Give Your Hero a Hero Speech
Let’s take a break today in this series on Villains and turn to the guy or girl opposite him: the Hero.
We’ve been saying in these posts that the Antagonist needs to be given a great Villain Speech, a moment when he or she gets to try to convince us that greed is good or that we can’t handle the truth.
Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, William Holden, and Ernest Borgnine marching to their Hero’s Moment
The hero needs her moment to shine too.
It’s our job as writers, yours and mine, to serve up some juicy, soul-defining, U.S. Prime dialogue for our protagonist to deliver.
Here’s one of my faves from the movie Fury, the Brad Pitt-starrer about a lone American tank driving deep into Nazi Germany in the closing weeks of WWII. The crisis comes when the tank hits a mine and becomes incapacitated just as a battalion of SS infantry is tramping down the road in its direction.
Do our heroes take off into the bushes and live to fight another day? Or do they make a stand, knowing it will cost them their lives?
Brad Pitt as the tank commander makes his own decision. “This is home,” he says, setting a palm on the turret of the tank. The other crewmen (Michael Pena, Jon Bernthal, Logan Lerman, Shia Labeouf) at first reluctantly, then with mounting spirit, join him. Each takes his last-stand position inside the tank, waiting for the SS, who are now only a couple of hundred yards away.
It’s a classic hero moment, the hour when the ultimate sacrifice is imminent, when ordinary men stand at the threshold of rendering themselves extraordinary.
The director/writer David Ayer gives the critical lines to Shia Laboeuf (who does a fantastic job delivering them) as Boyd “Bible” Swan, the tank’s gunner. Swan speaks quietly, in the steel intimacy of the tank’s interior, to his comrades, each of whom is isolated inside his own skull, awaiting the terminal moments of his life.
SHIA LEBOEUF
There’s a Bible verse I think about sometimes.
Many times. It goes, ‘And I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, Who shall I send, and who will go for us? Then
I said, Here am I. Send me.’
The sacrifice of one’s own life (or happiness or future prospects or whatever) for the good of others is the defining act of the hero.
Have you seen The Wild Bunch? I watch it once a year at least, just to remind myself what great storytelling and filmmaking is all about. The hero speech in that movie (screenplay by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah) is two words, delivered by Warren Oates as Lyle Gortch.
Here’s the setting:
The surviving members of the outlaw band known as the Wild Bunch (William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, and Warren Oates) have seen their companion Angel (Jaime Sanchez) captured and tortured by the evil generalissimo Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) and been unable to rescue him because of the overwhelming numbers of Mapache’s soldiers.
The Bunch pass the night in a debauch in the village where Mapache and his troops (and Angel, still in captivity) have laid up. Waking in the morning, William Holden, the leader of the Bunch, pays the poor young mother with whom he has passed the night.
Plainly he is thinking about Angel and how he and his companions have failed to deliver him.
Then something changes in Holden’s face.
Plainly he has come to some kind of resolve.
Note: not a word of dialogue has been spoken so far.
Holden crosses to the room in which Warren Oates and Ben Johnson are squabbling over payment with the woman they’ve spent the night with. Holden appears in the doorway. Ben and Warren look up. Warren sees the expression on Holden’s face. He squints, as if thinking to himself, Is Holden thinking what I think he’s thinking?
One more look convinces Warren.
His own expression hardens into the identical resolve.
WARREN OATES
Why not?
That’s it.
That’s the hero speech.
The three outlaws step outside into the sun, where the final member of the Bunch, Ernest Borgnine, sits in the dust with his back against the adobe wall of the house, whittling a stick.
Again without dialogue, the companions’ eyes meet each other. Borgnine barks a curt laugh, plunges his stick point-first into the dust, and rises eagerly to his feet.
The final scene of course is these four taking on Mapache’s hundreds and giving their lives in the process.
I’ve seen, in e-mails and in the Comments section of this blog, these posts referred to as “tips.”
I hate that.
What I hope these posts constitute are the collective tool kit of a writer. Today’s post is one I use in every book or movie I write, as are all the other posts in this series and all others.
It’s a box I check to help myself find my story.
“Do I have a hero’s speech? Have I given my protagonist a moment, even if it’s silent, when he or she gets to define the action they will take and explain the reasons why?”
If I don’t, alarm bells go off in my head.
“Take care of this, Steve. Figure it out and do it.”
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
I hate that too!
I have NEVER thought of your posts as tips. They are timeless, hard-earned truth we are all privileged to read. Thank you, thank you for posting this one. It is critical to keep the protagonist in perspective when studying the adversary. Kind of like jugging in our brains, isn’t it?
The dilemma, it seems:
Is this (whatever this is) an obligation or a convention?
You can’t install every trope (unless you’re writing a farce) but you’d better have every obligation.
We’re still waiting for Shawn to publish the “Book of Lists.”*
*that’s a joke, btw.
Todd Beamer, “Let’s Roll.”
bsn
Image: Author, in a garret above the waves, effortlessy braids passion and music and inspiration onto each page as if magic weaves perfect creation.
Real: Wordsmith, muscles of discipline and tongs of structure, genre, theme, and plot, sweating with resistance, distraction, and doubt, heats and hammers prose into shapes that may never be embraced.
Thanks for the tools.
I was thinking about “the hero’s speech” last weekend when we went to see “The Post.” Katharine Graham (Streep) is in her nightgown talking with her daughter, agonizing that “I never wanted any of this.” I leaned over to Jill and whispered, “This is the hero’s speech.” She leaned over and whispered back, “Shut up. I’m trying to watch this.”
I like how her moment of decision is sharp and short and unequivocal. Graham says to Bradlee: “Print it.” All the examples here are like that:
> Print it.
> Send me.
> Why not.
> Let’s roll.
And Shia’s delivery? Woof. I see that and believe he’s not faking anything.
I started writing in earnest last summer and finished a screenplay out of an attempted novel from nine or ten years ago. Then I started and finished another screenplay. Out of another attempted novel.
Now with a better understanding of what a hero’s speech is, I went back to each screenplay to make sure I had one. Or find a good place to write one. I was proud of myself to see that I had, indeed, written one. Short and sweet.
…more good stuff from the field manual…thanks, Steve.
“Tips” are free advice for a golf swing, given by an ameteur with a big ego. Your advice is routinely profound, given by a remarkable professional.
Such wisdom should be delivered in video lectures for thousands of dollars.
Great read. Very insightful. As a Marine, my reading and eating habit were limited to crayons until I got ahold of Gate of Fire. It literally changed my life. I’ve read it numerous times, and have collected over the years a handful of first ed, which are all over the house (my wife thinks I have a serious problem), and paper backs at the office, that I dog ear, and tab, and give to my Marines.
I’m curious which hero speech is “the” Hero speech in GoF? For me, there are so many! My personal favorite character is Dienekes, so his are stand outs to me. If I’m guessing though, I’d say “the” H.S. is that of Leonidas and Dienekes’ wife?
I’d love to hear your thoughts, or others thoughts on this subject. Very interesting, and another to reason to read it again, and get my GoF fix!
Semper Fidelis!
It is late and my mind has betrayed me… as soon as I clicked post it hit me! not the wife of Dienekes, but another…. May Alexandros break my nose and teach me a lesson; may Paraleia forgive me!
The Hero’s speech – brilliant advice as always. Thank you Steven Pressfield!
One question, should the hero’s speech coincide or be placed near the inciting incident? My understanding is no. For instance in The Fury that final hero’s speech is not until near the very end of the story.
My thought though is, if we include it sooner, rather than much later, the reader will have more of a commitment and emotional connection with the hero.
I’m currently working on a hero’s journey story at http://www.the-inspired.com with the inciting incident upcoming in the next few chapters.
Thanks again for your your website Steven! Greatly appreciated.
Goran
Thanks