The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: In the end, is the hero the only one who can solve the problem?

Thriller and horror writers love to complain about cell phones. It’s now impossible to write a thriller, they say, because rescue is always just a phone call away. 

Of course, there are ways around this problem: The battery runs out, there’s no signal, the phone gets destroyed, etc., but each one of them has become a cliché in its own right. There’s even a YouTube montage of dozens of characters giving these excuses.

But if you find yourself sweating over how to cut off cell phone access, then you’ve got a bigger problem. If your heroes need only to make a call to get out of trouble, then they’re not the only ones who could solve this problem, which means it’s not really their problem. “Wrong place at the wrong time” is too little to hang your story on. If there’s a cop out there who would be better at solving the problem, then you should write a story about that cop.

There needs to be a deeper reason why your heroes are the only ones who can solve this problem. Calling the cops should not be an option, whether or not a cell phone is available.

Of course, most of the traditional reasons why heroes might not call the cops have also become clichéd: No one will believe them, they’re on a revenge trip, they’ve been accused of the crime themselves, the cops are crooked, it’s the perfect crime, etc. But these have become clichéd for a good reason—they personalize the problem and put your heroes in a position where they and they alone have to solve it, as opposed to contrived cell phone issues, which feel tired and emphasize that the heroes don’t have to take care of it themselves.

Throughout your story, character should be colliding with plot. The ending is the ultimate collision in which the problem is resolved as both the character and the situation are permanently transformed by their volatile clash. 

Straying from the Party Line in Blue Velvet: It’s unclear if he’s the only one who could solve this problem.

The Problem: The movie sort of hedges its bets on this problem. For most of the running time, we suspect that the cops could handle this better on their own without Jeffrey’s involvement (which should be death for the story), but as Act 3 begins, we have a more typical movie development: Jeffrey finds out that one of the bad guys is a detective, and decides once again that it’s all up to him.

Does the Movie Get Away With It? Yes. In theory, we should get fed up with Jeffrey and insist on rooting for the cops, who we trust more to solve this case, but our interest in seeing the case solved is co-equal with our interest in understanding Jeffrey’s creepy psychology, so we’re willing stay with him (and then they finally reveal that a cop is on it, which is a more traditional way of getting us to root for him to solve it on his own. But even then the chief seems to be taking appropriate steps, though we can’t tell for sure.)

The 40 Year Old Virgin	Yes and no.  Sometimes it feels like everyone wants to help him more than he wants to help himself, but he does have to work really hard.  Of course there’s sort of a shadow-story going one where he helps and supercedes everybody else (he ends up everybody’s boss)
Alien	YES, only she tries to keep the ship quarantined, only she figures out what’s going with Ash, only she survives. In the end, everyone else is dead.
An Education	YES. Her family checks out and her school washes their hands of it.
The Babadook	YES.
Blazing Saddles	YES.
Blue Velvet	Yes and no. He has to shoot Frank because the police don’t get there fast enough, but if he hadn’t intervened we sense that they could have solved the problem better.  We’ll never know if the police couldn’t have just handled it better on their own. It’s possible Jeffrey did more harm than good, but that doesn’t hurt the movie, because we find his neurosis fascinating.
The Bourne Identity	YES.
Bridesmaids	Sort of.  Unlike in most movies, the hero is not working the hardest to solve the problem, Helen is. Annie’s remarkably passive. Helen needs her help because only Annie can talk to Lillian. And only Annie has the cop connection.
Casablanca	YES. Only he has the letters of transit.
Chinatown	YES, he thinks so, anyway, but he fails to solve it.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  he’s totally committed and the other Feds are just doing their job.
Do the Right Thing	Yes and no.  Nobody is working to solve the problem, but Mookie turns the tide, for good or ill.  He doesn’t solve the problem, but he attempts to, in his own way.
The Farewell	NO. Not at all.  She’s the only one who can stop this, but she chooses not to. And ultimately submitting to the will of the group seems to work.
The Fighter	NO. Not really.  He’s fairly passive, and many of the breakthroughs are forced upon him: he dad makes him ask Charlene out, Charlene forces him to make good on that, his new handlers force him to cut his family out… Most importantly, Charlene and Dicky make peace without him.
Frozen	YES. only her love for her sister is strong enough to break the curse.
The Fugitive	Sort of: Gerard could have solved it too, if he only cared.  In this sense, Kimble’s job is really not to catch the one-armed man or Nichols (what can he do with them?), but to convince Gerard to care, and therefore arrest the others instead of him. Once he finally convinces Gerard, they work together to solve the problem, but it would actually be better at that point if Kimble just got out of the way and let Gerard do it alone. Ultimately, it’s good that Kimble’s still there at the end, because he saves Gerard’s life, but if Kimble had just stopped running in that ballroom, that would have been better for everybody.
Get Out	YES. pretty much.  If he’d waited for Rod to show up, it would have been too late.
Groundhog Day	YES.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. Ironically, yes, even though he’s the only one avoiding direct confrontation, he does wind up working the hardest, day and night, learning how to understand his dragon and use those methods in training. In the end, only he can communicate with Toothless and save the day.
In a Lonely Place	NO. His friends care more about helping him, both externally and internally, than he does himself.  This should kill the movie but it doesn’t.  This is very rare: a compelling story about refusing to help yourself.
Iron Man	Sure. Pepper and SHIELD are helping, but they’re overpowered by Stane.
Lady Bird	YES. only she can be in charge of her own life in the end.
Raising Arizona	YES.
Rushmore	YES. Even Cross and Blume only get back to together due to his manipulations.
Selma	YES. Well, only Johnson can solve the problem but presumably only King could have forced his hand.
The Shining	NO. Jack gives up quickly, and others have to take up the fight, making this a tag-team hero movie. In the end, it comes down to just Danny as the new hero.
Sideways	NO. He chooses to wait for Maya to reach out to him, but it’s clear that she does so because of his efforts: his call confessing all, and the quality of his novel.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Only she is pushing hard on Lecter angle.  In the end, everyone else is in Illinois.
Star Wars	YES. Only he can make the shot because only he has the force.
Sunset Boulevard	NO, Betty is trying harder to save him than he is to save himself. He cannot solve the problem, and doesn’t try very hard.

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does this challenge become something that’s not just hard for the hero to do (an obstacle) but also hard for the hero to want to do (a conflict)?

Obstacles are fine, but conflicts are better. An obstacle is anything that makes a task difficult to do. A conflict is anything that makes a hero not want to do it. 

Amazingly, the Disney animation team had been writing and rewriting drafts of Frozen for two years before deciding to make the two girls sisters. Instantly, the story came alive, and they never looked back. Defeating a random snow witch is hard to do. Defeating your sister is hard to want to do. That’s the difference between an obstacle and a conflict.

Not all conflict is created equal. Genuine conflict occurs when characters don’t want to do something for reasons such as these:

• It would require them to question their deep-seated assumptions: Huckleberry Finn is convinced he’ll go to hell if he helps Jim escape. 
• It would require them to overcome an inner weakness: Steve Carell's character has built up an extreme reluctance to mature in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. 
• They promised someone they wouldn’t do it: Mark Wahlberg feels he cannot go on his own without betraying his family in The Fighter. 
• It would reveal their painful secrets to others. Harrison Ford in The Fugitive cannot investigate his wife’s murder without exposing himself to the police. 
• It would get their love interest or a family member in trouble: Tobey Maguire's character is constantly afraid his activities will endanger his family members in the Spider-Man movies. 

This is a problem that plagues tons of lackluster stories: Cooking every meal in Julia Child’s cookbook is certainly hard to do, but it’s not hard to want to do, so who cares? That’s why the modern-day portions of Julie and Julia fall flat. For that matter, this was another problem with The Aviator. Making an expensive movie and deregulating air travel are both hard to do, but they’re not hard to want to do, so the movie never took off.

Rulebook Casefile: Conflict vs. Obstacle in Hugo

I won’t get into the strengths and flaws of the illustrated novel, let’s just look at Martin Scorsese’s movie Hugo.  Hugo is all obstacle and no conflict. Hugo encounters lots of obstacles: a train station guard he has to avoid, an old man who won’t give him what he wants, a living situation he has to hide... But he’s not reluctant to deal with any of them.

He does have a “want”, but it’s very vague: For some reason, he thinks that if he repairs an automaton, it will write out a message from his dad, but why does he think this? His dad told him outright that he just found the old automaton somewhere and he has no idea what it will say if they get it working. What part of that did Hugo not understand?

Not only does this make Hugo’s quest nonsensical, it makes his inability to spot other clues exasperating: every piece of evidence indicates that the automaton is the lost property of the man who runs the gadget shop, but it takes Hugo forever to accept that this might be true.

If I may slip into Meddler mode, the fix for Hugo seems fairly obvious to me: combine two flat characters, Hugo’s beloved dad and his rotten uncle (who both die mysterious deaths), into one complex character.

In this version, Hugo’s loving but ne’erdowell dad, who maintains the clocks in the railway station with his son, would discover the automaton and bring it home to Hugo, claiming he made it himself. When Hugo realizes what the gears used to do and asks what it writes, the dad quickly covers for his lie by saying that it’s a mystery he wants Hugo to solve.

This way, after the dad disappears (drunk in the river, we eventually find out) Hugo has every reason to assume that the automaton will contain a message from his dad, and every reason to get upset when the evidence starts to indicate that the automaton must actually belong to the old man.

Also, this way, Hugo’s surrendering of the automaton to the old man is a painful decision, and it requires him to admit the truth about his father. By recognizing and alleviating the old man’s bitterness, he gains insight into his father’s own failures, ironically fulfilling his original goal of understanding his father.

This change would not only strengthen Hugo’s motivation, it would turn external obstacles into internal conflicts. Hugo’s tasks would not only be hard to do, but hard to want to do.

Rulebook Casefile: Obstacle Vs. Conflict in The Hunger Games

Just as with Hugo, The Hunger Games is too much obstacle, not enough conflict. At least in this one, we did have two occasions where the heroine faces a genuine conflict and meets the challenge: At the very beginning, she offers to take her sister’s place in a gladiatorial contest (bold and heroic!). Then, at the very end, she tricks the gamemasters into letting both her and her pseudo-love-interest live (bold, heroic and clever!) But in between… not so much.  

The co-competitor from Katniss’s home district (Peeta) decides that they should act like they’re in love, and she passively goes along with it. That’s a great story idea (borrowed from They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? but who’s counting?) but it doesn’t pay off. It’s neither an obstacle nor a conflict, because it’s not hard to do…

• What if the fake romance had been her idea, and Peeta didn’t want to do it, so she had to talk him into it? That’s a lot more active and difficult! 
• What if the gamemaster was offended at their manipulation and kept trying to prove they weren’t really in love, so they kept having to up the ante? 

 …or hard to want to do: 

• What if she was deeply in love with that hunky guy back home, and couldn’t stand to kiss someone else? They vaguely imply this might be the case, but they never really go there, for some reason. 
• What if she was in love with Peeta, despite the fact that he didn’t feel the same way, but he agreed to fake it for the cameras? That would have been emotionally wrenching for her to kiss her unrequited crush knowing that he was faking it! 
• In the book/movie, Peeta is really in love, and she’s not, but what if she had to hide it from him that she didn’t really mean it? He might begin to suspect the truth as they went along, forcing her to up the ante. 

But the real problem is the combat itself, which is totally emotionally flat. She sort of wants to win, so we sort of want her to win, but neither she nor we have any strong feelings either way. There’s no emotional journey. As I complained about the book a long time ago, killing her fellow teenagers causes no emotional response at all, which is utterly bizarre.

And this brings us to the fatal flaw that kills the drama and exposes the theme as totally hypocritical… Where’s the Woody Strode scene? Spartacus thinks he can survive in the ring by not getting to know anybody he’ll have to kill. He only makes one friend, and ignores the rest. Then, on his first day’s fighting, what happens? He has to fight his one friend!

Katniss becomes the champion gladiator, but she never has to kill anybody she likes along the way. Everybody she kills is a jerk. This is totally morally and intellectually dishonest. 

Ultimately, Katniss is a flatline. At the end, she hasn’t changed at all. Going to the capital hasn’t changed her. Killing all those kids hasn’t changed her. Being separated from that guy back home hasn’t changed her. Faking that romance with that other guy hasn’t changed her. She’s numb in the beginning, numb in the middle, and numb in the end. 

Rulebook Casefile: Obstacle vs. Conflict in Frozen

Jennifer Lee has been forthcoming about what a collaborative process writing this movie was.

Lee first became involved when she was co-writing Wreck-It Ralph and she was invited to screenings of the animatics for Frozen as it developed, just to give notes along with many others, and they liked her notes enough to hand the whole project over to her. One reason they needed a rewrite is that they had just decided on a big change. Lee was interviewed on the Scriptnotes podcast:

• Jennifer Lee: What was so weird for us with the — not weird, but it was a nice surprise was that with the — everyone we worked with, none of us can remember who said it. We were all in the room together. We all remember being together, and we keep saying you said, no you said it, said the “what if they were sisters?” And I remember that moment so distinctively because that was like when the film mattered all of a sudden to me. I could not see this movie before it at all. I actually was very — 
• Aline Brosh-McKenna: They were not sisters at all? 
• Jennifer: No, they weren’t sisters until about maybe one screening before I came on is when they tried the sisters. But the first screening I saw they weren’t related in any way. And part of why — 
• Aline: What were they? 
• Jennifer: Part of why Idina was not cast yet is it was more of — Elsa was more of like a Bette Midler kind of character. She was that more iconic older Snow Queen. And they were not related or connected in any way. And it was making them sisters was the first breakthrough I think. 
• Aline: Wow. 
• Jennifer: But what I loved was everyone suddenly could feel it. They could feel the film. Even if you don’t have a sibling, but just understanding that kind of — what you go through with your family is something you don’t go through with anyone, or rarely go through for anyone else. 

What they had discovered was the difference between obstacle and conflict. An obstacle is anything that’s hard to do, but a conflict is anything that’s hard to want to do. Defeating a snow queen is hard to do, defeating your sister is hard to want to do. That makes all the difference in getting your story to come alive.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. Very much so.
Alien	Somewhat.  Again, she’s the most loyal, so she’s the most reluctant to admit that the company wants them dead and blow up the ship.
An Education	YES. She feels she must betray her family and mentor in order to seek love.
The Babadook	YES. She’s unable to even say her husband’s name, nor to hear anyone else say it.
Blazing Saddles	YES. it rankles him to have to save racists.
Blue Velvet	YES. He’s endangering both women that he’s falling in love with, but he’s compelled to continue.
The Bourne Identity	YES. everything he finds out about his past makes him not want to go on.
Bridesmaids	YES. She doesn’t want to give up on her handsome but uncaring lover, doesn’t want her friend to get married. Also, she’s afraid of flying.
Casablanca	YES. Very much so.
Chinatown	YES. He has to care about a client, he has to go back to Chinatown, etc.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  because he likes Lefty.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Very much so.  He was told that there will always be a place for him there just before the riot.
The Farewell	YES. Lying is easy enough to do, but it’s hard to want to do.  (In the end, it becomes hard to do as well when she must go to great lengths to fake the medical report.)
The Fighter	Very much so.  He can’t stand the thought of choosing between his family and his girlfriend.
Frozen	YES. It’s hard to fight your sister.
The Fugitive	YES. Sort of for Kimble: he never wanted to engage with the real world, but has to now.  Very much so for Gerard, which is what helps Jones steal the movie from Ford.
Get Out	YES. Rose is all he has in the world, so he doesn’t want to admit she or her family is evil.  And he doesn’t want to think about his mom.
Groundhog Day	YES. Very much so. He has to totally transform his entire personality.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. In order to make peace, he must disappoint his father.
In a Lonely Place	YES. he thinks he needs his anger to survive and to write well.
Iron Man	YES. He has to endanger everything he has, put his fortune, company and friends at risk, go against his lifelong philosophy.
Lady Bird	YES. She knows she will lose her mom if she becomes her own person, and she loves her mom.
Raising Arizona	YES. They’re good people, and they don’t want to steal a baby.
Rushmore	YES. he must admit that he’s a barber’s son in order to repair the damage he does and find happiness.
Selma	Yes and no.  He tells Coretta he wants out, but is he telling the truth?  He fears he or his family will be killed, which certainly makes it hard to want to continue, but not in the sense that civil rights is something he has to come around to.
The Shining	Yes for Jack, Danny and Wendy, since they have to oppose family members, no for Halloran.
Sideways	YES. He’s still in love with his ex-wife and the idea of himself as a novelist.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. She really doesn’t want to talk about her past.
Star Wars	YES. It is at first, because of his aunt and uncle.  It’s pretty easy to want to do after they’re killed.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. working for Norma is hard to want to do, because of his self-respect, and romancing Betty is hard to want to do, because she’s engaged to his friend.

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does something inside the hero have a particularly volatile reaction to the challenge?

Heroes must have secrets or qualities that cause them to have unique reactions to challenges, some internal ionic charge that sets the compass of the story spinning—something the people sitting on the hero’s right and left don’t have. This is fairly obvious in comedies and dramas, where the volatility of the hero is front and center: 

• In a romantic comedy or drama, the heroes react to each other in an unexpectedly volatile way. That’s what romance is. 
• In any character-driven story, the unique psychology of the hero is the main topic of the story. 

Though it can be harder to remember in adventure stories or thrillers (where it’s tempting to have an Everyman hero), your heroes shouldn’t react to their situations in typical ways. Instead, heroes must respond to their challenge in their own unique way. That unique reaction is what makes them heroes. This is what the Everyman wouldn’t do. This is why this story happens.

• In Men in Black, we see that Will Smith is more clever than all of the other applicants when he figures out that he has to drag the table over while filling out forms rather than trying to write on his lap. 
• Captain America (who is also being judged by Tommy Lee Jones as he tries to join a different secret government agency) has more valor inside him than everybody else, even when he’s tiny. This is revealed when Jones tosses a dummy grenade into a group of soldiers. Everybody else scatters except our scrawny hero, who jumps on the grenade. 
• In Margin Call, Zachary Quinto’s stock analyst character has more compassion than the others: Only he gives a heartfelt farewell to Stanley Tucci’s fired risk assessment officer, so only he gets tipped off about the doom awaiting the firm. 

These are simple but powerful moments that allow the audience to choose this character to be their hero. These characters aren’t just in the right place at the right time; they earn their place at the table.

In the examples I cited, the heroes had something good inside them, but sometimes a more neurotic internal contradiction causes the hero to react in an unexpectedly volatile way. In each of the following cases, it’s a neurosis that ironically helps the hero succeed.

• In both Vertigo and Rear Window, only Jimmy Stewart’s characters would have uncovered the crimes that are central to the story, because the natures of the crimes happen to tap into the characters’ festering neuroses. 
• In The French Connection, only Popeye, with his self-destructive “never trust anybody” ethic, could have spotted the well-hidden drug ring. 
• In Silence of the Lambs, only Clarice, with her sheltered rural background, could have gotten this reaction out of Hannibal Lecter. That background also proves to be the key to solving the mystery, because Clarice has a unique understanding of the type of town where Bill lives. 

Remember: We can only care about your hero, not your plot. If your hero is a generic everyman who exists just to introduce us to your world or dazzle us with story twists, then you’ll sabotage yourself. Your story exists to serve your hero; your hero cannot exist to serve your story.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. Very much so.
Alien	Only slightly.  She’s the most loyal to protocol and the company, until she realizes that Ash isn’t worth being loyal to.
An Education	YES. David clearly kindles a spark of rebellion that was already in her.
The Babadook	YES. Very much so.
Blazing Saddles	YES. He’s a natural leader, and only he could triumph in this situation.
Blue Velvet	YES.  Very much so.
The Bourne Identity	YES. both before and after his amnesia: seeing Wombosi’s kid caused an unexpectedly volatile reaction, not just the coincidence of getting hit in the head.
Bridesmaids	YES. It triggers her suppressed rage and self-loathing.
Casablanca	YES. Very much so.  His cool exterior finally cracks.
Chinatown	YES. He’s particularly offended at having been duped.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  His extraordinary self-control allows him unprecedented success, but it threatens to destroy him.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Very much so, he surprises himself and us when he throws the garbage can through the window.
The Farewell	YES. On the inside, she’s having a volatile reaction, but she suppresses it all the way through the end of the movie, which is very non-western.
The Fighter	YES. He’s ready to snap when the movie begins.
Frozen	YES. She finds love, betrayal, etc.
The Fugitive	Not really.  He reacts less than the average person would.
Get Out	YES. His story with his mom makes the sunken place especially horrific for him.
Groundhog Day	YES. …But it takes a while. He does everyman reactions as long as he can, until he finally realizes that this really is about him.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES.
In a Lonely Place	YES. very.
Iron Man	YES. Everybody is shocked by how strongly he reacts to his captivity.
Lady Bird	YES. From the first scene, we see how volatile she’s become as a result of the stresses in her life.
Raising Arizona	YES. His first instinct when things go wrong is to rob another convenience store.
Rushmore	YES..
Selma	YES. He’s not a very volatile guy on the surface, but we sense a quiet fury lurking under the surface of Oyelowo’s performance.
The Shining	YES. Very much so, especially for Jack and Danny.
Sideways	YES.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Lecter is determined to get a reaction out of her, and does.
Star Wars	YES. It begins his spiritual awakening. We sense that Han could never power a lightsaber, for instance.
Sunset Boulevard	Not really.  He under-reacts to the horror of his situation, right up until his death (even after that, in his nonchalant postmortem narration).  He doesn’t even noticeably react to being shot.

Marvel Reread Club Episode 12: March 1963, Part 1

Steve and Matt Bird · 012 Marvel Reread Club March 1963 (Part 1)

Time for another visit to the Marvel Reread Club! March 1963 is a monumomentous month, so we’ve broken it into two episodes. First we’ll handle the full-length books: Amazing Spider-Man #1, Fantastic Four #12 and Incredible Hulk #6. Masks over masks over masks! An actual card-carrying Communist! Reet!