Belmont diary: Start the engines

I've completed the first draft of my airport comedy. It's titled Thirty Minutes Till Boarding. And it's a monster.

104 pages. 40 characters. One high-energy dance number that can boost the cast size to 50 or more. And lots and lots of luggage.

It's my biggest play to date. But that's not the only reason it was such a bear to write. It's also the first play I've written that has multiple storylines.

A new journey

My other huge-cast plays, It's a Madhouse! and Bringing Down the House, only had one storyline. Five or six characters drove the plot while the rest of the characters interacted in some way with the main ones in order to advance the plot.

There's one big advantage to doing it this way. It makes it very easy to follow the Hero's Journey template. After only, I only had to create one journey.

Thirty Minutes Till Boarding, on the other hand, has multiple storylines. Fourteen, to be exact.

Some of the storylines have two characters. Some have three or four. The biggest one has six. But all of the characters are the heroes of their own story.

Writing it this way was fun but also extremely challenging. The biggest challenge was just coming up with all those different stories.

But there was one other big challenge. To keep the play under two hours, each storyline had to be very short, no more than ten minutes. How could I make those stories satisfying, with a complete narrative arc for each character, in just a few minutes?

There was only one answer. I had to use a simplified version of the Hero's Journey.

Six steps to story

Instead of the the 15 beats of Save the Cat!, which I usually use for my plays, or the 12 beats of The Writer's Journey, which many screenplays use, I settled on six that each of these stories had to have:

1) Status Quo--We meet the characters, find out what makes them tick, and discover what their goals are (a lot to cover in just a page or two).

2) Catalyst--An external event prevents the characters from achieving that goal.

3) Turning Point--A new complication raises the stakes for the characters.

4) All is Lost--The character seems to fail in their mission, usually because they're approaching the goal in the wrong way.

5) Final Victory--With a different approach and a newly reenergized effort, the characters finally succeed in achieving their goals.

6) Reward--We get a glimpse of the new normal, which shows us how the characters have been changed by their journey (usually, but not always, for the better).

I'm really happy with how the play turned out. I think it's really funny and really heartwarming, maybe my most heartwarming play to date.

It's also makes a great ensemble piece. No character has more than 63 lines, and 3/4 of the characters have at least 20 lines.

That magic number

One last thing. As I said, this is my biggest play, both in length and cast size. It's a Madhouse! and Bringing Down the House both ended up with 38 characters. That seems to be a magic number for me because my first draft of Thirty Minutes Till Boarding also had 38 characters.

But Belmont Day School really wanted 40 characters. I'd have to add two. What would their story be? 

Well, that's where the old axiom "write what you know" came into play.

I thought back to my own experiences flying commercial and I remembered the time a middle-aged lady squeezed into the seat next to me, her hands clutching something wrapped in foil. She sat there with it on her lap, admiring it, the whole time we were waiting for the plane to takeoff. 

Finally, it's twenty minutes later, we're in the air and she unwraps this thing. It's a chili dog. Like a loaded with everything chili dog. Ketchup. Mustard. Relish. And, of course, a lots and lots of onions.

She could have eaten it in the restaurant. She could have eaten it at the gate. But no. She carried it onto the plane so that all 150 passengers could appreciate this stink bomb.

I had my storyline. All I needed to do was move it into the airport, add a couple of brothers, give them a reason for traveling, and it was a go.

Scene: A crime against humanity

Here's the first scene of that storyline:

NEIL and VERN ENTER RIGHT, carrying backpacks. VERN holds a chili dog wrapped in foil.

NEIL: I'm telling you, Vern. This trip to Italy is going to make us rich!

VERN: I sure hope so, Neil.

NEIL: Are you doubting me? Don't be doubting me, bro. You know I've always been the smart one.

VERN: I'm not doubting you. It's just that, well, I guess I'm a little confused about the plan.

NEIL: (Sighs.) All right. I'll go over it one more time, but only because you're my little brother and I know you tend to forget things.

VERN: Thanks, Neil.

NEIL and VERN sit.

NEIL: Now listen. It's really very simple. Step one: We buy an abandoned house in the village of Sambuca for one measly euro. Step two: We renovate the house. Step three: We sell the house for a whole lot more than one euro. Bing bang boom!

VERN: Sounds like a lot of work.

NEIL: Well, sure, it's a lot of work, but that's why we make such a good team, right? You do all the physical labor and I take care of the brainy stuff.

VERN: What brainy stuff?

NEIL: Well, you know. Drawing up plans. Getting permits. Those are just as hard as laying brick or putting up drywall. (Sees the foil.) Wait a minute. What's in that foil?

VERN: A chili dog. I haven't eaten since breakfast, you know.

NEIL: You're bringing a chili dog on the plane?

VERN: Yeah.

NEIL: A casing-wrapped tube of heavily processed meat and meat byproducts, smothered in some overly seasoned bean slop, and topped off with tear-inducing onions?

VERN: Oh, yeah!

NEIL: You can't eat that on the plane!

VERN: Why not?

NEIL: Because it's a crime against humanity, that's why! As soon as you open that foil, the vile stench will fill the cabin and the other passengers will be forced to inhale those toxic fumes for the rest of the flight!

VERN: I could eat it now.

NEIL: Do you really think I want to smell that foul concoction on your breath for the next eight hours? No! Throw it away or I'm going to be sick!

VERN: Yes, Neil.

VERN EXITS RIGHT with the chili dog.

NEIL: (To himself.) He's lucky he's got me to watch out for him.

 

What comes next 

I emailed the play to Belmont Day School today, which feels like starting the engines on a jetliner. The play is fully boarded, but it's not ready for takeoff just yet. 

That won't happen until October, when we finally nail down the script and the school starts rehearsing for their March performance.

But for now, we've got a story--oops! make that twelve stories--that are just begging to come to life.

I can't wait to dig in.

Aristotle was wrong

They say a good teacher learns as much as their students. I don't know how good a teacher I am, but I do know I learned a lot teaching my class on the Hero's Journey at the Arizona Thespian Festival this weekend. Above all, I learned that a quite a few people really don't like the Barbie movie.

But more on that later.

This is the second time I taught the class at this conference, and third time overall (I also taught it at the 2016 Colorado Thespian Conference, just before I moved to Arizona). But this time, in a very late move--like the night before my class was scheduled--I made a bold and possibly risky modification to the lesson. I changed my template from a three-act structure to a four-act structure.

Sacrilege, I know. The three-act structure has been ingrained in our culture going all the way back to Aristotle's Poetics. And it makes sense. As writers, we inherently know that every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end.

But what does that middle consist of? And how do we as writers keep the tension building so that we don't lose steam there?

Those are the questions that were bothering me as I was preparing for the class on Saturday.

The answers came, as they usually do, from Blake Snyder's groundbreaking screenwriting book, Save the Cat!

Blake presented his story template as a three-act structure as well. But he divided Act 2 into Act 2A and 2B. And he gave them different names. Act 2A is Fun & Games. Act 2B is Bad Guys Close In.

He also claimed that the midpoint of the story, which divided Act 2 into two equal halves, was the single most important plot point in the story. More important than the acceptance of the challenge that separates Act 1 and Act 2 and more important than the final push that separates Act 2 and Act 3.

It's almost as if he wanted to call them two different acts but didn't feel he could get away with it because of, well, that Aristotle guy.

So as I was preparing my presentation, I finally got to the point where I'd had enough of trying to justify why we call it a three-act structure and just call it what it is. A structure with four acts that were equal, in importance as well as duration. This would make things easier to understand for beginning writers. And it would drive home the point that writers really need to make that midpoint big. Like life-changing big.

It also dovetailed nicely with an observation I'd previously made about those two arbitrarily-divided halves of Act 2. As I discovered, they often take place in completely different physical locations, just as Acts 1 and 3 do.

For example, in Star Wars, the locations of the four acts are:

• Tatooine
• Millennium Falcon
• Death Star
• X-Wing fighter

While in Legally Blonde, the four locations are:

• Southern California
• Harvard Law School
• Professor Callahan's law firm
• Courtroom

Committing myself to this brave new playwriting world, I went into the classroom on Saturday excited and, yes, I suppose a little nervous.

I was assigned two sessions, both in the afternoon. Unfortunately, neither one had as many students as last year. The first session only had twelve students. The second session had a few more, but the students kept coming and going so it was hard to get a definitive count. I would guess it averaged around twenty. And this in a classroom with over 100 seats.

But no matter. The sessions started well--even if I did have to shout when the musical theater class next door broke into very loud song. The students, as always, enjoyed showing off their knowledge of Star Wars trivia. And they were very good at figuring out which events in the film matched up to story beats in the Hero's Journey.

It was when we got to Barbie that things got interesting. I'd mentioned in my last post that I'd chosen this movie because I figured a lot more kids would have seen this movie than Legally Blonde. This was based on my trip to Idaho earlier this year, where only three kids out of a hundred knew the 2001 Reese Witherspoon vehicle.

Well, big surprise! In each session, there were around three students--always boys--who hadn't seen Barbie. And when I asked kids to raise their hands for Legally Blonde, I found that about the number--mostly but not entirely boys this time--hadn't seen that movie either.

So, unsure of how things would work out, I launched into my discussion of Barbie. And it was clear from the outset that even the students who'd seen the movie weren't as familiar with it as they were with Star Wars. They didn't know the names of the characters and they didn't remember the key events of the story.

But they knew the ending. And that's what made things interesting. After a fairly subdued discussion of the Act Two break, and the Midpoint, and the fact that there really was no Act Three, things got very passionate very fast as we came to the ending. You know, the whole "I'm here to see my gynecologist" thing.

Everyone either loved it or hated that ending. Those who hated it (about a third of the class) said it was too ambiguous and unsatisfying. Sure, Barbie had become human, but that wasn't enough for them. They wanted her to find her purpose. They wanted her to choose a career. And they wanted to know what that career was.

Those who loved it, while acknowledging the ambiguousness of the ending, felt it was realistic and satisfying in its own way. After all, humans don't always know what their purpose is. At least not when they're young. The important thing is the search for it. And now that Barbie was human, she could.

I lean more toward the second group. I don't think any one career would have been satisfying to us, the audience. What would she be? A toy designer? A gynecologist.

No, my problems with the movie lay elsewhere. I wanted there to be more of a struggle to defeat the Kens in Act Four. And I don't like how Barbie's external goal (taking back Barbieland) and her internal goal (finding her purpose) were so completely unrelated.

So what do I do next year? Well, I definitely plan on returning to the thespian festival with this class. After teaching it three times now, I'm more convinced than ever that understanding the Hero's Journey and three-act structure--sorry, four-act structure--are vital to the development of young writers. And I was gratified--and not a little surprised--to see how many budding playwrights from last year's class chose to attend the class again this year.

But now it appears I have the flexibility of choosing either Legally Blonde or Barbie for my second film. Legally Blonde is great because it follows the Hero's Journey so closely. But I believe there's a lot to be gained by studying how Barbie veers from that template and what effect that has on us as audience members.

One thing's for sure. I'm going to ask for one of the small class rooms. I think there will be much more give and take if everyone is sitting close to each other.

And I'm definitely going to see if I can get a room next to a mime class.

The Hero's Journey in Barbie

Of the 438 posts I've written over the last 13 years, far and away the most popular one is The Hero's Journey in Legally Blonde. Not quite as popular, but still getting a healthy number of views, is The Hero's Journey in Star Wars. And I think that's great.

It shows how important storytelling is to our culture. To our species. And it reflects how truly passionate storytellers are (and really, aren't we all storytellers?) about improving their skills so that they can better captivate their audiences.

I've seen this myself. Both posts came from a writing workshop I gave--first at the Colorado Thespian Conference in 2016, then at the Arizona Thespian Festival last year--based on my simplified, seven-step version of Joseph Campbell's original Hero's Journey (by way of Blake Snyder).

Eager young writers packed the rooms where I taught, and discussions were energetic, even heated at times. The kids attending the workshop really wanted to understand--to absorb--all the ins and outs of the Hero's Journey.

I'd chosen these films for three reasons:

1) They exemplify the specific story beats of the Hero's Journey extremely well.

2) They're nearly opposites in genre, setting, and theme.

3) Almost everyone has seen them.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Idaho, where I last led this workshop in February. Kids didn't know Legally Blonde any more. Out of 100 students attending my workshop, only three had seen it. And obviously this killed any conversation around the movie.

So when I decided to repeat the workshop at this year's Arizona Thespian Festival, I realized I had to replace Legally Blonde with a different movie. But which one?

Well, it had to be something that everyone in today's generation of kids has seen. It had to follow the Hero's Journey pretty closely. And I really wanted it to be female-centered, with many of the same feminist themes as my original choice.

There was only one possibility: 2023's Barbie.

I was a little worried though. I wasn't 100% sure it actually fits all of the beats of the Hero's Journey. So I watched it again a couple months ago. And guess what? It doesn't. After all, co-writers Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach come from the indie world, where plot takes a back seat to characterization and mood.

But I figured that was okay. As long as I could explain how it differs and why, it would be worth discussing.

So let me stop yappin' and give you my analysis of the Hero's Journey according to the Doll That Changed the World.

1) Status Quo

We start the movie in Barbieland (the first of our four worlds), a pink paradise for Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and her friends. They're dancing. They're partying. It's a perfect world in which every day is the best day ever ("So was yesterday, and so is tomorrow, and every day from now until forever.").

2) Catalyst

But everything changes when a dark thought enters her mind. "Do you guys ever think about dying?" she says. The music stops with a ear-splitting record scratch as the other Barbies quit dancing to stare at her in horror.

As I teach in the workshop, the catalyst is always an external event, a shock to our hero's life that originates from outside the hero. In Barbie, however, it seems to be internal to our hero. Her thoughts of dying are just that: thoughts. And thoughts generally arise from a character's own mind.

Not in this case, however. As we are soon to learn, they come from the Real World and, more specifically from Gloria (America Ferrera), the mother of the girl who used to play with the Barbie. So, as strange as it may seem, the thoughts are in fact an external event.

If the initial state of the hero's world is negative, then the catalyst must be a positive event. In Barbie, the initial status quo is positive, so the catalyst must be negative. And this one definitely is, changing Barbie's world so that things aren't so perfect anymore.

She wakes up with bad breath. Her shower is cold. Her toast burns. She falls from the roof of her house. And, worst of all, her feet turn flat (oh, the humanity!).

3) Accept the Challenge 

Barbie wants to know why she's having these thoughts, so she visits Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), our first mentor, to find out what she knows. This beat couldn't be more clear as Weird Barbie offers Stereotypical Barbie a clear-cut, Matrix-like choice: a high-heeled shoe, which represents the status quo, and a plain old sandal, which represents traveling to the Real World.

Consistent with the Refusal of the Call (which is the second beat in Joseph Campbell's seventeen-beat Hero's Journey but does not appear in my version because it doesn't always occur in popular movies--cough, cough--Legally Blonde), Barbie at first chooses the high-heeled shoe. She's afraid of the Real World.

But Weird Barbie won't allow that, and when Barbie still refuses the sandal, Weird Barbie points out that choosing the high-heeled shoe will inevitably lead to Barbie getting cellulite, a fate so horrifying to our hero that she immediately changes her mind and joins Team Sandal.

And so, Barbie enters the Real World--the second of our four worlds--traveling by car, boat, rocket, bike, camper, snowmobile, and rollerblades to get there (with Ken going along for the ride).

4) Fun and Games

This isn't a single beat in my template but the entirety of Act 2. Here, mistakes are made by our hero and her clingy sidekick as they fumble their way around the new world they've entered.

Barbie and Ken make their entrance into the Real World wearing ridiculously bright neon colors, which earns them the derision of bystanders. They say wildly inappropriate things to strangers. They even get arrested for stealing new outfits. But these mistakes are relatively harmless (and comical!) because the stakes are low. None of these mistakes prevent Barbie from returning to Barbieland any time she wants.

Bad things are brewing, however, When Barbie and Ken split up to go their own ways, Ken discovers just how different the Real World is from Barbieland. In Barbieland,  the Kens are subservient to the Barbies. But in the Real World, men rule everything. Ken is thrilled to his core, setting up the darker events that will occur in the second half of the film.

Barbie, meanwhile, has her own adventures. At first, she's dismayed to learn that she, in fact, has not inspired a generation of young girls to grow up and build a kinder, more female-centered society. No, women are pretty much on the sidelines in the Real World, raising the question which will dog her for the rest of the film. If she had no real impact on the Real World, then what was she made for?

Before she can delve too deeply into this, however, she gets taken to Mattel headquarters by a some mysterious figures in a black limo. There the executives attempt to neutralize her by urging her to step inside her box.

Barbie immediately senses something is wrong and escapes. A chase through the office building ensues, and when she finally manages to slip away, she happens upon a kind, matronly figure sitting at a kitchen table. This figure calls herself Ruth, and while Barbie doesn't really learn anything from her during their brief conversation, the scene is important because it introduces Barbie to the figure who will become her second mentor. More on that later.

5) Stakes are Raised

Now comes the midpoint of the story, the beat that Blake Snyder considered the single most important one in any story. And that's because it's the beat that flips the story from bright and sunny to dark and grim. For the first time, the hero sees the true face of her enemy. And from this point on, the hero's mistakes are no longer amusing because they come with a cost. Someone could get seriously hurt--or worse.

In a drama, a minor character might die here (a development I call First Blood), a victim of the villain's evil plans. But, of course, Barbie is a comedy so there will be no death. Not a literal one anyway.

No. What dies, in a figurative sense, is the old Barbieland that our hero knew and loved. And that's because when she returns to it, she learns that the Kens have taken control, instituting a male-dominated society and relegating the Barbies to mindless, sexually-objectified servant roles.

As I said, in Act 2, Barbie always had the option of returning to Barbieland. But now she's a doll without a country. She doesn't recognize what Barbieland has become. And she definitely can't return to the Real World.

If a movie has a ticking clock, it's usually introduced at the Final Push beat. But in Barbie it's introduced here. Barbie learns she only has forty-eight hours before the Kens will vote to change the constitution and solidify their authority forever.

What in the Barbie World is she going to do?

6) Bad Guys Close In

Similar to Fun and Games, this isn't a single event but the entirety of the second half of Act 3.

Things get really interesting here because this is where Barbie significantly diverges from the Hero's Journey. In a typical movie, this half-act would run for 30 to 40 minutes and show the hero's increasingly desperate attempts to defeat the villain or, more likely, escape the villain's clutches. Either way, this can be a very exciting act, with tension-filled scenes of high-stakes action (think the escape from the Death Star in the original Star Wars).

Barbie doesn't have any of this. Instead, Stereotypical Barbie goes directly from learning that the Kens have taken over (Stakes are Raised) to giving up entirely (All is Lost).

Oh, sure. There's a brief bit about the Mattel executives following Barbie into Barbieland with the goal of getting her back inside that dumb box, but they're just comic relief. The real bad guys are the Kens (sorry, Ryan Gosling fans!).

What would a true Bad Guys Close In sequence look like in Barbie? Well, you might have Stereotypical Barbie trying to convert the other Barbies back to their former status and fail. Or you might have the Kens finding new, increasingly dastardly ways of exerting their control over the Barbies. You might even have the Barbies secretly infiltrating a meeting of the Kens to uncover some weakness they use against them. There are all sorts of possibilities.

But nope. In Barbie, the bad guys have already closed in.

7) All is Lost

So how does Barbie respond to her defeat? She gives up. Like, literally. She falls to the ground as she falls into an existential crisis, doubting her worth in a world that places a premium on practical skills. "I'm not smart enough to be interesting," Barbie says. "I can't do brain surgery. I've never flown a plane."

There's one more thing she can't do. She can't take power back from the Kens.

Sidenote: I actually cheated a little bit in the beat chart for the workshop. I show the Stakes are Raised moment as Kens Take Control and the All is Lost moment as Barbie Gives Up. But I should have used Kens Take Control for both because it's an external event that happens to our hero. Barbie Gives Up, on the other hand, is our hero's internal, emotional response to her defeat, a beat called The Dark Night of the Soul in Blake Snyder's template, which I don't include in mine. But that would have messed up my chart so I tweaked it.

Some movies have a sidekick pulls the hero out of their funk with some words of encouragement or offering a new, mind-expanding insight. Weird Barbie does try to encourage Stereotypical Barbie here, but it doesn't help. Stereotypical Barbie remains rooted to he ground, wallowing in depression and self-doubt.

Instead, Gloria is the one who finally breaks through with her speech about the crazy, contradictory demands our society places on women--arguably the most powerful scene in the film. Except that she doesn't break through to Stereotypical Barbie. She breaks through to Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), who suddenly remembers who she is: "Wait. I did write a book. It's like I've been in a dream... but what you said broke me out of it."

Note that just as there's no real First Blood in this film, there's no Death of the Mentor either, not even a figurative one. Weird Barbie is still there, trying to help. And Ruth has yet to return.

8) Final Push

So Writer Barbie has snapped out of her daze and came to the conclusion that Gloria's speech is what did the snapping. That's all well and good, but to wrap up the movie in a satisfying way, we need our Hero to lead the battle from here. And that's what exactly happens as Barbie uses this information to develop a plan to wrest power from the Kens:

1) Deprogram each Barbie one-by-one by having Gloria repeat snippets from her speech to them.

2) Making the Kens believe they have all the power by fawning over them as they sing their manly beach song.

3) Take it all away by flirting with the other Kens in the hopes that this will turn the guys against each other.

9) Final Victory

If that all sounds too easy, it's not. The plan succeeds, triggering a no-holds-barred beach-off among the Kens. In fact, the Ken are so distracted that they forget to vote, allowing the Barbies take control of Barbieland again.

Only this won't be the old Barbieland we saw in Act 1. This is a new and improved Barbieland. The Barbies have learned from their previous mistake--not fully respecting or even empowering the Kens--and vow to correct that going forward

Yippee! Barbie has achieved her external goal, and in a typical movie, that would be the end of it. But Barbie isn't a typical movie. No, in Barbie, it's not the external goal but our hero's internal goal that matters most. And, in another departure from most big-budget studio movies, there's no connection between those two.

So we're left with another 22 minutes of the movie in which Barbie must achieve her internal goal of  finding her purpose. And that internal goal requires an internal mentor: Ruth (remember her?).

10) Reward

Barbie doesn't know exactly what she wants to do. But she's starting to get a sense of it. "I want to be part of the people that make meaning," she tells Ruth. "Not the thing that's made. I want to do the imagining. I don't want to be the idea."

To Ruth, that means only one thing. Barbie must become human. She warns Barbie that being human is really uncomfortable and then you die. Barbie is unswayed. Ruth takes Barbie's hands and tells her to close her eyes and just... feel. A quick montage follows, showing brief clips of what it means to be human.

Ruth releases Barbie's hands and slips out of sight, leaving Barbie all alone in the world. Barbie stares into the ephemeral distance and responds to the montage she's just seen with a single word.

"Yes."

11) The New Normal

The next thing we know, Barbie is headed into a medical office, where she informs the receptionist that she's there to see her gynecologist.

It's a funny line, but it's important too because it tells the audience, in the most intimate way possible, that Barbie has achieved her goal. She has become human.

Barbie still may not know what her purpose is. But now that she's human, we're confident that she can findi it. All she has to do is live her life.

Final Thoughts

So we've seen that despite the indie pedigree of its creators, Barbie follows the Hero's Journey pretty closely. There is, in fact, just one key way in which it differs. Namely, the Stakes Are Raised and All Is Lost beats are identical, eliminating any need for Act 3 (Bad Guys Close In).

But there are a few minor ways in which the film, while not outright breaking the rules laid out by Blake Snyder and Joseph Campbell, does play things fast and loose with standard Hollywood story structure.

For one, there was no death of the mentor. Also, her internal goal was completely independent of her external goal, which led to an unusually extended sequence in which Barbie explored what it meant to become human. And finally, I found it a little strange that Barbie's final plan for victory succeeded so readily. There are usually a few setbacks on the road to final victory.

Does the movie still work? Well, that's a question that needs to be answered by each viewer for themselves. But seeing how successful the movie has been--not just at the box office, but in the number of accolades and awards it has received--suggests that it worked very well indeed.

So yes, you can veer off the path laid out by the Hero's Journey. But as they say, you have to know the rules in order to break them. And you have to know why you're breaking them.

If you can do that, then you're well on your way to creating your own compelling story.

I hope this outline has been helpful. If you'd like your own copy of the Hero's Journey diagrams for Star Wars and Barbie that I'll be presenting at the Arizona Thespian Festival, just left click on the images below to open them, then right click on the the opened images to download them. .

The Hero's Journey in Legally Blonde

A few years ago, I put together a lecture for the Colorado State Thespian Conference on the hero's journey in Star Wars. I broke down the movie into its major plot beats and showed how they match up with the three-act structure first laid out by mythologist Joseph Campbell and further developed by screenwriters Christopher Vogler and Blake Snyder, among others.

It was the most popular class I ever taught, drawing over a hundred kids in a room set up for a couple dozen. I was looking forward to teaching it again, but less than a year later I moved to Arizona. Unfortunately, I've been unable to get myself on the staff of the Thespian Conference here.

But the lesson lives on. And that's because my post where I share my PowerPoint from the class has recently become my most popular post.

So I thought people might be interested in the other part of the class, the part where I applied the same structure to the 2001 Reese Witherspoon film Legally Blonde.

Why this movie? Well, most writing students already know that the Hero's Journey works for testosterone-driven action and sci fi films like Star Wars. I wanted to show that it works just as well for something funny and light like this beloved girl power comedy.

My breakdown of Legally Blonde is shown in the chart above. Feel free to download it as a JPG by clicking on the chart itself or download a PDF version by clicking on this link.

Looking at it you'll notice that, unlike a lot of writing teachers, I don't dictate a page count for each of the story beats. After all, some very successful movies play fast and loose with the generally accepted ones (Star Wars itself takes 40 of its 125 minutes to get to the first beat).

But there's one key caveat. If you take too long to get to that next beat, you risk committing the only real sin of writing: boring your audience.

And yes, some teachers include several more beats, but I wanted to keep my template simple for the beginning writers I usually teach. Trust me, if you can cover these seven beats in your story, you're well on your way to crafting a compelling, structurally sound tale.

So let's jump in and see how the irrepressible Elle Woods forges her journey:

1) Catalyst--This is the beat that gets the whole story started. Some beginning writers confuse the Catalyst (or Inciting Incident or Call To Adventure, as some teachers call it) with Accepting The Challenge, but there's an easy way to keep them straight. The Catalyst is something that happens TO the hero. Accepting The Challenge is what the hero DOES in response to the Catalyst.

There are two ways to play the Catalyst. Some movies, like Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starts with the Hero in a negative status quo, i.e. a world in which the Hero is already suffering (Charlie's poverty). In this case, the Catalyst takes the form of a positive opportunity for the Hero, something that will allow the Hero to break out of the status quo and build a better life (e.g. the Golden Ticket).

A more common--and effective--way is to start the Hero in a positive status quo, a world in which the Hero has everything they need to be happy. The Catalyst then becomes something that upends that situation, snatching that perfect world away from the Hero.

The second path is the one that Legally Blonde takes. As the film starts, Elle Woods is well on her way to a SoCal version of nirvana. She has rich parents, a newly minted degree in fashion merchandising (my daughter looked into it once, it's much harder than it sounds), great friends, and the world's most eligible bachelor as her boyfriend. All she has to do is get that boyfriend to propose and the rest of her life will be bliss.

But Warner doesn't propose. In fact, he dumps her, making it all too painfully clear that he considers her unworthy of him. Elle is devastated. Her dreams of a "happily ever after" are destroyed.

2) Accepting The Challenge--This beat is the Hero's response to the Catalyst. And Elle goes big. Despite a (perceived) lack of smarts and a lifestyle that's been centered on swimming pools and the latest fashions, she's determined to follow Warner to Harvard and get her own law degree.  For this, she's convinced, is how she's going to prove to Warner that's she worthy of him and win him back.

As audience members, we already know this is a bad goal. Warner's a jerk. We don't want Elle to get back with him, now or ever. But we know this is part of the growth path she needs to follow to get to her True Happiness, so we go along with her.

Elle now enters the first half of Act Two, what Save the Cat's Blake Snyder called the Fun & Games section. Free of any real cost to her decision, she gets to explore all the ways that her new world (Harvard) is different from her old world (SoCal). This is always the funniest part of a movie, as it gives us a chance to see our Hero make a fool of herself as she flounders around trying to learn (or fighting against) the rules of this new world.

3) Stakes Are Raised--Also called the Midpoint or Turning Point, this is where things get serious. The fun and games are over. Now the hero really has something to lose.

In the movie, Elle goes to the Halloween party to win back Warner, only to be rejected one last time. After he shoots down her plan to get an internship, saying she's just not smart enough, she finally realizes she's never going to be be good enough for him.

In my class, I argued that this was one of the weaker beats in the movie since Elle's stakes aren't raised in any meaningful way. One of the students pushed back, claiming that this defeat provides Elle with the motivation she needs to succeed. But, as I pointed out, things really haven't changed for her. As audience members, we always knew she would never get Warner back. And sure, maybe she'll work a little harder now. But she's already working pretty hard in her classes.

Blake Snyder once observed that a lot of writers think the most important beat is the Inciting Incident or the Climax, but it's really the Midpoint. The whole movie revolves around this beat. The other beats are about what happens. This beat tells you why they matter.

When I first read this, it was like the heavens opened up. It changed my whole approach to writing. No longer did I dread the long hard slog of Act Two. Instead, I relished the challenge of coming up with a turning point that would raise my story to a whole new level.

In fact, the Midpoint is such an important beat, you could almost say it launches a whole new act, with the second half of Act Two becoming Act Three, and Act Three becoming Act Four.

A four-act structure? Why not? After all, a lot of films break their stories into four different worlds, with the middle two worlds occupying the Second Act. Legally Blonde does it with Southern California, Harvard, the law firm, and the courtroom. Star Wars does it with Tatooine, the Millennium Falcon, the Death Star, and the X-Wing Fighter.

If you think of the Midpoint as an act break, then you've split the three acts into four. And making the Midpoint an act break should really hammer home how life-changing this beat needs to be.

Still wondering if you've raised the stakes enough in your story? Then ask yourself one thing. What does your hero stand to lose now that they didn't before?

If the answer is nothing, rework it. Your readers (if not your hero) will love you for it.

4) All Is Lost--After the struggles of Act Two, your hero should lose it all at this critical beat. All Is Lot is where the mentor often dies, as when (spoiler alert!) Obi Wan Kenobi is killed by Darth Vader. Killing off the mentor is a highly effective story choice as it forces your hero to prove themselves by fighting their final battle alone.

But you can't have a death in a romantic comedy, so what do you do? You find another way to get rid of the mentor.

Legally Blonde handles this extremely well. After Elle gets the internship, Callahan becomes her mentor--and he's a good one. He teaches her how to do research. He teaches her how to build a case. Most importantly, he teaches her how to think like a lawyer.

Unfortunately, this all comes tumbling down when Callahan tries to seduce her. Not only does this convince Elle that no one will ever respect her for her brain, it also makes it impossible for her to work with him any longer. The relationship, if not the mentor, is dead.

5)  Final Push--Here the hero picks herself up, dusts herself off, and makes one last attempt to achieve her goals. And this time she has to do it alone. Or at least without her mentor. In most movies, the hero has allies she can lead into battle.

Elle does this by taking the lead of Brooke's defense team. Emmett may be guiding her, but it's up to Elle to win or lose for her client. She's the one who argues the case. And she's the one who makes the observation that finally turns the case her way.

For more on this, read on...

6) Final Victory--And now for the payoff. The hero succeeds, finally achieving their goal. But there's a little more to it than that--and it's all in the way they win.

As we know, the hero of every story must follow an arc. They start out being one thing (Act One), and through the lessons learned from their mentor, and the battles they've fought with their allies, they become something else (Act Two).

In Act Three, they may even reject their old self and attempt to achieve their goal based on their new skills only. But they only succeed when they combine something about their old self and their new self.

Star Wars does this. Luke starts the movie with mad piloting skills. In Act Two, he learns to use the Force. But when he gets to Act Three, he loses confidence in his ability to use the Force and relies solely on his piloting skills to destroy the Death Star. He quickly discovers that's not enough. He keeps missing the target. It's only when he combines his new self--the Force--with his old self--the Pilot--that he hits the target and succeeds in blowing up that massive space weapon.

Legally Blonde does something similar but opposite. At first, Elle tries to win the trial by being her new self--a quick-thinking, hard-nosed defense attorney. But it's not enough. Her legal arguments are going nowhere. Only when she combines that new self with her old self--a beauty expert--does she recognize that Brooke's stepdaughter must be lying about washing her freshly permed hair.

Not every movie does this. But if you want to make your story the best it can be, you're going to want to find a way to have your hero combine their two selves.

7) Final Reward--Now the hero gets to revel in their victory. But the main point of this beat is not to show how the hero revels. It's to show how much they've changed.

Elle has definitely changed. No longer the bubble-headed blonde who only cares about looking good and landing a wealthy husband, Elle is now a successful lawyer who has proven herself to everyone by graduating it the top of her class.

She has achieved her True Happiness. But, as in the best of these endings, it's a very different happiness than what she pictured in Act One. This is made painfully clear at the end when Warner asks her to take him back--and Elle rejects him. What better way to show how much she's changed?

I know a lot of writers reject templates like these, thinking it inevitably leads to formulaic stories. And yes, if you follow them blindly, it can lead to a story that's completely predictable and dull. But that's your job as a writer: finding new ways to make those old structures work.

After all, they've been used to tell stories for thousands of years, so much so that they've become a part of our DNA. Who are we to change them?

The Hero's Journey in Star Wars

So I had another amazing experience at Colorado Thescon today. Around 25 students attended Five Ways to Punch Up Your Playwriting, and we had some good discussions, especially around loglines and how to make them unique.

But the response to my workshop, Plot 101: Playwriting Lessons from Star Wars, completely blew me away. I figured those magic words, "Star Wars," would generate a lot of interest, but I never expected over 100 students (and several teachers) to show up. Unfortunately, my room only had chairs for 30 of the students, but the other 70 carried on bravely, claiming a spot on the floor for the hour and 15 minutes of my lecture. (I'll ask for more chairs next year!)

Actually, it was less a lecture and more a free-wheeling debate. Most of the students had already been exposed to the Hero's Journey structure, and they all had very strong opinions as to what the catalyst is and why the destruction of Alderaan does not make a strong midpoint. Surprisingly, the students were just as passionate in their discussion of my alternative example of the Hero's Journey, Legally Blonde.

You know how people with a strange, terrible disease often think they're the only one in the world with that disease? And then they find an online support group and they realize there are actually hundreds of people like them? Well, that's how I felt today, only my disease is Story Structure Geekitis.

I didn't bring enough handouts for all of the students, but I promised them I would post the diagram I taught from on my website, so here is the PDF version. Or just download the JPG above. Either way, feel free to print it, email it, tattoo it on your forearm, or whatever floats your boat.

Yes, it borrows from both Joseph Campbell and Blake Snyder, but I've simplified it to include only the seven plot points most important to a well-told story (I don't want young writers to get overwhelmed by the numerous plot points in those other works). I also changed some of the terms to more accurately reflect their purpose. Most importantly, I added the corresponding plot points in Star Wars to guide them as they develop their own stories.

The class was so popular that I've decided to turn it into a two-hour workshop in which I'll work closely with each student to help them structure their story according to the Hero's Journey. Look for this class to pop up in Colorado Springs, probably sometime in January.

Update: If you'd like to read my take on the Hero's Journey in Legally Blonde, which formed the other half of the class, follow this link.

See you at Thescon!

This weekend, I'll be teaching at the Colorado High School Thespian Conference for the fourth time. I always look forward to it as it's an amazingly well-run event as well as a wonderful opportunity to interact with some of our state's most creative young minds.

I'm especially excited this year because I'll be introducing a new workshop: Plot 101: Playwriting Lessons from Star Wars. In it, I'll examine how this blockbuster film followed the story milestones defined by Joseph Campbell in the Hero's Journey. I'll also work with the students to help them apply the same story milestones to their own plays.

I'm also reprising my popular workshop, Five Ways to Punch Up Your Playwriting. Here I offer five practical tips that are guaranteed to make your script stand out from the crowd (Tip #1: Give your story a hook). The workshop includes examples from published plays as well as opportunities for students to practice the tips we discuss.

Both workshops are on Friday, December 2. Five Ways to Punch Up Your Playwriting is at 12:45pm in Room 210/212. Plot 101: Playwriting Lessons from Star Wars is at 2:15pm in Room 210/212.

I would love to have you join me. Or if you just want to stop by and say hi, that's good too.