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.

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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. 

Beat Analysis - TAKEN (2008)

I'm working on a couple of projects for clients that are similar to TAKEN, so I decided to do a beat analysis.

Director: Pierre Morel
Writers: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Stars: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen

Log Line: A retired CIA agent travels to Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris.

The real attraction here is that the first film was a success: It did $226M worldwide off $25 budget. But even more interesting is that the sequels did even better. TAKEN 2: $376M w.w. off $45M budget.
TAKEN 3: $325M w.w. off $48M budget.

Moral Premise Statement: Ignoring the presence of evil leads to danger and death; but awareness and prevention of evil leads to safety and life.

Another version could be: Narcissism leads to death, bit Sacrifice leads to life.  (This would more easily embrace Kim's mother, Lenore. 

Two charts and some explanation should suffice.

DISCLAIMER: The two charts in this post are significantly determined by my subjective evaluation of  what is "a beat" and how "intense" the action is in that beat. If I did this again, the charts would look a little different. If you were to do this, they might look a lot different.

BASIS OF ANALYSIS: Most movies move through "sequences" and climax in "moments." "Moments" are often "turning points," "disasters," or "act climaxes." Typically a sequence might have a screen duration of 8-11 minutes, and the climactic moment at the end of the sequence might be 1-4 minutes long. Elsewhere on this blog I write about Paul Gulino's Sequence Approach of dividing the feature motion picture into 8 shorter "sequence" movies, that when strung together gives you the full length feature. At the end of each sequence is a climax, disaster or turning point of some type. What we tend to find is that moments are portrayed in real time and involve a lot of tension, action or decision making; while sequences are portrayed as taking hours or days and involve less tension, little action and are used to "setup" the next moment, or turning point. This sort of structure is very evident in TAKEN.

CHART 1: Beat Action vs. Beat Duration in TAKEN (2008)

This first chart is something new for me. It shows in blue the action intensity of each dramatic "beat" on a scale of 1-10. The orange shows the corresponding "beat" duration in minutes.  Those familiar with the beat structure I teach may remember that a motion picture typically as somewhere between 13-22 major beats. The chart above has 34. I didn't add anything, I simply split up some of the long sequence beats (that could be 12-15 min long) into collections of scenes that seemed to go together as a short sequence. One of the guidelines here were "set pieces" where a great deal of action took place and was isolated. In a movie like TAKEN our hero (Bryan Mills) is on a hunt and he moves from location to location, or set to set, in his pursuit. That's why there are 34, and not 22 or less. Thus, in the chart above the x-axis divisions are equal, and the duration of the 34 beats varies from about 25 seconds to 5 minutes and is indicated by the height of the peaks and valleys of the orange area.

OBSERVATION: I was actually looking for a pattern and I may be reading into this more than is evident. However, I have a theory that in good action thriller films, as the story unfolds, the sequences become shorter and the moments become longer. Since the  moments are where the action is, such a plan would accelerate the action as we get closer to the end. Also, since sequences set up moments, they can be shorter and shorter toward the end because our knowledge about the story world increases as we move deeper into the story and so we need to know less for each new setup.

The above chart suggests this theory. The volume of the orange (beat duration) clearly decreases as the movie unreels, and the the blue (action intensity) clearly increases correspondingly.

Okay, enough of that. Here's the mother-load.

CHART 2: Action Intensity vs. Minutes in TAKEN (2008)

(Click on the chart to enlarge it.) The data of the two charts comes from the same action analysis—that is, the same 34 beats used in Chart 1. Here however, each beat's length is visualized by the width of each column (from about 25 seconds to 5 min 18 seconds).

LABELS
The round tangerine circles indicate important moments:

• I.I. = Inciting Incident.
• A1X = Act 1 Climax
• A2 = Beginning of Act 2 (Crossing the Threshold)
• PPA = Pinch Point A
• MOG = Moment of Grace (Mid Point)
• PPB = Pinch Point B
• PPB2 = Another Pinch Point in Act 2B.
• A2X = Act 2 Climax
• R = Resurrection Beat
• A3X = Act 3 Climax (Final hand to hand battle)

GOALS
Bryan has two goals stated and implied in the Act 1 Climax. Each goal has three parts.

Goal 1. Re: the Kidnappers: "I will look for you. I will find you. I will kill you." (Explicitly stated)
Those three goals are achieved at G:1A, G:1B, and G:1C.

2. Re: his daughter, Kim: "I will look for you. I will find you. I will save you." (Implied)
Those three goals are achieved at G:2A, G:2B, and G:2C.

Notice how the goals are established simultaneously just before he crosses the threshold into Act 2. These are the story questions that the audience hangs on and hopes are all answered: "Will Bryan look for, find and kill the bad guys; and will he look for, find and save his daughter?" Notice how the achievement of the second and third goals are spread out, so the audience always has something to look forward to. A good story holds a carrot out in front, leading us to the end, and the end better be the most important of all the goals. Imagine how dull this movie would be if Kim was rescued early in Act 2—there might be three more goals to achieve, but since Kim is rescued, who cares. "Let's leave." Rightly, the filmmakers rescue Kim at the very end.

THREE DAUGHTERS
Assuming you've watched the movie, notice how there are three daughters that Bryan rescues, each of whom foreshadows the rescue of Kim, his biological daughter. Notice also how the first rescue is from a knife wielding man -- as is the last (bookends). Notice how Bryan acts like a caring father to each of the girls, even though the first two are NOT his daughters. The filmmakers do a good job (casting mostly) by revealing the ironic character of our hero. They never say it, they just show it—at once, he is both extremely ruthless and kind. This trait intrigues our audience in deep, deep ways. It is classically ironic and provides a secondary hook to intrigue the audience.

I will not explain the various beat criteria and how this movie fits them, except to say it does with a few noteworthy exceptions.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE

Exceptions to beat structure work when they are natural to the dynamic of the story. Usually such divergences enhance the organic and natural structure an audience expects. TAKEN is no exception regarding these exceptions.

1. MOMENTS and TURNING POINTS

Major Turning Points: Ideal vs. Actual

• Inciting Incident: Ideal 12.5%, TAKEN 15%.
• Act 1 Climax: Ideal 25%, TAKEN 30%
• Moment of Grace: Ideal 50%, TAKEN 54%
• Act 2 Climax: Ideal 75%, TAKEN 87%
• Final Conflict: Ideal 95%, TAKEN 94%

The differences here are all the consequence of respecting the story's dynamic. Noteworthy is that the Act 2 Climax (Near Death) is delayed because there are two wonderful Pinch Points in Act 2B.

2. NO TIME FOR DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

Notice that the Climax of Act 2 (NEAR DEATH) is slammed up next to Bryan's Resurrection Beat, when he pulls the steam pipe out of the ceiling. This again is a good example of the filmmaker respecting the dynamics of an action thriller in the third act. Who wants to wait around for some hero to mope? In DIE HARD, we have a Protagonist, and so the Dark Night of the Soul is a necessary couple of minutes for John McClane to mope about. There's even time for a confessional scene between the sinner (John McClain) and the authority figure or priest (Sgt. Al Powell). But TAKEN does not have a PROTAGONIST; it has a HERO. The difference? See Hero vs. Protagonist post. 

3. MOMENT OF GRACE

Normally, what happens at the midpoint is that the protagonist recognizes the truth of the Moral Premise for the first time and makes some transformation toward it. He/she won't fully transform until Act 3, but at the midpoint, there's a realization of what the character needs to do to achieve the goal.

But in a hero-based movie, the story isn't about the transformation of the hero, but the transformation of things around him or her. So, what do you do at the midpoint? Here is what TAKEN does:

A. Bryan is offered grace the moment he sees Kim's jacket.
B. Bryan is offered grace when he realizes that here's an eyewitness who has spoken with Kim.
C. Bryan makes clear and definite progress toward his ultimate goal by getting Kim's jacket, which he holds close to his heart minutes later when there's time to reflect. And this offers grace to the audience, knowing that he's going to succeed despite all odds.
D. When the drugged girl comes around, he gets his first direct information as to where Kim is...or was, as it turns out. It's a big dose of grace. 

Addendum (added 11/12/25)

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

Aside from the structure discussed above, here is a list of storytelling techniques that emotionally capture and engage the audience. The headings are written as actions that the writer of a successful thriller like TAKEN must inculcate into the story.

A. WRITE YOUR HERO AS AN ORPHAN. One of the all-time structural favorites that sucks an audience into any story divides the story into four parts. This concept is discussed by Carol S. Pearson in her book, The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By, and is further explored by Jeffrey Alan Schechter in his book, My Story Can Beat Up Your Story, which narrows the structure down to four parts. It goes this way for the protagonist:

Act 1: Orphan

Act 2A: Wanderer

Act 2B: Warrior

Act 3: Martyr

This perfectly describes Bryan's path. At first, the filmmakers spend considerable time creating sympathy for the lonely Bryan and his adoration and longing for his daughter, Kim, even risking his career as a spy to be home for her earlier birthdays. As the movie opens, Kim celebrates her 17th. Thus, especially in the early scenes of the film, we see how he is obsessed with his princess daughter's happiness and safety. Bryan's character lives for his daughter; he has no other goal in life. Thus, the story is an exploration of what a father is willing to do to protect his daughter, even if it means risking his own life. This is also the major emotional thrust in the Bruce Willis movie Armageddon, where Harry Stamper (Willis) literally gives his life as a martyr for the future of his daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler), who stands in for humanity and all of Earth.

B. EARLY ON,  DELIVER UNMERITED HUMILIATION TO YOUR HERO. Humiliation also plays a part when Kim's affections are drawn to the birthday gift of a horse that her rich step-father presents to her, and Bryan's gift of a cheap Karaoke machine is left on the ground, all but forgotten. We yearn for Bryan to one-up Stuart's gift...which he does in the final shot of the movie. 

C. MAINTAIN YOUR HERO'S CONSTANT EMOTIONAL FOCUS.  As pointed out above, Bryan is a HERO, not a PROTAGONIST, and thus he does not have a physical arc. His goals never morph, which means they are not refined or refocused, as in many other stories where the protagonist unpacks the reality he finds himself in and adjusts his focus. His emotional motivation (if you'll allow the redundancy) remains the same from start to finish. Similarly, Bryan does not have an emotional arc. But his emotion is high and focused and can be described by one word: TENSE, and it doesn't grow deeper or relax until the very end, when Kim is safe in his arms. 

D. SURROUND YOUR HERO BY THE MORAL PREMISE VICE AT EVERY TURN. Two meaningful story adages that apply here are: (1) There is no drama without conflict, and (2) The antagonistic force (the villain) must be pervasive and all-powerful.  The conflict begins at the level of values—psychological values, from which evil actions are encouraged and launched. Since we have a hero (who has no arc) and who is willing to sacrifice his life to protect life, that means he (Bryan) must be surrounded by the opposite. Pervasively, surrounded by the values that oppose him.  Look back at the moral premise statements at the beginning of this post. The value dipoles are Narcissism vs Sacrifice, and Ignoring Evil vs Awareness of Evil. We can stick with the first dipole for this point: Bryan must be surrounded by a Narcissists...and he is, beginning with Lenore (his ex-wife), Kim (his daughter), Stuart (Kim's step-father), and Amanda (Kim's traveling companion). Once onto his quest, the gang of thugs he encounters are all pure-bred narcissists—St. Clair, Marko, Peter, etc., all the way to the Sheik. His only friends, and they are not close, but they are helpful, are his ex-CIA buddies—Sam, Casey, and Bernie. Another way to show the vice is that everyone other than Bryan's closest friends either lies to him,  misrepresents the truth, or hides the truth. 

E. IN ACT ONE, DEMONSTRATE THE HERO'S SUPERPOWER REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE THE QUEST. Some of Bryan's skill and courage is told to us by Bryan's ex-CIA buddies, but we see it when Bryan saves pop star Sheerah's life from an assassin. 

F. THERE SHALL BE NO SLOW PARTS EXCEPT TO TAKE A SHORT BREATH.  The adage here that applies is this: Thou shalt keep your hero on the run for the entire story. He must be either running toward or away from trouble. The movie is a constant chase and race against time, and the hero's life (and his quest) is always and everywhere at stake. When the respite occurs, tension remains as the audience waits for the outcome of the respite and the chase to resume. Example: Bryan nurses a trafficked girl back to health as we wait with bated breath—the clock is ticking. Kim, in an act of love, had given the girl her jacket. Bryan has to wait for the girl to regain consciousness to ask her where she got the jacket. The answer (the red door in Paradise) sends Bryan back on the chase, but the respite is so short that the audience is still on the treadmill. When Bryan sits down with Jean-Claude's family for dinner, we know it's only for a moment before the guns come out. 

G.  THERE MUST BE A DOOMSDAY TICKING CLOCK. Right after Bryan discovers that Kim is kidnapped, he's told that he has 96 hours (4 days) or she's gone forever. 

H. THE HERO SAVES THE DAY JUST BEFORE THE TICKING CLOCK GOES BOOM. Just as Kim is rapped and taken out of Paris on a riverboat by the villain sheik, Bryan breaks into the sheik's bedroom, and before Kim's neck is cut by the sheik's jambiya dagger, Bryan shoots the sheik between the eyes.

I. THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS MUST BE INCOMPETENT, ABSENT, OR CORRUPT.  Jean-Claude is on the take. When Bryan chases Peter at the airport and starts a fight, a traffic jam and a traffic death, the police are nowhere in sight. The tail that Jean-Claude puts on Bryan is easily lost, just as Jean-Claude said it would happen. 

J. THE HERO MUST BE SMARTER AND STRONGER AND FASTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE, BUT NOT AT FIRST. Example: Bryan is captured, but he knows that to escape, he can pull apart a steam pipe, turn on a conveniently located valve, and douse the key thug with hot steam. It's almost deus ex machina. Bryan has friends in high and low places, having been in Paris many times in the past on spy missions. He knows the Director of International Intelligence and the owner of a cheap hotel. Bryan knows to remove the bullets from Jean-Claude's gun, which is hidden under his home's toilet. Why? Well, it feels more like a spy movie than putting the gun in a drawer next to J-C's bed.

K. THE HERO NEVER FOLLOWS UP ON HUNCHES, BUT ON CONCRETE CLUES.  Further, our hero is smart enough to take the most basic of clues and know exactly where to look. Examples: Bryan finds the SD card from Kim' phone that has a picture on it of Kim and Amanda at the airport, and in the reflection of the poster ad behind Kim and Amanda is a reflection of Peter, the thug that Bryan recognizes and chases. The girl with Kim's jacket tells him to look in the "red door" in Paradise. Bryan is given the name of a Port Clichy where sex workers and trafficking are active. Through a translator, he's told to go to a construction site. 

L. THE HERO NEVER WASTES TIME TRACKING DOWN BLIND ALLEYS OR RED HERRINGS. Blind Alleys and Red Herrings are for mysteries. This is the basic difference between mysteries and thrillers. In a thriller, every clue is productive and leads closer and closer to greater danger, an escalation of risks, and the culmination of the quest—Bryan's daughter.

M. THE HERO HAS ACCESS TO NECESSARY TECHNOLOGY AND TRANSPORTATION WHENEVER HE NEEDS IT. Bryan knows where the photo kiosk is that will take Kim's SD card and generate a picture. The kiosk will also enlarge and enhance Peter's reflected image. Bryan is able to plant a radio bug on a thug's jacket and pick up the signal through a car's infrastructure. 

Here are no doubt more, but I really must start writing.

Miracles Don't Just Happen, and Neither Do Story Hooks.

Story hooks are very much like miracles. But unlike miracles, your audience won't take the hook on faith. You have to explain it.

I have been working on a non-fiction book that has a couple of chapters that deal with the intersection of miracles and natural law. It occurred to me that miracles are very much like story hooks.

What's a Miracle?

A miracle can be defined as any unique physical phenomenon that defies natural explanation and which appears to have some benefit to a person or group of persons. That definition is an attempt to separate incidents of fate, or natural catastrophes that harm humanity (e.g. tsunami, tornadoes, or ...falling branches—like the one that totaled my wife's car yesterday in our driveway) from a similarly fascinating natural event that saves a person's life or prevents catastrophe. While a tornado may level a house we would not call it a miracle. But the baby that is carried by that same tornado to a field 2 miles away and set down without serious injury—

The view out my office. NOT a miracle, unless it can be fixed.

—that's a miracle!

And of those two events (the house leveling tornado or the tornado as baby transporter) which is the story hook?  The baby for sure.

My examination of miracles for this book I'm the editor of (in which I find myself at times rewriting the material), has revealed that there are many ways miracles can be naturally explained, although such explanations are nearly as miraculous and as fanciful as the event itself. The explanations involve unseen hierarchy of the nature's laws, the hierarchy of species, coincident of event timing, and the intersection of spacial and time dimensions beyond those which we normally perceive (3 of space and the point-dimension of time).

Miracles (and perhaps story hooks, too) seem to have two common components:

1. There is an instigation or incident from an outside trigger, and
2. After the outside trigger natural physical laws take over. 

In other words, the idea that a miracle violates or breaks natural laws is probably a false concept. It appears that the unusual event is the trigger, after which Natural Law dominates. (Ah! Now, I'm sure some of you would argue with that. Well, hold on, there's more but I can only type one finger at a time.)

Do Miracles and Hooks Break with Nature?

Now, as I just stated, people of religious faith will challenge me on ideological grounds that miracles do not violate or break a natural law. They will claim that unless there are miracles that defy nature they aren't miracles, and if there are no such nature-defying events then religious faith is dead...and since we can't have that, miracles must defy, violate, or break with nature.  (So much for the circular reasoning of ideology. I prefer evidence, else one could believe in anything....really.)

I'm not going to try to defend religious faith here (although I have it, and I do believe in miracles), but let's examine some ideas and see the story potential in each. My point is that miracles are a good way to conceptualize story hooks...and likewise your hooks should be/could be/must be miraculous...with an explanation of a sort. 

Are These Miracles? Could they be Hooks?

A dandelion growing in the middle of the desert? We'd call that a miracle, but it's an event that can be explained. The miracle here is that a dandelion seed got into the desert mud. After that inciting incident, natural law took over...when the conditions were right we have a blooming dandelion.

We call the development of a human being in a mother's womb and its delivery, The Miracle of Birth, although biologists claim that it can all be explained...at least at some level. Frankly, science can explain very little about how it happens nor can they create a baby from scratch. That makes it a miracle....an everyday miracle, hey get that thumb out of your mouth, you want buck teeth? Why look at that thumb and those teeth...wanna explain either of those?

Aunt Millie being healed of some strange lung disease is one thing...we're not really sure if there was a misdiagnosis, or if some "miracle" drug actually worked, if if an angel visited her in the middle of the night. 

But how do we explain Splash, Jesus walking on water or healing the eyes of the blind, or Moses leading the Children of Israel through the Red Seat on dry land? The skeptic's easy explanation of the Bible miracles is that they're as real as Splash—they didn't actually happen. The person of faith, on the other-hand, is much like the avid story connoisseur...they believe, for there's something of value in the story and the belief. And a good hook or miracle can reveal truth in the story myth that follows.  (Where "myth" is the story vehicle, regardless of it's truth. J.R.R. Tolkien once told C.S. Lewis that the Jesus myth was a true myth worthy of belief. The Chronicles of Narnia were the result.) [Did you ever wonder why those British authors only used initials for their given names?]

Daryl Hannah in a mermaid suit, Morgan Freeman walking on water, or Jesus spitting on a man's eyes are all good hooks, aren't they? How can they be possible? We wonder, we're intrigued, we allow mystery and suspense to pile in...and we become engaged in the story...because of the miracle. We're hooked.  Most people of faith don't want an explanation of miracles (from the ancient past or present day.) But story mavens need something, and I think people of faith need something too, otherwise belief in anything, true or not, would be probable. 

In stories then, when we're presented with the hook, we want to know something about it, like where did it come from, or how does it work? It can't be the writer's convenience and just appear. We can't expect readers or audiences to buy into the ideology just because we said it is so. Even if we can't explain it perfectly, audiences expect us to give it some basis in logic, even if the logic is faulty.  

For example, in WHAT WOMEN WANT, Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) has a bathroom accident with a hair dryer and a bathtub, that "allows" him to hear the thoughts of women he's near. At first this is just what playboy Nick would want. But then it turns into a curse. Nonetheless, the hook, or miracle is explained...at least enough so we can suspend disbelief. And of course it makes no sense, whatsoever. If anything like what happened to Nick happened to a real person, they'd be electrocuted dead. End of movie. 

So, it occurred to me, that some of the philosophical, logical, and scientific understandings of where real miracles come from would help us as storytellers come up with believable hooks. 

5 Rules for Miracles and Story Hooks

1. Miracles and hooks are at first unexplained phenomenal events, seeming impossibilities in the physical realm. But in reality, miracles and hooks do not actually violate Natural Law. C.S. Lewis writes in his book Miracles:

If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and in months later a child is born.

2. Miracles and hooks are not the same as events of fate or catastrophes which occur due to natural law of occurrences, but without moral purpose. Miracles and hooks are specific to a person or group of people with a moral purpose. That is, a miracle or a hook involves some intelligent, benevolent "person," or "force" that triggers the event.

"Everything in a successful story relates to the character arc described by the moral premise statement, including the hook, which describes the peculiar and person problem of our protagonist....Peter." (personal interview with Stan Williams) ...hey, I needed a quote...can't I quote myself even if I just made it up?

3. After the event is triggered, Natural Law takes over and all other things in the person's life or story transpire without additional miracles or hooks. Natural law is never violated, although the natural laws involved may be unknown.

Scientific discoveries reveal natural laws heretofore unknown which caused events that previously could only be described as unexplained phenomenal, or something God does in secret.  But even if we have some explanation for how the event occurred,  the phenomena's moral purpose defines it as a miracle.

4. The "person" or "force" behind the miracle or hook may be a representative of a higher order species that intervenes in the life of the lower species. 

A miracle to a nutritive plant could be triggered by a brute sentient animal. A miracle to a brut sentient animal maybe triggered by a rational person.  A miracle or hook to a rational person would be triggered by a supernatural entity. In each case, the higher species reaches down into the environment of the lower species to trigger an event. For both agents, in both species, no natural law is broken, although the lower species may not understand the natural law which the higher species invokes. 

For example, a young girl folds her laundry and puts 12 pairs of socks in her drawer. The next morning there are only 9, her three favorite pair of red socks are missing. She wonders if she counted wrong. But then a few days later a miracle occurs and the three missing pairs show up again, in the drawer, perfectly in place. She takes one pair out to put it on, and low and behold she discovers a second miracle, the holes in the heels of the socks have been mended. How did this happen? Well, you guessed it, a higher order species paid her a visit...her mother.

5.  "Persons," and "forces" can trigger miracles by operating in extra dimensions of time and space beyond the 3 dimensions of space and 1 point of time humanity normally experiences. Science fiction is always playing with time and other dimensions. If we're to consider some of the theories surrounding Quantum String Theory we have as  many as 10 dimensions to play with, and all we need is a 4th for Jesus to walk through walls, or for Bruce Nolan (Jim Carey) to hear the prayers that God hears and to walk on water.

Conclusion

So, the next time you're trying to think up a hook, think instead of a miracle. That impossibility that through your craft you make reasonable. 

Log Lines, Tags, & Hooks

I recently received the following question from a reader.

Hey Dr. Stan, 

Can I get your reaction to my tagline for the script I'm currently working on (and constantly re-working).  It is: 

After defying incredible odds to become the first African-American female rescue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard, Susan Carville is asked to embark on a mission that will require her to choose who will live and who will die.

Any feedback from you would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you,   

Lady Writer

Lt. j.g. Lashanda Holmes, the first female
African-American helicopter pilot in the Coast Guard.

Dear Lady Writer,

Well, that’s not a tag line, but it’s a pretty good log line. A tag line suggests the emotional arc. For your story a “tag” might be: “Hope that Transcends Desperation.” or “Called to Save, Forced to Let Die.”

But as a story and a log line... you have several layers of outer conflict or potential story hooks:

• Becoming a person who saves lives in desperate situations
• Becoming a rescue swimmer
• Being a female
• Being African-American

Any ONE of those engenders social conflict and potential difficulties. Any ONE of them can become the basis of a movie's hook, because each has a perceived disadvantage.

A person that wants to become a rescue swimmer is prejudice against by her friends for being an a physical fitness junkie and courageous. That bias is not very different from how society’s patriarchal majority at times dismiss women, and white racism marginalizes blacks.

Putting all four together creates greater interest (and greater jeopardy) but also creates a bigger problem for the story. Significantly dealing with ONE of those issues, or perhaps TWO is enough for a screenplay. Dealing with all four suggests to me a novel. Dealing with all four in a screenplay will be difficult, and that difficulty is evident in what you have to do with the log line. (see below)

MULTIPLE HOOKS SOLUTION

But there is a solution. PICK ONE to be the spine of the story, and dramatically reduce the importance of the others to subplots. My recommendation is to pick the spine that has the broadcast audience appeal, and let the others tag along—their very presence will reinforce their validity. For instance, of those four story sub-plots, which do you think will appear to the most people? That then becomes the focus of your story, and the focus of your log line.

Put it another way, I have no problem with seeing all four in a story as your log line suggests, but if you focus principally on Susan's blackness as your main plot, you’ll make the film for only 18% of the American audience that identifies with being black, and you’ll be telling the rest of your potential audience that their lives matters less. If you focus the spine on the fact that Susan is a woman, you’ll marginalize 49% of your potential audience and tell them (the men) they don’t matter. If you focus the spine of your story or being a rescue swimmer, then you have marginalized 99.9% of your audience. But I think everyone in your potential audience would identify with the human need to help others and the moral dilemma of helping others in situations where you are useless to do so.

UNDERDOGS

At the same time, the most successful stories are “underdog” stories, or as Disney labels them, “fish out of water” stories. These are stories where the protagonist can easily be identified as one with the audience. They are just like everybody else, filled with fears and anxieties, and a lost sense of “What can I do?” When you put such a character into a situation that seems impossible you have the biggest interest, the deepest hook.

So my story and log line recommendation would be to focus the story on someone who wants to help others in desperate situations but has to overcome their insecurities of doing so. Keep their motivations high and noble that all your diverse international audience can identify with. Second I would focus on the technicalities of the difficultly of becoming a rescue swimmer. This will intrigue everyone. That Susan happens to be female and black will raise the noble pursue of her in an otherwise male and white world. And while you can make some minor points about her being female and black, you don't want to become so politically correct that you miss the point and open your story up to mockery.

The regular audience goer will believe (coming into the theater) that Susan should become a rescue swimmer ONLY if she can be a good one. Her sex and the color of her skin should not enter into her success of failure, although you can show her struggling with her black-female identity. Just keep it a subplot. This is where Martin Luther King's call for judgment to be made on character not on skin color comes in. If you make gender or race an issue then you suggest that Susan should become a rescue swimmer BECAUSE she is female and black. If you make Susan female and black but don't make a big deal about it, then you reinforce the idea that gender and race are not the issue—character qualities counts. This was part of the success of THE KARATE KID I worked on with Will and Jaden Smith. While Jaden is black, the story was not about his blackness, but about the cultural issues between American and Chinese. Overbrook did the same thing with last year's ANNIE. Both were successful and appealed to broad audiences because race was not an explicit issue in the promotion or the plot...yet it was there.  A gender example would be KILL BILL where Uma Thurman's sex is an implicit not an explicitly issue, and it attracted a male audience.

Now, since Susan's story is a true story, and being female and black WERE issues for her, you will want to still deal with them. Just remember the more you bring them to the forefront of your story, the more you limit your audience to just black females, which would be about 9% of your potential audience.  If you don't made a big deal about then you garner a larger audience who will see black females as fully capable and you'll win their respect from a faithful portrayal of a rescue swimmer's difficulty of rising to that level.

LOG LINE DIFFICULTIES & SOLUTIONS

If you want to make all four elements a significant part of your story then you'll have a log line that reads like this:

After defying incredible odds to become the first African-American, female, rescue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard, Susan Carville is asked to embark on a mission that will require her to choose who will live and who will die among the crew of a sinking ship who are a mix of men and women, whites and blacks. 

This log line is fraught with racial, class, and gender overtones and what becomes lost in such political messages is the remarkable universal nature of anyone becoming a rescue swimmer in order to save another's life. The audience is narrowed and the message debatable.

But if the log line is:

After defying incredible odds to become a rescue swimmer for the U.S. Coast Guard, the newly certified swimmer is sent on a death-defying mission where the swimmer must decide who will live and who will die.

Then the log line has universal appeal. And when the trailers and poster comes out and we discover the swimmer is a black woman, the appeal for the story will skyrocket. People don't like to be preached at about any political issue, but they subliminally understand the gender and racial undertones.

Also notice this minor point. Proper nouns are never used in a log line. Use generic descriptions to (again) keep the appeal broad.

Hook Exercise Results

I've run this exercise before in my workshops, but rarely have I received the results that I did in Dallas at the T.D. Jakes Film Festival workshops on August 30, 2013. After several slides explaining the first Secret of Successful Stories, an Ironic Hook, I asked the participants to write down their ideas and pass them forward. Here, with some minor editing, is what came to me — grist for the story mill. I have no names, so if you turn one of these into a book or movie, be sure to give credit to the "T.D. Jakes IFFFF Moral Premise Workshop Participants"

Cancer 9-1-1
The Baby Teacher
Babies Raising Moms
Big Shoes, Little Feet
Sugar Ain't Sweet
A life insurance salesman is a serial killer
An Army Drill Sargent gets elected POTUS
Female POTUS appoints all male cabinet
Navy seal appointed commander at West Point
A bird is afraid of heights
A bear raises a boy in the wild
A Grandma becomes an astronaut
An alien becomes a civil war hero
A man takes over the world with an army of Shih Tzu
Due to climate upheaval Manhatten and Florida switch places
Skateboading park on the moon
Strong man fights army with large bone
A man can't fall
A man to lazy to cook sells his inheritance for a sandwich
The adventures of a quadriplegic world traveler
Black girl from Louisiana becomes 5-Star Chef in Italy
A beautiful white woman wakes up as a black woman the morning of wedding
A retired madam starts a church
A man wakes up from a coma as a woman
A man is unable to speak until he turns 30
A baby disarms a mad assailant.
A musical chair
A preacher is possessed by the devil
Boy with no hands plays the guitar
Preacher summoned to be a wartime spy
A dysfunctional family functions
Blind white racist falls for a black woman
Match.com pairs up a black racist with with white racist.

ZERO HOUR and TOO MANY HOOKS

Perhaps before reading this, a brief primer on "hooks" is in order.  HERE.

Now, on to ZERO HOUR and the problem of too many hooks. It provides a great lesson for people writing stories who want to over-the-top-amaze. Don't. I just read where the TV drama series ZERO HOUR is being cancelled after only 3 outings. Not familiar with it, I found its Wikipedia site, which is probably edited by the show's creator Paul T. Scheuring.

Here's the basic plot:

Hank Galliston (Anthony Edwards), publisher of a paranormal-enthusiast magazine, while trying to save his abducted wife Laila (Jacinda Barrett), learns that he must also save the world from an impending cataclysm.

Conventional wisdom is that a story can have one hook, or maybe two if the second is a subset or is embedded in the first. Recall that a hook is an ironic impossibility (or improbability) that the storytellers need to make reasonable (i.e. believable.) Everything else about the story should be real (not an impossibility) so as to give the audience a footing in reality. The reality connection allows the audience to IDENTIFY with one or more of the characters.  When there are too many hooks the audience can be lost trying to identify with the characters because so few plot elements have a basis in the audience's reality. One hook is entertaining, two or more are confusing.

So, in the basic plot above we have three hooks:

1. paranormal
2. abducted wife
3. world cataclysm

Now, it does seem that the three could be connected logically: the paranormal entities abduct the wife in the process of destroying the earth.

What is unnerving is this plot summary is there's no real and logical connection between paranormal activity, wife abductions and world cataclysms. None. I think Mr. Scheuring and his EP's at ABC are hitting something pretty hard during development and production.  Give your audience one, not all three, and they may buy into the story line long enough to suspend believe.

Well, if that's not bad enough, here's plot summary for Episode 1.  Take a deep breath, this never seems to stop with the hooks:

Hank Galliston publishes the magazine Modern Skeptic, which focuses on the paranormal. His wife Laila buys a unique-looking clock from a boardwalk vendor and is later abducted. FBI Agent Riley arrives to show Hank and his copy editors, Arron and Rachel, video footage of Laila's abduction. The screen freezes on mercenary White Vincent, with whom Riley is familiar. Hank disassembles Laila's clock to find a flawed diamond. With light shone through it, the stone refracts a map. Hank shows the map and its markings to Father Mickle (Charles S. Dutton), a priest who talks of a language that died in the 2nd century. The priest also mentions the Rosicrucians, a group of Christian mystics of the time, and place called New Bartholomew. The map diamond is left with the priest and Vincent later assaults him, collecting the diamond. Hank leaves his team behind and travels to where New Bartholomew should be, with Agent Riley in tow, as she tells him White Vincent's terrorist history. Arron and Rachel travel to Bavaria to find the clock maker (Jan Tříska), who wears a Rosicrucian cross. He informs them that after the Nazis created a new "eternal life," the Church appointed twelve new "apostles" that assembled in 1938 to protect the war-torn world from doom. A clock was created for each. The apostles then scattered to hide from the Nazis. New Bartholomew was not a place, but one of the apostles. Hank finds the place on the map where New Bartholomew is located. It is a German submarine, stuck in Canadian ice, with some dead people inside including New Bartholomew, who resembles Hank. Outside, Vincent arrives as the clock maker's voiceover warns of the approaching tumultuous "zero hour".

 Here are the improbables for me, your improbables may vary. Any one of these is cool. Trying to find a foundation in reality with ALL of these in one episodes makes me dizzy ... with laughter.

1. A magazine business that investigates the paranormal (actually that there's an audience for such a magazine and advertisers enough to keep it financially viable is the hook).
2. A unique-looking clock. (Unique = none else like it in the WORLD)
3. Someone is abducted. The sentence construction leaves me unsure if Laila or the vendor is abducted (the antecedent is...?)
4. There's video footage of the abduction so clear that we can identify the perp (which is really the hook that CSI has made famous)
5. The clock has a "flawed" diamond inside. (who knew????)
6. The diamond is really a PowerPoint slide of a map. (the other hook here is that there's a projector blub so sharp and small that it can shine THROUGH a diamond, and yet another hook is that the CSI detectives they hired from Jerry Bruckheimer for this series can figure out  what facet of the diamond to project the  light through.)
7. Charles Dutton is playing a priest... yet again. (I guess that's not an improbable)
8. There's a mystical decoder language that died in the 2nd century but it's useful today)
9. The are Christian mystics (who also died in the 2nd century but are relevant today)
10. Vincent is a terrorist who kidnaps people (who knew?)
11. The clock maker has survived the 2nd century and is hiding diamonds in clocks with maps.
12. The Nazi's created a new "eternal life."  (who makes up this stuff?)
13. The Catholic Church has created 12 new apostles. (the original 12 are mystical enough. I guess we couldn't figure them out so we set them aside and created 12 we could understand.)
14. There are 12 clocks, with 12 diamonds no doubt, with 12 maps. That's enough for 1,728 episodes.... which sort of reminds me of Earl's list, from "My Name is Earl" which gets longer with every episode.).
15. The 12 apostles carrying these 12 clocks (which are no longer unique clocks because there are 12 of them) are running around the world with clocks under their arms hiding form the Nazi's. (is this an undercranked silent movie?)
16. One of the new apostles is stuck in a German submarine.
17. The German submarine is stuck in Canadian ice
18. There are dead people "on ice" in the submarine
19. New Bartholomew looks like Hank