Shut up and do your ABCs…
Posted on December 20, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized
This is the first time I’ve had Internet access in the last five days… WOW! Lots of email wondering if I’m okay and if I ever plan to make another post on the blog. LOL.
In fact, while I’ve been up to other filmmaking errands, I have been giving the subject of characters a hell of a lot more thought.
Let’s face it… Your CHARACTERS are YOUR STORY. I would even take this a little farther and say that your Protagonist IS YOUR STORY.
So just how in the hell do you create characters… Especially your Protagonist, so that actors want to play them? We already know that our characters, even if shooting from the hip, really should shoot from the hip in a way that presents an honest (consistent with character) line of dialogue and or an honest line of action.
Time to go deeper… Back to our ABCs…
A = ACT
Let’s look at the definition… I’ll leave OUT the definitions that do not apply…
ACT:
-
anything done, being done, or to be done; deed; performance: a heroic act.
-
the process of doing: caught in the act.
-
activity in process; operation.
-
to do something; exert energy or force; be employed or operative: He acted promptly in the emergency.
-
to reach, make, or issue a decision on some matter: I am required to act before noon tomorrow.
-
to operate or function in a particular way; perform specific duties or functions: to act as manager.
-
to produce an effect; perform a function: The medicine failed to act.
-
to behave or conduct oneself in a particular fashion: to act well under all conditions.
-
to pretend; feign: Act interested even if you’re bored.
-
to feign; counterfeit: to act outraged virtue.
-
to behave as: He acted the fool.
-
act on or upon.
-
to act in accordance with; follow: He acted on my advice.
-
to have an effect on; affect: The stirring music acted on the emotions of the audience.
-
act out.
-
Psychology. to give overt expression to (repressed emotions or impulses) without insightful understanding: The patients acted out early traumas by getting angry with the analyst.
-
act up.
-
to fail to function properly; malfunction: The vacuum cleaner is acting up again.
-
to behave willfully: The children always act up in school the day before a holiday.
-
act funny, to display eccentric or suspicious behavior.
-
act one’s age, to behave in a manner appropriate to one’s maturity: We children enjoyed our uncle because he didn’t always act his age.
Yow!
Of course we’re talking mostly about your Protagonist but let’s face facts… Your character has to ACT. Too many spec screenplays have the protagonist being a very passive character and unless that act of being passive is consistent with the character, it becomes downright boring when your Protagonist doesn’t ACT.
Let’s talk about PASSIVE PROTAGONISTS for a minute… I’m not saying that your protagonist can’t be passive but if you’re going to make him or her passive, then you’ve got to create the quintessential passive protagonist and paint them on the page for us… That way, when they finally do ACT, their ACT, while still somewhat passive, is a major act for THEM. In other words, be consistent. How many times have I read a spec script with a rogue cop who’s fucking passive almost all the way through the script?
Are you fucking kidding me????? How in the hell did he get to be a rogue cop in the first place? LOL. By ACTING. Through ACTS. Definitely NOT by being passive.
Do you ever wonder what people YOU KNOW are doing at any given moment? I do. I wonder what so and so is doing at Christmas. I wonder what he or she might have thought about a certain movie or book. Why do I wonder that? Because I know these people and I LIKE them.
By the same token, I could give a shit what other people are doing right now. Why? Because they’re boring and because of that characteristic, I can reasonably predict what they are doing right now.
Nothing.
So think about it… I contend that for pretty much the same reasons we wonder what certain other people are doing right now or what certain other people’s opinion is about something are the same reasons we care about the characters on the screen.
Of course the eventual actor on the screen will only ADD to this phenomenon but damn… THAT’S ICING ON THE CAKE, BABY!
It starts out with you and how you create that character… More importantly, your Protagonist. Make us care about your characters. Make us wonder what they would think about something. Make us wonder what they might be doing right now. Do that and we will lean forward in our theater seats and peek over your characters’ shoulders and root for them all the way to the end of the movie.
Make them ACT.
B = BECOME
Definition…
-
to come, change, or grow to be (as specified): He became tired.
-
to come into being.
-
to be suitable or necessary to the dignity, situation, or responsibility of: conduct that becomes an officer.
-
To grow or come to be: became more knowledgeable; will become clearer in the morning.
-
undergo a change or development; “The water turned into ice”; “Her former friend became her worst enemy”; “He turned traitor”
Don’t just make your characters ACT… Make them BECOME i.e., the character arc. The internal change that they don’t necessarily want or desire but absolutely NEED to be able to move on with their lives. Each ACT from above should be yet another step closer to completing your Protagonist’s evolutionary process. Notice BECOME doesn’t necessarily mean good or bad. Yeah, some protagonists can undergo an evolutionary process that makes them worse than they were at the beginning of the story.
Note that I said, “evolutionary process.†Make each ACT allow your Protagonist to BECOME just a little more and a little more and a little more until, at the end, we can SENSE the transformation. Your plot should SERVE your character’s transformation not the other way around. Remember, your audience doesn’t know SHIT about character arcs… LOL. But they can SENSE transformation.
C = CHARISMA
Definition…
-
a spiritual power or personal quality that gives an individual influence or authority over large numbers of people.
-
A rare personal quality attributed to leaders who arouse fervent popular devotion and enthusiasm.
-
Personal magnetism or charm: a television news program famed for the charisma of its anchors.
-
a personal attractiveness or interestingness that enables you to influence others.
-
Extraordinary power and appeal of personality; natural ability to inspire a large following.
How many times have we seen Protagonists that we don’t care about?
Plenty. Let’s put a STOP to it now!
It doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad… They must have charisma.
Let’s take a look at what they say about charisma at Wikipedia:
The word charisma (from the Greek word χάÏισμα (kharisma), “gift” or “divine favor,” from kharizesthai, “to favor,” from kharis, “favor”) refers to a rare trait found in certain human personalities usually including extreme charm and a “magnetic” quality of personality and/or appearance along with innate and powerfully sophisticated personal communicability and persuasiveness; in short, charisma is often used to describe a seemingly uncanny ability to charm or influence people. It refers especially to a quality in certain people who easily draw the attention and admiration (or even hatred if the charisma is negative) of others due to a “magnetic” quality of personality and/or appearance. Though the term as it stands is extremely difficult to define, other similar terms/phrases related to charisma include: grace, exuberance, equanimity, mystique, positive energy, joie de vivre, extreme charm, personal magnetism, personal appeal, “electricity,” and allure, among many others. Another term constantly used is the “X-factor.” Usually many of these qualities must be present within a single individual for the person to be considered highly charismatic by the public and their peers.
Despite the strong emotions they so often induce in others, charismatic individuals generally project unusual calmness, confidence, assertiveness, dominance, authenticity, and focus, and almost always possess superb communication and/or oratorical skills. To the early Greeks, charisma was said to be “a divine favor/gift” or “gift of grace,” implying that this “divine quality” was an inborn trait; today however, many believe it can be taught and/or learned, despite the persistent inability to accurately define or even fully understand the concept.
In other words, what I’m trying to say is that your characters… Especially your Protagonist… Has got to have enough charisma to influence me, your reader and your audience to sit forward in my seat and root for him or her until the end of the story.
So quit thinking of charisma in the usual manner… It works both ways in screenwriting. Even your antagonist can use some charisma… Give your antagonist enough charisma and he or she will become one of our guilty pleasures… Take a look at Hans in the original DIE HARD. Wasn’t he almost like a guilty pleasure?
Why?
Charisma.
Here’s another interesting read about CHARISMA.
No, probably not in a screenwriting book… Yet. LOL. But so so imperative to create characters we want to root for or admire.
The ABCs. Learn ‘em.
Unk
Tags: charisma screenwriting characters protagonist antagonist The Unknown Screenwriter
Comments
17 Responses to “Shut up and do your ABCs…”
Leave a Reply
[...] A very interesting post on developing an interesting protagonist over at Unknown Screenwriter. Well worth reading and picks up on one of the key flaws I used to be guilty of in my early screenplays, having a passive protagonist. [...]
I would add D -
D) Defect.
Characters need defects. The character needs to not be perfect, because almost no one is. Everyone has flaws, everyone has defects. It’s not just what we are that defines us, but also what we are not. We’re petty. We like fart jokes. We have an ego. We don’t like cats. We like cats TOO much. We lie about little things. We lie about big things. It’s not only the perfections we love about a character, but also their inperfections, because that’s a large part of what makes them who they are.
This is why Superman is boring and Batman and Spiderman are not. Because Supes is too nice, too perfect. Batman has a mean streak and can be a nasty sumbitch and the webslinger is cheap and sarcastic and has girl problems. That’s why we love them so much.
Okay, I’ll get flamed for dissing Supes, but honestly, who would be a more interesting dinner companion, Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne?
Josh,
I agree… Sort of. LOL. For me, I create the flaws within the character bio that I start out with. It’s these flaws that leads to the character making bad decisions or ACTing badly.
Unk
Right. I do the same thing. Not only that, what a character WANTS is usually a selfish thing, which makes it more honest and more true, right? Miss America wants world peace? Boring. Harold and Kumar want White Castle sliders ’cause they’re stoned out of their gourd? Interesting.
Even a doctor saving a life may do it because he wants to impress his dad or score with a babe. A lot of our goals are selfish ones, even the altruistic ones.
Not all of them. But many. Flaws are important.
Perfect people do not exist except in bad writing and bad stories, don’t you think? Even Indiana Jones was afraid of snakes. That made him much more interesting.
Superman? Ah, other than his attachment to Lois, what’s wrong with him? Nothing! He’s too nice and it’s dull.
Peter Parker, on the other hand, is one troubled lad and that’s intriguing.
And Bruce Wayne also seems a little too attached to that young ward of his, Dick Grayson, which makes for some kind of story when you think about it.
Let’s be honest. Characters create plot. If something happens your characters can decide whether to participate in it or not.
Decisions must be made in life or things stay the same.
Now we come to the point. Characters need to make decisions. And it’s up to us to give them situations where decisions are hard to make. e.g. “should I jump off this bridge or face the enemy?”; “Who am I gonna save? My best friend or the love of my life?”; “Should I save my skin or go back to save the kid?”; “Am I going to take the road to my right or to my left?”
Decisions the audience themselves don’t know how to decide right in that moment and they wait for the protagonist to do so. Because those decisions aren’t everyday decisions. We as writers have to put obstacles in their ways that are less ordinary then ordering pizza.
Take an example of Die Hard (one of my fav movies). We know John McLane had a fight with his wife but logically he wants to save her from the terrorists because he still loves her. We see his first decision is to get the cops, his first few attempts fail. That’s what we all would do. Call the cops. Now that failed (obstacles we put in as writers) John has to make other decisions. Decisions we probably have never dealt with in our lives. Let Mr. Takagi die or rush in? Jump down into the ventilator system or face the baddies who outnumbered you? Go into a showdown with your enemy tho you have only two bullets left?
There are many reasons people watch movies. I’m sure one of the reasons many like heroes are because they are leaders. We are automatically attracted to them. They are alpha. They don’t look at another person to know what they are doing is right. They know it from their heart. They are true to themselves.
I know your story doesn’t need a leader literally, but a character that does what he or she does is right for themselves. Napoleon Dynamite ins’t the coolest and smartest guy on the planet but he does what he realizes he needs to do to be himself. He won’t be President of USA but he will be the person he was meant to be. That’s where your story and characters start: What do they need to do to make peace with themselves, to become true. If they succeed or not is another question. What matters is that they really honestly tried to make it happen.
Just random thoughts on characters. It certainly isn’t complete (not by far) but may have some good ideas on creating interesting characters.
Tom
Fantastic, Unk, fantastic! Thanks for the reminders and tips.
Happy holidays!!
Scribe
I’ll tell you what Superman is … not boring … a jackass. He’s more annoying than any other superhero for the sole reason that (with one exception) he hasn’t been able to die. Thus, he refuses to kill anybody else (with one exception). He’s not really nice, he’s “superior” which is a pain in the ass sometimes. If you see enough of him you see that he’s not the Mr. Nice Guy of the 50’s.
As for the characters… great article. Although, you didn’t mention Vogler’s journey, of which this is really a microcosm. It’s all about showing a character in their own world, flawed in a way they don’t recognize, them volunteering to venture into a “special world” which pushes them beyond their normal world’s decisions and situations. This results in their growth (or failure to grow in tradgedy) and the completion of their arc. At the end, you have the same character in the same world but a changed individual.
I like the ABC’s, but I also like D too. It reminds me to go back to A.
Every time I come here, you inspire me to go back and look at all my screenplays again. You’re better than my Screenwriter’s Bible.
yeah, I don’t get the passive thing at all. Come on, this is yer script already . . . DO SOMETHING.
I take that back, I get it in the first act, no problem. Make the protagonist the lazy version of Lebowski . . . makes for a bigger change when he gets off his ass to do something . . . makes the arc thing easier as well.
But at some point . . . become a mushroom-cloud layin’ MOFO.
Great post, Unk, thanks. Happy Christmas and all the best for 2007
“Do you ever wonder what people YOU KNOW are doing at any given moment? I do.”
Are you wondering what I’m doing now?
ABC
Almost Being Christmas….so it’s time to wish happy holidays and the like.
Adam,
Exactly… Passive definitely works as a starting point as long as your Protagonist gets off his or her ass and starts to ACT.
Miles in SIDEWAYS was, in my opinion, extremely passive all the way through the movie but the difference was that he was SO PASSIVE that even his small ACTs of being less passive showed him becoming a little stronger and a little stronger and a little stronger… So in this sense/example it worked. Being passive was definitely consistent with that character so it can work if you do it right.
Chesh,
Always wondering…
Unk
Nice run of posts here, Unk. The bar is getting crazy high. I’m still too green to work from outlines and bios, I end up doing a ton of scenework that I know will never be in the script — basically, the movie before the movie — then, I start plotting from there.
This, as usual, is a post delivered with perfect timing.
Having decided to strip all my spec scripts back down to core concepts, I’m currently doing character development on all my projects (five in total!).
I don’t think you can do too much back story development work — and I’m also aware that only 60% of the back-story will become explicit in the script.
I put all my characters onto an excel spreadsheet, so I can see how their neurosis, fears, motives, desire, secrets and back-stories play off each other.
By having it all on the same page, I’m able to create much stronger and less linear plots — in other words the characters start to control the plot, rather than the other way round.
I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to see the dynamics of the film unfold across a couple of sheets of paper.
And my other shameful little secret, is in the row marked “appearance” instead of making up a description, I create a fantasy cast.
Harking back to Unki previous post about creating characters which will attract name talent — I’ve taken the obvious next step — I’ve decided who I’d like to play the role and pasted a photo of the actor into the spreadsheet — and then the I set myself the task of creating a character good enough to attract that name onto the project.
(Not something I’d ever show a producer! More an almost childish games I play with myself — I am blushing as I write this! LOL — but it does work for me, so where’s the harm?)
The other thing about creating good back stories, is if you’re also a director (which I am) I can then keep my character development sheet in my production file and use it as a tool for helping with the task of rehearsing the actors during production.
If an actor wants to know why a particular character reacts a particular way in one scene, I can show them the back-story and how it relates to the text.
If I can ever figure out how to set up a download page on my site, I’m hoping to give away my character development spreadsheet in the New Year to any screenwriter like me who needs a methodical approach to character development.
In the past I relied far to much on my intuitive understanding of my characters — I really can’t explain how much richer a screenplay becomes when all your characters have good back stories.
Merry Christmas, Unk.
[...] A very interesting post on developing an interesting protagonist over at Unknown Screenwriter. Well worth reading and picks up on one of the key flaws I used to be guilty of in my early screenplays, having a passive protagonist. [...]