This is a technique that’s been developed principally in my writing classes since 2014. It’s an attempt to incorporate essential Science of Storytelling principles into a practical, step-by-step method for creating effective and original stories. The process was born out of the observation that the most common and fundamental problem I encounter in my students is that their plot and protagonist are essentially unconnected. In reality character and plot are indivisible. Life emerges from self and is a product of it. This is how story ought to work too.
The Sacred Flaw Approach is a way of building a fictional story as a brain builds a life. By going through a straightforward series of steps, we can aim to discover an original character who is embedded in a credible and relevant world and who has a subconscious need and an external goal that will work symbiotically to drive their plot.
While you’re working with the approach, it’s important to remember a couple of things. First, I’m not suggesting in any sense that this is the only way to make story. It’s simply one route which the people who’ve attended my class have found useful. Second, it doesn’t need to be followed religiously. The demands of your particular piece might make some parts of this framework irrelevant or inappropriate. You might reach a point where you no longer need it. You might not want to use the standard five-act plot as your model. It’s really just a guide to help you think in the right direction. The only thing that matters is that it helps.
Before you start, I recommend reading the approach through to the end. You’ll discover both the questions you’ll be required to answer about your character and the reasons you’re being required to answer them. This may end up saving you quite a bit of time.
The approach’s focus is on character because, for me, this is where storytellers should begin their deep creative endeavours. When we’re talking about character, we’re really talking about character flaw.
With every class I teach, there are usually one or two writers who politely resist this line of thinking. When I work with them, I sometimes sense the problem is that they’ve rather fallen in love with their protagonists. They’ve lived with them for months and maybe years of drafting and redrafting and they don’t want to closely define them because they’re this and they’re also this and they’re this and this and this and, oh my God, they’re just amazing! The last thing they want is to assign to them any flaws.
For some of these students, I suspect what’s secretly holding them back is that the protagonist actually is them. The more work they do on that character, the further that character moves away from who they are. As strange as it might sound, this process can cause them some emotional pain, almost as if they’re losing a loved one. But it’s pain they must endure. Unless it’s overcome, this problem can be fatal to their creativity. A storyteller needs spine. They have to make hard and clear decisions about their characters, even if those decisions are left ambiguous on the page. Underpinning every gripping scene in their story is that fundamental dramatic question: who is this character really? If the author doesn’t know, the reader is likely to sense it and grow confused, frustrated and uninterested.
A further common problem is that storytellers resist focusing on character because the source of their inspiration, and their excitement about their project, is not a character at all. There are three common routes into a story idea that don’t come from character – a milieu, a what-if and an argument.
Here’s a reasonable milieu – scientists have found the cure for death and the earth is overflowing with humans. It feels like it could be the basis of some big-budget TV series. But the problem is, it’s not a story, it’s a setting for a story. The risk is that the writer feels most of their creative heavy lifting is now done and, having thought of a dark and compelling milieu, they just have to fill it with some thrilling action. So here’s the haggard cop and here’s the ballsy sex worker and here’s the brave but beleaguered politician and here’s some cool CGI panning shots of a foggy night in the rammed metropolis.
None of this is good. To move beyond cliché requires precision. The writer must zoom in on a specific part of this deathless world and then find a compelling character within it. For instance, what’s happening to the earth’s resources? Is this a place of extremely heightened inequality in which only the rich can afford to eat fresh food and see the ocean? That could be an interesting line to pursue. Or perhaps we could think about the people who decide that, despite the cure, they want to die. There’d presumably be a booming euthanasia industry. There’d be peripheral industries too – what if there was a paradise island which the tired-of-life could go to, in their last week, in order to live out their wildest dreams? What kind of weird human dramas could happen in a place like that? Perhaps the story could be about intergenerational war, as 200-year-old humans with 200-year-old political views fight the new progressive generation?
Fine. But we still haven’t located our character. So, what if our story followed a renegade scientist who wanted to save the planet from this runaway plague of humans? And this person is attempting to destroy the cure for death? This could make for an interesting subversion, in which the plucky selfless hero is the person trying to kill everyone. She’d surely be likely to suffer from some massive internal conflict over her project.
We’re getting closer. Let’s go with the scientist. I can picture her immediately. She’s a beautiful, gutsy, empowered biologist who lives alone and likes a drink and struggles against the grey-suited establishment. Are you bored yet? We’re still in the land of cliché. The only way to escape it is to work out precisely who this person is, how she’s damaged and therefore what specific battle the plot must create for her.
What if a world-famous celebrity became their own lookalike? He decided, for whatever reason, to escape Hollywood and hide out in a small regional town. (Maybe there’s been scandal? Maybe he inherited an apartment in this obscure location from an aunt and it was the only place nobody would look for him?) None of the townspeople would expect to see him there. On his first day he bumps into the owner of a beleaguered lookalike agency who realises he ‘kind of’ looks like the actor he actually is. He talks the celebrity into doing a last-minute job at a party that evening. He’ll be serving tequila shots to a hen party.
This is a reasonable ‘what if’ for perhaps a black or a broad comedy. I can picture the protagonist immediately. He’s past his peak but still handsome, sarcastic, dry, but lovable somewhere deep down. On his first gig he’s horrified to discover how much he’s hated by the public. What he needs, in order to heal, is to reconnect with authentic people. Back in Hollywood he’s just become engaged to a spoiled, skinny, cocaine-snorting starlet. But then in walks kooky barmaid Serena. She drives a beaten-up old Mini. Some of her hair is pink. Are you bored yet? Once again, we’re drowning in cliché. How else is this ‘what if’ going to become a story that moves us and surprises us and feels as if it’s saying something real, if not by digging right down into the unique character of the protagonist?
Sometimes writers want to highlight some perceived societal problem. Say you’re angry about the US healthcare system, so you decide to write a kind of healthcare version of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. It centres on a Gordon Gekko type who ramps up the price of an essential medication. Fine. The risk is that, if you don’t do the necessary character work, ‘a healthcare version of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street’ is exactly what you’re going to end up with.
Where to begin this process depends on what material, if any, you’re starting with. If you have a what-if, try to think of it instead as a story event (see section 4.1) or a trigger for one. The story event is the happening in the top layer of the drama that ultimately forces your protagonist to question and change who they are. So, what kind of person might be maximally changed by such a story event? What kind of flawed idea might define this character and how might this specific story event deeply challenge this idea?
If you have an argument or a milieu you can use this process to work your way towards a character and a story event that might best explore it. For instance, one example of a milieu is a war zone, whilst an argument you could build a story around is: war makes monsters of men. So you’d need to think, who is the character whom this argument or milieu would most trigger? That is, who would be most likely to be psychologically overturned by violent war? It might be someone who has narcissistic tendencies and gets carried away with themselves. They’d also be rebellious and not enjoy following orders. This, of course, is Lawrence of Arabia and its protagonist, T.E. Lawrence. He was uniquely vulnerable to the milieu in which he found himself. The screenplay’s specific combination of character and story event powerfully argued that war makes monsters of men.
If you have an idea for a character, you can dive straight in. Don’t worry about your story event yet, we’ll be working on that later. If your story has multiple protagonists you might find it useful to work through the Sacred Flaw Approach for each of your principals. I’d encourage you to consider how each protagonist connects with each other’s flaw. They might have different versions of the same problem, which rub up against each other, making it better or worse, depending on the needs of the plot. In romantic comedies or buddy movies, the two protagonists often inhabit two opposing flaws. When they finally come together, they’re healed.
The job of your plot is to test, break and retest a flawed character. They either rise to the challenges of its story event and become a better person by recognising and fixing their flaw, or they don’t. If we’re to build a compelling and dramatic story out of someone’s flaw, then, it ought to be a profound one. We’re looking for a specific kind of flaw – one that our character has formed a core part of their identity around and that has the potential to do them damage.
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to interview the famous psychologist Professor Jonathan Haidt. He told me something I’ve never forgotten: ‘Follow the sacredness. Find out what people believe to be sacred, and when you look around there you will find rampant irrationality.’ Rampant irrationality! This is exactly what we should be hunting in our characters.
In order to locate what they’re irrational about, then, we should ask what they make sacred. The things we make sacred are, to a great extent, the things that come to define us. This, I believe, is the secret of unlocking the truth of a character. When other people think of us – when they’re asked what we’re like – this quality will probably be the first thing that pops into their minds. This is our ‘sacred flaw’. It’s the broken part of us that we’ve made sacred.
In The Remains of the Day, the butler Stevens has made the idea of English dignity in emotional restraint sacred. This is where we meet him in act one, immersed in a reality of rampant irrationality without really being aware of it. Early in Citizen Kane, we watch Charles Foster Kane make the idea of himself as a selfless warrior for the ‘common man’ sacred – a faulty belief that powers the rest of his journey. Likewise, the early sequences of Lawrence of Arabia portray T.E. Lawrence making the idea that he is an ‘extraordinary’ man sacred – and then we’re dragged unforgettably through the consequences of this irrational belief.
These were faulty concepts that became built into these characters’ neural models of reality. They struggled to see past them. They helped to define who they were. The point of the plots was to test these sacred ideas and break them apart. That’s what made those stories gripping.
Let’s pause briefly to acknowledge that this process has been designed to create a maximally characterful character. Many of our most memorable and popular protagonists – the ones that seem to burst, Scrooge-like, from the screen or page utterly alive and compelling – are the ones who seem the most possessed by their mistaken idea. All story is change, and the most important change of all that takes place is to the people who inhabit them. The further you pull back the bow, at this stage, the further your narrative arrow will be able to fly.
But how far to take it is your own creative decision. I’m sometimes asked if story can explore an idea that a character has happened upon later in life and is therefore not something they’ve oriented their life around. Of course they can, as the case of Citizen Kane demonstrates. But that doesn’t mean it’s advisable to skip your character work. You still need to ask, who is this person who believes this? How and why did they come upon this belief? What did they believe before? Why did they change? What does this belief mean for their outward goals? And their secret fears? What does it protect them from? And what kind of story event could come along to dramatically test this belief?
Even if we’re telling a story about a new belief, it ought to matter to them deeply. It should connect, somehow, to the core of who they are, giving us profound clues about their wants, needs, secrets and dreads.
When we’re talking about a character’s sacred flaw, we’re referring to a flaw in their theory of control (see section 2.0). All animals seek to control the external world such that they get what they desire from it. For us highly social apes, this means controlling an environment of humans. Many of the most memorable characters in fiction, and reality, derive their fascination from the fact that they’re making a fundamental mistake about the human world and their place within it. We can see their mistake but they can’t. It leads them to behave in ways that seem baffling, maddening and self-defeating. We’re curious about this mistake – about its nature, its source, its effects and its possibilities for change.
Let’s pretend we’re fictionalising a real-life story from the realm of politics. Say we’ve been tasked with writing a screenplay about the UK’s tortuous attempted ‘Brexit’ process, in 2018 and 2019, that was led by the then Prime Minister, an embattled Theresa May. When our protagonist’s initial attempt at leaving the European Union collapsed, it became apparent that part of the trouble was with her character. She developed a reputation for being stiff, cold and robotic and unable to take advice. She couldn’t connect with her enemies and allies on a human level, or understand the delicate arts of negotiation, diplomacy and compromise, and this was her downfall. Her inability to control her environment of other humans left her isolated and disempowered. One unnamed newspaper source tried to define her character flaw precisely: ‘May’s problem is she always thinks she’s the only adult in the room.’
This line leapt out at me. I don’t know if it’s actually true but, for our purposes, it works as a fabulous example of a sacred flaw. So let’s take a close look at why. First, because it describes a theory of control. ‘If I sincerely believe I’m the only adult in any room, that’s how I’ll behave and then people will frequently accept it. I’ll earn respect and get what I want. This is how I’ll control the world of humans.’ This theory was successful for her, for a long time. She used it to build an impressive life.
Imagine our fictional May at the cusp of adulthood. What kind of job would a young woman with her flawed theory of control pursue? A belief in always being the only adult in any room speaks of someone hubristic, naive and who sometimes treats other people in a high-handed, dismissive and patronising manner. It’s a person convinced they know best and who’s not intimidated by anyone regardless of their claims to greater life experience or expertise. Who might a youngster like this become? A politician, perhaps. And a politician who could go far. Even up to the level of Prime Minister.
This was the theory our May held sacred. She’d had to have convinced herself of its truth and embodied it, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to properly exploit it. And, because this is what brains do, she would’ve seen evidence for it everywhere – and not only in the rarefied position of power it earned her. When I searched for the source of the original ‘only adult’ quote, I wasn’t able to find it, such was the era’s endless Brexit coverage – but I did find plenty of examples of people sincerely describing May as ‘the only adult in the room’. She’d surely have read such comments. But were they true? Of course not! Despite what we might enjoy telling each other, throughout her political life, and the Brexit process especially, May would’ve been dealing frequently with unbelievably hard-working and competent international leaders and policy experts. Adults (almost) every one.
Our protagonist’s sacred belief that she was the only adult in any room was, at one point, her superpower. It helped earn her everything she most valued. It gave her confidence, tenacity and courage. It gave her wealth, status and a place in the driving seat of history. But ultimately it turned out to be her downfall. This is why our screenplay’s story event is the delicate, complex and high-stakes Brexit process. This was the surface-world event that tested and brutally exposed the reality of her subconscious flaw. Her faulty model of the world prevented her from taking advice or compromising. It alienated and enraged all the people who could’ve helped and supported her. Because she refused to see her flaw and fix it, she ended up failed, loathed and broken. Her story is a tragedy.
The ‘only adult’ line works creatively as a sacred flaw because it immediately suggests a suite of behaviours. The moment we hear someone always thinks they’re the only adult in the room, we can imagine them in action. Put them in any human environment – a dinner party, an amateur dramatics group, a team of superheroes tasked with saving the earth from an alien invasion – and there they are, trying to control it with a very specific set of actions that lead them to success, sometimes, but also into unexpected trouble. They come alive in our minds.
When I’m teaching these principles, it’s common for students to take some time to properly drill down to their character’s sacred flaw. They usually have to make a few leaps. For instance, someone recently said their protagonist’s sacred flaw was ‘he’s very controlling’. OK. It’s a start. But it lacks precision. It doesn’t vividly suggest a specific suite of behaviours. When I hear ‘controlling’ I’m not immediately able to imagine this person in any situation beyond a vague and clichéd glowering and demanding. He doesn’t come alive in my mind.
So we reach for further precision. We ask, exactly how does he try to control the people around him? What’s his actual strategy? And the answer came, ‘He does it by telling stories. Tall stories.’ Much better! I immediately thought of the brilliant Billy Ray screenplay for Shattered Glass, that tells of a disgraced journalist who found fame, then infamy by doing precisely that. Someone else mentioned the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Someone else spoke of an over-protective mother who coddled her children with comforting lies. And we were off, our imaginations in flight, fuelled by all the amazing potentialities we could suddenly see for this person.
So how would you succinctly describe your character’s broken theory of control? What’s the flawed belief they have about themselves and the human world that they cling onto, and that has come to largely define them?
If it helps, you could think of it as a statement that begins in one of the following ways:
The thing people most admire about me is …
I’m only safe when I …
The most important thing of all in life is …
The secret of happiness is …
The best thing about me is …
The most terrible thing about other people is …
The big thing I understand about the world that nobody else seems to get is …
The best advice anyone ever gave me was …
Remember, precision is critical. Vagueness at this stage will only make for vague characters and clichéd story. Your answer should suggest a theory of control and therefore a suite of behaviours:
‘The best thing about me is that I’m always the only adult in the room’ (suggests: patronising, stern, hubristic, strong, distant, leadership qualities, doesn’t listen …)
‘I’m only safe when I enthral other people with my amazing tall stories’ (suggests: liar, braggart, manipulator, attention-seeker …)
‘The most important thing of all in life is to keep all the money and love I have to myself’ (suggests: lonely, miserly, suspicious, joyless …)
‘The big thing I understand about the world that nobody else seems to get is that it’s impossible to truly be friends with a member of the opposite sex’ (suggests: cynicism, self-belief, convictions of worldly-wiseness, sex-focused …)
You’ll know when you have it because you’ll feel your character lurch alive in your imagination. This is a moment to remember. You’ve just met your protagonist.
At this point, it’s not uncommon for a writer to look at their sacred flaw and worry that it describes a character they’ve already read or seen numerous times, or that feels otherwise flat or obvious or reductive. Try not to panic. We’ve only just begun. The next stage of the Sacred Flaw Approach involves taking your small yet precise idea and growing it into a life.
This step involves working out exactly when and how the damage occurred that created your character’s flaw. It’s common in story for there to be a moment when the protagonist reveals hints to their origin damage, or we see it in flashback, and gain a sudden insight into the root causes of their behaviour. But, as Shakespeare worked out four centuries ago, spelling out the causes of a character’s actions overtly can be a mistake. Leaving only clues, or even excising origin damage information completely, can add profundity and fascination to your story.
Nevertheless, I believe it can be invaluable for the writer to know these moments and know them well. The writer is not the reader or viewer of their story, they’re its God, and they need to know their characters as would an all-seeing, all-knowing creator.
This even matters if you’re writing stories based on truth. Early in my ghostwriting career I wrote the memoir of a former member of the Special Forces called Ant Middleton. I was keen to locate his sacred flaw. This wasn’t easy. Ant was impressive in a thousand ways, but you probably wouldn’t describe him as a heavily introspective man. I asked him, again and again, ‘Why did you want to join the Special Forces?’
‘Because I wanted to be the best,’ he’d say.
‘But why did you want to be the best?’
And Ant would throw his hands up, baffled. Doesn’t everybody want to be the best? So I began digging. I discovered he’d lost his beloved dad at the age of five and was brought up by a domineering stepfather. Ant described this man’s tenure as the coach of his boyhood local football team. He’d arrive at games in a knee-length leather raincoat, cycling shorts and black boots with his Rottweiler at heel. He’d make all the boys listen to Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’ at full volume before each match, and had ‘SIMPLY THE BEST’ printed on their football shirts in large letters. He was so fearsomely competitive that some of the parents apparently removed their children from his team. And he always expected Ant to be the best player of all. If he wasn’t, there’d be trouble. ‘I started hating going to football because of the pressure he’d put on me,’ Ant told me. ‘I always had to play at my highest capacity.’
‘Would it be true to say that, when you were a child, you learned that you were only truly safe when you were the best?’ I asked. Ant leapt off his seat. ‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘Yes! That’s exactly what it was like.’ This idea – this sacred flaw, this theory of control – was what powered every dramatic scene in his book. It was my key to unlocking his character, and the life that emerged out of it in all its colour, drama and complexity.
I wouldn’t have got there if I hadn’t first defined his origin damage and the flawed idea that emerged from it. Here was a boy who had to be the best. This belief became internalised – he came to believe he was the best. It was a sacred idea and, therefore, fiercely defended. It took him to some truly amazing places. It saved his life and gave him the ability to take the lives of others. He became a real-life action hero. But it also did him damage. When Ant left the military, and was treated with aggressive disdain by a police officer, he assaulted the man and ended up in prison.
When did your character come upon their faulty belief? Defining a precise moment in which it took hold means going beyond the vague cliché – ‘her father beat her’ or ‘his mother didn’t love him’. I’d like you to write the scene out in full – the characters, the setting, the dialogue, everything. This is an actual, detailed cause-and-effect incident with a beginning, a middle and an end. And it tells of a highly specific outcome – the creation of what became a powerfully defining belief. At the start of your scene, your character will believe one thing. Then something happens and it makes them realise …
Make it a childhood incident. The flaws that come to characterise us most often have their origins in our first two decades. This is when the brain is in its heightened state of plasticity and its neural models of the world are still being formed. Because these experiences get built into the structure of our brains, they become folded into who we are. We internalise them. They become part of our theory of control. (Of course, in reality, much of who we are is actually a product of our genome, but ‘my genes made me do it’ is going to be an odd tale to tell.)
Perhaps they witnessed something intense or upsetting. Perhaps it happened directly to them. As we’ve discovered, because of our tribal evolution, experiences of being ostracised and humiliated are tremendously hurtful for humans. Perhaps the origin of their damage lies in a moment when such feelings were powerfully felt?
Whatever happened to your character, it should be a precise moment in which they clearly understand that if they don’t believe or behave like this, then that might happen. It’s important for reasons that’ll become clear that the theory of control that forms out of this moment has these two components. First, that it tells our protagonist who they must be in order to get what they want from the world. Second, that it tells them how to avoid something bad. In other words, this moment, and the belief that springs out of it, will help us define their future goals and their secret subconscious fears.
Let’s use Lawrence of Arabia as an example. T.E. Lawrence’s origin damage is hinted at during a fireside scene in which he quietly admits to a fractured family life. His father, Sir Thomas Chapman, didn’t marry his mother, which would’ve been an unusual and shameful situation for a person of his time and class. We can imagine a young Lawrence desperately looking up to his father but rarely seeing him and, in general, being made to feel completely invisible by him. Then, in this moment of origin damage, little Lawrence behaves with a kind of cheeky, vain rebellion and, for one precious, unforgettable instant, his father responds to him with warmth and mirth. And so Lawrence learns: ‘If I act with vain rebellion, I won’t be made to feel invisible by people I admire’.
The knowledge that, more than anything else in the world, Lawrence dreads being made to feel invisible by important people helps us mentally model his character with vivid accuracy. It’ll be of enormous value when it comes to plotting his story.
At this stage, you might also want to consider your character’s personality type. What version of self do they become when you run them and their flaw through the filter of one of the ‘big five’ traits?
The next steps involve turning this flaw and this damage into a person and a life. This means allowing the character to internalise it in such a way that they don’t see it as a flaw at all. We’re going to mimic the process by which a brain does this.
We have our moment of origin damage and the belief about the world it created. Now the character needs to experience a powerful confirmatory event that ‘proves’ to them that this belief is correct. Something happens which causes them to embody this flaw. They test it as a theory of control. And it works! It fully convinces them that this flawed belief is true.
It should be a pivotal moment that took place before the age of twenty-one. It should be a scene that involves some jeopardy. Something’s got to be at stake. And they must be active in it. They need to let this flawed belief guide their behaviour at a moment at which they’re strongly challenged – and it ends up being their superpower. This incident makes them feel (or, at least, they’re able to thoroughly convince themselves) that this belief is not only correct but the most correct belief they can possibly imagine anyone ever having. As far as they’re concerned it’s the key to how they’re going to behave, from now on and forever.
During the scene, they’ll need to defend their behaviour. The brain is a hero-maker. No matter how wrong we are, it excels at seducing us into believing that we’re right. It makes us feel good in various ways:
It makes us feel morally virtuous
It makes us feel like a relatively low-status David being threatened by more powerful Goliaths
It makes us believe we’re deserving of more status
It makes us believe we’re selfless, somehow, and that our enemies are selfish
So make them defend their action and the worldview it’s generated in the form of a hero-maker narrative (see section 2.6). They can speak the narrative ‘out loud’, to an antagonist or authority figure, or as narration to the reader. Your job is to inhabit your character, and their flaw, in such a way that you’re arguing so well in the defence of the unlikely decision they’ve made that you practically convince yourself (in my classes, I use as an example the iconic ‘You can’t handle the truth’ speech from Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men). In this scene, we’re seeing their flaw take over who they are – controlling their decisions and behaviour. It’s become a core part of their identity, one they’ll fight to defend. From this moment onwards, their flawed belief becomes sacred. It becomes how they see themselves in the context of the human realm. It becomes their key to controlling the world and avoiding that which they secretly dread.
This is based on a famous exercise by the novelist and tutor John Gardner. Try rewriting the James Baldwin passage in section 2.3, but from the point of view of your character. They’re walking into a jazz club in Harlem in the 1950s. How do they experience it? What details do they fix upon in their environment? What’s the hero-maker narrative in their head? Are they intimidated or threatened in some way? Do they have a particular goal? Perhaps someone directly challenges them. How do they talk to themselves about these feelings? How do they make themselves feel better?
As they grow up, your character’s flawed theory of control will build a particular life for them. It’ll lead them on a particular journey – into a particular job with a particular romantic history, into a particular neighbourhood and a particular home with a particular front door with a particular colour and state of repair. They’ll have particular values and particular friends and enemies and particular goals, obstacles and fears.
At this stage, their sacred flaw (as far as they’re concerned) will have largely been of benefit to them. It’ll have brought them much that they most value. But it’ll also have created hidden dangers for them. The following questions have been designed to nudge you into thinking in the right ways about the life that’s built itself around their sacred flaw.
How has their flaw led to material or career gains?
Say we’re making a three-hour biopic of the children’s book Mr Nosey. His sacred flaw is something like: ‘I’m only safe if I know everyone else’s business.’ What career might this faulty belief have made for him? Perhaps he’s a domestic cleaner for the rich and famous. Perhaps he’s a social worker. Perhaps he’s responsible for judging prospective foster parents. He’d be amazing at that job. He’d love it. But his over-enthusiasm for nosiness, created by his flaw, would constitute a significant hidden danger.
How do they get an internal sense of heightened status from this flaw? How does it make them feel superior?
Even if your character has extremely low status and is even self-loathing, there will be a way in which their flaw makes them feel somehow better than other people. (If they simply think they’re worthless, and wrong about all their most precious beliefs, they’re probably not a vastly compelling character.)
What small moments of joy does it bring them?
For example, when the bourgeois, status-obsessed Emma Bovary attends an opulent ball, she takes great pleasure in marvelling at all the symbols of status, such as the wealthy guests’ complexions, that are the kind that ‘comes with money’ and ‘look well against the whiteness of porcelain’.
How has their sacred flaw brought them closeness with friends, colleagues or lovers?
What life goals has it generated? What achievement, in the external world, do they believe will make them happy and complete?
Perhaps they want to be entered into the pantheon of Britain’s greatest ever butlers like their father, as our friend Stevens did? Perhaps they want to be famous, rich and loved by the masses, like Charles Foster Kane? Perhaps they want the perfect marriage to go with their perceived reputation for total perfection, like Amy Elliot Dunne? This should be an important but potentially achievable core personal project (see section 4.0) that your protagonist is aiming towards on the surface of the plot. As always, be specific.
The final two questions require you to have a proper handle on your origin damage and the characteristic world it’s created. You may need to go back and think a little more about them, and perhaps give them a tweak, but this really is worth doing in order to get the coming steps right.
What (if only in their minds) will they risk losing, materially, socially or otherwise if they act against their flaw?
To answer this, you’ll need to have a good idea about what your character wants in the external world; what important goals they’ve been busily pursuing.
How does their flaw make them safe? On the subconscious level, what do they ultimately dread will happen if they act against their flaw?
You might already have this. If not, now’s the time to work it out. Remember, the belief they came upon during their incident of origin damage would’ve been, in some way, protective. They’d have experienced it as, ‘If I don’t believe this, then that might happen.’ That is now a great subconscious fear. It’s what their entire life has been a kind of strategic defence against. For Stevens it was something like, ‘If I don’t act with emotional restraint, then I won’t be respected like my godlike father.’ For T.E. Lawrence, ‘If I don’t act with vain rebellion, I’ll be made to feel invisible by people I admire.’
Once again, be specific. It’s not enough to be vague and say just ‘won’t be respected’ or ‘made to feel invisible’. Making an extra reach for precision, at this stage, will give you critical insights into your character’s secret dreads. This will help you conjure vivid characters and a gripping plot.
You’ll hopefully know your character sufficiently well, by now, to be able to begin telling their story. To do this we must work out their story event. This is the actual happening, in the real-world surface level of the story, that’s going to present an overwhelming challenge to their sacred flaw and ultimately break it apart. It’s the event that’ll draw them into a new subconscious realm in which their tried-and-trusted theory of control no longer works.
There’s a good chance you already know what your story event’s going to be, but if you still need help, the following list might trigger your imagination (if you’d like to pursue this line of thinking further, I’d recommend The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations by Mike Figgis or the epic Plotto by William Wallace Cook).
• An opportunity
• A plot or conspiracy (either against them or that they join)
• A journey or quest
• An investigation
• A misunderstanding by a powerful figure
• A revelation made about either them or someone else
• A promotion or demotion
• An enemy, monster or unwelcome figure from the past
• An accusation
• An onerous task
• A discovery
• A rescue (of a person, a sense of status, a career, a relationship)
• A reckoning (judgment; atonement for a past sin; discovery of impending death of themselves or someone else)
• A dare or challenge
• An injustice
• An escape
• An attack by enemies (internal or external)
• A temptation
• A betrayal
I’m not convinced there’s any such thing as an obligatory plot recipe that must be followed on pain of failure. When you consider storytelling in all its wonderful variety, it seems to me the only true fundamentals are that a story event on the top layer of the drama triggers change on the subconscious layer beneath. However, it is also true that one particular pattern has proved exceptionally robust and popular, having been in use for over two thousand years. This is the standard five-act structure.
There have been countless attempts by theorists to understand exactly why and how it works, all with varying degrees of complexity. I believe an interrogation of the science of storytelling explains it with a fresh clarity. The standard five-act structure is simply the most efficient way of showing a character’s sacred flaw being tested, broken and rebuilt. In its first half, the protagonist’s old theory of control is tested and found wanting. At the midpoint, it’s transformed. In the second half, their new theory of control is heavily tested. In the final act, they’re given the choice: do they want to embrace this new theory of control or revert to their old one? Who are they going to be?
Each act centres on a significant plot happening that tests the protagonist, causing them to actively respond. In their reaction they’ll answer the dramatic question of ‘Who am I?’ in a rather different way each time. This is how both levels of the story – plot and character – work symbiotically to generate the propulsive energy of an irresistible story, with its peaks and troughs of constriction and release (section 4.0) coming relentlessly. Here’s roughly how it works:
Act I: This is me, and it’s not working
At the start of the story, the protagonist’s theory of control is established. We see them behaving in their characteristic way and get a sense of their goals, outer life and secret wounds. Before long, significant unexpected change strikes. This is the ignition point, the first happening in a cause-and-effect sequence that will draw them into a new psychological realm, a world in which their theory of control is going to be tested as never before. They respond to the ignition point characteristically – and fail to regain control of their situation. Information gaps are opened: what’s going to happen next?
Act II: Is there another way?
Having acted on the event of the ignition point, and found their old theory of control has not halted the chaos, the protagonist begins to realise they’re going to have to come up with some new strategy. Being the old ‘them’ is no longer an option. Act two tends to be one of surging, tense emotion as they actively experiment with a new way of being and perhaps learn important lessons from mentors. There might be a thrilling release of tension as they experience a small victory or some initial success that soon proves short-lived or illusory. During this act, the protagonist fully commits to actively taking on the challenges of the plot.
Act III: There is. I have transformed
Despite their new strategy, the plot fights back. Emotions darken. It’s now clear the protagonist must decide whether or not to continue on this perilous path of character change. Somewhere near the middle of the story, emotions rocket upwards as the protagonist fully and dramatically commits to their new theory of control. They might express it in an amateurish, unsure or over-the-top manner, but the change feels profound, even irreversible. There might be a sense that the protagonist and the world in which they exist can never be same again. But in response to this thrilling act, the plot strikes back yet again – this time with unprecedented power.
Act IV: But can I handle the pain of change?
Chaos bursts forth. The protagonist feels hunted and overwhelmed by the plot. This is their lowest, darkest point. As the attack becomes relentless, they begin to question the wisdom of their decision to change. In some active way, the protagonist might show some form of retreat or reversion to their old theory of control. They might also ruminate deeply, revealing hints and clues about origin damage. Once more, the dramatic question is asked and answered afresh. But the plot won’t leave them alone. It makes it clear that the protagonist is soon going to have to decide, once and for all …
Act V: Who am I going to be?
Constrictive emotions grip as the final battle approaches and then arrives. A peak moment of ecstasy accompanies the protagonist finally achieving complete control over both levels of the plot, conscious and unconscious, in the form of a God moment (section 4.3). The chaos is vanquished. The very final scenes often show, not the heightened action of the battle, but the dramatic question being answered conclusively. In an archetypal happy ending, we’re shown that our hero is going to be someone new – someone better.
A tragic five-act plot goes through a similar sequence, but instead of the protagonist moving towards a version of self that’s better able to tame the chaos, they double down on their flawed theory of control, which ultimately makes their situation worse and worse (in act three of Lolita, for example, Humbert Humbert dramatically embraces his worst self by finally getting his hands on the now parentless girl). They fail to heal their flaw, and in the final act the consequences are likely to be grave and take the form of one of those tribal punishments – humiliation, ostracisation (i.e. banishment or imprisonment) or death.
We’re going to pursue the five-act model (for much more on this model, I recommend the excellent Into the Woods by John Yorke and The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker), but there’s no need to feel beholden to it. Having done your deep character preparation, you might find it works wonderfully. If so, there’s no reason to discard it. But equally, now you understand how it functions, you might feel empowered to play around with it.
For a deeper exploration into the five-act model I’m going to focus on a canonical and oft-analysed five-act story, The Godfather, which is considered one of the greatest films of all time and is based on a novel, by Mario Puzo, that sold nine million copies in just two years. Its protagonist is Michael Corleone, the son of mafia boss Vito, and the story tells of his rise to the head of his family’s criminal organisation. When we first meet Michael, he’s rejected the gangster life.
SACRED FLAW: I’m an honest, upstanding family man, not a gangster.
This is a slightly vague flaw (and, remember, when we’re talking of a ‘flaw’ in this context we’re not referring to a moral flaw but a flawed belief that’s vulnerable to change). Nevertheless, it’s the core belief that Michael has wrapped his life and identity around, that the plot interrogates over and over again in the form of the …
DRAMATIC QUESTION: Am I an honest, upstanding family man? Or a gangster?
And from where did this flawed notion originate? In the tradition of Shakespeare, we’re given only clues. However, it does become clear that Michael was …
ORIGIN DAMAGE: … the favourite son of his father, the gang boss Vito, who dreamed of his growing up to become not a mobster but a US ‘senator or governor’.
What is the real-world event that comes along to challenge young Michael’s sacred flaw and ultimately change it?
STORY EVENT: The Corleone family comes under attack.
As your story starts, you’ll want to introduce your principal characters, the most important of whom is obviously your protagonist (or protagonists, if you have more than one). In The Godfather we meet ours at a family wedding, and he’s displaying his theory of control and the life he’s built out of it in full. There he is, in sharp relief amongst the burly gangsters, smart and upright in his immaculate Marines uniform with his non-Italian fiancée Kay, a teacher, whose wide-eyed questions he answers with bracing honesty. (‘My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse … Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.’) Michael is his own sacred flaw made flesh.
You’ll also need to locate your ignition point (section 2.5) in act one. The ignition point is that wonderful moment in the narrative when we find ourselves sitting up. It’s triggered when the right event happens to the right character – when we sense an unexpected change has taken place that strikes at that character’s flawed belief. Because of this, the event triggers them. It makes them react in a surprising and specific way. This unusual reaction makes us sense something’s afoot and arouses our curiosity. It’s the first trickle in a flood that ultimately has the power to overturn who that person is.
As in The Godfather, the ignition point doesn’t have to happen immediately, but my advice would be not to take too long about it. The Godfather’s ignition point is the attempted assassination of Michael’s father, Vito, by rival New York mafia figures. These men want to enter the narcotics business but require Vito’s help to do so, as he has exclusive access to politicians and judges who need paying off. But Vito refuses, arguing his esteemed contacts might be prepared to turn a blind eye to gambling and prostitution, but drugs would be a different matter. Unfortunately, these rivals won’t take no for an answer. They sense Vito’s leader-in-waiting – his hot-headed, risk-taking eldest son, Sonny – might be more amenable to their plan. So they conspire to knock Vito off, allowing Sonny to take over and hopefully action their scheme.
And how does our protagonist Michael react to this unexpected event? By weeping, raging, or demanding bloody vengeance, as we might expect? No. He acts characteristically and as his sacred flaw would predict. He’s calm, pliant and well-behaved, agreeing that he shouldn’t get ‘mixed up’ in the events directly, and obediently placing calls for Sonny. Does this theory of control work for him? Does it enable him to reimpose order over the world? Does it heal the pain and prevent more from coming? Of course it doesn’t.
In this first sequence of your story, then, you’ll want to establish your protagonist by showing the nature of their sacred flaw and indicating what they want in the world. They’ll then be triggered by an ignition point that’ll make them act in a way that’s characteristic but will backfire or prove somehow ineffectual. This is the plot beginning to prove their theory of control is wrong.
Michael’s characteristic passivity does not tame the chaos. Unarmed, he visits his father Vito in hospital to find his police guard has vanished. Why? He discovers that a corrupt cop boss, who’s in league with the rival mobsters, has ordered them away from Vito’s bedside so the job of killing him can be completed. Michael wheels his father out of his room and hides him. When the corrupt cop shows up, Michael angrily berates him. The cop insults him and beats him in front of a crowd. The effect of Michael’s fidelity to his old theory of control? Pain, humiliation and his father in imminent danger of death. It’s not working. So who is Michael going to be?
In act two, the answer to the dramatic question begins to change. When Michael gets home, word reaches the family that the rival mob boss and the corrupt cop have requested a meeting with him – as a respectable, honest and non-dangerous representative of the Corleones – so they can negotiate. Michael says he’ll do it. To our surprise, and the surprise of the other characters, he says he’ll kill them at the meeting. The room erupts with laughter. ‘What are you gonna do?’ says his brother Sonny. ‘Nice college boy, uh? Don’t wanna get mixed up in the family business? Now you wanna gun down a police officer, what, because he slapped you in the face a little bit?’ But Michael insists. His offer now accepted, an experienced mobster teaches him how to kill at close range, thus introducing Michael to the rules of this new psychological world.
The Godfather is slightly unusual in that it doesn’t obviously offer what the story theorist Christopher Booker describes as an act two ‘dream stage’, when everything seems to go right for a while, as the protagonist experiences small or illusory wins. However, there is a surge in positive, tense excitement as we see Michael’s powerful expression of character change and witness his training by a seasoned mentor.
It took me an inordinately long time to work out what happens in act three. The puzzle that befuddled me so was this: right in the middle of the standard five-act plot the protagonist transforms, taking on a new and ‘improved’ theory of control. And yet this so-called improvement triggers an overwhelming surge in chaos. It didn’t make sense. Surely a new and improved self should solve their problem and tame the chaos? Why would becoming better make matters worse? (It’s worth underlining again, in the case of characters such as the antihero Michael Corleone, ‘better’ doesn’t mean ‘more moral’ as much as it does ‘better able to tame the chaos’.)
Solving that puzzle meant re-examining the idea of the theory of control. My breakthrough was the realisation that its purpose isn’t only to tell a character how to get what they want. It also tells them how to avoid what they don’t want. It’s partly protective. It both helps a person achieve their life goals and shields them from things they deeply fear. This is why, earlier in this process, I asked you to consider what your character would lose if they abandoned their flawed theory of control. It’s in acts three and four that such an understanding becomes crucial.
So we could ask, why did the young Michael Corleone choose to inhabit and build a life out of his sacred flaw, that was something like, ‘I’m only safe if I’m an honest, upstanding family man and not a gangster.’ Let’s give him an obvious reason: because, if you’re a gangster, people you love get killed (if we were scripting his origin damage scene, it would encapsulate this lesson). This was the protective purpose of his theory of control. So his theory – his guiding psychological strategy for survival in the human world – both gave him what he wanted (a statusful army career, the chance of a normal family life and even a potential future as a US senator), and also defended him from that which he most feared. This insight also allows us to see The Godfather’s ignition point in a new light: the shooting of Vito was the first piece of evidence Michael had that his theory of control wasn’t going to work. He might have been out of the family business, but pain and suffering were still inevitably going to reach him.
And then, in act three, he abandons his theory of control completely by committing a double murder. What’s the result? The protection it had offered him, in the form of control over bad things, vanishes. Michael’s killing of the senior cop brings publicity and unprecedented heat onto all of the New York mob families, and they collectively round on the Corleones, seeking revenge. Bullets start flying, heightened chaos is unleashed. In act four people that Michael loves dearly, including his elder brother Sonny, are killed.
This, in many five-act stories, is how the second half of the plot tests the protagonist’s commitment to change. Every fear that had previously been stopping them becoming a different person now actually happens. All their nightmares are unleashed. This massive ratcheting of drama at the precise point at which the audience risks getting fidgety is, I’ve come to believe, the piece of engineering genius that’s made the five-act structure matchlessly popular for more than two thousand years.
To make sure it’s clear, let’s glance at another by-now familiar example and remind ourselves of the expanded sacred flaw we gave to Stevens in The Remains of the Day: ‘If I don’t act with emotional restraint, then I won’t be respected like my godlike father.’ By adding this extra clause, we’re offered a clue as to what Stevens most deeply feared, and the situation that his adult life and self had taken the form of an escape from.
The novel’s author Kazuo Ishiguro decided to place Stevens’ transformation not at the midpoint of his story, but in the final paragraph. This gives us an opportunity (with sincere apologies to Ishiguro) to sketch out a very rough first draft of what might’ve been acts three and four if he’d decided to use the standard five-act structure:
• Following his realisation that emotional warmth is the key to human happiness, Stevens returns to the house of Miss Kenton. We see him experiment with emotionality in his own nervous, fledgling way. Miss Kenton cautiously agrees to return with him to Darlington Hall.
• Back at Darlington Hall, Stevens and Kenton become closer. She tenderly touches his hand. Giddy with delight, Stevens overdoes the emotional warmth and ‘banters’ clumsily with his new boss, Mr Farraday, in front of various important guests – who are visibly shocked and embarrassed. Farraday feels humiliated. He berates Stevens in front of the staff and guests. Stevens pushes back. There’s an argument. Kenton is appalled. Where’s the dignified and respected man she fell in love with?
• Stevens is fired and asked to leave Darlington Hall immediately. Kenton is promoted. She wants nothing more to do with him. Our protagonist has lost everything he’s ever cared about. His reputation is in tatters. His life’s greatest fears have been realised. The price of abandonment of his old theory of control is now plain. Will he commit to his new strategy of emotional warmth? Or will he play it safe and revert to his old version of self?
Act four sees the plot fighting back with everything it has. The protagonist might feel hunted, out of options or overwhelmed. It’s common for them to begin questioning the wisdom of their transformation – can they survive losing the protections of their old theory of control? This is their ‘dark night of the soul’, during which we might witness ruminative moments that reveal hints and clues about origin damage. They might go through a reversal, exhibiting signs that the plot’s test has been too savage and that they can’t, after all, pay the price of change.
In The Godfather, following Michael’s active entering of the mafia life, and the resulting death of his brother Sonny, his broken-hearted father Vito surrenders the war and offers the rival families access to his judges and politicians. The family’s power is fading. Vito is a wounded old man and Sonny is dead. Michael is now next in line to lead. He promises Kay that, in the future, the family business will become ‘completely legitimate’. The answer to the dramatic question has changed yet again.
But then Vito warns Michael there’s a traitor in their midst – ‘someone you absolutely trust’ – and that Michael’s life is at risk. Vito dies of a heart attack. Michael is now in charge. What will he do? Which version of Michael Corleone will he decide to be?
In order for a story to end with a sense of profound satisfaction, we must feel the dramatic question has been answered once and for all. This often happens following a final battle (section 4.2), in the form of a God moment (section 4.3) in which the protagonist reimposes control over their external world by finally mastering who they are in their internal world. For one blissful instant they have complete, godlike control over everything. They have embraced their new self and triumphed.
Of course, you might opt for an ambiguous, more modernist ending. If so, it’s still a good idea for you to have a firm grip on the duelling versions of who your character is, and to be skilful and deliberate in making your point, lest it feel as if you’ve simply opted out of making the decision through a lack of creative courage. Whichever type of ending you choose, if it’s going to be satisfying, it must deliver a clear answer to the dramatic question – we need to see, at the end of all the chaos and drama, who your protagonist really is.
The final minutes of The Godfather show precisely this. Michael is at his nephew’s christening, at which he’s being appointed the little boy’s godfather. As he takes his solemn vows, his men, on his orders, kill the family’s enemies one by one. After the service Michael watches impassively as his brother-in-law (whose child’s christening he’s just left, and who’s been revealed as the ‘traitor’ Vito warned him of) is garrotted. Michael’s final battle is fought and won.
When his sister discovers her husband is dead, she throws herself on Michael in fury, wailing, ‘And you stood godfather to our baby, you lousy, cold-hearted bastard.’
Following her departure, Michael’s now-wife Kay – the wide-eyed teacher with whom we saw him being characteristically honest concerning the family’s business, back at the film’s start – asks if the terrible accusation is true.
‘Don’t ask me about my business,’ says Michael.
‘Is it true?’
‘Enough!’
‘No!’
‘All right,’ he says. ‘This one time I’ll let you ask me about my affairs.’
‘Is it true?’ she demands. ‘Is it?’
‘No.’
Who is Michael going to be? An honest, upstanding family man? Or a dishonest gangster? The film’s closing exchange takes the form of the dramatic question being asked and then answered for its final time. We then see Michael’s new mafia supplicants reverently kissing his hand. And our story fades to black.