3 Tips for Writing a Story That’s Better Than Its Flaws

Steven Schwartz (composer and/or lyricist for musicals as varied as Pocahontas, Wicked, The Prince of Egypt, and Enchanted) has said  musicals are about structure first and foremost.

If you get the structure right, then a multitude of sins can be forgiven.

This is certainly the case in The Greatest Showman, whose sins are multitudinous. Any selection of critics will tell you all its problems, from ignoring the problematic life Barnum actually lived, to its relatively simplistic structure and lack of historical substance.

But it works. If you’re judging by how leggy it was in theaters (very), how many copies of the album have sold (a million) or been streamed (a billion), something about The Greatest Showman connects with audiences. That something is the way Pasek and Paul’s songs tie theme to structure and pull the audience along for the ride.

3 Tips for Writing a Story That’s Better Than Its Flaws

Six of its eight songs (and three reprises) hit plot points, and hit the timing of those plot points to the minute in five of those six cases. A seventh song is the all-but-required Broadway “I want” song, which works in this case as a delineation of What the Protagonist Wants and What the Protagonist Needs. Theme is present in every song in some way. And, most interestingly, through the work of structure, Barnum is revealed as his own biggest antagonist.

Here are three reasons Greatest Showman still connected with audiences, and how you can go about writing a story that’s better than its flaws.

1. The Songs Hit Plot Points

In this 97-minute movie, more than half of which is music, the plot points come fast, often only minutes apart. To review its structure and songs:

Hook: A young P.T. Barnum dreams of running what will become the circus in the opening number “The Greatest Show.”
Inciting Event/Key Event: Barnum loses his desk job and decides to open a museum of curiosities. This is one of two plot points that isn’t set to music.
First Plot Point: Barnum decides to include living curiosities in his museum. “Come Alive” presents his call to action to the cast of the subplot.
First Pinch Point: While he’s obtained the Thing He Wants, his Ghost keeps him from being satisfied, leading him to court the bourgeoisie through Carlyle in “The Other Side.”
Midpoint: Barnum rejects the Thing He Needs to keep pursuing the Thing He Wants, underscored by Jenny Lind’s song choice, “Never Enough.”
Second Pinch Point: Barnum’s wife sings “Tightrope” while Barnum leaves New York for Lind’s opera tour and Carlyle is left in charge of the circus. His family and his business falter without him.
Third Plot Point: The tour is canceled, and the circus is set aflame. While isn’t set to music, it is bookended by “Tightrope” and Barnum’s “From Now On.”

2. Theme Permeates the Musical Numbers

In “A Million Dreams,” Barnum sings that “dreams for the world we’re gonna make” keep him awake at night. The Thing He Wants is to provide a stable life for his wife and children, one he never had as an impoverished boy. In the same song, his wife provides the counterpoint to the Thing He He Wants: the Thing He Needs. “Share your dreams with me. … Bring me along.” All he needs is his wife and family, but his Ghost leads him to crave more.

That more, though, is “never enough.” At the Midpoint, Barnum has the Thing He Wants and has not yet lost the Thing He Needs. Reaching that goal wasn’t enough. Stealing the stars from the night sky, towers of gold, fame and notoriety, nothing satisfies him. Barnum apparently misses a quiet lyric that Jenny Lind sings: “Darling, without you.” His truth is none of it is enough without the support of family, but Barnum is insatiable.

Finally, just after the Third Plot Point, Barnum’s found family, the cast of the circus, approach him at his lowest point and remind him what he’s done for them. Barnum then sings of all he’s accomplished, but claims they were “someone else’s dreams, pitfalls of the man I became.” He finally relearns that his family, both nuclear and found, is most important, and this truth permeates the remainder of the movie. He has, finally, understood the Thing He Needs.

3. Structure Reveals the True Antagonist

The critic and the mobs, who are set up as the external antagonists in The Greatest Showman, don’t work. They aren’t personal enough, don’t have clear motivations, and are hardly presented as people at all. Since they aren’t given songs of their own, we don’t see their motivations as we do other characters. Perhaps this was a choice necessitated by what they opposed (those who find this theater a spectacle would not join in the singing), but it was one that left me, even on a first viewing, disappointed.

However, structure shows that there are strong Pinch Points. Barnum, through his Ghost, has become the antagonist. His insecurities about his rich in-laws looking down on him lead him to invite Carlyle to join the circus to help him appeal to the upper classes. While “The Other Side” is a fun, almost seducing song, its location at a pinch point shows that this is Barnum unable to accept the Thing He Needs. He’s about to become the antagonist.

Since he has by the First Pinch Point received the basis of the Thing He Wants, and never lost the Thing He Needs, the middle of the story switches its focus slightly from Barnum to the acts he curates. The love story is played out (“Rewrite the Stars”); “curiosities” who were uncomfortable with who they were come out of their shell (“This Is Me”). Within the sub-world Barnum creates, others are free to explore the theme of found family and acceptance.

Here, Barnum is both its creator and its greatest threat. This is most clear in “Tightrope,” which marks the Second Pinch Point. Barnum has decided to take the singer Jenny Lind on a national tour that will cost him a fortune before it turns a profit, leaving Carlyle in charge of the circus, and his wife and daughters alone. No one wants him to go. The contrast between the circus failing without him and Barnum’s courting the social elite plays over the soundtrack of his wife reminding him that he has given up What He Needs.

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Despite its flaws, The Greatest Showman provides an excellent example of how musicals use songs to hold together the structure, how to follow a Cinderella arc, and how a well-structured story can provide clues about what’s going on beneath its surface.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What do think is the single most important element in a story that works despite its flaws? Tell me in the comments!

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