Two Roles for the Mirror

As water reflects the face, so the heart reflects one person to another.

Proverbs 27:19 CEB

It seems strange to blog about The Case for Christ. Not only is it autobiographical—the original book penned by Lee Strobel—but I know his daughter, Alison, from my writing circle of friends. So, I’m about to pick apart a character who is very real (in the physical sense, not from Kathy-land,) and I know one of the players personally. Weird.

But, here goes. . .

There are several types of characters in a story. The Protagonist, the Antagonist, the Mentor, etc. I’d like to address the Mirror. This is the character who becomes the reflection for the protagonist, and helps them become who they were meant to be in the first place, thus helping them complete their arc.

It wasn’t until I saw The Case for Christ that I realized there are two functions of the Mirror.

#1 One is to show to the protagonist a positive part of himself that he didn’t realize was there, bringing out the best of his personality.

A good example of this is Megamind. The blue alien, Megamind, is falsely taught that to be bad is good, (see my post on Megamind, “How to Find a Supervillain’s Essence.”) He tries very hard to prove himself a supervillain to the citizens of Metro City. But deep down, he really is a nice guy. His love for the reporter, Roxanne, is the catalyst to him finding his true self. But first, he must take on a less antagonistic body form. So, he creates a formula for shape-shifting and becomes the mild-mannered, and yawningly uninteresting, Bernard, Roxanne’s coworker. While thinking she’s talking to Bernard on a date, she sees the real Megamind. She hears his heart and falls in love. Through Roxanne, Megamind finds his true self, his true-blue essence, and becomes better for it.

#2 The other role of the Mirror is to reflect the negative aspects of the protagonist’s personality. To do this, it’s helpful if the protagonist is an anti-hero. Think of the acerbic Charlie Alnutt in The African Queen, (or really, any Humphrey Bogart movie.)

In The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel is an anti-hero. He comes off as an arrogant journalist who feels he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no God. He teaches his daughter this, and he lives it with every fiber of his being. His wife, Leslie, had also started out this way, but through an event that nearly costs her daughter her life, Leslie begins to change her mind after witnessing a miracle. The family is in a restaurant where Alison nearly chokes on a gumball. A nurse, Alfie, is there and saves the little girl. Alfie is a Christian and refuses the parents’ thanks, claiming that Jesus is the one who saved their child. Alfie and her husband were going to a different restaurant that night, but she had a strong feeling they should go to this one.

Leslie begins to turn her back on the atheist platform on which she and Lee had built their lives, and she seeks out Alfie to learn more of this Jesus who saved her daughter.

Lee becomes more and more belligerent against the thought of a God of the universe. He emerges into the anti-hero as his refusal to listen to Leslie begins to rule his life. His marriage becomes strained. The more he converses with his wife, the more he sees the ugliness of his convictions, even though he’s not ready to admit it. The Mirror is doing her job by calling out the parts of Lee that God did not create.

Leslie begins to pray, “Take his heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh.” She prays this daily throughout the duration his journey.

Lee's Identity is hard-nosed journalist. Lee's Essence is what God had put in Him from the time he was knit in his mother's womb—lover of truth. 

Lee decides to settle the debate once and for all, and puts his journalistic tools to work to prove there couldn’t possibly be a God. The more research he does, the closer to the truth he comes. And, of course, God proves Himself worthy while on trial, and Lee must concede that Leslie and Alfie, and other believers he has encountered, are right. There is a God.

Had Leslie not challenged him to look within his depths to see the unyielding, arrogant man he was, Lee would have never embarked on the journey to dispel Christianity. And as a result, he never would have traded his heart of stone for a heart of flesh and come to know Christ as his personal Savior.

Do you know and love someone with a heart of stone? Be the Mirror to help them see what is really going on with them. Remember, a reflector doesn’t beat the reflectee over the head. It gently allows them to see what they already know about themselves.

“What is Your Center?”

This question was asked by North (Santa) of the mischievous Jack Frost in Rise of the Guardians. (Not to be confused with Legend of the Guardians, a movie about owls. I’m hoping I, myself, can get it straight after writing this article!) According to North, a person’s center is what makes them eligible as a guardian of children. He demonstrates to Jack what his own center is. He grabs a nesting doll and Jack opens it to reveal all the different facets that make up the man, North. With each doll, Santa is:

• Intimidating
• Jolly
• Mysterious
• Fearless
• Caring

In the last tiny doll, we see a baby with huge blue eyes. This, according to North, is Wonder. He dances around the room explaining that he has big eyes full of wonder. Eyes that only see the wonder in everything. Wonder is what he puts in children—what makes him a guardian.

You can see this scene by clicking here. 

The other guardians' centers are:

• Easter bunny – Hope
• Tooth fairy – Memories
• Sandman – Dreams 

Throughout the movie we watch as Jack discovers himself. He starts out as a mischievous ice imp who thinks a Snow Day is the best thing ever, and is jealous that children believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, Sandman, and the Tooth Fairy—even the evil Boogie Man—but not in him. They look right through him; he is invisible to them because they do not believe.

His journey is to find out who he is. Through a memory of his tooth, (okay, even I thought this was a stretch, but if you’ve seen the movie, this makes sense,) he realizes he was a human boy once. He loved his family, particularly his little sister. One day when they were skating on the ice, they hit a thin patch that starts to crack under her feet. She was petrified with fear. Jack encouraged his sister by telling her that getting off the ice would be just like playing hop scotch. This helped her to move and he was able to reach out with the stick he’d been playing with and fling her to safety. However, his selfless act put him in danger and he fell through the ice.

Fast-forward through the rest of the movie where Pitch, the Boogie Man, is turning all the children’s dreams into nightmares and snuffing out their belief in the guardians. We come to the scene where it finally dawns on Jack what his center is. Pitch has him, the guardians, and Jamie, the last boy on earth to believe in the guardians, boxed into an alley. As Pitch advances to finish off his mission, Jack assures Jamie that everything will be okay. Then he remembers how he had used a game for his sister to save her from falling through the ice. He creates a snowball in his hand and throws it in Pitch’s face mid-threat. This shocks Pitch and makes everyone start to laugh. Jack knows now that he is the guardian of Fun. He rallies the other children and they defeat Pitch with a good, old-fashioned snowball fight. Even the Boogey Man is no match for a child intent on having fun.

Writer Application

How can we find the “center” of our characters? If you search out the center, you will find who they are at the core of their being, and this in turn will help them discover what their own strengths are. You might argue that Jack’s center is heroism, but all of the guardians have that—yet each one has their own unique center.

The center of a character’s being can help you determine who they are. Michael Hague, story and script consultant, calls this their essence. To determine their essence, you must also determine their identity. On his Story Mastery website, (which I highly recommend,)  Hague has a list of questions to ask of your characters. Number twelve and thirteen on that list are:

What is the hero’s identity – what protective persona keeps the hero from facing and overcoming their emotional fear?

What is the hero’s essence or truth? Who would he be if his identity was stripped away? In other words, who does he have the potential to become, if he’s courageous enough?

Jack’s identity is his mischievousness. He’s been having “fun” for three hundred years, often at other’s expense. This is what he uses to protect his true essence.

In the end, we see Jack’s essence is his ability to protect the children by removing their fears through fun and games. This is who Jack Frost is. The guardian of Fun.

Once he embraces his true center, the children can see him now, and he is no longer alone.

Following Jack’s Lead…

Something Fun!

If you want to know what your center is, there’s a fun quiz at Quizilla. My center, according to the above quiz is…drumroll…

IMAGINATION

You are something else altogether! Your center is Imagination! This is a result that is very rare and difficult to have because it is a balance of all the other centers: Fun, Memories, Wonder, Hope, and Dreams. You cannot have Imagination without these combined! You are strange and mysterious, and very wise. Others don't always understand you or your motives, but in the end, you are usually right. You prefer to fight for the right cause, rather than the easiest and you defend the imaginations of children.

Pretty cool for a writer! Don’t you agree? To see what I look like as a guardian click here. I am beautiful!

How To Find a Supervillain’s Essence

At the recent American Christian Fiction Writers conference, I attended a class taught by Michael Hauge, THE screenplay guy who is famous for his lectures on story structure and his book, Writing Screenplays That Sell. Every novelist should learn how to write using his method, which is a linear version of the Hero’s Journey. You can read his articles and sign up for his newsletter here.

During the discussion on Character Arc, Hauge made this elusive concept even clearer in a way I had not heard before. He refers to the hero’s essence, which is only found in his inner journey.

Here are my rough notes on questions to ask about your character:

1. What is my hero’s longing? The deeply held desire that the hero is paying lip service to because he/she doesn’t have the courage to go after it. (Hauge refers to the hero as both male and female characters.)
2. What is my hero’s wound? The unhealed source of continuing pain. Often happens well before the story begins. It can be a single event or an ongoing situation.
3. What is my hero’s belief? When we’re wounded, we take on a belief of how the world works.
4. What is my hero’s fear? A situation that will lead to that wound again.
5. What is your hero’s identity? What is the false self the hero is presenting to the world to protect them from the wound? This is the emotional armor we create to protect us from the fear created by the wound that created the fear in the first place.
6. What is my hero’s essence? Who is he really if he could strip away the emotional armor? Who is the hero truly?

I just saw the movie, Megamind. Great movie! The dialogue is witty and the plot, while not believable, (because let’s face it, it’s a cartoon,) delivers a story that clearly develops the hero’s inner journey. It is text book in it’s display of the above questions.

Before you read further, I want to remind you that THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE! If you haven’t seen the movie, close your eyes and go a different website! Um…which might be difficult with your eyes closed. Oh well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Once you’ve seen the movie, come back. This is great stuff!

Let’s look at the questions above as they apply to the title character, Megamind.

What is Megamind’s longing?

In a prologue type of beginning, we see an adorable blue alien baby with a bulbous head being placed in a round space traveling device ala Kal-el who later became Superman. And reminiscent of Krypton, the blue child’s planet is also collapsing. As the glass door closes, his frantic parents tell him he is destined for gr—. And that’s when the door snaps shut and he is flung into space. Not having heard the word “greatness”, he wonders, “What am I destined for?”

We also see a more human looking baby in a similar craft. He’s much more self-assured, and we can see the beginnings of a rivalry. The blue child is excited when he sees earth drawing near and it seems his space craft is heading straight for a mansion. But, the humanoid child bumps him out of the way, and lands under the Christmas tree inside the opulent manor while the blue child lands in the yard of the Prison for the Criminally Gifted.

Through the next few years, the humanoid child is doted upon, while the blue child is taught right and wrong from the inmates, namely, good is bad and evil is good. The blue child is finally sent to school where the humanoid child has already won over his classmates and teacher. The blue child tries to do the same, but fails at ever attempt and gets into trouble. He finally decides that his prison family had it correct. He couldn’t be the good child, so he vowed to be the best bad child he could be.

And so, in answer to the question, his longing is to become the most notorious villain the world has ever seen.

What is Megamind’s wound?

As the two grow into adulthood, the humanoid child continues to be good, and has become Metro Man, a superhero who consistently saves the citizens of Metro City. They love him, to the point of ridiculousness, but then, who wouldn’t love an Elvis/Superman type with extraordinary good looks, good hair, and the ability to vanquish all your foes?

The blue child becomes Metro Man’s arch-nemesis, Megamind. He doesn’t have superpowers, but he has a phenomenal brain and can invent anything to further his dastardly cause—which is to destroy Metro Man. And why does he want to destroy him? Because of his wound. Metro Man will always be stronger, better looking, and. . .more popular.

What is Megamind’s belief?

Megamind is secure in his belief that he will never be good, because that would be bad. And since bad is good, that’s the only way he wants to be. Evil to the core.

What is Megamind’s fear?

Megamind finally accomplishes his purpose and fries Metro Man by intensified sunrays until he’s a mere skeleton. High on victory, he takes over Metro City, becoming its Over-Lord. But his victory is fleeting. With no Metro Man, he has nothing to do, and he is bored.

So, he devises a plan. He creates a superhero with whom he can spar as he did Metro Man. Problem is, he accidently shoots a doofus cameraman named Hal with the Metro Man’s superhero DNA. Hal becomes Tighten (originally Titan, but the doofus misspelled it,) quickly learns that it’s more fun to be evil than to be a superhero, and so he becomes the most dangerous supervillain Metro City has ever seen.

Hal, before he became Tighten, was the lovesick cameraman for a sassy reporter named Roxanne. Megamind also has a crush on Roxanne, and now he not only has a villain to deal with, he’s locked into a love triangle.

Roxanne, who was repulsed (and vaguely bored) with Megamind, begins to see him as a different person. . .literally. Megamind can change his appearance with the help of one of his inventions. After several dates with whom she thinks is Bernard, an unassuming, bookwormish guy, Roxanne begins to see the true essence of Megamind. When she kisses “Bernard” in a restaurant, Megamind’s disguise is revealed and she rejects him.

And this is his greatest fear that began in that classroom many years ago. Rejection.

What is Megamind’s identity?

I think we can agree that the hero’s identity is as a supervillain. Bad is good. It’s the emotional armor that he’s been carrying around ever since his school days.

What is Megamind’s essence?

However, if he could strip away his emotional armor, he would see himself as a genius inventor with a large capacity for love.

As Tighten continues his reign of terror, Megamind and Roxanne discover that Metro Man did not die in the burning sunray blast. He is, instead, hanging out at his secret. . .er. . .hangout. It seems that Metro Man faked his death because he has decided to shed his identity as a superhero and become what he always wanted to be—in essence, his. . .er. . .essence—a musician. He tells Megamind that he must stop Tighten and become the new hero. Roxanne agrees because she’s seen Megamind’s true essence of character when he was disguised as Bernard. But, Megamind refuses, believing the lie that his wound has caused—that he is condemned to be a supervillain for life. He is beyond redemption.

Dejected, he throws himself in prison. Nothing will change his mind that he could ever be good.

However, when he sees on the television that Tighten has captured Roxanne and she is in real danger, he escapes and faces Tighten—not as a supervillain, but as a superhero.

Alas, Tighten has all of the qualities of Metro Man since he was shot with a dose of the superhero’s DNA. Megamind’s brilliance is no match for Tighten’s strength. But wait! With one last effort, Megamind uses one of his inventions and changes Tighten back into Hal, but that doesn’t stop the falling building that is headed straight for him.

Suddenly, the building splits in two and we see Metro Man save the day once again. But this time, Megamind doesn’t. . .er. . .mind.

In the end, Metro Man continues to live in his true essence as a musician, and Megamind fulfills his parents’ prophesy that he is destined for greatness. He moves into his true essence as the much loved hero who vanquished the supervillain, Tighten.

In my class with Michael Hauge, he also taught about the romantic thread. He said, “The reason the romance character and the hero belong together, is because the romance character is the only one who sees beneath the hero’s identity and connects at the level of essence.”

We see this with Roxanne. She literally saw beneath the hero’s identity, especially easy since he didn’t even look like himself. She fell in love with whom she thought was Bernard, but it was Megamind who allowed her in to see his true essence.

This is the recipe for developing your Character’s inner journey. It worked with Megamind, and I’m sure if we watch for it, we’ll see it in other movies as well. Just remember Identity vs Essence. One is what the hero believes about himself, but the other is who he truly is.

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Megamind - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1001526/