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If George Gurdjieff (see previous post) had been a screenwriter, he might have organized his plots around the story’s “centre of gravity”. Gurdjieff used that term with reference to his lectures. There’s no point in wasting time with details, he said, if the essence of his subject isn’t understood. Let’s – as writers and readers – consider this approach.

So, what is a story’s centre of gravity?

In Star Wars, it was the Dark Force, a centre of gravity that most certainly guided George Lucas through the development of his intergalactic tale. It’s almost always a ‘dark force’, that is to say, an aspect of the protagonist that he or she will avoid like the plague. It’s what heroes fear most. It defines their limits. So, naturally, that’s where the story is headed.

A story should take the protagonist to that very place where she has no experience in defending herself. It’s a place of emptiness, exhaustion, and dread. It’s only at this dead-end where the hero opens up to influences beyond her narrow, mind-made reality…and finds a way out.

As writers, we need to discover this crucial story element as soon as possible in the writing process. As readers, we get seduced into the story by our expectation that the protagonist will crash and burn into this personal void.

This week’s blog from Eckhart Tolle says it perfectly: “Creativity arises out of the state of thoughtless presence in which you are much more awake than when you are engrossed in thinking.”

Consider Loretta (Cher) in Moonstruck. I keep coming back to the Act Two crisis in this most perfect of films. Loretta has struggled throughout Acts One and Two to suppress her romantic nature because she’s soon to marry a dullard. But after the most romantic evening of her life (with her fiance’s brother), she has run out of defenses. She has come to a full stop. As the camera zooms slowly into her face, we see exactly what Gurdjieff and Tolle are talking about. We see the ‘thoughtless presence’ that exists at the ‘centre of gravity’.

Act Three finds the hero functioning in tune with her deeper nature for the first time. As in fiction, so in life – we have to come to a complete stop before resuming a life that’s in tune with the wider world.  

Until we know what it takes to bring our hero to that complete stop, all other story details are meaningless.