Making False Goals

Sometimes storytellers get so excited about getting to the end, the gooey center gets forgotten.  And really, who doesn’t love the gooey center?   A lot happens in the heart of that murky swamp of act two that gets pushed aside.  We know how to start, and we certainly know how to end (you know, WITH EXPLOSIONS) but the weird, swirly middle doesn’t get the same love and attention.  So what should you be doing in the murky swamp?  One thing the brilliant Matt Bird emphasizes in his Secrets of Story (a book so good I returned my library copy and bought my own) is that your protagonist should “pursue a false or shortsighted goal for the first half of your story.” (pg 107) Since this topic doesn’t get enough dedicated pages, let’s talk about false goals.

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For example, Frodo thinks he’s going to drop the Ring off with ol’ Elrond and go home.  Sorry, buddy.  In Avatar: the Last Airbender Zuko wants to win his honor back by kidnapping and imprisoning the Avatar.  Spoiler alert: kidnapping is a terrible way to get your honor back.  Both have a larger, character-driven goal we root for (i.e. ensuring peace in the Shire/ becoming an honorable man) and they initially choose the “easier” route to get there.  The story makes them change their tactics and get a new goal, and the story’s stakes rise dramatically when they do it.
You probably already have a false goal in your story without consciously thinking about it.  All I’m asking you to do is bring it into your consciousness, because not doing it right can undermine your big finish.  

If you still aren’t sure what a false goal is, try the animated film, Chicken Little.  I have never seen a film so obsessed with it’s false goal.  Here’s the setup: Something falls on Chicken Little’s head and he immediately incites panic in his town.  His father doesn’t listen to him or believe him and so the father tells everyone an acorn fell on his son’s head.  Chicken Little’s false goal is to get his father to be proud of him by winning the big baseball game, but his friend Abby (repeatedly and annoyingly) insists that no baseball game will fix the real problem (thank you for making it explicit, American animation practices, in case we might miss anything).  Importantly, Chicken Little wins the game.  He achieves his false goal.  So does Frodo.  But of course Abby is right, and shortly after his great victory, chaos ensues.  

​Having a character achieve their false goal can be more powerful than having them fail to achieve it.  It makes your characters feel more human.  In Star Wars, Luke takes on a simple rescue mission.  It gets him off the planet he hates and into the adventure he craves.  But once Luke delivers his princess, the real problems begin.  He may have chosen the farm life if he’d known he would have to fly into the heart of the Death Star.  But when the stakes are raised, Luke and the audience are already in it.  We’ll see it through to triumph or tragedy.  
You can see from these examples how powerful and malleable the false goal can be in a story.  So don’t sleep walk right past it!  Be vigilant at every point in your story and bend it to your will.  The audience will be putty in your hands.

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