So here’s what the normal, relatable pain of each stage looks like:
Mid-life: “Is that all there is?” The main character is no longer officially a “young” adult, and their life seems stagnant. Maybe they’re married, with kids, a mortgage, and a decent job, but that doesn’t fulfill or excite them anymore. They crave meaning, stimulation, adventure. Or maybe they’ve reached mid-life, and life hasn’t turned out how they wanted it to. They lack the things one is supposed to have by this point.
Separation: The main character has just gone through, or is now going through, a break-up, and finds themselves, in the script’s first act, single and alone. So there’s the grieving. The self-pity. The sense of being unable to live without the person who dumped them. The fear and loathing about being single. Or maybe the freedom and excitement of being single, but it’s colored by pain. Always, it’s about pain. They’re on the rebound. They’re raw. They’re vulnerable.
Death: Similar to “Separation,” this can be about losing someone and not being able to easily get over it. Or it could be about one’s own approaching mortality.
Addiction: Maybe this isn’t as universal as the other four, but most of us have seen addiction and had some form of it, even if it’s not super serious. In the movie version, it’s serious enough to be the main problem of their life.
Adolescence: “Nobody understands me or loves me.” These movies are about the pain of not belonging, and not being able to be popular, especially with desired romantic partners. Parents can’t or won’t help. One feels a prisoner in their boring existence, not sure who they’re going to be, not sure who they really are, but feeling everything super deeply. When people talk about a “coming of age” story, it’s usually one of these.
Each of the five stages is characterized by a kind of pain we can mostly all relate to, or have seen in our lives. It’s universal to people in the particular “passage.” And the main character wants to
escape that pain.
Now here’s the key: they identify a goal or approach that they think will fix what ails them, and they chase and/or wrestle with it throughout the movie.
And it’s the
wrong way to deal with this life stage.
What they’re doing is trying to self-medicate. They can’t face the pain of their situation anymore. And this goal or approach seems like a way out.
But it never is. In the end, it doesn’t lead to what they want. They might fail at their goal, and be disappointed. Or reach it, but it’s unfulfilling. And they have to face the pain of the life stage, head-on. Typically they’ve learned a lesson in the process, and can do so with more maturity now. And we can sense that soon, if not right now, they’ll get past the pain. By accepting it and going through it, perhaps with more perspective than they had before.
This wrong goal can be winning over, and/or making a relationship work with a member of the opposite sex, as in
10, Superbad, My Best Friend’s Wedding, An Education or
Her. This is probably the most common ROP goal. In some separation passages, it can be a revenge plot, as in
The First Wives Club or
The War of the Roses. It can involve a massive lifestyle change, as in
Sunset Boulevard or
Lost in America. Or the main character might not have a clear goal, but a big specific problem, and is struggling with their life circumstances in not the most healthy way, as in
Ordinary People, Good Will Hunting, or most Addiction Passages — where the addiction is the problem, and they can’t seem to overcome it. (Though they might also have an external additional goal, like a relationship with Scarlett Johansson in
Don Jon.)
As in any genre, the main character must be actively involved in trying to get what they want, or in struggling with their problem, and things must be complicating in the process. As
Save the Cat’s story structure tool, the “
beat sheet” teaches, this usually builds to an “all is lost” crisis late in Act Two, and a “final battle” over the goal in Act Three.
But somewhere in this third act, the main character wakes up and realizes the “wrong way” isn’t going to cut it. And they’re going to have to make peace with that approach having not been the answer, and face their life without it.
Rite of Passage is the one genre where the audience doesn’t tend to agree with the main character’s approach or goal. They can sense that it’s the “wrong way.” But they can also understand why they would choose it. This is very important. Because you don’t want the audience judging the main character, looking down on them, disagreeing with them at every turn, not getting them,
not liking them. They must essentially “become” the main character so that they are really emotionally engaged in the story. So they must be on the
same team. They just know, in the end, that this isn’t the best way of dealing with this life problem.
The biggest issues I see in scripts that are trying to be Rites of Passage is that the situation isn’t all-consumingly difficult enough, relatable enough, high stakes enough. Actually I see this as the key issue in most genres, and most scripts. The difference here is that the main character’s obsession needs to be “wrong,” and they need to grow in the end. Another thing to be careful of is not mixing in other problems with higher stakes, because they will tend to take over the movie, in the audience’s mind. When done right, the pain of this life stage, and the one obsessive wrong road the main character is going down, is the whole movie.
I’m taking suggestions for which of the other nine genres to discuss next time!
So leave a comment if you have a request… or any questions/responses.
This is incredible! And so clarifying!! Thank you so much. For the longest time, i have been trying to find a structure template for a coming of age/ROP story. do you know of any other structure templates specifically for a COA or ROP story? Thank you!
So glad you found this helpful!
I don’t know of other such templates and if they exist, they probably would use the idea of ROP or COA in a very different way (more general, possibly less useful IMHO) than what STC does…
Could a Rite of Passage, such as adolescence be framed in a negative way?
i.e.: a kid’s childlike wonder is challenged as his friends start to leave him for more mature pursuits, he initially tries the “wrong way” of trying to be even more imaginative ans playful, but eventually comes to the “acceptance” that the world is less optimistic and imaginative as he is and loses his childlike wonder?
Or would this more likely fall under “family institutionalized” resulting in “joining” the group?
Well it’s always negatvie in that it’s the “wrong way” – the question for me is making that wrong way believable, relatable, and entertaining — where they’re chasing something with a great degree of desire invested. I’m not sure what your character would be specifically chasing and if millions in the audience would strongly relate to it — and it maybe sounds a little bit “internal.”
It’s hard to say more without knowing more specifics but that’s my initial take…
Great post and very helpful! Thanks.
Could identity questions related to adoption be categorized as adolescent ROP?
Even if the protagonist isn’t an adolescent anymore?
Thanks Ellen!
I would say “no,” because that character wouldn’t currently be going through the universally relatable pains of adolescence, which tends to be a key starting point of such a movie. What is the character’s goal that drives them throughout the movie?
This series of articles about “STC´s Ten genres” has been incredibly interesting and useful, so ¡thanks! If you consider to continue it (or has the time to do so), I´d love to read your insights about “Out of the bottle”. I use to consider “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” as a very hard to classify film, but the sub genre”Surreal bottle” seems like an appropriate for this very unique movie.
Thanks for the positive feedback Joeaneska! Perhaps I’ll tackle “Out of the Bottle” next then. I have to give Blake Snyder credit for placing “Eternal Sunshine” there. SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES is great for further explanation of these genres…
Thank you so much for your article Erik! It has given me a lot of great ideas for my ROP. The one problem I keep running into, is how to separate my ROP from similar ones like Ordinary People and Good Will Hunting. It could be very easy to throw in a therapist but don’t want to go down that path. Maybe just trying to find someone else to let the Hero know they’re taking the wrong action?
Glad you found it helpful, Zachary! I will e-mail you regarding your specific question… it’s hard to say without knowing more about the story…
Hi Erik and thanks for your post, very valuable read!
One question, I’d take a guess at A Beautiful Mind being a rite of passage?
If so, how would you subcategorize it? Or give it a different genre?
May the peace be with you
Hi Bhuma,
Blake Snyder himself categorized A BEAUTIFUL MIND as a “Real-Life Superhero.” See https://www.flyingwrestler.com/save-the-cat-genres-movie-list-with-erik-borks-additions/. I think it’s because he feels “Superhero” explores what it’s like to be special and different, with a unique mission in the world, and some sort of flaw. What that character does is arguably not as “heroic” (i.e. helping/saving others) as we normally see in a “Superhero,” but I see Blake’s point…
If I had to pick another genre for it, I might call it a “Solo Golden Fleece.”
I wouldn’t call it a “Rite of Passage,” because (a) I don’t think he’s responding to a relatable and universal life passage (like Adolescence, Mid-Life, etc.), which I think is key to this genre, and (b) I don’t think he’s choosing the “wrong way” to respond to it. Instead, he’s got a very unusual set of problems, in terms of his advanced intelligence, and his mental illness.
Thanks for your article, Erik! I’d like to read your take on the ‘solo fleece’.
I would love to hear more about the ‘Dude with a problem’ genre.
Robert
Great analysis. Please look next at Golden Fleece and Institutionalized.