What's the best way to go about finding the Tone for any particular story you are creating?  Is it just a matter of looking around for something similar or is their a method that I can use?

--Thanks, John

Dear John,

Yes your moral premise statement sounds spot on. Both versions are excellent. The psychological virtue and vice are naturally opposite as well as the physical consequences. It's worth noting that the whole point of serving others is to alleviate their suffering. But when we try to alleviate ONLY our own suffering we cut ourselves off from the services and love of others... leaving us worse off. I think the natural law in all this is that we are made to be dependent on others. You know the old adage, "no man is an island."

TONE

Part of tone comes from the genre. Another part is the thread produced by the moral premise, assuming you consistently apply it. Tone also involves, obviously, emotion. You can have scenes that have elements that are mean spirited, but the overall tone of the movie will be dependent on how the filmmaker portrays the consequence of the mean spiritedness. (Example: AS GOOD AS IT GETS: Protagonist Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) is as mean spirited as a character can get without committing a crime. But we have compassion for him because his OCD is so humorously displayed; we understand where he's coming from and we root for him to change. And by God's grace, by the end of the movie, thanks to his antagonist, Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) he does.)

If a character is mean spirited, are the others in the scene also mean spirited out of revenge or do they illustrate compassion toward the person who is mean spirited? When my wife gets angry with me, am I angry back at her? The answer to that is, unfortunately, too often, yes. That results in an angry tone. But if I could be compassionate and connect better with her feelings, the overall tone might be one of consideration and compassion, accentuated by the contrast. The audience will naturally gravitate toward the virtue, which they know they'd prefer in real life.

What you suggest is an excellent way for any of the elements of a film. Copy the masters. All new stories have antecedents, that is, other films that have similar elements. Study them. Watch them over and over. Get the sense, the rhythm, the sequence of plot points. You might do well to replicate it (beat for beat in your own story) and see if you learn anything. No doubt you will.

Stan

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.

Moral Premise Analysis by Miquiel Banks

Some time ago I started receiving emails from an independent film reviewer, Miquiel Banks. Since then, Miquiel has been creating a series of beautiful on-line documents that are very much like the movies he's writing about -- there are nearly as many pictures as there are words.

But what interests me with Miquiel's work is that he's the first to repeated use the moral premise as a cornerstone of his analysis and writing.

I have not read everything Miquiel has review, and indeed I have not seen all the movies he's thought-through, but I've seen enough to recommend his effort and frequent good insights.

You an find his reviews here:
http://www.scribd.com/document_collections/2509330
I'm sure he'd like to hear form you via scribd if you so choose.

In the meantime I've asked him about his source of film stills. But he's keeping that a secret.
Here's a link to his Karate Kid review. He came up with a good moral premise for the movie. He's done a lot of good work.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33617688/TMP-Film-Review-The-Karate-Kid-2010

My moral premise analysis of Karate Kid (2010) is HERE. 

Story Structure Basics - 13 Major Beats

[Revised 18 March 2015]

Click for Larger Image

Often when a producer or writer sends me a script to analyze it's because they sense that there's a problem with their story. Usually they're right, and the biggest offender is a lack of structure.

The problems reveal themselves in several ways. There may be three acts, but the protagonist doesn't have a physical goal that the audience can see and root for. Their protagonist may have a physical goal, but the turning points are not the result of the protagonist's moral decision or action. There may be turning points initiated by the protagonist but not for any singleness of moral purpose. In biographies the writers are often so taken by what they presume to be the moral virtues of their protagonist that they fail to include any serious conflict or an antagonist that forces the protagonist to change. The result of problems such as these is the lack of drama, weakened entertainment value, or no way for an audience to become emotionally engaged. 

Perhaps most difficult to obtain is an even emotional roller coaster effect throughout the story. Often critics and viewers complain about a slow second act, or a "sagging middle." The beat outline describe in this post can solve that problem. Each beat (13 or 20), when properly understood and applied, creates a regular roller coaster from front to back. Notice the wavy blue line in the graphic; this represents one ideal of how an audience's emotions can be manipulated by understanding the placement of the 13 (20) beats. Each peak and valley of the line corresponds to a beat. If the beats are missing or misplaced, the blue line sags or plateaus.

What causes the ups and downs is whether or not the protagonist is portrayed as achieving his goal or not. Is he or she being successful or endangered? That emotion is tied directly to the           assimilation of the Moral Premise in the life of the protagonist—will the protag. learn the truth of the moral premise and achieve his or her goal or not. All of this happens in the minds and hearts of your audience on a subliminal level, but it should never be subliminal to the creator, you.

What follows is a generic summary of what I might write in a story report to such writers or producers, as I explain the basics of what's missing in their story. I usually start off by describing that what follows is a natural law of story telling. It's not my opinion, but the consequence of untold experiments of storytelling over the ages. If you want a story to connect, then you can't ignore this stuff, at least not story foundations. [See subsection Story Development Steps/Story Foundations]

The Moral Premise Statement LIST

I have created a single page that lists all the moral premise statements used in the book and my workshop slide presentation. In the weeks to come, I'll be adding statements from his blog, of which I think there are more than in the book and workshop. That page is here: http://www.stanwilliams.com/MORALPREMISE/MPS.php

The page is the idea of William Fitzpatrick who created and manage a WikiScreenplay site that is no longer operative...it appears. 

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.)