Tag: John Truby

My favourite screenwriting guru.

Posted on

Christine’s desire

I ended my last post with a question; what does Christine’s desire line look like?

It would be easy to say Christine’s desire is to escape prohibition but I don’t think that adequately describes what she wants. To truly understand her desire we first have to understand her need. What must Christine fullfil within herself to have a better life?

Need is about overcoming her moral and psychological weaknesses. The knee-jerk reaction to this question identifies her drug use as her weakness, but as I tried to explain in my previous post, Christine’s drug use is not a negative. That understanding just doesn’t fit with the moral vision or theme I have for the story.

As I understand it Christine’s weakness is her rebelliousness, that impulse she has to resist authority, control, or convention. In the chapter “Character Web by Archetype” of “The Anatomy of Story” John Truby notes that the rebel’s strength is the “courage to stand out from the crowd and act against a system that is enslaving people”. The weakness of this archetype is that they “often cannot provide a better alternative, so end up destroying the society”.

I think of the link between the two sides of her weakness like this. If Adam’s self-righteousness is a product of a positive pushed until it becomes a negative, his responsibility, taken to the extreme, is oppressive.

Christine’s weakness is a product of her bravery pushed until it becomes destructive. At the beginning of the story her rebelliousness is the wellspring of the conflict with Adam. Her defiance exasperates Adam. He reacts with self-righteous indignation and arrests her, which reenforces her will to resist. She has a destructiveness about her at the beginning of the story.

The question then becomes, what is she at the end? In purely technical terms she needs to achieve the polar opposite. Put simply if her weakness is destructive she needs to create something.

That insight brings me to the conclusion that Christine’s need is to change the society she lives in. Ironically, a need she is only able to fulfil through Adam. When, at the end of the story, Adam chooses freedom over security, he is fulfilling Christine’s creative need to free society. He is doing it because of what he’s learned through Christine.

A conclusion I wasn’t really aware of until now. Christine’s desire line is not to escape prohibition, it’s to change Adam. This insight changes the way I look at Adam and how he relates to Christine.

Advertisement
Posted on

Reiner’s need

Many of the recent posts have had something to do with Anthony Reiner, specifically his moral and psychological weakness.

I’ve been trying to understand the things that are not only hurting Reiner, his psychological weakness, but are also hurting the people around him, his moral weakness. I’ve realised his moral weakness is his persecution of the drug user, implicitly informed by his psychological weakness, an authoritarian personality.

What I haven’t addressed so far is his need.

To paraphrase John Truby, Reiner’s need is what he must fulfil within himself in order to have a better life. I have to admit, I’m having difficulty reconciling Reiner’s need with Adam’s, knowing how their individual needs interact.

The events of Carrion transform Adam from a self-righteous policeman into, what I can only describe as, a caring insurgent. I realise that reads like an oxymoron but essentially that’s what he becomes. By the end he cares about Christine, putting her needs first, for the first time in their relationship, even though what she asks devastates him. From this personal crisis comes his new moral action, he picks up a gun to fight prohibition. The story ends only after he has taken this action, finally making the moral argument against security and for freedom.

What does all this mean when considering Reiner and his need? What must he fulfil within himself in order to have a better life, and how does he argue for security? I think the answer to this question can be found in his authoritarian personality.

Reiner and the totalitarian mindset

In “Reiner and the totalitarian mindset” I noted Alfonso Montuori’s characterisation of the totalitarian mindset as a response to the stress of contemporary pluralism. Basically we live in complex times, full of uncertainty, and feel threatened. Backed into a corner we have a tendency to succumb to black-and-white solutions.

When I translate this back to Reiner, it indicates a course of action. Adam’s refusal to kill Christine turns Reiner’s reality upside down. Until this point he considered Adam a protege, and so perceives his refusal to kill Christine as nothing short of a treasonous betrayal. He has a psychological need to restore order, return Adam to the fold. Unable to make that happen, he has a moral need to destroy him.

Reiner’s attempts to enforce prohibition are his attempts to make the moral argument against freedom and for security. The punch, counter-punch, of antagonist and protagonist play out as Adam and Reiner fight over the kind of world they will live in.

Reiner’s argument for security is crushed by Adam’s argument for freedom. If this were Reiner’s story instead of Adam’s, the argument for security would crush the argument for freedom.

One final thing. At some point I will have to turn all of this conjecture into a screenplay, but until I’m clear about each character that seems like a folly.

Posted on

Throwing out the first act

Finishing my last post brought an insight that means I’m ditching the first act, at least those scenes involving Adam and Reiner.

The ideas for this change bubbled up after a lot of research about Reiner’s totalitarian mindset. I’ve been concerned since the outset with the action that puts Adam in conflict with Reiner. The idea I’ve been working with, has his relationship with Christine provide the conflict, that pits the two men against each other.

But I’ve never really been happy with how that scenario plays out. It wasn’t strong enough, and doesn’t explain Adam’s decision to put his self-righteous attitudes to one side and save Christine. Neither does it explain the vitriol Reiner has for Adam.

What I’ve really been looking for is something that serves two functions.

First it has to force Adam to land definitively on Christine’s side. Second it has to make an absolute enemy of Reiner. I think I’ve found the solution in the hierarchical structure of the totalitarian regime. Reiner puts his standing with the regime on the line when he sponsors Adam’s induction. The price of admission is Christine, Adam must kill her. When he refuses, he not only puts himself on the wrong side of the regime, he also makes a mortal enemy of Reiner.

Adam is cast out, throw into a cell with Christine and John, condemn to suffer the fate of all junkies in the coming genocide. This changed scenario brings with it an inciting event that kick-starts the story. It allies him with Christine but lets her be an opponent. It gives Reiner a character specific reason to hate Adam.

This mirrors the final battle, resonating against Adam’s choice to help Christine commit suicide.

I hope that all makes sense, this really is me thinking out loud.

Posted on

Inciting Adam

While writing about Reiner’s authoritarian personality I noted the polarisation of freedom and security.

Reiner’s authoritarian personality

The conflict between Adam and Reiner is a fight over the kind of world they will live in. “Will it be a world ruled by freedom or one ruled security?”

If Adam is to have a better life at the end, he has to reject the world of security demanded by Reiner, and make a positive choice for freedom.

The seed of this decision is sowed in the stories inciting event.

Adam has to do something that, to quote John Truby, “causes the hero to come up with a goal and take action”. The difficulty I have is that Adam and Reiner are part of the same tribe, they’re policemen in a totalitarian state that has built its identity on attacking drug users. Adam at some level shares this totalitarians mindset, he couldn’t be a policeman if he didn’t.

So what would make him question the orthodoxy?

If part of the totalitarian mindset, that Adam is part of, is the authoritarian personality exemplified by Reiner, an individual willing to belittle himself so he can, as part of something greater, become great himself, what startles Adam out of that delusion? My gut tells me the only thing powerful enough to force that kind of revelation in Adam, is a direct attack on Christine.

Whatever self-righteous stance he might take against her drug use, she’s still his sister, the only remaining member of his family. Whatever he believes at the beginning of the story, when she is attacked, he’s compelled to save her.

At present the inciting event happens as Reiner attacks a surrogate for Christine. Adam gets a call from her as Reiner beats the surrogate to a pulp. Reiner’s actions, and Christine’s plea for help, prompt Adam to abandon his post and go to help her.

The attack on Adam would need to be more sustained before he finally reject Reiner. Perhaps it’s in the symbiotic tendency of the authoritarian personality, seen in the tyrannical father who torments his wife but is subservient to his superiors. Perhaps Reiner uses Christine against Adam, he’s forced to choose.

Instinct tells me that’s actually the choice Adam has to make in the final battle, the last stepping stone that gets him to the freedom side of the river. What I’m looking for, is the first stepping stone on that journey.

I’m sure it has to be a direct attack on Christine. Reiner makes a move against Christine, which forces Adam to step in. His instinctive response puts him in direct conflict with Reiner.

With this choice made I now have to go back and restructure the first thirty five minutes of the plot.

Posted on

Reiner’s authoritarian personality

In my two previous posts I tried to pin down the totalitarian mindset, what is it that makes Reiner such a vitriolic exponent of prohibition? That prompted me to uncovered Reiner’s moral and psychological weakness. Those things that are hurting not only himself, his psychological weakness, but also the people around him, his moral weakness.

Reiner’s moral weakness is his persecution of the drug user, a characteristic implicitly informed by his psychological weakness, an authoritarian personality. The realisation that Reiner has an authoritarian personality fits perfectly with the standing I have for him in my head but ignorance forces me to ask, what is an authoritarian personality?

I found a good answer in Erich Fromm‘s 1957 article “The Authoritarian Personality“. Fromm defines the authoritarian personality as “the inability to rely on one’s self, to be independent, to put it in other words: to endure freedom”.

I’m struck by this phrase “to endure freedom”.

At the core of the conflict between Adam and Reiner is the polarisation of freedom and security. As John Truby points out “a true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from achieving his desire but is competing with the hero for the same goal“.

On first inspection the two men have completely different goals. Adam needs to save Christine, and Reiner wants to destroy all drug users. On the surface their desires are different, but I’ve realised the two men are actually fighting over the kind of world they will live in. Will it be a world ruled by freedom or one ruled security?

If Adam is to have a better life at the end of Carrion he must choose freedom to the exclusion of that demanded by Reiner. For Reiner freedom always exceeds to security, the safety of the nation, the security of belonging to something greater, a mindset that accepts the logic of the ruler and the ruled.

Exploring the digression a little further I am struck by the torturous state of mind that Reiner must suffer if freedom is something that has to be endured. The freedom implicit in a choice to take drugs must be physically painful for him. Which gives an indication of his hostility for drug users, and why he is compelled to correct the imbalance with violence. 

That said Reiner’s inability to endure freedom is not the whole story. Fromm’s description of the authoritarian character is complex, more detailed that I can outline here, but when I apply it to Reiner, he is described as an immature personality who “can neither love nor make use of reason”.

Reiner feels alone, gripped by fear, and needs to feel a bond with something greater. A bond he finds “in the symbiotic relationship, in feeling-one with others; not by reserving his own identity, but rather by fusing, by destroying his own identity”. His adherence to the prohibitionist cause is a subconscious desire to be part of a larger unit. What Fromm might describe as “masochistic and submissive character aims” has Reiner belittle himself so he can,”as part of something greater… become great himself”.

Reiner is a “passive-authoritarian” and can only survive by connecting with the figure of an “active-authoritarian”. A character type who, I now realise, is missing from Carrion. He is present in the abstract, in the form of a government, in the “Code-10” laws that seek to marginalise the drug user, but as a tangible character that Reiner has to look up to, has to submit to, they’re missing.

I need to fill this gap if the story world of Carrion is to work. It’s a mistake on my part to think Reiner can function without this figure.

Finally I think it’s a mistake to understand Reiner as an entirely passive. Inherent in the notion of the active and passive authoritarian is the notion of hierarchy. Reiner’s masochistic desire to be ruled, also comes with a sadistic desire to rule. It’s part of the symbiotic tendency inherent in the authoritarian personality, and goes some way to codifying the relationship between Adam and Reiner.

Fromm likens this characteristic to the tyrannical father “who treats his wife and children in a sadistic manner but when he faces his superior in the office he becomes the submissive employee”. Reiner treats Adam in a sadistic manner but in his dealings with his boss is submissive. Put simply he’s a bully.

I’m sure that Reiner’s desire to dominate Adam plays some part in Adam’s rejection of Reiner, but the exact nature of his choice eludes me at the moment. In the story world of Carrion, where the totalitarian mindset is all pervasive, what makes Adam step back and pause for thought?

Perhaps the simple act of hesitation puts him at odds with Reiner? He can smell the scepticism, which is enough to elicits the wrath of the pedant in Reiner.

Adam’s “rebellion” cuts Reiner to the quick, the same way freedom is something he has to endure?

Posted on

Reiner and the totalitarian mindset

I’ve been thinking about Adam’s main opponent Anthony Reiner, specifically what makes him such a willing exponent of prohibition? As I pondered in the comments of my previous post, “I’m trying to figure out the mechanism of his adherence to the cause. Why does he react so violently to Adam’s need to save Christine?”

Reiner and the totalitarian mindset

Reading back over it I realised, Reiner reacts to Adam’s decision to help Christine as a betrayal of the cause, a reaction rooted in Reiner’s totalitarian mindset, a mindset that has no tolerance for ambiguity.

When he encounters the kind of complexity offered by Adam’s willingness to help Christine, he tries to impose his pre-existing frames of reference on the decision, reducing it to an us or them ultimatum.

Going back to Alfonso Montuori paper “How to make enemies and influence people” it’s interesting to note the kind of personality the totalitarian mindset attracts. Consistent attempts to suppress “complexity through maladaptive simplicity is characteristic of the closed-mindedness of the authoritarian personality”.

Montuori’s characterisation of the totalitarian mindset, as an authoritarian personality, fits perfectly with description I have of Reiner. For Reiner ambiguous situations cause anxiety, a stress he copes with by adhering to “a clear set of rules and regulations… imposed by whoever is in charge”.

While this might be described by John Truby as his psychological weakness, a weakness hurting only himself, it doesn’t describe his moral weakness, the weakness that is hurting at least one other person. It is clear to me now that Reiner’s moral weakness is explicit in his framing of drug users as an external threat. As Montuori notes “the perception of an out-group as a threat and an enemy is the glue that holds this (totalitarian) mindset together”. A distinction that’s at the very core of Carrion.

In this fiction, as in reality, drug users are universally defined as a threat, blamed for everything from social unrest to criminality. The prohibitionist routinely reduces the drug issue to a simple black and white choice, “if we sort out the drug problem everything will be all-right”.

In Carrion the threat from users becomes even more acute when they are attacked by the insects. It’s no coincidence that the government are behind the release of the insects. It serves two functions, first it’s an attack on the drug using population, uniting people against an identifiable enemy. Second it creates a crisis that allows drug users to be targeted for persecution.

In Carrion users are not only a threat to public order, now they’re a threat to public health, a threat that needs to be dealt with in the expedient, harshest, terms possible. Although it’s interesting to remember that when Hitler was asked whether he thought Jews should be annihilated he replied no. If we didn’t have them “we should have to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.”

In trying to answer the question, what makes Reiner such a willing exponent of prohibition, it’s become apparent that his willingness to persecute drug users is his moral weakness, a manifestation of the totalitarian mindset, embedded in the authoritarian personality, that is his psychological weakness.

Weakness and need and desire

Now all I have to do is work out his need, what he “must fulfil within himself in order to have a better life”.

Posted on

The iceberg opponent

While skipping through Anatomy of Story by John Truby, I landed on a section called The Iceberg Opponent.

Truby argues, to make your antagonist as dangerous as possible, you should create a hierarchy of opponents, and “hide the hierarchy from the hero and the audience”.

This worries me slightly because Adam’s opponents aren’t really hidden from him. The only element really hidden from him is the true nature of prohibition, and I’m not sure if that’s enough?

Adam’s main opponent is Reiner, he wants to stop Adam achieving his desire, saving Christine. As the plot develops, Adam encounters ever more hostile forces, police, military, insects. These are less hidden opponents, and more a hierarchy of force.

Why would they hide?

As I’ve noted in an earlier post “prohibitionist’s aren’t shy about telling us they think users should be killed”. Truby urges you to “always look for the deepest conflict that your hero and opponent are fighting over”.

The antagonist’s antagonist

In “The antagonist’s antagonist” I note Adam and Reiner are actually fighting over the kind of society they live in. Which version will prosper? “Will it be a society of freedom ultimately chosen by Adam or will it be a society of security demanded by Reiner?”

So this is a fight for freedom or security.

If you dig even deeper security is actually an analogue of power. I often quip prohibition isn’t about public health, it’s about public control. It’s a aphoristic way of saying prohibition is a mechanism used to control the population.

Adam’s real opponent, the opponent hidden at the deepest part of the iceberg, is actually power. Not just any power, the power to destroy an entire class of people, because they don’t fit their view of how you should live in the world.

What Reiner is actually fighting for is tyranny.

%d bloggers like this: