It’s a truism in old melodramas that the hero can only be as powerful as the villain they overcome. Weak villains make for weak heroes.

But this is about much more than men in white hats versus men in black hats. It applies to every aspect of your story, including the emotional and philosophical resolution. If you want to write a story where change for the better is possible, it must also be difficult. Impossibly difficult.

You can’t make the philosophical and emotional arguments of your story strong by making the counterarguments weak.

Don’t rescue your arguments

Just as rescuing your characters weakens your story, you weaken what you want to say emotionally and philosophically if you ‘rescue’ your ideas by stepping in and limiting or undermining the counterarguments.

To give your story real power, every single obstacle needs to be strong. So strong that we fear they will inevitably win, especially leading up to the climax.

And this needs to be true for argument just as much as character.

‘ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND’ EXAMPLE

Charlie Kaufman’s script for ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (Gondry, 2004) is a source of constant wonder for me. One of the many wonderful things about it is the way Kaufman has structured the story so that the penultimate sequence is a pair of mirrored scenes in which Joel and Clementine are each forced to hear the long list of everything that is wrong with them as a partner. With the complainant present.

All the good memories have been wiped. All that is left is the list of bad memories.

Surely this dooms any chance of reconciliation, connection and hope between them? But no. Because they also have that uncontrollable wild-card, desire, to drive their connection.

Paradoxically, this devastating exposé of all their faults, of everything that drives the other crazy, is precisely what makes the ending work. It allows their reconnection to be hesitant, unforced and believable. And that’s its power. It feels truthful.

The oomph of the ending comes not from winding up the emotions in those last seconds, but from making the opposing argument that immediately precedes those last seconds tangible, direct, devastating – and shared.

Kaufman didn’t rescue his arguments to give us a sentimental ending. He empowered them to earn the ending.

The Three Core Questions

As I’ve explored more substantively in other posts, all stories address three questions across four core arenas, and do it whether you consciously intend it or not.

1. The Narrative Questions:
   1. What happens right now, and what are the immediate consequences?
   2. What is going to happen soon? What can be avoided now, but not forever?
   3. What is going to happen in the end?
2. The Social/Psychological Questions:
   1. What has to change in people, in relationships, and in society before the narrative can end?
3. The Philosophical Question:
   1. What does this mean about how we should live our lives?

The Four Spheres of Conflict

1. The Uncaring Universe. Implacable. Unmovable.
2. Society. Other people and their institutions. Powerful, controlling. Can only be overcome with allies.
3. Intimate Others: Power and dependency coloured by emotional connections and shared pasts.
4. The Divided Self: Unresolved inner conflicts and habituated responses.

Triumphant Endings Need Catastrophic Middles

If you want to have a story that ends in triumph, then you need the protagonist to face enormous obstacles. If the obstacles are weak, then your story is weak.

For your story to be strong, you must have powerful countervailing forces in each of these areas. Forces that you set up in Act 1, and are on top all through Act 2.

Fear, but also Hope.

You need a modicum of hope in Act 1, otherwise the audience won’t invest in the story. They’ll protect themselves by disconnecting.

Once they’re in, then you can build the pressure.

To flip the usual narrative, if you want your story to say that choosing a career and individual self-expression is as essential as finding true love, you don’t do it by making the only potential love interest an unattractive emotional cadger with bad taste in clothes.

Make the contest of narrative and ideas genuine by making Mr or Ms Right as attractive as possible in mind, body, and spirit.

And this is not just about finding the right romantic partner. The concept – weak villain, weak hero – applies to all sorts of dilemmas – moral, political, and ethical.

Even if your romantic comedy ultimately argues that you can have your cake and eat it, that with the right partner, and the right partnership, you can have both, you still need to earn that ending by making both sides of the argument as convincing as possible.

And the biggest obstacle of all, the one that is there right from the beginning of your story, is the enemy within – the character’s unresolved inner conflicts.

The Enemy Within

Contemporary stories are often the narrative journey of a character from psychological, political and emotional repression to psychological, emotional and social freedom.

Those obstacles can be outside the character in society and institutions, or closer to home in family and other intimate relationships.

But the deepest obstacles are within. And the deepest of those internal obstacles are the constraints caused by trauma, because they can’t be easily overcome by logic and will-power, and they can’t easily be overcome in the midst of a crisis.

Strong internal obstacles – the enemy within – are ideal. Those internal obstacles are there from the beginning. They are powerful. They are very hard to understand, harder to face, and nigh on impossible to overcome.

And so they are often the final key to unlocking the protagonist’s ability to confront and deal with external threats and obstacles.

It is no coincidence that the climactic crisis of so many stories is the central character finally exposing their true, hidden self and risking even their psychic integrity to face and overcome the external forces that oppress them.

For your central character, the journey to becoming their true self and acting from free choice almost always includes facing and overcoming their traumatic wounds, which have trapped them in a prison of habituated protective responses that become self-destructive.

Endings are Meaning Too

The end of a story is not just the narrative ‘Ahhh!’

It’s also the conclusion of an argument about how we should live our lives: for ourselves, for others, and for our world.

And just as the journey of the character is made meaningful by the power of the forces they face and overcome along the way, so the power of your counterarguments makes your argument meaningful.

A Practical Checklist

Narrative:

• Do we genuinely believe the ending is impossible by the 2nd Act midpoint?
• Are obstacles present in Act 1 that foreshadow the climax’s needs?

Social/Psychological:

• What must change in people/systems—and are those forces actively winning until late?
• Are relationships complicit in maintaining the status quo?

Philosophical:

• What does your story argue about how to live?
• Where is the most persuasive counterargument—and does it almost win?
• Is it being carried by a character we trust and believe?

Internal:

• Can the protagonist succeed without confronting their wound? If yes, raise the bar.
• Is the penultimate confrontation also a self-confrontation?

You don’t get a strong ending by nobbling the opposition to your final argument, but by making people viscerally experience, through the story, the power and reality of the opposition.

Related Essays

• Three Key Questions
• Four Spheres of Conflict
• Externalise the Last Step
• Creating Meaning through Subplots