Initial Story Driver of "The Empire Strikes Back - Enemies and Allies"

[RailwayAdventurer]

Ever since @jhull posted the fantastic analyses for the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, I’ve been wondering what is the initial Story Driver is for the “Enemies and Allies” storyform.

In the “Enemies and Allies” storyform for the Empire Strikes Back, “Darth functions as Protagonist, pursuing Luke in an effort to manipulate the boy into joining the Dark Side (Overall Story Throughline of PSYCHOLOGY and Overall Story Goal of BEING). He will join us, or die explains the balance of conflict between the Goal and Consequence.”

In another article (sourced below), Jim explains, "Identifying the objective Story Goal and Consequence of narrative consists of three steps:

1. Identify the initial inequity
2. Determine what will resolve that inequity
3. Set the type of Objective Story Goal that generates that resolution"

Also, @mlucas had this to say about the importance of determining the initial Story Driver when figuring out the Story Goal:

@mlucas

That opening driver sets up an inequity, which in turn sets up the Story Goal within the storymind as an attempt to resolve that inequity. There will be forces of initiative/pursuit and reticence/prevent. The former side with “we need to attempt this thing to fix this problem” while the latter side with leaving things as-is and preventing that attempt.

So I’m curious what action in the “Enemies and Allies” storyform causes Vader to start trying to get Luke to join the empire. What do you think?

(P.S. I was originally just going to ask Jim this through Subtext, but I thought everyone in the community could benefit from this. Plus, I wouldn’t want to slow him down in implementing the upcoming Players feature in Subtext. I hope I’m not releasing any storyform information that you would prefer to remain exclusive to Subtext users, Jim. )

Sources: http://discuss.dramatica.com/t/pursue-mc-versus-prevent-mc/
https://narrativefirst.com/articles/identifying-the-goal-and-consequence-of-a-complete-story
https://narrativefirst.com/blog/the-story-structure-of-the-original-star-wars-trilogy

[mlucas]

Great question. I think the answer is actually pretty simple – the initial driver is the Empire’s discovery that Luke & the rebels are on Hoth. (This action includes all the probe droid stuff. It forces the rebels to decide to evacuate Hoth “it’s a good bet the Empire knows we’re here”. And forces Vader to override his subordinates decision and decide that Hoth is the place: “That’s it. The Rebels are there.”, etc.)

Prior to that, yes Vader and the Empire are pursuing Luke and the rebels, but they don’t know where they are (a balanced inequity). So it’s similar to The Matrix where there’s agents and rebels fighting them but neither side is making any ground until the decision that Neo is the One (which in that case was a decision that took some analysis – they’d been watching Neo for a while – rather than just a discovery of where he was).

I feel like the concept of Desirability (Desire x Ability) is helpful here – Vader wants to convert Luke to the dark side but has no ability to do so until he knows where he is (so Desirability is zero). Once the probe droid finds the rebels on Hoth, Ability is no longer zero.

[mlucas]

Just realized I didn’t address how that sets up the Goal of turning Luke to the dark side. It’s trickier – not as clear cut as Captain America: Civil War. You might think the inequity kicked off by the Empire’s discovery sets up a Goal for Luke and the rebels to escape.

But to me, escaping is a lot more like reticence – they want to return everything to the status quo of them being in hiding and the Empire hunting them. They’re not looking to achieve anything – in the entire movie no one even once makes mention of “striking a blow” or doing any damage to the Empire or doing anything to help the rebels’ cause besides escaping.

Vader’s the real force of initiative. He’s the one trying to change the status quo. The storymind is saying “ok, things are no longer in balance here, let’s try to resolve that by making Luke into Vader’s apprentice”.

(Again, you can draw parallels to The Matrix – Vader is Morpheus, trying to convert Luke (Neo) in order to change the balance of the war.)

That’s my understanding anyway, hopefully Jim will chime in, in case I’m not seeing it properly…

[RailwayAdventurer]

Absolutely amazing response! I wish I had more to say about it, but I’m still speechless, even five days later. Thanks for such a great answer, and for covering it so thoroughly.

[jhull]

@mlucas

That’s my understanding anyway, hopefully Jim will chime in, in case I’m not seeing it properly…

What would I add? It’s absolutely brilliant.

[mlucas]

OMG! I just realized how well “Do or do not, there is no try” fits the IC (Yoda) Focus/Direction of Effect/Cause. “Cause something to happen, or don’t. Trying on its own has no Effect.”

https://app.narrativefirst.com/storyforms/the-empire-strikes-back-enemies-and-allies

(Of course it’s also a multi-appreciation moment with the RS Concern of Doing and Focus of Expectation, especially once Luke fails to raise the X-Wing and Yoda makes it look easy.)