This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction. It’s one of nine injury analyses that appear in the book, but this one is near and dear to my heart, especially because you all helped pick it. I asked a couple of months ago for injuries to analyze in fiction, and this one was suggested above all others. I hope it doesn’t disappoint!
(Image courtesy of Dreamworks)
Format: Feature Film (animated) Genre: Action-Adventure / Kids ealism: Fantasy (high fantasy)
It’s funny. When I put out a call
to my readers asking what injuries I should take a look at for this book, I got
this kid’s movie as an overwhelmingly popular arc to take a look at. It’s a
great representation of disability!
It’s just that everyone suggested
specifically the back half of the
movie, where a human gets injured.
But I say let’s start from the
front and look at both of the arcs in
this movie, shall we?
I think everyone forgot the first
injury because it happened to a dragon.
How
To Train Your Dragon is a Dreamworks movie about a Viking named Hiccup, a
chief’s son who’s very… “un-Viking.” As in, he doesn’t want to kill dragons.
Dragons are initially presented as
“pests,” but it turns out they’re more than that, they’re a menace: the town of
Brunk gets raided, set on fire, all the
time.
So here’s an interesting start: the
beginning of the movie finds Hiccup working for a disabled blacksmith, who has
interchangeable prostheses for his left hand and a peg leg for his right leg. His
hand can become anything: a hammer, tongs, even a saw or a battle-axe. Yet his
prosthetic leg is just that: a leg, something for him to stand on.
As the blacksmith’s protégé, Hiccup
is shown to be a very handy inventor. He makes a mean catapult, and the opening
of the movie has him trying to take out a special kind of dragon called a Night
Fury. Scary!
To the excitement of all, Hiccup
shoots one down! His homemade catapult launches a set of stone balls on a cord,
which brings down a Night Fury — a feat no one’s ever accomplished before.
Of course, no one sees him do it,
so no one believes him.
But when he goes over to check on
the dragon he shot down, it turns out the Night Fury isn’t so tough after all.
The beast is tied up in the cords from the weapon Hiccup launched.
In a moment Blake Snyder’s kickass
book on storytelling (Save the Cat!)
would approve of… Hiccup sets him free!
…and almost gets eaten for his
troubles.
But the dragon doesn’t kill him, which is perplexing to Hiccup. After his relief
washes away, the ever-curious Hiccup keeps coming back to find out why the dragon hasn’t killed him.
It turns out the dragon — who’s
later dubbed Toothless — has an Inciting
Injury: one of his tail fins has been ripped off by the accident.
Hiccup has already given him his
only Immediate Treatment: he’s cut
the ropes that are holding him captive.
But that doesn’t solve Toothless’s
flying problems. Toothless is pretty miserable. He has fallen into a ravine he
can’t get out of, because his flight trajectories are all messed up by his
damaged tail.
The two form a friendship, over
fish, over drawings, and Hiccup decides to build him a prosthesis to fix his
tail.
This is the first analysis we’ve
looked at where the protagonist gives
the Definitive Treatment to another
character. It’s unconventional, and it’s a risky move on Hiccup’s part, but it
gets Toothless back in the air.
Cue the training montage! Hiccup
builds a saddle to ride Toothless, and their training forms a Rocky Road to Recovery as they learn to
fly together. They train, and Hiccup works through various incarnations of the
dragon tail and harness system. They crash, they fly, they crash again, until
they get it right.
Their New Normal is a great partnership! With Hiccup at the controls of
Toothless’s prosthesis, they can fly together. The lessons Toothless teaches
Hiccup about the way dragons work make Hiccup a celebrity in his town.
So Toothless’s arc is pretty
straightforward…
Toothless’s Injury Arc
Inciting Injury: Tail fin amputated when he’s shot down by Hiccup.
Immediate Treatment: Freed from the projectile, which had tied him
down. (A few days later, but hey, he’s a dragon.)
Definitive Treatment: Prosthetic tail fin made by his human
handler.
Rocks on the Rocky Road: Toothless
and Hiccup almost fall from the sky a few times during the acclimation process,
but the wound itself isn’t the issue
that needs discussing.
The Big Test: None. By the time we need Toothless to fight, they’ve
already reached the last stage.
And the New Normal? A lasting friendship and partnership, where the two can
fly — but only together.
This isn’t the only injury arc the
movie has in store for us, however. Later in the plot it’s Hiccup’s turn to be
maimed.
In the story’s global climax,
Toothless and Hiccup are taking out the mother dragon that’s made all the other
dragons behave so badly. Their plan has worked — the other dragon’s gone down
and exploded!
But up shoots a wall of fire,
Toothless’s prosthesis has been burnt away, and Hiccup falls —
And Toothless, ever the faithful
dragon, follows him down.
When they hit the ground, there’s a
horrifying moment when we think Toothless has been horribly hurt and Hiccup has
been consumed by the flames, until Toothless reveals he’s had Hiccup nested
inside his wings.
Hiccup has had an Inciting Injury, though we don’t know
what it is until the next scene.
He wakes up at home to Toothless’s
cheery face snuffling him like a puppy, and we discover when he tries to stand
that his injury has been twofold: a head injury (which explains the time lapse)
and a lower leg amputation. He’s got a steel prosthetic foot, a Definitive Treatment for an injury we
didn’t know he had. (His Immediate
Treatment for the burns and concussion was injury prevention: Toothless
wrapped him in his wings so he wouldn’t burn to a crisp on the way down.)
Hiccup gets an absurdly short Rocky Road to Recovery as he tries to
walk outside and stumbles — but Toothless lets himself be used as a crutch, and
helps his friend learn to walk on his new leg.
However, the two get back to their New Normal pretty quickly. Turns out
Hiccup’s blacksmith boss — owner of the peg leg and the prosthetic multitool
hand — has built a special harness that will allow Hiccup’s new metal foot to
lock in to Toothless’s saddle. They can fly again!
(All of this happens in the span of
about two minutes of screen time, which is pretty impressive for a fully-told
injury arc! However, this arc is abrupt even for a fantasy movie; the character
goes from unconscious and unable to walk to flying
a dragon in less time than it takes to brew coffee.)
Hiccup’s injury mirrors
Toothless’s…
Hiccup’s Injury Arc
Inciting Injury: Falls through some fire. It’s never explained how,
exactly, he comes by his leg amputation or his significant head injury which causes him to wake up at home
probably weeks later.
Immediate Treatment: Injury prevention, by Toothless swaddling him
as the two plummeted together.
Definitive Treatment: While he was unconscious, his blacksmith boss
built him a prosthetic leg. His head injury is completely ignored here; it’s
implied that he’s been allowed to rest.
Rocky Road to Recovery: Hiccup has some difficulty walking, but it
quickly goes away — the magic of filmmaking! He literally stumbles twice.
(To be fair, we’re talking about a
movie with Vikings riding dragons and talking with Scottish accents. Realism
isn’t exactly their forte.)
The Big Test: None.
New Normal: Hiccup is back to total functional ability. Because his
needs have been fully met, he can continue to walk, fly his dragon, and has no
apparent significant changes to his life. This can technically be regarded as Total Disability for the foot, since the
foot itself was lost, but as he shows no signs of problems walking or
performing his activities, it’s almost a meaningless amputation. Functionally,
this is No Disability.
What Can We Learn?
Well, first of all, the injury arc
doesn’t have to be about the hero to be a meaningful arc for the audience.
The injured character doesn’t even
have to be human.
Second of all… notice a theme?
The blacksmith (the only one in the
village who truly believes that Hiccup can become a great Viking, by the way)
is disabled. His disability is played almost for laughs; he’s got an
interchangeable hand (sometimes tongs, sometimes an axe), but his leg
prosthesis is just a piece of wood.
Then Toothless gets hurt — by
Hiccup’s hand, an emotional element that’s never fully explored. Should Hiccup
feel guilty about shooting down what turns out to be a gentle, playful, kind
creature?
But Toothless has an injury that’s
a parallel to a leg amputation: one of his tail fins is missing, making his
usual form of locomotion impossible.
While Toothless is canonically a
dragon, he’s modeled very much like a dog in his actions and behaviors: his
loyalty, his curiosity, his initial standoffishness that becomes a fierce
friendship. Hiccup, seeing this metaphorical dog metaphorically limping, helps.
It’s through his kindness to his
companion that Hiccup learns how to save his people — and does just that in the
end. Seeing Hiccup’s example of kindness and understanding toward
the once-feared creatures causes a realization in his people: that humans and
dragons can coexist peacefully, that each can benefit the other. Hiccup and the
Vikings help rid the dragons of an evil overlord, and the dragons stop raiding
the village and stealing the sheep.
Hiccup is himself injured near the
end as a parallel injury. Thus, the blacksmith, Toothless, and Hiccup all find
themselves depending on their prosthetics to move through the world as they
once did. The parallelism is phenomenal!
There’s even a moment of kindness
repaid: It’s Hiccup who’s taught Toothless to fly again, and it’s Toothless who
helps Hiccup walk again.
Now, how can we all learn to incorporate
that kind of parallelism into our stories?
It’s also a great example of the
Big Battle having consequences —
Hiccup’s wound isn’t timed so that his Big Event will coincide with the climax,
but so that the climax will be his Inciting Injury.
My one criticism of the film (from
an injury arc perspective) is the way in which Hiccup’s arc is shortened.
He remains unconscious for what
must have been weeks of sailing home and fitting him for his prosthesis — his
smithy mentor has even designed and built a wholly new flight apparatus for
Toothless so they can fly again right away.
In terms of time, it takes weeks
for a stump to heal enough to accept a prosthetic, and weeks again for the
amputee to learn to walk, instead of literally seconds of film time. However,
since this is in the denoument of the film, it’s much less irritating than it
would be if, say, it had happened before the Big Battle and Hiccup had been on
his feet again for the fight.
This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, out THIS WEEK from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers].
It’s not too late to receive the bonus content for Maim Your Characters!
With three extra injury analyses like this and the official ScriptMedic Character Injury Worksheet, plus a copy to keep of the 5 Biggest Mistakes Writers Make Approaching Injuries. Just email a copy of your receipt for the book to AuntScripty{at}gmail{dot}com and I’ll be happy to send your bonus content right along!
