The Complicator: A New Way to Structure Your Script

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A guest column by Larry Benson (1)

The Complicator

One of the most useful principles to help a writer develop the conflict and structure of a story is what I call the Complicator.

The principle of a Complicator:

Any increase or decrease in the quantity and/or quality of the values of the main characters makes the conflict harder to resolve for all of them. More specifically, the Complicator is the second important value that contradicts or opposes the first main value of a leading character.

Let’s look at a simple example of how, because of a Complicator, a character can be caught in a terrible dilemma.Consider, for example, Ayn Rand’s short story “Good Copy” (2), which she discusses in her book The Art of Fiction. (3)  The “three act” plot structure of “Good Copy”strongly reflects the Complicator principle.

In act one of “Good Copy”, we meet Laury McGee, an ambitious young newspaper man who wants to advance his career in a town where nothing exciting ever happens. Laury consequently kidnaps Jinx Winford, a wild and beautiful heiress, in order to further his journalism career, which is his first important value.

In act two, while achieving success with his popular news scoops about the kidnapping, Laury is hit by a difficult complication: he falls in love with his kidnap victim. Laury’s second important value  ̶  Jinx  ̶  is now directly in conflict with his first value, his career.

In act three, Laury’s love value is pitted directly against his career value. This escalating conflict forces Laury in the climax to choose between these two values after Jinx is abducted by a real kidnapper. This conflict between Laury’s two main values reaches its worst clash and choice in the climax.

Nature of The Complicator

Let us look more thoroughly at the nature of a Complicator so you can more easily apply it to your own writing. Remember, the Complicator is that other important value that contradicts oropposes the first main value of a character. A writer needs to look carefully at the nature of the first value to find the Complicator that creates the hardest conflict for the first value.

The complicating second value should be intimately related to the first value. Notice that Jinx is central to both of Laury’s main values: his career and his romance. Also notice that the Complicator provides the worst possible problem for this specific character.Laury is depicted as an honest and good person, and it is these traits that make the Complicator harder for him. Laury, for example, would never do anything to harm Jinx.

This second value must also be the hardest complication re the particular conflict situation of this story. Laury loving Jinx is a huge threat to his journalism career. It is very difficult for a man to love a woman and to be her kidnapper. If Laury, for instance,has to do something to protect Jinx and is exposed as a fraud, his career will be destroyed and he could be jailed.

The introduction of a Complicator should make the pursuit of a character’s other values harder. That is: Any advance of one value is a setback for the opposed value. For example, each time Laury acts on his career value, he hurts his love value. Each time he acts on his love value, he threatens his career value.

Making it even harder for Laury is that his love for Jinx grows to become equal to or even greater than the value of his career. Love and career have now become Laury’s two highest values that he will eventually be “forced” to choose between.

Laury’s dilemma is further complicated in act three by the introduction of another element: Jinx is kidnapped by a real criminal and her life is threatened. Now Laury is caught in the worst, most high-stakes predicament and must decide which is more important: his career or Jinx’s life. This (ironic) complication of Jinx’s kidnapping forces Laury to make a final choice between the two values. Note that these two main values of Laury’s are mutually exclusive -- choosing one means losing the other.

A Complicator can also change a story from a purely physical clash into a conflict of spiritual values. Consider the situation of a man in love with two women. The man is happily living with his lover, but then his former wife, whom he still loves, returns to town. Now the man is torn between two high values. He is in a dilemma. But he is torn not only about which woman to physically be with, but also about his own ideals of loyalty, justice, and his future long-term happiness. Now the story is a conflict with moral values at issue  ̶  and is thus a much harder problem to resolve.

A Complicator thereby gives you a clear structure for your story: Act One, introduce Value One. Act Two, introduce Value Two and escalate the conflict between these to a crisis point. Act Three, the character faces the worst choice between these two Values and chooses one. You can see this structure in many classic films, such as On The Waterfront, Pretty Woman, and An Officer and a Gentleman.

A Complicator With a Decreasing Value

Let us look at another example of a Complicator, one where the complication comes from a decrease of a value, not an increase as in “Good Copy.”

In the film The Verdict, the protagonist (Frank Galvin) is an alcoholic lawyer struggling with a big case he wants to settle so he can gain an easy pay day. Then Galvin is given a potentially huge value: an expert witness that he believes will make it possible for him to achieve a greater value. That is, to win the case at trial and thus redeem himself by no longer being an alcoholic, ambulance-chasing lawyer. Galvin consequently chooses to go to trial rather than settle, thus committing himself irrevocably to that greater value goal that cannot be reversed.

But then the big Complicator hits him.

Galvin’s value of the star witness, which made him commit to the trial and which he believes is essential to him winning and redeeming himself, is suddenly taken away. Now Galvin is in the worst possible position: This alcoholic and unconfident lawyer must defend his client and win the trial without the help of his special witness. This escalation of the conflict Galvin faces is achieved by the removal of a value. The plot of The Verdict has the following pattern of escalation: the lessening of the values of the protagonist by decreasing their quality and number.

There is more to the Complicator than I have outlined here, but these ideas should help you to create a more dramatic and better structured story.

Actionable Writing Tip

When you are creating a story, especially one where you want a character to struggle with a high stakes internal conflict, you must first clearly introduce his main value. Then you must know what is the worst second value for such a character and the conflict situation he is in and introduce that. To do this you must know what important values are and how to complicate them to create the worst conflicts. Using a Complicator not only gives you a clear way to structure a story but also a method for creating a compelling one.

…

Larry Benson was the writer of an optioned screenplay adaptation of the novel Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo, and other screenplays.

1)  Edited by Scott McConnell from Larry Benson’s notes.

2) “Good Copy” was published in The Early Ayn Rand, NAL, 1984. See here 

3) Art of Fiction, Plume/Penguin, 2000. See here   

                               “Stories are ideas in action!”

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