Today's Tip for Longform Writers: Want and Obstacle
The thing I think about as I write my third book.
There's something I've been working on in my forthcoming book that's inspired by Aaron Sorkin.
He talks in his Masterclass about the driving force behind his screenplays:
Want and Obstacle.
His hero must want something. His hero must be denied that something by an almost all-powerful obstacle.
The goal of his scripts is for the hero to figure out how to overcome the obstacle and get what she wants.
By the end of the movie the hero not only has what she wants but has learned something about herself, too.
Want and obstacle is another way to say conflict and resolution, which is the language I use and have for some 25 years, which means want and obstacle is applicable to far more than just a feature-film script.
It's applicable to the memoir you may be penning, the historical work of narrative nonfiction, the television pilot, the personal essay, the magazine feature, the serialized podcast: They all need a want and they all need an obstacle.
How can you identify them right now?
Well, there are large wants and small wants, large obstacles and small obstacles.
They play out across grand sweeps of narrative and are also found within individual paragraphs of the essays or stories you've written or individual scenes of the script you're shaping.
They're everywhere. I noticed three wants and obstacles Tuesday in just the 600 words I wrote of my forthcoming book.
Reflect for a second on a want and an obstacle in a story you're writing, or one you've just finished.
Write down what that want was and how the protagonist was temporarily denied it.
Now you're starting to get the hang of it.
If you're still unsure, though, let me help you.
InYou Have to be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live, which this week came out in paperback, the biggest of wants is the SCLC's desire for civil rights legislation. The biggest of obstacles is trying to obtain that legislation via a campaign in Birmingham whose leaders were literally out to kill King and other civil rights leaders.
There were wants within that: King's desire, say, for the Kennedy brothers in D.C. to see civil rights the way he did. Obstacles, too: Bobby Kennedy's refusal to inhabit King's shoes, Bobby's outright disdain even for King.
There were wants within that want: King's desire for his SCLC to stay together despite Bobby Kennedy's best efforts to tear the group apart.
Obstacles within that obstacle: The internal bickering of the SCLC and the egos on full display when the disdain from Bobby Kennedy intensified.
That Bobby Kennedy would ultimately become King's advocate is one of the biggest want fulfillments of the book.
My point is, once you start to think about them, wants and obstacles appear everywhere.
Applying them in your work creates narrative momentum—narrative cohesion, too.
The goal is to get you writing stories as compelling as Aaron Sorkin's.