The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Is the hero generally resourceful?

You can’t tell the audience who the hero is; you need to show them. The audience chooses the hero, not the other way around. The audience will choose the character who is trying the hardest to get what he wants.

But just because we've has chosen a hero doesn’t mean we trust that hero. You can do everything else right but still lose us if you don’t give us what we crave: a moment where your hero does something clever that makes us say, “Okay, this hero is resourceful enough to care about!”

Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity is an example of a character who doesn’t really get a “moment of humanity,” simply because he has just woken up with amnesia and, as a result, has no real personality when the movie begins. So why do we bond with him? Because of the one aspect of his mind that he held onto: his extreme resourcefulness.

This goes way beyond being good in a fight. The moment where we really fall in love with him is when he’s trying to escape from an embassy and rips a fire evacuation plan off the wall so he’ll have a map of the place. We love loves to see something like that.

But you might protest: “Not every hero has to be Jason Bourne! Maybe my hero isn’t clever. Maybe he’s not even a hero. Maybe he’s just a fool. Can’t I tell a story about a fool?” The answer is yes, of course you can. But he has to be a resourceful fool.

How does that work? As my brother likes to point out, “It’s hard to make things foolproof because fools can be so clever.” If you think about this, it’s absolutely true. Nothing in this world is foolproof because resourceful fools always figure out some way to screw it up. If you’re going to write about a fool, that’s the kind of fool you want to write about.

As filmmakers go, you don’t get more admirably artsy than the Dardenne brothers of Belgium, who make beautifully observed but grueling portraits of pitiful figures who somehow manage to spiral even further down. Why are these movies so compelling, despite their painful subject matter? It’s because of the brothers’ ability to create great heroes. Of course, no one thinks of their characters as heroic, and certainly not clever, but in their own way, they are.

Bruno in The Child is an aimless junkie who discovers that his ex-girlfriend has just had his baby, so he immediately sells the child on the black market to get money for drugs. Later, he is truly shocked to see how upset she is, and he tries to get the baby back.

At one point in this process, Bruno is forced to wait in a back alley before the person inside will speak with him. There’s just one problem: Bruno can never wait around for anything. He can’t sit still for a second—that’s his entire problem. But he doesn’t whine about this problem. Instead he finds clever ways to solve it.

When he is told he must wait five minutes, we instantly sense that this is like a prison sentence to him. We share Bruno’s anxiety as he looks around desperately for something to do. Then he spots it: a mud puddle by a white wall. He goes over, soaks his boots in mud, then leaps up against the wall repeatedly, putting black boot prints all over the wall. This happily occupies him until they come to get him. Problem solved. Fools can be so clever.

We previous looked at another character with extreme resourcefulness: Jason Bourne. Bourne is a nice guy, but because of his memory problems, he doesn’t have enough of a personality to be fully likeable, so the filmmakers made up for it by having him be extra resourceful. We admire the resourcefulness so much that we don’t mind the lack of personality.

Jake Gittes, on the other hand, has lots of personality, it’s just not very likeable. Not only is he surly and cynical, his fatalism borders on passivity (he believes in caring “as little as possible”), which is never an appealing quality in a character. Once again, the filmmakers overcome these barriers to empathy by having the character be delightfully resourceful:

• Jake gets tired of waiting for Hollis Mulwray to leave the beach, so he reaches in his glove compartment where he has a bunch of cheap pocketwatches. He lays one behind one of Hollis’s tires and goes home. In the morning, he has one of his operatives fetch the smashed watch, which shows him which time Hollis left.
• When Jake visits the new water commissioner Yelburton, he asks for his card. Later, Jakes wants to get past a police cordon into a reservoir, so he takes out the card and tells the officer that he’s Yelburton. The officer apologetically ushers him through.
• Jake isn’t allowed to check out a book showing land sales, so he asks for a ruler instead, holds it against the page and coughs while he tears the page out of the book.
• Jake wants to see the list of residents at the rest home, so he pretends that he wants to look it over to make sure no Jews are there. When that fails, he makes an excuse to wander around until he sees an activities board with the names on it.
• Jake wants to follow Evelyn’s car easily at night, so he rushes out first and breaks one of her taillights.
• He tells the police that he’s leading them to Evelyn at her maid’s house, but he instead leads them to Curly’s house, where he sneaks out the back.
• He wants to confirm that the glasses are Cross’s, so he asks Cross to read something in bad light, forcing Cross to take out another pair of reading glasses, which match.

Audiences go crazy for this sort of this sort of clever tradecraft. As I said in that piece, many of these things feel like “news we can use”: cool things we can mimic ourselves to be cooler, more successful people. They don’t so much build identification with the hero, but they turn the hero into someone we aspire to be, which is almost as good.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	NO. Not really.
Alien	YES, she does some clever things.
An Education	YES. She can always finagle what she wants.
The Babadook	NO. Not really.  Samuel is, though.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Very much so.
Blue Velvet	YES. Very much so.   He figure out how to break in, how to trick Frank at the end, etc.
The Bourne Identity	YES. very much so: taking the walkie off the guard he knocks out, taking the floorplan off the wall, etc.
Bridesmaids	YES. She sneaks out of bed in the morning to freshen up, then pretends to wake up looking great. Climbs over gate.
Casablanca	YES. Very much so.
Chinatown	YES. Very much so.  The trick with the watch is great.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  bluffs on fugazi, makes up Japan story, many more examples.
Do the Right Thing	NO. His resourcefulness never really gets tested, because he never accepts a large challenge.  Like Jake when he walked a beat in Chinatown, he’s doing as little as possible.
The Farewell	NO. Not really, but when she finally chooses to act, to fake the medical report, she does manage to summon the resources to do it.
The Fighter	NO. He has to be prodded into everything and shown how to do it.
Frozen	NO. Not tremendously, but she recruits allies that have the skills she needs.
The Fugitive	YES. He’s very good at figuring out how to live on the run.
Get Out	YES. Not really at first, but in the end he is.
Groundhog Day	YES. He comes up with a lot of clever solutions to his problems.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. He invents and builds elaborate devices.
In a Lonely Place	NO. Others have to take care of him.
Iron Man	YES. Very much so.
Lady Bird	YES. she rehearses for the audition, schemes her way into the world of the cool kids.
Raising Arizona	Somewhat.
Rushmore	YES. Very much so.
Selma	YES. He’s always gaming the situation to his advantage, and using his army in various ways.
The Shining	No for Jack, yes for Danny, as seen by his walking backwards through the footsteps.
Sideways	YES. He steals money, manipulates people, steals extra wine, etc.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Uses her car jack to get into the garage, etc.
Star Wars	YES. He comes up with clever plans throughout.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. he cleverly avoids the repo men.

Marvel Reread Club Episode 18: Special Guest Jeremy Whitley Helps Us Meet the Wasp!

Steve and Matt Bird · 018 Marvel Reread Club Tales To Astonish 44, June 1963, with guest Jeremy Whitley

It’s a new Marvel Reread Club where we read just one issue, June 1963’s Tales to Astonish #44, joined by special guest Jeremy Whitley, the only writer to have written a Marvel comic starring any version of the Wasp in her own book! Pillbox hats! Laughter and gaiety! Sluggards confused with dullards!

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Is the hero curious?

Your hero has to want to unravel the story. That’s all a hero is: the character who has to solve this problem. Your audience wants the entire story to come out, but they can’t do it themselves. Instead, they have to trust your hero to get to the bottom of it for them. If the hero doesn’t care, what is the audience supposed to do? 

But let’s say you feel the need to drop some information to the audience that they’ll need later, so you have somebody casually mention something important in conversation with the hero, but the hero doesn’t notice or care, even though it should be a big clue. This is a huge identification killer. If your hero passively receives an incomplete piece of important information and doesn’t follow up, then the audience feels betrayed. They say to your hero, “Hey, loser, I’m counting on you to dig up all the information I need to enjoy this story, but you’re not asking the follow-up questions I need you to ask! What good are you?”

Now, of course, you can occasionally have your hero “miss” a piece of key information the audience picks up on, but only if the audience feels the hero has a good reason for missing it, like a big distraction. Even better, drop the information, and then have the hero and audience both get distracted by something else at the same time so they both forget about it. Then, later, when it turns out to be important, they’ll both be kicking themselves at the same time, and they’ll bond even more.

An example of the right way to do it would be when Jake finds the glasses in the pond in Chinatown. The audience and Jake both get distracted at the same time and forget all about them. Later, when they turn out to be the key piece of evidence, we don’t get mad at Jake for forgetting about them; we get mad at ourselves.

It’s an equally big sympathy killer if heroes don’t act on the concrete information they do receive. This can be a problem when you try to build tension by ending every scene on an ominous warning of some kind. Oooh—spooky! But then, in the next scene, the heroes have moved on to another part of their day, and they forget all about the warning until it’s too late, three scenes later. Heroes may take a while to become proactive, but they should always at least be reactive.

When we're watching or reading, we're constantly trying to anticipate what’s going to happen next. If we can tell that the hero is not able, or not even trying, to anticipate a consequence that we can anticipate just by looking over her shoulder, we feel powerless. Why are we putting our trust in these schmucks?

Remember on The X-Files when they would get a big piece of the alien invasion puzzle at the end of an episode, and we’d all be on the edge of our seats, and then next week they were back in some Podunk solving some dinky little monster mystery, as if they’d never gotten that big clue? Remember how infuriating that was?

A more recent example is the hapless Tom Cruise science fiction epic Oblivion. Even though he meets several characters who are more than willing to tell him what’s going on, Cruise remains oblivious to the nature of his situation for most of the movie. He just doesn’t ask for some reason. The audience collapses in impotent frustration, waiting for him to care about his own story.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES.  Somewhat.  He becomes a dedicated student of what they’re trying to teach him.
Alien	YES, but not overly-so: only she is unwilling to bring it on board.
An Education	NO. Yes about life in general, but only occasionally about her own situation. She refuses to investigate big clues. Why isn’t this more frustrating for the audience? I don’t know.
The Babadook	Yes and no.  She never makes much attempt to figure out where the book came from.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Very much so.  He fascinated by the scheme that he’s caught up in and investigates eagerly.
Blue Velvet	YES. Very much so.
The Bourne Identity	YES. very much so.
Bridesmaids	YES. She wants to find out about Helen, wants to come up with creative solutions to problems.
Casablanca	YES. he’s always asking around as to the secrets of the town.
Chinatown	YES. Very much so.  He claims he’s not, and he tries not to be, but in fact he’s so curious that he spends most of the movie investigating without a client.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  he’s constantly investigating.
Do the Right Thing	YES. By implication, because he knows everyone in the neighborhood and cares about their business.
The Farewell	YES. Right away, she’s trying to figure out where her Nai Nai really is.  She keeps demanding to know why they’re doing this, trying to understand Chinese logic.
The Fighter	YES. he studies his future opponents, etc.
Frozen	YES.
The Fugitive	Not really.  The conspiracy doesn’t even occur to him until he’s already exposed it.
Get Out	YES. He keeps spotting things that are off, and asking questions, but can’t put it all together.
Groundhog Day	YES. He investigates right away.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. Very much so.
In a Lonely Place	NO. He refuses to pay attention to key facts he needs to hear.
Iron Man	About scientific things, but not enough about his own life until it’s almost too late.
Lady Bird	YES. she tries out theater, looks up whatever she can learn about things mentioned by the guys she has crushes on.
Raising Arizona	Somewhat.
Rushmore	YES. Very much so.
Selma	Sort of?  He doesn’t really solve any mysteries.
The Shining	YES. both investigate room 237, for instance.
Sideways	YES. He figures a lot of stuff out.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Peeks at the Buffalo Bill before she gets the case.
Star Wars	YES. Very much so: wants to hear more about the rebellion, more about his father, see the whole video, etc.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. he’s always pushing for more info about Norma.

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Is that great flaw (ironically) the natural flip side of a great strength we admire?

Writers usually give their heroes too many flaws and not enough strengths. In all the ways adding flaws makes your work easier, adding strengths can make your work harder. 

• Strengths decrease conflict: Fewer things are a challenge to the hero. 
• Strengths decrease motivation: The hero has less reason to want to change. 
• Strengths decrease sympathy: It’s harder to root for an over-dog. 
• Strengths decrease identification: Deep down, few people think of themselves as strong. 

It’s tempting to give your hero a lot of flaws and no strengths, but you should resist that urge because flaws only generate pathos in contrast to strengths. You need to keep the flaws to a manageable number and ensure each one is the flip side of a great strength because:

• It’s realistic. 
• It’s naturally ironic. 
• It will make overcoming those flaws something that’s not just hard to do but hard to want to do. Your hero will be reluctant to overcome that flaw for fear of losing the accompanying strength. 
• We’ll be less likely to get exasperated by the flaw because we see the good side. 
• It will make us worry more about the hero, since the strength is a potential problem. 
• We will be more sympathetic to the flaw if we see it as a result of too much of a good thing. 

Your heroes’ internal struggles are only going to have dramatic tension if they’re reluctant to overcome the flaw, and we must empathize with that reluctance. We need to see the potential downside of abandoning that flaw.

Rourke’s main flaw in The Wrestler is irresponsibility, but this is the flip side of his strength: He loves having a good time and makes sure everyone else in the room has a good time, whether it’s the fans at his wrestling matches or the customers at his deli counter. We want him to become more responsible, but we don’t want him to stop lighting up the room.

Flaws need to have an upside, which is why some just don’t work very well. One of the most overused flaws is alcoholism, but it’s not as compelling as some writers think because there’s very little upside. It’s hard to overcome, but only because it’s a chemical addiction. There’s never any good reason to be an alcoholic. We’ll never identify with a character’s desire to keep drinking destructively.

The same is true for other less-than-compelling flaws, such as vanity, bigotry, and ignorance. This is also why mental illness doesn’t actually work very well, unless seeing the world in a different way is the character's strength, as with the CIA analyst Claire Danes plays on Homeland. Danes is reluctant to overcome her bipolar disorder because she suspects that she does her best thinking when she’s manic, and even though we see her suffer, the audience feels the same way. In other words, her flaws come with some strengths on the flip side.

The indefatigable writing guru Carson Reeves came up with a pretty good list of ten common flaws found in heroes. Let’s start with his list and then look at how to generate a strength that is inextricably paired with each flaw. As we do so, note that two characters with the same basic flaw can have very different flip-side strengths. You could pair refusal to grow up, for instance, with being fun loving (Knocked Up) or sweetly innocent (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) but not both.

• Flaw: Puts work in front of family and friends 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Hypercompetent, indefatigable, loyal to clients, patients, bosses, partners, etc. 

• Flaw: Won’t let others in 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Tough, honest, self-deprecating 

• Flaw: Doesn’t believe in one’s self 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Humble, openhearted, careful 

• Flaw: Doesn’t stand up for one’s self 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Nice, sweet, giving, loyal 

• Flaw: Too selfish 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Zealous, hypercompetent, sarcastically witty 

• Flaw: Won’t grow up 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Fun loving or (alternately) innocent 

• Flaw: Uptight, risk averse, anal 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Careful, hypercompetent 

• Flaw: Reckless 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Brilliant, independent thinker, aggressive, effective risk-taker 

• Flaw: Lost faith 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Self-aware, rational, sarcastically witty 

• Flaw: Pessimistic/cynical 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Funny, bitingly honest 

• Flaw: Can’t move on 
• Possible flip-side strengths: Loyal, sentimental 

One of the most entertaining “flaw/strength” scenes of all time appears in Larry Gelbart’s wonderful script for Tootsie. Michael Dorsey’s exasperated agent explains that nobody will hire Michael because he’s too intense:

• Agent: You played a tomato for thirty seconds—they went a half a day over schedule because you wouldn't sit down. 
• Michael: Of course not, it was illogical: If he can't move, how's he gonna sit down? I was a stand-up tomato: a juicy, sexy, beefsteak tomato. Nobody does vegetables like me. I did an evening of vegetables off-Broadway. I did the best tomato, the best cucumber ... I did an endive salad that knocked the critics on their ass! 

Casting directors may not want to hire Michael, but we are more than willing to hire him to be our hero. We sympathize with his flaw, even though we hope that he will eventually overcome it. We can work with this guy, because he’s well worth rooting for.

Rulebook Casefile: Hidden Flip-Side-Strengths in Sideways

Sideways is one of those movies that writers might cite when insisting that they don’t need to create “sympathetic protagonists.” Miles does a lot of truly loathsome stuff, over and above being an angry drunk: he steals the money for the trip from his not-well-off mom, he reads “Barely Legal” porn, and Jack mentions in passing that Miles actually cheated on that ex-wife he’s been pining for all movie!


(And let’s face it, a handsome Clooney-ish rakishly-handsome guy might be able to pull some of this stuff off, but Miles is very... Giamatti-ish. That makes misbehavior a lot less charming onscreen.)

So does this prove that heroes can just be a big bag of flaws, with no mitigating strengths? No, it doesn’t. On first glance, it’s easy to spot Miles’s flaws and hard to find any strengths, but they’re there, and they’re not inconsiderable. I would say that Miles’s biggest flaw is that he’s hostile. Is there a  flip-side of that? There certainly is: Miles is passionate. And that passion is attractive.

 The most obvious example is the double-date scene. Jack is capable of picking up a wine merchant in ten minutes flat, which Miles could never pull off, but as soon as the actual date begins, everything flips: Jack is stuck asking Stephanie about what her routine is when she closes up the vineyard, while Miles is instantly able to fully engage with Maya because of their shared passion for wine and his smart opinions on the topic. Of course, he gets too drunk and almost botches it, but that great start ultimately sustains him throughout.

And once you see it, you realize that Miles’s conversational skills are actually everywhere in the movie. One example: When Miles shows up late and hungover to pick up Jack from his in-laws, they’re all glad to see him and get his opinion on which wedding cake they should get.

Later, Miles is stuck spending an afternoon at a bowling alley with Jack, his fling, her kid and her mom. We know that this is excruciating for him, but at the end, we hear the mom say “It was really great to meet you, Miles,” and we believe it.

I myself have some of the same flaws and strengths as Miles. I mentioned before that I had an unusual friendship with an aging millionaire named Lewis King, even though we clearly had little in common. Why? One time he joked he’d invited me along to a lunch because, “It’s always good to have a content provider.” Miles and I have a lot of flaws, but, for better or for worse, we’re both content providers, and that can get you pretty far in this world. For Miles, that’s the one great strength that saves him from his horribleness. It’s the flip side to more than one of his great flaws.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES.  He’s kind.
Alien	YES. We don’t notice at first, but we gradually realize that she has certain key strengths: from the beginning, only she is equally at home on the bridge and in the hold and only she tries to maintain quarantine.  She’s the canny one.
An Education	YES. Intellectual ambition, biting wit, tolerance
The Babadook	YES. Perseverance.  The resentment comes out of intense love that he cannot fully return (and vice versa)
Blazing Saddles	YES. He’s charming, funny, and bold.
Blue Velvet	YES. he’s curious, charming, and a great improviser
The Bourne Identity	YES. he’s a living weapon, and he’s trying to become more human.
Bridesmaids	YES. The flip side of all three: She’s funny in a self-deprecating way, a good improviser, and loyal.
Casablanca	YES. he’s cool and in control.
Chinatown	YES. Coolly analytical and effectively deceptive. A great detective.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  he’s the perfect infiltrator because he’s totally dedicated to it.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Funny, empathetic to everyone, laid-back, a good lover.
The Farewell	YES. … and that her strength was her willingness to knuckle under (which we had perceived to be a flaw)
The Fighter	YES. He’s loyal to and trusts all of those he loves.
Frozen	YES. Hope, pluck, positivity
The Fugitive	YES. And the flip side of that is that he’s self-sacrificing: three times, he puts himself in danger to save others. Ironically, because his true (unforseen) goal is to convince Gerard of his righteousness, he actually helps his question by helping others in ways that seems to damage his quest.
Get Out	YES. His ability to passively observe makes him a great street photographer.  He’s got a great eye.  (I guess you could say that another flaw/strenth pair is flaw: he’s not paranoid enough and strength: he’s a peace-maker, but that, too, turns out to be a flaw.  In 2017, the country agreed on one thing: The time for peace-making had passed)
Groundhog Day	YES. Sarcasm, wit, entertaining onscreen presense.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. He’s compassionate, smart and perceptive.
In a Lonely Place	YES. he’s brutally honest and a great writer.
Iron Man	YES. He’s brilliant, charming, ultimately principled.
Lady Bird	YES. She’s self-confident and goes for what she wants.
Raising Arizona	YES. Not really the flip side: he’s loving and totally dedicated to Ed’s happiness.
Rushmore	YES. He’s romantic and enthusiastic.
Selma	YES. The adultery isn’t really the flip side of a great stength (he believes in outreach?)  The possible over-reticence is certainly the flip side of his ability to channel the movement in a non-violent path that can win whites over.
The Shining	NO. Jack has no strengths.  Danny has the ability to sense evil spirits.
Sideways	YES. though it’s not immediately obvious. He’s a great conversationalist, when he puts his mind to it (even when he’s forced to spend the evening with his friend’s girlfriend’s mother, she says “It was really great talking with you!”)  He’s also a good writer, and therefore a good observer of people.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. She listens and looks closely, thinks in new ways.
Star Wars	YES. Idealistic and eager.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. he has a devastating cynical wit, and a little writing ability.

Marvel Reread Club Episode 17: June, 1963

Steve and Matt Bird · 017 Marvel Reread Club June 1963

It’s June 1963 at Marvel Reread Club! In this episode we tackle Fantastic Four #15, Journey Into Mystery #93 featuring Thor, Strange Tales #109 and Annual #2, both featuring the Human Torch, and Tales of Suspense #42 featuring Iron Man. That leaves one issue which will get its own very special guest episode next time. Predictable organ grinder monkeys! Hypnotic radiation! Imps of laziness! Super-glue filled purses! Projectile ham!

And here are the Radioactive Man’s awesome robots from Journey Into Mystery: