What is the premise?
SPLITTING THE THEME INTO OPPOSITIONS
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- The Heros Moral Decision
| SPLITTING THE THEME INTO OPPOSITIONS The theme line is your moral argument focused into one sentence. Now you must express the theme line dramatically. That requires that you split it into a set of oppositions. You then attach these thematic oppositions to the hero and his opponents as they fight. There are three main techniques you can use to break your theme line into dramatic oppositions giving the hero amoral decision, making each character a variation on the theme, and placing the characters' values in conflict. The Hero's Moral Decision In the hero's moral development, the endpoints are your hero's moral need at the beginning of the story and his moral self-revelation, followed by his moral decision, at the end. This line is the moral frame of the story, and it tracks the fundamental moral lesson you want to express. The classic strategy for dramatizing the hero's moral line is to give him amoral flaw at the beginning and then show how his desperation to beat the opponent brings out the worst in him. In short, he has to get worse before he gets better. Slowly but surely, he becomes aware that his central moral problem comes down to a choice between two ways of acting. No matter how complex the actions of the characters over the course of the story, the final moral decision brings everything down to a choice between two. And it is final. So the moral decision is the narrow part of the funnel for your 6 theme. The two options are the two most important moral actions your hero can take, so they provide you with the primary thematic opposition for the entire story. This great decision usually comes just after the hero has his moral self- revelation, which shows him which choice to make. On rare occasion, the choice comes first, and the hero's self-revelation is a recognition that he made either the right or the wrong choice. KEY POINT Since the endpoint of the hero's moral line is his final choice, you want to begin figuring out the moral oppositions using that choice. * Casablanca: When Rick's ex-love, Ilsa, returns to him, he can use two exit visas to escape with her to America. Rick chooses fighting the Nazis over his love for Ilsa. Download 0.98 Mb. Share with your friends:
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