In last week’s post I linked to several teaching exercises I’ve developed and always use in my workshops, and which are especially helpful to jump start a new book or script:
The Master List, Index Cards & Story Grid, Collage Book, The Master Lists Notebook.
To expand on the uses of a Master List, I want to stress that this method can be a lifesaver, not just at the beginning of a project, but all the way through your writing process.
A Master List is a specific, personalized Top Ten list.
I am pretty sure there is no story problem that cannot be solved by stopping the hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth, breathing a bit, and then sitting calmly down to make a list of examples of the way great storytellers (YOUR favorite storytellers) have dealt with the particular problem that you are tearing your hair out and grinding your teeth over.
(And of course, ten is just a suggestion! You can list as many as you want, but I always suggest a minimum of ten to activate your creative brain.)
Can’t figure out a great opening? List your Top Ten favorite or most striking opening images.
Your villain isn’t villainous enough? Make a Top Ten Villains list, and take some time to really break down why those baddies turn you on.
Your story isn’t hot enough? Have some real fun and list your top ten steamiest sex scenes – and/or best kisses.
Not enough suspense? List your top ten most thrilling suspense scenes.
Top Ten Character Introductions.
Top Ten Climaxes (Act & Sequence climaxes, I mean!).
Top Ten Hero/ines.
Top Ten Into the Special World scenes.
Top Ten Image Systems.
Are you starting to get how incredibly useful - and fun – this can be?
As an example, let’s use a Master List to take a look at a crucially important character archetype that I don’t think I’ve posted about here yet:
THE MENTOR
Not all books/scripts have distinct mentors— it’s not an absolute requirement of a great story. But—
Almost all stories have at least some type of mentor scene—
—even if it’s just a few moments of some wise advice from a friend, parent, neighbor, child— anyone, really!
And in some stories the Mentor is not only a major character, but actually drives most of the action of Act I and Act II, as we see in Dead Poet’s Society, Whiplash, The Matrix, Karate Kid.
This character archetype is named for the original mentor—Mentor— in Homer’s The Odyssey. Of course that Mentor had a little more than human wisdom, as it was really the goddess Athena taking Mentor’s form who guided Odysseus and his son Telemachus at critical junctions in that ancient story. This is good dramatic history to know, as we often see the same god/desslike wisdom and nearly supernatural - or overtly supernatural - power in more modern versions of the mentor.
Athena Appearing to Odysseus to Reveal the Island of Ithaca by Giuseppe Bottani
I'm a particular fan of the Mentor Story Pattern, so I thought I'd make a list and see why this character so appeals to me.
If you want to play along, just stop right here and try it –
Take a minute to brainstorm ten great - or at least memorable - Mentor characters.
That is, great according to YOU. Oh, all right, you can do five now, and get down to some juicier ones later. You can even throw in some not so classic ones, for contrast.
My list:
Hannibal Lecter (but you probably suspected that!)
Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid
Glinda the Good
Morpheus the Bad
Yoda
Obi-Wan Kenobi
Yoda, Kenobi, and Dumbledore’s granddaddy: Merlin
Mary Poppins
The Faun in Pan’s Labyrinth
Johnny in Dirty Dancing
Haymitch in The Hunger Games
Coach Taylor & Tami Taylor in Friday Night Lights
And that’s already more than ten, but I’ll also throw in Baba Yaga, that most feared witch of Russian folktales, a pre-Lecter villainess who often served up great wisdom to her protégés… if she didn’t eat them first.
And yes, yes, I know, Mr. Miyagi in the original Karate Kid.
It’s an interesting thing to look at mentors in terms of what they bring to the story structurally, as well as just as individual characters. Of course everyone on my list is quirky, outrageous or frankly off the charts (except Johnny, but it’s that dance thing…). And yes, a couple of my choices reflect that I am partial to the hot mentor type. But I also love some of them for how they enhance the stories structurally.
As you’ve probably noticed, I love to use Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games as a teaching example. Just one of the many, many things this book and film do well is develop a unique and memorable mentor character.
In The Hunger Games, Haymitch is a past (distant past) winner of the games who is supposed to guide the two sacrifices from his province to victory in the Games (think Survivor meets The Lottery meets Lord of the Flies). But in the book, we meet Haymitch as he falls off a stage, stumbling drunk, and vomits all over himself on national TV. He has a reputation as a complete buffoon. Not a great omen for his protégés, right? But doesn’t that ratchet up the suspense incredibly? How are Our Heroes Katniss and Peeta supposed to survive the Games with only this loser to rely on?
But – Katniss and Peeta do their damndest to get the most information they can out of Haymitch, and the relationship begins to develop, first as Haymitch realizes he might have a couple of survivors on his hands, and then with Katniss learning at key points that she can actually rely on Haymitch’s sponsorship and guidance – they develop an almost psychic bond, and Katniss comes to understand through her own growing success in the games exactly what would have turned Haymitch into an alcoholic: she can see herself going down exactly the same road if she survives/wins. In the end, Haymitch is the first one she runs to embrace, showing how deep the relationship has become.
The Harry Potter series is a wonderful example of how can give your story a fairy tale mysticism and resonance by creating Three Mentors (also sometimes called supernatural allies) in the pattern of the Three Witches or Three Fairy Godmothers - one of the world’s most powerful and enduring archetypes. In the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid are fantastically unique characters on their own, but as a trinity, they are mythic. Of course, the classic novel A Wrinkle In Time does the same with Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which - direct descendants of the three Fates, Moerae, Norns – all themselves derivative of the Triple Goddess.
Full story breakdown of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Stealing Hollywood
And speaking of fairy godmothers… helpful as she is in a pinch, Glinda is less a mentor to Dorothy than an anima figure, a personification of the pure strength and goodness of Dorothy’s feminine Self. For all Billie Burke’s campiness, it’s still one of the most powerfully transcendent images of the feminine ever put on film. And please - give me a mentor who bestows ruby slippers!
The Wizard of Oz full story breakdown in Stealing Hollywood
Yoda, of course, and Ben Kenobi, also bring depth to the mentor roles in the Star Wars saga by their utter contrast in characters and similarity in strength and spiritual power. And of course the feisty Zen charm of Yoda, the utter surprise of this tiny indomitable creature when he harrumphed his way onto the world stage, earned him a place on the Top Ten Mentors Of All Time list.
Both of these are direct descendents of Merlin, as are Dumbledore and Gandalf. I especially love T.H. White’s depiction of that classic wizard/mentor in The Once and Future King.
Hannibal Lecter is a delicious (sorry) take on the mentor character – a cannibalistic sociopath who turns out to be a damn fine teacher.
Besides being a delight for the pure badass sexual charge of Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, The Matrix is a great film to look at for a structure you often find in a mentor story:
The mentor drives the action for a good long time, and when the protégé, in this case Neo, finally takes over the story to save his own mentor, we feel that action as a huge and exhilarating character growth.
Full story breakdown of The Matrix in Stealing Hollywood
In Pan’s Labyrinth, the Faun is a unique take on a mentor not just for that amazing creature created by the filmmakers, but also because we really don’t know if the young heroine should be trusting this bizarre and erratic being who is her guide into the underworld. This unease creates a lot of suspense and dread in this very emotional film.
More on Pan’s Labyrinth and fairy tale structure in Stealing Hollywood
While not as fantastical as the others on my list, Johnny from Dirty Dancing is a memorable mentor because he really is a great teacher, from a dancer’s perspective, and personally I particularly like the Mentor/Lover Combination, the forbidden quality of that dynamic. That kind of story generally has a bittersweet end, and Dirty Dancing delivers the poignancy.
Back to Merlin, again – I love his own backstory (or front story, as he lives life backward…) with Nimue, a protégé/lover/destroyer to him.
Mary Poppins is a Mysterious Stranger character – the mentor who pops in to fix a situation (in this case a family), and pops out again. She’s everybody’s ideal of a teacher, who literally opens magical doors. As much as I love the trippy movie, the PL Travers books are must-reads for the sheer prickliness of Mary P. – Julie Andrews she is not, but the adventures are all the more fantastical and bizarre.
Now, remember – not all stories have mentors, it’s not a requirement of a great story. I should also note that often instead of a mentor you will see another classic character: The Expert From Afar. Both Hooper and Quint in Jaws fall into this category, in my opinion (as well as being Sheriff Brody’s chief Allies). They’re great characters, but they don’t take on the deeply personal and often spiritual dimension of teacher that a true mentor character tends to have.
The Expert From Afar, done badly, can take a turn into “Morris The Explainer” – a character (to compound the cliché, this is often a professor) who appears in one scene to take an exposition dump (okay, REALLY sorry, but if you think of it that way it might discourage you from ever doing it…) and promptly disappears into oblivion.
I really should do a list of bad examples for contrast, but maybe you all can just take care of that for me in the comments (she says hopefully…)
And there’s another character that shows up sometimes that I’ll call the Oracle, or Sibyl – like the Oracle in The Matrix; or the little Indian woman in Slumdog Millionaire, who tells Jamal to “Win it for India” before the last round of the game; or the three witches with their fateful prophecies in Macbeth and the Slav Witch in Northman; or Galadriel in Lord of the Rings. This is not to my mind the same as a Mentor, who takes on the protégé as a much longer commitment (I think the Oracle comes back to do something more like that in the Matrix sequels, but I wouldn’t swear to it…). But it’s a variation that can have a lot of dramatic power, done well. This character often appears in Act II: Part 2, or Act III, in a scene Joseph Campbell called: The Visit to the Goddess.
Okay, that’s a lot! But hopefully this all has given you a good sense of how you can use the Master List yourself, to brainstorm characters and scenes for your own book or script.
So how about it? Give us a few examples and why you love your favorites. Or tell us about one of your own mentor characters, and how they came to be!
—Alex
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