If the wish is not expressed by one of the characters, it may be implied by the character's dire situation. Audience members making strong identification with a character in trouble will make the wish themselves, desiring the hero to be happy, triumphant, or free, and getting themselves in alignment with the forces polarizing the story.
Spoken or not, the story hears the wish, seemingly attracted by the intense emotion contained in it. Carl Jung had a motto carved above his door, "Vocatus atque non vocatus, deus aderit," which loosely translated means "Summoned or not, the god will come." In other words, when the emotional conditions are right, when the need is great, there is an inner cry for change, a spoken or unspoken wish that calls the story and the adventure into being.
The story's response to the human wish is often to send a messenger, sometimes a magical little man like Rumpelstiltskin, but always some kind of agent who leads the hero into a special kind of experience we call an adventure — a sequence of challenges that teach the hero, and the audience, a lesson. The story provides villains, rivals, and allies to challenge or aid the hero and impart the lessons that are on the story's agenda. The story sets up moral dilemmas that test the hero's beliefs and character, and we are invited to measure our own behavior against that of the players in the drama.
The adventure has a special quality of the unexpected. The story is tricky. It acts in the roundabout, indirect, slightly mischievous way of the faerie folk who are its frequent agents, providing the hero with a series of unexpected obstacles that challenge the way the person has been doing business. It usually grants the hero's wish but in an unexpected way, a way that teaches the hero a lesson about life. Many of life's teachings can be boiled down to "Be careful what you wish for," which is a lesson taught by countless science-fiction and fantasy stories as well as love stories and stories of ambition.
WANTS vs. NEEDS
Through the triggering device of wishes, stories seem to like arranging events so that the hero is forced to evolve to a higher level of awareness. Often the hero wishes for something that she or he desperately wants at that moment, but the story teaches the hero to look beyond, to what he or she really needs. A hero may think she wants to win a competition or find a treasure, but in fact the story shows that she needs to learn some moral or emotional lesson: how to be a team player, how to be more flexible and forgiving, how to stand up for herself. In the course of granting the initial wish, the story provides hair-raising, life-threatening incidents that challenge the hero to correct some flaw in his or her character.
By imposing obstacles to the hero in achieving the goal, the story may appear to be hostile to the hero's well-being. The intention of the story may seem to be to take something away from the hero (like life itself.'), but in fact the real aim of the story is benevolent, to teach the hero the needed moral lesson, to fill in a missing piece in the hero's personality or understanding of the world.
The lesson is presented in a particular, ritualized way, reflecting a more universal principle we might call "Not Only... But Also" (NOBA). NOBA is a rhetorical device, a way of presenting information that can be found in "fortune-telling" systems like the I Ching and the Tarot. Not Only... But Also means: Here is a truth that you know perfectly well, but there is another dimension to this truth of which you may not be aware. A story might be telling you, through the actions of a character, that not only are your habits holding you back but also if you keep going in this direction your habits will destroy you. Or it might be telling you that not only are you beset with difficulties, but also these very difficulties will be the means to your ultimate victory.
In Lajos Egri's famous example from "the Scottish play," the premise is that Macbeth's ruthless ambition inevitably leads to his destruction. But Macbeth doesn't see it that way, not at first. He thinks only that ruthless ambition leads to power, to being king. But the story, summoned into life in response to Macbeth's thirst for power, teaches him a lesson in NOBA form. Ambition leads not only to being king, but also to Macbeth's destruction.
The words "but" and "however," as lawyers know, are very useful for setting terms and conditions, and can be powerful tools of rhetoric and storytelling. A story is like a long sentence or a paragraph, with a subject, the hero; an object, the hero's goal; and a verb, the emotional state or physical action of the hero. "So and so wants something and does something to get it." The NOBA concept introduces the word "but" or "however" into that sentence. Now its "So and so wants something and does something to get it, but there are unexpected consequences, forcing so and so to adapt or change in order to survive."
The aim of good storytelling is to get the audience to make the wish along with the hero. Stories do this through the process of "identification," by making the hero sympathetic, the victim of a misfortune or an understandable error of judgment. Good storytellers invite audiences to invest themselves in the fate of the characters by making them likeable or giving them universal drives, desires, and human weaknesses. Ideally, what happens to the hero is happening, on some emotional level of connection, to the audience. The story and the hero are not the only active agents in the drama. The members of the audience are also agents in the play, emotionally involved, actively wishing for the hero to win, learn the lesson, survive, and thrive. They identify with heroes in a threatened position where it appears their wishes may not be granted and their real needs may not be met.
The wishes of heroes are a strong point of identification for many people, since we all have wishes and desires that we secretly cherish. In fact, that's one of the main reasons we go to movies and watch TV and read novels — to have our wishes granted. Storytellers are, most of the time, in the wish-granting business. The Disney empire built its entire corporate identity around the belief in wishing, from its theme song "When You Wish Upon a Star" to the wish-granting fairy godmothers of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, to the genie who grants three wishes in Aladdin. Hollywood executives and best-selling novelists aim to know the secret wishes of their audiences and fulfill them. Popular stories of recent years have granted widely held wishes to walk with the dinosaurs, trod the soil of alien planets, seek high adventure in mythic realms or in times gone by, and outpace the boundaries of space, time, and death itself. So-called "reality television" grants wishes on a nightly basis, bestowing on ordinary people the thrill of being seen by millions and having a shot at stardom or riches. Politicians and advertisers play on the wishes of the public, promising to grant security, peace of mind, or comfort. A good technique of Hollywood pitching is to begin by asking "Did you ever wish you could —" (fly, be invisible, go back in time to fix your mistakes, etc.), connecting up the desires of the story's hero with a strong wish that a lot of people might have.
THE WISHES OF THE AUDIENCE
It pays to think about what audience members wish for themselves and the heroes in stories. As writers we play a tricky game with our readers and viewers. We evoke a strong wish through our characters, then spend most of the story frustrating the wish, making it seem that the characters will never get what they want or need. Usually, in the end, we grant those wishes, and show how they are achieved by struggle, by overcoming obstacles, and by reconsidering them, with the desire sometimes shifting from what the hero thinks she wants to what she really needs.