The Hero Starts and Stops

A hero wants to start something . . . or stop something . . . or both.

While we’re in this early phase of developing a story, we’re playing around at a pretty high level of abstraction.

To say a hero wants to “start something” or “stop something” is to rise up into the clouds of language in an attempt to simplify the writer’s process at this stage.

This is fine. It’s necessary for writers to kick things off. Just keep in mind that as I walk through this, that’s what we’re doing. I say this because you might be tempted to react critically. “This is stupid. Start something? Stop something? Duh.”

We’re messing around in this early stage. We haven’t committed yet to a flawed hero with a setup desire or to a three-act process of the transformation of our hero. We’ll get there soon enough.

We’re at a high level of abstraction because we’re playing with story ideas.

The more decisions you make about your story, the more you descend from the clouds of abstraction to the terrain of your story.

We start with a hero and a desire, but soon enough we’ll be dropping down to story, acts, sequences, chapters, scenes, beats, reversals, revelations, and dialogue.

Back to starting and stopping: someone once wrote (I can’t remember who; let me know if you know) that a hero is either trying to make something happen or trying to stop something from happening.

And of course, we’re all doing both of these things at any moment in our lives. This is abstracted thinking for a purpose. It’s not a very good way of thinking about life. It’s not a description of real life. This is a writer’s tool, which means it’s merely a way of thinking about your story.

A hero wants to stop the bad guy from doing a bad thing. That sounds like an action movie: Mission Impossible, Die Hard, The Dark Knight, James Bond, etc.

A hero wants to get a date with his crush (Take Me Home Tonight) or play jazz on stage (Soul) or get out of prison by impersonating a drug lord (The Death and Life of Bobby Z, by Don Winslow) or exploit a human asset for global advantage (The Fox, by Frederick Forsyth).

Even though thinking about your hero starting something or stopping something sounds so abstract as to be nearly useless, it’s actually a sneaky way to discover your subject and genre.

For example, while I’m brainstorming story ideas, I don’t think I’d ever choose to write a novel of global espionage like Frederick Forsyth. I don’t know anything about that. I’d be writing from the movies I’ve seen and the books I’ve read, not from my own experience. 

And I don’t think I’d write about an inmate impersonating a drug lord. That’s a world I don’t know about. That’s a Don Winslow thing.

But if you riff on what your hero might want to start or might want to stop, you might very well stumble on a subject you like, you know, or you want to learn about, and you might instinctively sidle up to a genre that fits your writing personality.

Remember that what you like to read and watch isn’t necessarily what you like to write. 

I don’t watch horror movies or read horror novels, but I’ve written two horror novels. Go figure.

Horror is not a genre I gravitate toward. It took me so long to get through watching It Follows (2014): truly fantastic but so tense. I did read the novel The Amityville Horror (1977) when I was in fifth grade and promptly wrote a story called Hell House. I’m impressionable.

For my horror novel A Box Came for You, I found a way into the story by imagining a young man who wanted to start his life in Los Angeles. I could relate to a young man’s desire to leave home and start his life, especially when he feels like he’s fallen behind his peers. I also had to think of the story as a monster story, and the monster was just an antagonist the hero had to kill. I thought I could do that and focus on that and forget about whether or not I had it in me to check every box in the horror genre. That was too much pressure.

In other words, for me to write a horror novel, I had to bring it back to what I like writing about, what I understand, and what I could research competently. I had to make the storyline the kind of storyline that I get excited about.

My hero wants to START his life, but he has to STOP the monster.

That seems like it could apply to many stories. It’s simple because it’s about dreams, and it’s about survival. And I get that.

Horror is a genre for readers, by the way, not a structure for writers. 

Horror is not a type of storyline. It’s a feeling or atmosphere, or, better yet, it’s the promise of certain effects on the reader. You can make lots of storylines into horror novels, and that’s what I did.

I’ll talk more about genre labels versus story structures in a later post. There’s a lot to cover there, and I do not pretend to understand a tenth of it. I know storylines and story structures. I know what I need to know to write the stories I want to write. After writing professionally since I was 22, I still don’t understand the genres, subgenres, and subsubsubgenres for marketing to readers and viewers.

As you think about what your hero could start or stop, you should remember that it’s okay to use simple verbs. 

A simple verb doesn’t mean a simple story. It means a strong story. 

You’ll have plenty of time to complicate the story with a million inventive obstacles thrown into your hero’s path. 

For now, think of simple action verbs.

Your hero wants to . . . escape a place or enter a place . . . save someone or catch someone . . . rescue a city, repel an invader, solve a problem . . . seduce a lover, subdue a rival, impress a boss, pursue a calling . . . explore a frontier, protect a loved one, exact justice . . . kill the monster, heal the alien, free the captive, find the cure . . . seek shelter, console a friend, win the game . . . plan the wedding, sabotage the wedding, spread the news . . . sacrifice a dream, hunt the fugitive, prove your innocence . . . defend the home, marry the stranger, search for treasure . . . reunite with a comrade, bring the message to the front, hide the child from the bad guys, save the woman from the sinking ship . . . ferry the witness to court, stop the exploitation, cross the wasteland, reveal the truth . . . prosecute, launch, confess, defy, topple, achieve, remember . . . and so on.

Embedded in all these verbs are stories about love, war, family, survival, meaning, passion, life, and death.

In The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), our hero wants to get a job. Sounds simple, right? But my goodness, the drama that movie makes of that simple desire: gut-wrenching.

The hero wants to get a job.

Remember The Pursuit of Happyness if you ever get worried that your story, at this early stage, is too simple.

So as you search for something your hero can start or stop, remember that gut-wrenching dramas and uplifting stories and hilarious comedies can come from a simple action verb.

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PHOTO: Storm clouds in Myrtle Beach, SC