“Life’s Stories”
This may be the single best article I’ve read in years. Written by The Atlantic senior editor Julie Beck and recommended by some wonderful GITS reader who has gotten lost in my transition in email servers (if you read this, please email me so I can give you a heart hat tip), I was tempted to do a multi-part series based on its content. Instead I’m going to focus on just one of many fascinating ideas presented in the piece. First some setup:
In Paul Murray’s novel Skippy Dies, there’s a point where the main character, Howard, has an existential crisis.“‘It’s just not how I expected my life would be,’” he says.
“‘What did you expect?’” a friend responds.
“Howard ponders this. ‘I suppose — this sounds stupid, but I suppose I thought there’d be more of a narrative arc.’”
But it’s not stupid at all. Though perhaps the facts of someone’s life, presented end to end, wouldn’t much resemble a narrative to the outside observer, the way people choose to tell the stories of their lives, to others and — crucially — to themselves, almost always does have a narrative arc. In telling the story of how you became who you are, and of who you’re on your way to becoming, the story itself becomes a part of who you are.
“Life stories do not simply reflect personality. They are personality, or more accurately, they are important parts of personality, along with other parts, like dispositional traits, goals, and values,” writes Dan McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, along with Erika Manczak, in a chapter for the APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology.
In the realm of narrative psychology, a person’s life story is not a Wikipedia biography of the facts and events of a life, but rather the way a person integrates those facts and events internally — picks them apart and weaves them back together to make meaning. This narrative becomes a form of identity, in which the things someone chooses to include in the story, and the way she tells it, can both reflect and shape who she is. A life story doesn’t just say what happened, it says why it was important, what it means for who the person is, for who they’ll become, and for what happens next.
As storytellers, it behooves us try to understand how our audience use stories in their own lives. And that’s what this article delves into in great depth. But here’s the jewel I want to zero in on:
McAdams conceives of this development as the layering of three aspects of the self. Pretty much from birth, people are “actors.” They have personality traits, they interact with the world, they have roles to play — daughter, sister, the neighbor’s new baby that cries all night and keeps you up. When they get old enough to have goals, they become “agents,” too — still playing their roles and interacting with the world, but making decisions with the hopes of producing desired outcomes. And the final layer is “author,” when people begin to bundle ideas about the future with experiences from the past and present to form a narrative self.
See that, my friends? Another expression of three act structure!
Act One — Protagonist as Actor. Playing roles learned in their lives before FADE IN.
Act Two — Protagonist as Agent. Leaving the Old World and entering the New World, their gauzy Want becomes a Conscious Goal, and the Protagonist becomes an active agent in pursuing that goal.
Act Three — Protagonist as Author. Getting to know and embracing their True Self, the Protagonist writes the ending chapter of their journey as exhibited in the Story.
Actor. Agent. Author. Only works for a story in which a Protagonist has a positive transformation arc… but hello! That happens in a majority of Hollywood movies.
I bet I could use this take and apply it to dozens of movies. Let me take just one: Tootsie.
Act One: Michael Dorsey is literally an actor. A perfectionist at his craft which has created a scenario in which no one will hire him because he is a pain in the ass to work with. In his personal life, he exhibits a significant flaw: An instinct toward chauvinistic behavior viewing women as objects of desire (if you need proof of this, track Michael’s behavior during his birthday party).
Plot Point: Michael Dorsey becomes Dorothy Michaels and ‘she’ lands a job as an actress on a daytime drama.
Act Two: Michael has two goals: To make money which he will do by keeping his job on the soap. And eventually to be with Julie (Jessica Lange), his co-star. Here while still being an actor, he evolves into Agent, making choices and taking action to move him toward his goals.
Plot Point: Julie mistakes Dorothy’s interest in her as a lesbian thing, which pushes Julie away from Michael’s intentions as a male suitor. And Dorothy becomes so popular, she is forced into a two-year contract which means Michael will have to continue his double life for a long time.
Act Three: How to solve his dilemmas? When the soap is forced to shoot an episode live, Dorothy literally rewrites the script on the fly — creating her own narrative — which reveals that she is a he.
In this scene, Michael Dorsey becomes Author, writing a new narrative for his character: “I’m proud and strong and lucky enough to be the woman that was the best part of my manhood. The best part of myself.” A confession directed at Julie. Leading to this denouement:
Booyah, ladies and gentlemen! We have yet another lens through which to look at Three Act Structure and the Protagonist’s transformation: Actor. Agent. Author.
And that, my friends, is just one of the nuggets from this article in The Atlantic. For the rest, go here. Some seriously awesome reading!