Every story, including our perceptions of our own lives,
need a hero, villain and victim to maintain a stable triad. A story with just a hero and a victim would
be unsatisfying, as would one with just a hero and a villain. Stories with only a villain and victim are
depressing as well as unsatisfying.
The triad doesn’t have to be obvious. In the movie Twister, the weather itself is the villain, the scientists are the
heroes and the Mid-western townspeople are the victims.
You can make things even more interesting by setting up
competing triads. In The Matrix, the humans see the triad with humanity as victims, the
machines as the villains and our main characters as the heroes. However, the machines see themselves as
victims, humanity as oppressing villains and their agents as defending
heroes. In The Avengers, Loki presents himself as a hero to humanity, freeing them from the oppression of self-determination. By allowing the bad guys to see
themselves as heroes, it gives them substance and reality. Otherwise they’re just Evil, in the tradition
of nineteen-twenties melodrama.
I can see the triad being useful in setting up your
characters and their story arcs. As the
story progresses, they can change their perceptions of the triad. A character who was seen as a victim might
become a villain as the story unfolds and we learn more about them. A villain might become a hero when the truth
is revealed (like Dr. Kimble in The
Fugitive. To the Marshals, he is a convicted felon who has escaped but eventually they realize he is an innocent man struggling to prove his innocence).
It’s a different and interesting way to think about
stories. Bringing these concepts out
from instinctive to conscious thinking tends to make people better
writers. Instinct always has blind spots
and sometimes those blind spots are big enough to drive a truck through.
No comments:
Post a Comment