“Three … you’re kidding, right?”

That was my response when my friend Clifford first suggested to me that Hollywood had a very limited repertoire of stories to offer. He nodded with all of the assurance of one of Australia’s most experienced producers.

“Star Wars?” I hazarded.

“Type One,” he said.

“Jaws?”

“Type Two.”

“Oh, like The Godfather?”

“No, that’s a Type Three masquerading as a Type Two.”

“I’m confused…”

And you might be too, but it’s not hard once someone lays it out for you. Hollywood has been re-working the same three structures for longer than cinemas have sold popcorn.

1. The Quest

The first, and possibly oldest archetype is ‘the quest’. In it our ever-present hero is driven by one simple desire: to get something. It might be the hand of a pretty girl like Heath Ledger’s love in 10 Things I Hate About You, or the pretty boy who is Julia Robert’s target in My Best Friend’s Wedding. But it doesn’t have to be person. It could be as simple as freedom like The Great Escape or as obscure as a memory like Memento. Whatever the goal, the hero doesn’t have it and his quest involves doing everything he can to get it.

The most important part of ‘the quest’, though, is not the hero’s goal but his motivation. What is it that drives the one we’re rooting for, and can we respect it? Love drives Wall∙E to deliver Eva’s plant. But Lightning McQueen gives up his chance at a Piston Cup because he realises that ambition shouldn’t rate over friendship.

2. The Chess Game

The second plot granddaddy is ‘the chess game’, a story that organises itself around the battle between an evenly or overmatched hero and his nemesis. It’s a case of move and counter-move, with each side attempting to anticipate the other until the winner finally emerges. This is the natural home of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, Batman and the Joker, Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. But the hero’s opponent doesn’t have to be a person. It could be a virus like Contagion or an entire weather system, like The Perfect Storm.

The key, of course, is not the opponent’s identity but the threat they bring to bear. The villain is the measure of the hero – we wouldn’t think much of Sarah Connors if the Terminator could be stopped with a magnet. The greater the villain, the greater the hero’s victory.

3. The Life Lesson

However the story that will undoubtedly stay with us the longest is ‘the life lesson’. ‘Hard work will win out’, ‘No man is an island’, ‘All that glitters is not gold’ – for millennia stories have been the favourite method for teaching moral truths. The Shawshank Redemption teaches us to ‘get busy living or get busy dying.’ Schindlers’ List tells us that all evil needs to triumph is for a good man to turn his back. The Lord Of The Rings reminds us half a dozen ways that enduring commitment can topple the darkest empire.

It actually doesn’t matter if the hero wins or loses; the success of ‘the life lesson’ story is measured by its ring of truth. Too vague – it’s good to be good like Noddy – and the audience will just nod as they nod off. Too bizarre – ‘Love justifies anything, including drinking blood’ – and they’ll wonder what Twilight’s writer was drinking. The sweet spot is something that we’d struggle to voice but everyone knows to be true.

Christian storyteller CS Lewis wrote that, “History is a story written by God,” [1] and I believe our most attractive scripts are exactly that because they reflect His greater work.

The history of humanity is the original quest story with the motivator being the search for something that will last. The writer of Ecclesiastes observes that, ‘God has set Eternity in the heart of man,’ and everywhere I look I see people with immortality on their mind.[2] But as a race we find ourselves in the greatest chess game of all. Death has won every turn, defeating rulers, scientists and warriors alike.

But God entered His own story in the form of Jesus to teach us the most undeniable life lesson of all: we cannot do it on our own. Sin is so rampant we cry out for an all-powerful judge, and our failings so dark we long for a sympathetic saviour. The problem with our recognising this ultimate story, though, is that humans have never been fond of scripts where we’re not offered the leading role.

Watch a forum on ‘Secret Hollywood’, with Adrian Drayton, Mark Hadley and Ben McEachen chatting about the three ideas that underpin every movie script. This forum formed part of a three-part series for City Bible Forum in Sydney in July 2013.