The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Is this a story anyone can identify with, projected onto a bigger canvas, with higher stakes?

“Write what you know” really means you should write the emotions you know, but put those emotions into a more extreme situation with a lot more at stake. 

This is what it means to dramatize. In real life, nobody wants to have “way too much drama going on right now,” but when it comes to stories, that’s exactly what you want. The same types of things that happen to you are happening to them (the same universal emotions, the same universal dilemmas), but in the fictional version, the highs are higher, the lows are lower, and the potential consequences are far more life shattering.

You totally identify with the hero’s situation and emotions, but you get to vicariously experience the thrill of a much bigger transgression than you would ever actually commit, followed by the pain of the big consequences you’ll never have to suffer, followed by the gratification of a big transformation that is always out of your reach. And if, along the way, you get to inhabit a glamorous (or fascinatingly gruesome) world you would never otherwise get to visit, all the better.

Once again, of course, masterful storytellers can successfully break this rule. TV shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation excel at creating low-stakes, unglamorous worlds in which small interactions and minor complaints become just as compelling as an alien invasion. Once again, those shows are choosing to run uphill, but they prove that it can be done.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. Every man has felt like he’ll never get laid, and this is his ultimate nightmare…and ultimate fantasy, because everybody wants three perfect wingmen.
Alien	YES, it’s the ultimate unsafe workplace.
An Education	YES. Wanting to get away from parents with dangerous older boy, but in this case much older, and a career criminal. (That said, the stakes aren’t really that big, just the usual: losing out on the chance to go to college.)
The Babadook	YES. every parent has resented their children, and vice versa.  Everyone has repressed emotions until they become dangerous.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Very much so.  We’ve all had to prove ourselves, but not with these stakes.
Blue Velvet	YES. A coming of age story in which the adult world our young man discovers is insanely dark and evil.
The Bourne Identity	YES. It’s a metaphor for anyone who is disgusted by what he’s become
Bridesmaids	YES. The stakes are only slightly higher than real life, but a rivalry over a friendship results in plane being forced down, for instance.
Casablanca	YES. we’ve all pined for an ex, and wondered what we would actually do if given a second chance, but this time the war is on the line.
Chinatown	YES. A journey into the world’s darkness, but with the future of LA at stake.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  being promoted over your hapless boss, but your undercover with the mob.
Do the Right Thing	YES. everyday city tensions culminate in a death and a riot.
The Farewell	YES. Wang says that the more specific she made it to her culture the more universal it become.  We’ve all told lies to family to make them feel better, but not usually with life or death stakes.
The Fighter	YES. Very much so.  We all have to break free of our families in order to succeed.
Frozen	YES. It’s a very believable difficult sibling relationship
The Fugitive	YES. The most universal emotion is to feel misundertood / misjudged.
Get Out	YES. Very much so.  We’ve all felt like everybody at a party was talking about us behind our backs, even if we’re white.
Groundhog Day	YES. Very much so.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. Training a pet, but with two civilizations on the line.
In a Lonely Place	YES.
Iron Man	YES. A universal tale of overcoming hypocrisy and taking responsibility for one’s actions, but with lives on the line.
Lady Bird	NO. this is just the writer/director’s life story, faithfully recreated with its original place and time, with the same stakes as the true story.
Raising Arizona	YES. The urge to have a family at all costs, combined with the fear of family commitment, get pushed to absurd extremes.
Rushmore	YES. We’ve all had unrequited love.
Selma	YES. It’s like a thousand everyday activist stories, but this was the big one.
The Shining	YES. fear of isolation and being trapped in a marriage, set in the most isolated place in America trapped with a monstrous man.
Sideways	YES. Very identifiable, but not really bigger, except for the two “Holy Crap” moments.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. We’ve all felt that we must accept injustice to get ahead at work.
Star Wars	YES. Very much so.
Sunset Boulevard	YES.

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does the concept contain an intriguing ironic contradiction?

So I’ve promised you many different types of irony, and now I’m ready to deliver the first two, ironic concept and ironic title. Let’s look at the ironies contained in those same example stories: 

• Casablanca: The least patriotic American has to save the Allied cause. 
• Beloved: A mother kills her daughter to ensure her freedom. 
• Silence of the Lambs: The only way to catch one serial killer is to work with another serial killer. 
• Groundhog Day: A man who just wants to get his least favorite day over with has to live it again and again. 
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: A miserable and unfortunate kid discovers that he’s secretly rich, famous, and heroic. 
• Sideways: A man helps his friend celebrate his upcoming wedding by playing wingman for him as he pursues other women. 
• Iron Man: An arms dealer is attacked with his own weapons and then declares war on arms dealing. 
• An Education: A girl rejects the idea of getting “an education” but learns another meaning of the word in the process. 

Because this rule is so nearly universal, it’s instructive to look at an exception that proves the rule. A few years ago, Denzel Washington directed and starred in a highly fictionalized true story called The Great Debaters about a debate team at an all-black college that gets to challenge the Harvard team in the 1930s. As it happens, the team gets assigned to defend the proposition that civil disobedience is good. They do a good job with that and win, which is good, because otherwise what would the movie be saying?

This movie is actually worth watching, but it commits the cardinal sin of many well-meaning period pieces: It irons out the irony.

What makes this so frustrating is there is a lot of potential irony inherent in the premise, if the makers of the film had been willing to fictionalize it a little bit more. Here’s why college debate teams are interesting: You don’t get to choose which side you argue—it is randomly assigned. So what if the black team had been assigned the anti-civil rights side of the argument?

The team would balk, but then, after a few stern speeches from Washington, they would realize this was their big opportunity. They would have to create devastating anti-integration arguments, but the more they proved that blacks weren’t equal in theory, the more their eloquence would prove they were equal in reality!

At that point you could end the movie either way and it would still be powerfully ironic. With that ending in doubt, the whole movie would come alive. Instead, with the version they made, we know the whole time that there’s only one way to end it, unless they want to make it look like integration was a big mistake.

Of course, another problem is that The Great Debaters is a terrible title. You can tell right away it has no irony. It always drives me crazy when I see a fantasy novel with a title like The Knight’s Sword or an airport paperback with a title like Deadly Assassin. These titles are telling you right off the bat that this book will be predictable. A good story needs conflict, and why not start with the title, which is your first opportunity to set two incongruous elements against each other?

Just glancing down the list of underrated movies I’ve recommended on my blog over the years, I see that these titles are inherently intriguing: Blast of Silence, Dark Days, Killer’s Kiss, The Little Fugitive, Little Murders, My Favorite Wife, Safety Last, Unfaithfully Yours, and The White Sheik.

The Court Jester, on the other hand, is a great movie, but it has an inherently weak title, because where else would a jester be? Shoot to Kill could be the title of any thriller ever made. And Fritz Lang rightly complained when the studio changed the name of his movie from the ironic The Human Beast to Human Desire. Lang demanded to know, “What other kind of desire is there?” An ironic concept is great, and an ironic title is a nice bonus on top of that.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. A handsome 40 year old man is a virgin.
Alien	Sort of: answer a distress signal, almost all of them get killed as a result.
An Education	YES. She wants an education, but doesn’t realize which kind she’ll get. The glamorous sophisticates are lowly crooks.
The Babadook	YES. A son must fear his mother.  A hunt for external monsters leads to the discover of an internal monster.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Very much so: A black must save a town of rasists in order to save himself (and empower his people).
Blue Velvet	YES. An idealistic amateur detective discovers he’s just as creepy as those he investigates.
The Bourne Identity	YES. A spy with a conscience becomes the latest target of his own agency.
Bridesmaids	YES. The bridesmaids are not maidenly. An attempt to plan a happy celebration becomes a nasty conflict.
Casablanca	YES. The least patriotic American has to save the Allied cause.
Chinatown	YES. The ultimate cynic finds out he’s actually naïve.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  an undercover FBI agent finds his pitiful targets more sympathetic than his bosses.
Do the Right Thing	YES. A comedy about a race riot.
The Farewell	YES. Lying for an honorable reason, withholding aggressive medical care with the idea that it would do more harm than good because of the fear it would cause
The Fighter	YES. Sort of: a gentle boxer lacks self-esteem.
Frozen	YES. Having to stop (and maybe kill) the person you most love.
The Fugitive	YES. A wealthy doctor learns what it’s like to be a dehumanized convict, and a marshall realizes that he himself can sometimes be the bad guy.
Get Out	YES. These liberals love black people a little bit too much.
Groundhog Day	YES. A man who just wants to get his least favorite day over has to live it again and again..
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. A dragon killer in training succeeds by befriending a dragon.
In a Lonely Place	YES. a writer of crime stories is caught up in one.
Iron Man	YES. Many: He thinks his products are making everyone free, but they’re in the hands of his evil captors. He has an impervious shell but a weak heart. An arms merchant wants to disarm the world.
Lady Bird	Not really.  The cover image is very slightly incongruous: a girl with colored hair at a catholic school, but that doesn’t really rise to the level of irony.
Raising Arizona	YES. Hi tries to goes straight by kidnapping a baby.
Rushmore	YES. Somewhat: a young man who acts old.
Selma	YES. A non-violent army.  The most powerless people in the country bending the most powerful man in the country to their well.  The only way they can win is to find a violent sheriff who’s willing to beat them up.
The Shining	Somewhat: the family becomes a source of danger, when the world goes crazy only the crazy kid seems sane...
Sideways	YES. Not really for Miles, but yes for Jack, a man looking for love on the eve of his wedding.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. The only way to catch one serial killer is to work with another.
Star Wars	YES. The kid who didn’t get to go join the rebellion becomes the hero of the rebellion.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. The nation’s most glamorous people are deluded lowlifes, etc.

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Is the One-Sentence Description Uniquely Appealing?

Okay, folks, here’s the deal.  I’m sick of BCI, you’re sick of BCI.  We’ll do some new ones to celebrate when the book comes out, but that’s many months away (Official announcement soon!)  So what shall we do with those months, other than Friday podcasts?  Here’s my big idea.  I cobbled the checklist together out of blog posts, rewrote every one, and published those rewritten essays as my first book.  But if you click on “The Ultimate Story Checklist” in the sidebar, each question still links to the original blog post, not the nicely rewritten and expanded version in the book.  

I thought it would be nice if each of those linked to the version from the book, expanded to add any Checklist Roadtests or Straying from the Party Lines I’ve done about it, and then showing the answer to that question from every checklist.  It’s the deluxe version of my first book, and it’ll play out over the next 122 non-podcast posts of this blog!

So let’s start off with question #1: Is the one-sentence description uniquely appealing?

Right here at the beginning, I want to emphasize that great stories need not answer yes to every question, and this first one is a great example. As you’ll see below, it’s great to answer yes to this question but by no means essential.

So how do you boil your big, beautiful story down to just one line? It sounds impossible. In fact, it sounds insulting! Your story is large. It contains multitudes! But let’s say that you have twenty seconds to pitch it to someone. Can you do it? Of course you can. Because every great story grows from one simple idea.

This is the usual layout for a one-sentence summary, which is also called a “logline”:

A [adjective indicating longstanding social problem] [profession or social role] must [goal, sometimes including the ticking clock and stakes].

This can work for many different types of stories:

• The movie Casablanca: An amoral American nightclub owner must decide between joining the fight against the Nazis or pursuing his true love.
• The novel and movie Beloved: A guilt-wracked ex-slave must confront the vengeful ghost of the daughter she killed.
• The novel and movie Silence of the Lambs: Am underestimated FBI rookie must work with a devious imprisoned serial killer to rescue a senator’s daughter.
• The movie Groundhog Day: A selfish weatherman must repeat the same day over and over until he achieves personal growth.
• The novel and movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: A mistreated boy gets a chance to go to wizard school, where he must defeat the evil wizard who killed his parents.
• The comic series and movie Iron Man: An arrogant arms dealer must build a suit of armor to free himself from a warlord and then perfect his suit to deal with related menaces at home.
• But wait, there are two more examples we’ll keep returning to that don’t exactly fit this model:
• The memoir and movie An Education: A clever-but-bored schoolgirl in pre-Beatles London puts her Oxford dreams on hold when she meets a devilishly charming older man.
• The novel and movie Sideways: Two miserable middle-aged men romantically pursue two divorcées during a weeklong trip to wine country.

Crucially, there’s no “must” in the last two examples, which inherently makes them a harder sell. As it turns out, both movies are wonderfully entertaining, but it’s hard to know that from reading the logline. Because there’s no “must,” we fear that the stories will lack stakes and motivation. Because the hero is not being literally compelled to enter the world of the story, we fear that we will not be compelled to, either.

The first six are stories you might try out simply based on this intriguing line. Of the eight, these last two are the ones you’re more likely to try only if you’ve read good reviews or you’ve heard good things about the author of the novel or the director of the movie. As it happened, both movies got great reviews, and so people checked them out and discovered they were compelling.

So every great story doesn’t need a uniquely appealing logline, but it definitely helps, both in selling your work to a buyer and eventually to an audience. As mentioned in chapter two, publishers and producers hate to say to the public, “I know it doesn’t sound interesting, but trust us—it’s really well written.” In order for them to market your work, they prefer to have a unique, appealing concept.

A sharp logline also focuses your mind as a writer: You’re not feeling your way through the shapeless blob of a half-formed idea, you’re starting with a unique and clever concept that automatically excites both your readers and yourself. That’s a great way to start.

As you pitch concepts you’ll hear the term high concept a lot, without explanation. It’s worth noting that the term high concept has changed in meaning over the years. It used to refer to big, complicated, highly conceptual ideas like 2001, but now it refers to the opposite: a concept that is uniquely simple.

• Limitless (and the novel it’s based on, The Dark Fields) is high concept because you instantly understand the appeal of the premise: What if a pill could make you rich and powerful?
• But it can also apply to movies without any science fiction elements. The Hangover was also high concept: Three groomsmen can’t remember their wild bachelor party or find the missing groom.
• For that matter, Wedding Crashers is the ultimate high-concept story because you got the unique appeal of it as soon as you heard the title, no poster or tagline necessary.

High concept now refers to a simple one-sentence premise that makes everybody say, “Oooh, that sounds fun!” High-concept ideas are easy to market. If the concept is instantly and uniquely appealing, it’s an easy sell.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that every story has to be high concept to work. Let's look at a movie that has an unappealing, low-concept logline (even though it does have a "must" in it). Here's a one-line summary of The King’s Speech: “A nervous figurehead must work with a radical speech therapist to overcome his stutter in order to give an inspiring speech as World War II begins.”

The financiers of that movie took a huge risk: Instead of starting with an asset (an appealing logline), they started with a huge liability (an unappealing logline). Every step of the way, they had to explain to potential directors, actors, and distributors, “We know it doesn’t sound very interesting, but if we do a good job we can make it interesting.” That took a lot of persuasion on the part of the producers.

But somehow, in the end, they did it. They convinced enough people at every step to take a chance on it, and shepherded it all the way to box office success and a Best Picture win. And guess what? The final product was a much better movie than any of the three I just listed. It can be done, if you’re willing to run uphill.

But if you want to give yourself a big boost, both in terms of selling it and in terms of writing it, a uniquely appealing logline works wonders.

Okay, for each of these, I’ll then show various Rulebook Casefiles or Straying from the Party Lines I’ve done in regards to this question.  In this case, there aren’t any, that I can remember.  But of course, I have asked this question in every checklist I’ve done, and here are the answers:

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. A 40 year old virgin makes new friends who try to finally get him laid.
Alien	YES. The crewmembers of a space freighter are hunted down and gutted one by one by an alien bio-engineered to be the ultimate killing machine.
An Education	YES. A clever-but-bored schoolgirl in pre-Beatles London puts her Oxford dreams on hold when she meets a devilishly charming older man.
The Babadook	YES. A mother and son are stalked by a creature that emerges from a creepy picture book.
Blazing Saddles	YES. A sarcastic black track layer in 1874 is set up to fail as the new sheriff of a white western town, but rises to the task.
Blue Velvet	YES. A voyeuristic college student finds a severed ear in a field, leading him to discover the dark side of his small town and himself.
The Bourne Identity	YES. A spy with no memories must determine who he was and who he wants to be now, while his ex-bosses try to kill him.
Bridesmaids	YES. A broke and broken-down bridesmaid gets into an epic feud with a wealthy rival who wants to steal the position of maid of honor.
Casablanca	YES. In an exotic city filled with intrigue, an amoral American nightclub owner must decide between joining the fight against the Nazis or pursuing his true love.
Chinatown	YES. A 1930s private detective discovers a massive conspiracy to control Los Angeles
Donnie Brasco	YES.  a married FBI agent goes so deep undercover in the mob that he almost becomes a made man.
Do the Right Thing	NO. Not especially : “A conflicted black pizza delivery man working for the only white business on his block must decide what to do when a race riot breaks out.” This movie was sold on the success of the writer /director /star’s previous two movies, which were more broadly comedic.  He cashed in that goodwill here with a more ambitious movie.
The Farewell	YES. A young Chinese-American woman returns to China to see her dying grandma one last time, but nobody will let her tell her grandma the truth.
The Fighter	YES. The inspiring true story of a boxer who breaks free of his explotative family to become a champion.
Frozen	YES. A princess must save the world from her sister’s out-of-control ice powers.
The Fugitive	YES. A falsely-convicted fugitive hunts for his wife’s killer.
Get Out	YES. A young black man becomes increasingly aware that his white girlfriend and her family may have sinister designs on him.
Groundhog Day	YES. A selfish weather man is mysteriously cursed to relive the same Groundhog Day over and over until he achieves personal grow.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. An underestimated Viking prince captures and bonds with a dragon, so they try to bring peace to their two tribes.
In a Lonely Place	YES. An angry screenwriter is accused of murder, then falls in love with the beautiful woman who provided his alibi, but she’s not sure he’s really innocent.
Iron Man	YES. A humbled arms dealer becomes a high-tech armored superhero to confront the enemies foreign and domestic that he himself has armed.
Lady Bird	NO. There’s no hook.  It had to depend entirely on reviews and a funny trailer.
Raising Arizona	YES. A desperate childless couple steal a baby from a family with quintuplets, but two escaped convicts and a ruthless bounty hunter complicate things.
Rushmore	Somewhat: A precocious high schooler falls in love with a teacher, then loses her to his own best friend, a rich school funder.
Selma	YES. An activist army and its weary general have to convince the president to commit to civil rights.
The Shining	YES. A family agrees to take care of a snowbound hotel, but when the father is driven mad by spirits and tries to kill his family, his psychically-gifted son must stop him.
Sideways	NO. The logline sounds very unappealing. (Two miserable middle-aged men romantically pursue two divorcees during a week-long trip to wine country.)  This was sold largely on the writer-director’s reputation. We knew we could trust Payne, and he knew we trusted him and would let him make a low-concept movie.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. An ambitious FBI rookie must work with a devious imprisoned serial killer to rescue a Senator’s daughter.
Star Wars	YES. A farmboy on a distant planet becomes the hero of a galactic rebellion.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. A dead screenwriter tells us how he  became the kept boy of a psychotic ex-silent-screen-goddess and tried to get away.