Cracking the Story Code — James Bonnet
Saturday, January 21st, 2012
By Karen Leabo

Story-making

Forty years ago as a young writer, James Bonnet became obsessed with discovering the secrets that underlie great stories. "My bias is very simple," he said at the Scriptwriters Network meeting Jan. 21 at CBS. "Story is at the heart of all the different media and genres. If you plan to write, produce, direct films or write novels it's important to know as much about story as you can."

Bonnet set about analyzing the stories that have remained relevant for decades, even centuries. He studied The Iliad, Lord of the Rings, Macbeth, Cinderella and other enduring tales to see what they had in common. "Aristotle said genius is seeing the connection between things," he said. "This inspired me to look for structures and patterns in other things found in psychology and the real world." Now he is passing along what he learned. "This can save you thirty years of work," he said.

Bonnet, a successful actor, TV writer, and the author of the nonfiction book Stealing Fire from the Gods ("the complete guide to story for writers and filmmakers") says we are entering the age of story. "Interest in story has grown dramatically," he said. "Story will soon be the most valuable knowledge anyone can have."

Most writers, even those considered "successful," write only a few big hits, which prop up the scores of projects we never heard of. By mastering this knowledge, Bonnet said, a writer can make you a master of the craft of deep hidden story structure that all great stories have in common, so that you can write a hit every time, stories with a powerful psychic connection and universal appeal.

Aristotle's classical story structure and Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey are a part of it, but only a small part.

"Stories are metaphors for life," Bonnet said. The characters in story represent the major players in our own psychology, in our families, society and the world. Stories can inform us about the groups we form-families, governments, corporations, etc. "These structures are extremely powerful. If you incorporate them into your stories, they'll be more powerful," he said. Great stories guide us through life passages.

Bonnet maintains that these hidden structures are linked to our evolutionary past, that they are programmed into our DNA and also linked to the source of our creativity.

As writers, we all make creative decisions about our stories, he said. When we hit on something that "works," our intuition tells us so. But where do intuitive feelings come from? It's been called the creative unconscious, hidden wisdom or hidden truth, the muses, the psyche, soul, God, higher guide, source, subtle energy, collective unconscious, even The Force. "Call it anything you like," he said. The question is, why does it care?

It has to do with our evolution as humans. Bonnet used the image of a snakestone to illustrate mankind's rise, descent, and the future we're headed toward, which promises to rise to a greater height than before. Our creative unconscious plays a major role in our lives and in story-making. even if we're not aware of it because it controls positive and negative intuitive feelings that govern our storytelling. "Great stories bring the creative unconscious to consciousness." This is "lost information" that our psyches are looking for.

There are several ways we can express this hidden energy, he said. Jackson Pollack chose to do it with abstract paintings. Michelangelo did it with his painting of the Sistine Chapel (which contains the hidden image of a human brain). But writers personify the energies in the characters, actions and events of a story. Like a Chinese dragon, a mythical beast composed of the parts of several real animals, writers take apart real things (people, events) and rearrange them to represent hidden structures. We idealize one thing, exaggerate another, minimize this and that, until our intuition tells us that a comprehensive picture of hidden wisdom is revealed.

Here is an example Bonnet gave of how this works. Part of what makes us human, he said, is our ability to look into the future. But with that gift came worry. If you analyze the myth of Prometheus (whose name means "forethought") you can see that it's a metaphor for the importance of forethought and its relation to worry, and the nature of worry itself. So although it appears to be a story about a guy chained to a rock and getting his liver chewed on every day by a big bird, our psyches recognize the hidden truth, which is why the story has endured.

Another example is the story of one of Hercules's twelve labors--destroying the hydra. When he cuts off one of the creature's seven serpent heads, two more heads grow back in its place. This is a metaphor for how human aggression operates (aggression is met with even greater aggression). "The point of the story is learning to control anger," Bonnet said. Hercules accomplishes this by cauterizing the wound (a metaphor for the psychic mechanism that heals wounds).

"Storytelling is cumulative," Bonnet said. "Each story contributes some great truth. Bring enough together, and you see the passages achieved in our evolutionary journey, and in our lifetime, which guides us to higher states of being and full realization of ourselves."

Next, Bonnet introduced the concept of the story wheel, comprised of positives and negatives. "All great stories have a place on the story wheel," he said. "Look at them altogether and you see how they're connected and have a common purpose (guiding us to greater states of being and awareness). On the upside of the wheel you have stories that end happily, where the hero resists temptation or performs a selfless act. On the opposite side you have the anti-hero who performs an abominable act, leading to a tragic ending. Each story is of connection of disconnection-to ourselves, families, society, the world, or the spiritual dimension, so that one type of story helps us relate to our families (ET), another to society (A Christmas Carol, Slumdog Millionaire) or to the world at large (Harry Potter). Religious and mythological stories help us connect to the cosmos or spiritual dimensions (stories of Jesus, Buddha and Ghandi).

On the opposite side of the wheel are stories that illustrate disconnection (The Godfather, Macbeth, Othello, the Garden of Eden). The more hidden truth a story contains, Bonnet said, the more powerful it will be, the more it will relate to our lives and the more likely we are to remember it.

So, The Lord of Rings and Harry Potter both tell us about the nature of our lower selves (represented as Sauron and Voldemort, respectively) always trying to regain its power.

"If you learn how to communicate with the creative unconscious," Bonnet said, "it becomes a powerful partner. The closer our creative decisions come to these truths, the more powerful the story is." When you piece together these structures, you'll know, he said. "When you hit pay dirt you get chills up your spine."

Values and Scourges

In real life, Bonnet said, we're all pursuing certain cherished values: life, health, wealth, freedom, honor, love, etc. We're also trying to avoid their opposite (scourges): death, poverty, ignorance, tyranny, hate, etc. and we're doing it all simultaneously, which is what makes life complex. "Story likes to isolate these values so one can be examined in great detail," he said. The Iliad is about pursuing honor and avoiding dishonor. Everything is related to that one virtue.

Silence of the Lambs is about pursuing justice. Harry Potter is about freedom from tyranny. When a single value and scourge are examined in detail, it creates a unifying force, adding power and clarity.

But your story is also about a subject, which is different from the value/scourge. In Harry Potter, the subject is magic. In The Excorcist, it's demonic possession. "You can do the same with the subject of your story," Bonnet said. "Study the subject with great detail. Make a powerful artistic statement. Study dimensions in yourself and use the creative process to bring forth the truth."

Essential Elements of Story

Bonnet went on to identify the essential elements of story. First there is a problem, a unifying event holding the story together. "Life is about problems, from bugs in the pantry to a serial killer in the neighborhood," he said. A problem can run the gamut from threats to career, emotional, health, threats to families, communities, the world, etc. The story's structure is created from revealing how problem is created and how it's resolved. The problem brings about a change of fortune and has to be resolved. Each story contributes knowledge about problems and solutions. "All great stories are about problem solving and transformation."

The threat is the thing that brings about the problem. A serial killer is the threat, and murder is the inciting action that creates the problem that brings about state of misfortune. That is the main source of resistance, he said, which creates classic story structure.

For example, Indiana Jones goes after the Holy Grail. The Nazis are the threat, which causes complication and eventual crisis. Climactic action is required to resolve crisis, leading to resolution.

In Ordinary People, the mother is the threat (by resenting the younger son's survival). She's the main source of resistance.

You can see the same patterns in real life, he said. Hitler was a threat that brought about a problem, which leads to resistance, complication, crisis and resolution. A small pox epidemic is a threat. On a smaller scale, a germ is a threat that causes resistance to our immune system.

If any of these things are missing, Bonnet said, your story won't feel quite right. "If your story isn't working, this is first thing to look at. Threat is the key to high-concept, the thing that makes it possible to pitch it in just a few words." Example: An asteroid the size of Texas is hurtling toward earth. Without the shark in Jaws, without Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, we wouldn't know very much about those worlds. Why do we know so much about the Titanic? Because of the iceberg. We don't know much about the first flight of the 747 because it was uneventful.

If all great stories have the same structure, why do they seem so different? "What appear to be differences are variations in metaphor, time and place," Bonnet said. Voldemort and Sauron are both incredible dark forces who have lost power and are attempting to regain it. Gandalf and Dumbledore are characters that provide a similar function. "What [J.K.] Rowling did was create a fresh metaphor to express an identical underlying structure [as that in The Lord of the Rings]."

"Given a well-told story, the surest way to success is a unique metaphor," he said. "You're only as good as the world you can create, the new life you can breathe into these old structures … The underlying truth has to keep refreshing the metaphors so it continues to attract and hold interest."

The key to a fresh take is the angle you tell the story from. The Great Escape, Saving Private Ryan and The Pianist all are World War II genre movies, but very distinct because of what the writer focused on. Jaws, Cinderella and A Christmas Carol are the same story, told from a different point of view. (Jaws is from the hero's, Cinderella is from the victim's, and A Christmas Carol is from the villain's.)

"You can tell the story in any sequence you like," Bonnet said. "You can put emphasis on any part that you want--as long as you remain relevant to the larger story."

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