The war story is about primal fear, security courage and the will to or not to commitment not to take life or in order to defend intellectual constructs.

         _ Shawn Coyne

The War Story is an arch-plot (Hero’s Journey) or mini-plot (multiple characters) external genre that culminates in the big battle event in which the combatants fight righteously and prevail or crumble and die in disgrace.

Global Value Arrow: Honor-Victory to Disgrace-Defeat

         Positive: Victor with Honor

            Defeat with Honor

         Neutral: ---

   Defeat with Dishonor

         Negative: Dishonorable Defeat Presented as Honorable

War stories, like Society stories, use tightly confined plot trajectories to represent global power struggles. Even the epic way stories focus on deeply personal and specific human conflict.

Controlling Idea:

- Positive: War’s meaning emerges from the nobility of the love and self-sacrifice soldiers for each another.

- Negative: War lacks meaning when leaders are corrupt and dishonor soldier’s sacrifice on the battlefield.

Core Emotion: Excitement, Fear, Intrigue

People choose war stories to experience courage and selflessness in the face of intense fear, even without actual danger

Obligatory Scenes

- An Inciting Attack

- Protagonists deny responsibility to respond

- Forced to respond, the protagonists lash out according to their positions on the power hierarchy

- Each character learns what their antagonist’s object of desire is

- Protagonist’s initial strategy to outmaneuver antagonist fails

- Protagonist’s, realizing they must change their approach to attain a measure of victory, undergo an All-is-Lost moment

- the Big Battle scene: the core event of the War story, and what the reader is waiting for. This is the moment when the protagonist’s gifts are expressed or destroyed

- The protagonists are rewarded with at least one level of satisfaction (extrapersonal, intrapersonal, or intrapersonal) for their sacrifice

Conventions

- One central character with offshoot characters that embody a multitude of that character’s personality traits (Achillies in The Iliad, Dienekes in Gates of Fire)

- Big Canvas. Either a wide-scope external settling (War and Peace) or the internal landscape (Saving Private Ryan or Platoon)

- Overwhelming Odds … the protagonists are substantially outnumbered

- A clear “Point of No Return” moment, when the combatants accept the inevitability of death

- The sacrifice for brotherhood moment. One protagonist sacrifices himself for the good of his fellow soldiers

War Subgenres

- Pro War (Core Value: Victory/Defeat): The Longest Day, Inglorious Bastards

- Anti-War (Core Values: Victory/Defeat): The Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front, Platoon

- Brotherhood (Core Value: Honor/Disgrace): Gates of Fire, The Deer Hunter

Notes on the Controlling Idea of War Story:

         The controlling idea in Gates of Fire was that one character–the protagonist, and unique throughout the whole book–is troubled by the idea that he knows what fear is, but he doesn’t know what the opposite of fear is. How do you overcome it? Then finally in the end, the answer is: the opposite of fear is love.

         In this case: the love for your fellow warriors in your phalanx. Having that controlling idea determines who the antagonist is (the Persians in this case). The Persians don’t have that love. That theme, that controlling idea, guides the reader all the way through the story.

         Gates of Fire is an exploration of the nature of courage. Those 300 Spartans knew they were giving their lives. It’s one thing to fight a war and die. It’s another to send your allies back to safety while you go forward knowing you’re going to die for a greater cause.

         Casablanca has a similar theme. It’s better to sacrifice yourself for the good of the group than to selfishly cling to life, or cling to anything.

         That’s why in Gates of Fire, you have two diametrically opposed kings, Leonidas and Xerxes, a good king and a bad king; the one who sacrifices his life for the good of all and the other who just wants more and more and more for himself.

         Theme is another way of saying “universal truth,” and I say that because we as human beings because we change our behavior based on stories. Gates of Fire is a story based not only based about courage, but understanding that the self is best expressed in the larger community of other selves.

         In order for us to truly understand that–and I think that’s a universal truth–there is no better feeling than being a member of a football team, win or lose; than being a husband or a wife in a magical moment together when you have a child; being a child in a family; feeling larger than yourself when you are among sympatico people. This is why people come together.

         One of the reasons Gates of Fire is such a wonderful story is that it supports that universal truth.

         Now, there is no way Steven Pressfield is thinking of this when he’s writing the book. This is the magic of the muse. This is the magic of the unconscious. He’s writing the story because he wants to tell that climatic moment when those guys fought in the battle, but underneath that is the universal truth that love, and being part of something larger than purely yourself, is more important than selfish acquisition of more and more and more just for yourself.