Wobbly Moral Premise Statements

I received this comment and question from a reader in Hong Kong. He apologized for his English, but it was actually pretty good. Nonetheless I've edited it in the post below for clarity. In honor of this question, I must post a picture of the Chinese edition of The Moral Premise. (I had nothing to do with the cover design...neither did my publisher, or so I'm told.)

      Dear Dr. Williams, 

I am a screenplay writer from Hong Kong. Yes! You have a loyal fan all the way from China. : )  

I really love your book and your blog. You have such a kind heart to share your ideas.
Here's my question: I always find the moral of my story wobbling. Maybe I want to say too much within one story. Or, maybe, I don't know how to shorten the moral to a one-line moral premise statement.  

Regarding a recent project here's my dilemma. 

Is self-preservation, survival or stability of life enough of a motivation to carry an entire story?  Is survival and stability more important than the basic human need to love, to be loved, and to make real friends? Should one take risks for love and justice? 

Self-protection leads to safe, stable life and money, but also loneliness and isolation. By protecting oneself, one must lie, and to reject chances to help others.
Meantime the hero might be haunted by his own action, because he does not confront the righteousness in the bottom of his heart. 

In the beginning of my story, the hero always ignores justice by remaining neutral; at least that's how he comforts himself. He is says to himself, "I am only being neutral, I don't take sides." Later on, he finds the youngster he 'trained' has become evil. The youngster has become so self-protective that he wants to destroy justice. That's one of the moments that awakens him that he's going at it all wrong.  

I find myself stuck in condensing al this in a one-sentence moral premise statement. It seems that the story is about self-protection, but it's also about "what one does returns to him."  Does "self-protection" articulate what I want to say? Is it that I am looking at my story from too many perspectives or trying to include too many moral concepts, thus diluting a central theme? 

Is it okay to dig deeper into such philosophical questions? Or, will that only make my story more wobbly (or ambiguous)?  

G

Dear G:

It may seem that you are taking on too many moral concepts and thus you're not sure what the story is about at its moral core...thus it seems wobbly and not about one thing.

It is true that a single moral premise can affect other thematic issues other than the one explicitly stated in the main moral premise statement.  But you need to be able to understand how all the "sub" themes reinforce the "main" theme.

A good example of this is explained in my blog analysis of the moral premise themes in the movie KITE RUNNER. http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/2011/10/kite-runner.html#more

In KIT RUNNER the central virtuous theme is COURAGE. But the movie embraces other themes that are logically related to courage by helping us understanding that the total lack of courage can lead to paranoia, and that an excess of courage can lead to arrogance. Further that the courage is needed to be able to forgive and seek justice. The blog diagram of the inner journeys shows the relationship of nine themes: paranoia, courage, arrogance, bitterness, forgiveness, tolerance of evil, lazier-faire, justice, and totalitarianism. That sounds like a mouthful, but each of those concepts are logically related...to courage.

The same may be true for your story.

If the central virtue is "self-preservation" then the absence of that virtue could lead to "self-destruction" or "suicide." Similarly the excess of that virtue would be "arrogance," "tyranny," or as you say, "the destruction of justice."

In a similar way an excess concept of justice (tyranny) can lead to isolation as people stay away from individual that like bullies.

And as you suggest when your protagonist acts a certain way, that may cause others to treat him the same way. So if he bullies others they may bully him back. Of if he bullies a bigger bully, he's sure to be in for a surprise.

So, your moral premise statement may not be wobbly at all, but just needs to be focused.

Just be sure that the various theme (or values you're writing about) ARE logically realated to the core moral premise and it's SINGLE conflict of values.

It could be: "Self-destruction" or "Arrogance" leads to isolation and death; but a "healthy self-preservation" and "generosity to others-for-the-sake-of-your-own-safety" can lead to friendship and life."

Again, see what I do with these movies and their moral premise arcs: http://moralpremise.blogspot.com/search/label/Nicomachean%20Ethics

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.

The Kite Runner and VALUES TABLES

Dir: MARC FORSTER
Writers: DAVID BENIOFF (SP), and
Khaled Hosseini (N)

AMIR: Khalid Abdalla (adult), Zekeria Ebrahimi (young)
HASSAN: Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada
BABA: Homayoun Ershadi
SORAYA: Atossa Leoni
RAHIM KHAN: Shaun Toub
ASSEF: Abdul Salam Yusoufzai (adult), Elham Ehsas (young)
GENERAL TAHERI: Abdul Qadir Farookh
SOHRAB: Ali Danish Bakhtyari (Hassan's son)
ZAMAN: Mohamad Amin Rahimi (Orphanage Director)


IMBD's KITE RUNNER

(It was late when I posted this, so please advise of typos.)

Synopsis 

Amir, Baba and winning kite.

It's 1978 in Kabul, Afghanistan. A crazy place with humans trying to find dignity in the midst of hell. A puppet Communist government thinks it's in power. But the Islamic Mullah's really control the the people through intimidation. At the same time the Afghan guerrilla Mujahideen movement is born. The Russians invade the next year. When the Afghans defeat Russia in 1989 killing 40,000-50,000 Soviets, with help from U.S. shoulder fired rockets,  there is more fighting.

In 1992 there are elections under a tenuous run Mujahideen Islamic State. More fighting. In 1994 the Taliban with their version of extreme Islamic fundamentalism (believe or die, or die because we don't like you -- tyranny) they make rubble out of Kabul. There is Pakistani and Iranian interference. More fighting. Mass killings by the Taliban, and the Hazaras sect is massacred.

God tries to slow the Taliban down by bringing Earthquakes to the country that kill tens of thousands. But the Taliban tries to out-do God. Osama bin Laden makes plans from within Afghanistan, attacks the U.S. (NY and Washington), setting up the U.S. attack in 2001. This is a very crazy place, and the irrationality of it all is the reason many didn't want the U.S. to get involved, even to stop the Taliban -- who seem to have been infected with the same demons that possessed the Nazis.

Questions Answered about RomComs

Janet asked some questions in the previous post's com box. I'll answer them here.

Janet Asks: Do all the other main characters struggle with the same MP, but in regard to their own issues?

Answer: Yes. that is how the movie can have multiple story lines but still be about one thing. the principles are the same for a novel or a screenplay.

Janet Asks: I've just bought and read The Moral Premise and learned a huge amount from it. But I'm writing a short romance novel rather than a screenplay...The type of romance novel I'm writing needs two main characters (hero and heroine) but there's no room for an additional significant secondary characters or antagonist. (Each acts as the others' antagonist along with the characters' psychological flaws.) Both hero and heroine have different lessons to learn, so I'm struggling to form the vice and virtue sides of the moral premise.

Answer: Good romantic comedies have two protagonists, the man and woman, who are the antagonists for the other. But there are other characters. Each will have a "reflection" character, and each with have a "nemesis" character. These are like the good and bad angels on their shoulders creating scenes that push the characters one way or the other. Each of these minor characters will have arcs that deal with the same moral premise as the main characters do, but obviously just not in as much depth.

When you say the hero and heroine have different lessons to learn, if those lessons are different sets of virtue and vices, then you have two different stories. Your story will connect better with audiences if the virtue and vice set are along the same continuum for both. See the posts on this blog under the topic of "values" (below and to the right under the Movies & Topics list.)

It is not always possible to squeeze a moral premise into an existing story that violates some of the natural laws of storytelling. I frequently guide students to change their story so it's about one thing, and not dilute the core psychological and moral principle which the story is REALLY about.

Janet Asks: Both characters' lives are out of balance. The heroine focuses on work and has no social life, whereas the hero has made play his priority and isn't into serous relationships. (He's successful in his work so he has no lesson to learn about needing to work harder.) She needs to learn how to have fun while he needs to learn that fun flings won't make him happy. If the story was just the heroine's, then the moral premise would be easier, e.g.: A life totally focused on work brings yearning and and sadness but balancing work with fun brings fulfillment and happiness.' But this doesn't include the hero's issues.

Answer: For this to work, you need to change elements of your story. See the posts on Nicomachean Ethics — "Mean Virtue.  If your heroine is into work and not play, then the hero would be into play and not work. Don't make them too extreme in those areas, but the bias has thrown their lives (with everything in their lives) out of balance. The purpose of the antagonist in a story is to change the protagonist by obstructing the protagonist's goal. Thus your characters are like iron-sharping-iron.  

Janet Asks: Does the the moral premise in story with two main characters (who are both heading towards a happy ending) need to incorporate both arcs?--something along the lines of: 'Both an excessively serious approach to life and an excessively playful attitude lead to unhappiness, but a healthy balance between the two leads to fulfillment and happiness.' Often in romance novels the hero and heroine have similarly opposite flaws as the ones above such as Risk/caution/ or using others/helping others, so I'd love to be able to get the moral premise right for 2 protagonists dealing with opposite issues.

Answer: Yes, you got it. This is the Nicomachean Ethic post, precisely.

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.

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.)