Archive for the 'Character' Category
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
DETECTIVES: There’s no such thing as too quirky!
The copper who uses their special break-dancing prowess to catch criminals. The Private Eye who can piece clues together using hallucinations caused by auto-esphixiation. The detective who is also a duck. I love them all. But how quirky is too quirky?
In my own writing, whether it stars a procedural copper or an accidental investigator, mysteries have always been my ‘thing’. Trouble is, if your protagonist is just doing their job week after week, it can be hard to generate an emotional connection - no matter how many endearing tics they have.
This is easily remedied in a film/one-off. A case starts as professional but quickly becomes personal (Silence of the Lambs, Chinatown, Se7en). But if you’re creating an ongoing TV, web or comic series - surely everything can’t be ‘hey, this case resonates with that traumatic broccoli experience I had as a child!’ But you’ll probably need something if you don’t want your show to simply be a cerebral exercise.
I’ve heard the appeal of the Mystery described as ‘the audience’s desire to see Order triumph over the Chaos of the outside world‘ (like the drunken football fans who chucked our bins all over the street last night. Where were you, Batman?) But where Bob Peck in a one-off story like Edge of Darkness needed to know why his daughter died, the returning series detective needs a more abstract motivation for taking on the Chaos of the world that we can understand and emotionally connect with.
The reason we connect with any of the above more than, for example, Miss Marple is because of this vocational calling that made them a detective. Details aside, this can usually be summed up as one word. Redemption. Ambition. Validation. Even Retaliation. (they don’t all have to end in ‘-tion’ btw 
)
So it’s okay to pile on as many quirks as you like to make your detective unique. But before you do, make sure you can easily answer the core reason why this guy or gal is a detective in the first place.
Friday, June 18th, 2010
Testing your Characters’ Character.
You’ve probably done the Facebook Quiz that tells which Batman villain/Disney Princess you are (I’m Belle from Beaty and the B… I mean the Riddler, I’m the Riddler!!) But what results do you think your script’s protagonists would get?
In scriptreading, often a character acts out of character so they can steer the plot towards the desired set-piece. This never reads well. Similarly, you can tell when a writer is writing a character who is not like the writer…yet still makes the sort of decisions that the writer would. This doesn’t ring true either.
The Meyers-Briggs test is a personality profiler that categorises you into one of sixteen personality types using 70 ‘yes or no’ questions. It’s quick to do and I’ve become quite obsessed with it of late, profiling everyone I know and finding the results spookily accurate. But whether you believe the entire human population can be categorised so easily or not, chances are your fictional characters can be.
Following my post about films set in a single location, I’ve been working on my own confined script where the protagonist’s decisions/actions will really swing the (hopefully) pressure-cooker environment one way or t’other. My heroine turned out to be an ENFJ categorised as the ‘Idealist Mentor’:
ENFJ = Extrovert + iNtuitive + Feeling + Judging
or ENFJ = 
or 
But the fact that she’s a ‘Mentor’ type doesn’t mean she has to take the Mentor role. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice and Sam Becket from Quantum Leap are also considered ENFJs, both sharing the same altruistic, externally focussed and positive outlooks and are both clear protagonists. Yet this personality type also has good powers of persuasion and manipulation - so there’s no reason why a ENFJ can’t be the antagonist either.
So TAKE THE TEST - either for your character or even yourself 
. The results provide a really good abstract character bio that you can then check corresponds with the decisions you’ve made for your protagonist.
I’d love to know if you find they match up (for your character or for you!)
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Single-Location Movies
I know that anyone *funding* a film loves a single-location concept - but what does the rest of the world think? Are they too much ‘like a play’? Or do the restrictions just add to the creativity in storytelling techniques as with Rear Window’s complicit tension or Reservoir Dogs‘ flashback-heavy narrative?
In my opinion, many single-location stories have an ‘ooooh’ concept but only a ‘meh’ execution. There’s an interesting hook at the beginning, a decent pay-off at the end and a lot of treading-water in the middle. I find this isn’t because the characters don’t go anywhere new - it’s because the STORY doesn’t. I don’t think these films are ‘too talky’ by definition - but it’s all too easy to write redundant dialogue that’s simply filling pages until the next set-piece. (Similarly, filling Act Two with chases and jet-setting doesn’t help matters either. If it doesn’t move the story along, it’s still going to be hollow.)
This is why I always use David Slade’s HARD CANDY as my favourite example of a low-budget, high-impact breakthrough movie. Two principal actors, one main location (a nice house), a central as well as a notorious scene you’ve probably heard about even if you’ve not see it (Download the script here)
In Hard Candy, what keeps the pace alive and the drama vivid is that the SITUATION keeps changing, even if the location doesn’t. Far more expensive films could take a lesson. Each sequence provides a revelation or shifts the balance of power between the two protagonists. This is what grabbed me. It’s by no means perfect but, by the end of the film, I didn’t know whose side I was on - let alone how I wanted it to end or how it actually would.
From Hard Candy to The Shining and The Breakfast Club, there’s no way these films are a gimmick. They just seem that way when the writer has come up with a cool location instead of a cool story.
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Creating TV Drama Series: Something Borrowed, Something NYPD Blue
Something different…but the same. Trying to shoehorn my way into TV writing, I’ve spent years trying to concoct never-been-done before ideas for drama series. And yet what are my favourite shows on TV at the moment? A show about Cops and a show about Doctors. (This doesn’t include Lost, obviously – but Lost is the exception to every rule including this one so it will get its own blog posts at numerous later dates )
For anyone who hasn’t seen either Bones or House then I’ll summarise: In Bones they solve a murder every week and in every episode of House they try and work out what’s wrong with sick people. Genius, innit.
Well, actually yes. Why do I actually watch and love either of these shows? Not because of the above, that’s for certain. But each provides a clear and renewable ‘story-engine’ to provide a launch-pad for the plot of many, many episodes. I was lucky enough to recently attend a really useful seminar in Manchester with BBC’s Controller of Drama Production John Yorke where he clearly described some of the must-haves for a returning series:
Naturally, I agree. For Bones, the big softy in me loves the family aspect of the show. The more the series progresses, the more we see how damaged each of the brilliant people in it are and you like them even more for being able to function whilst being that broken. In House, I’m watching to the see the chinks in House’s bastard façade that defines his morality. And, while I’m waiting, I can enjoy just House being a bastard. But a clever bastard. And that’s what the creators of these shows are too, dagnammit!
As the series have progressed, I’d also say that both the murder and medical mysteries have actually slipped down the importance scale in an average episode. But they’re always there as the spine in Bones and the foundation in House. Without them, there’s no need for the characters to even be together. It’s telling that the fourth season of each show featured Brennan and Booth and House and Cuddy facing murder or disease on a plane bound for Asia – deprived of their usual facilities and facing the ticking clock of landing. But both were very different – apart from the fact that they were both brilliant.
Even if both will-they/won’t-they pairings got married, there had better be dead/dying body in their Honeymoon suite! But it’s the fact that the writers have made me want there NOT to be a mystery to solve that makes these shows so successful.
It seems the series creators ensure we want to see their characters happy…then do everything they can to ensure that they’re not!
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Writing Roles for Gorgeous George…
Well, not *just* for George. This time every year – come Award Season – there are always a number of films where you could easily think ‘that film would be nothing without that central performance from (insert A-Lister)’. Maybe this is true. But how do you write the roles that big actors actually want to play?
When I went to see Up in the Air back in January, I realised halfway through that this wasn’t just a role written for George Clooney – it’s just that Clooney was the perfect actor for the part. And he is acting up there. Despite me thinking that Ryan Bingham is one of those characters that Clooney always plays, I’d never really seen him do it (maybe not since ER anyway). And while George was up for a Bafta the other week, it was for Best Adapted Screenplay that Up in the Air got its gong.
This might all sound bleedin’ obvious, but I’ve been reading an increasing amount of scripts that sacrifice character for concept - when really character should be the concept. Especially if you’re trying to get a first feature made. If you can’t prove you can write decent characters for lower-budget films, why will anyone trust you to write characters for expensive ones?
January also saw the release of Daybreakers and Britflick Exam – two films with some decent character actors but few decent characters. Both were dominated by cool high-concepts but, in my opinion, without decent character stories both ran out of steam as soon as the novelty of the big ‘what if?’ had worn off. It all seems so frickin’ obvious but, sitting there watching Up In The Air, it really hit home that high-concepts must still have the character at heart. As Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio put it:
High Concept = Character + Conflict + Hook (where Hook is often a cool catalyst or big event)
Maybe you do have the next breakthrough lower-budget, high-concept like Paranormal Activity or Cube did. But then the makers of these films have struggled to catch the same lightning in a bottle if they’ve even attempted a follow up. If all you’ve got is a gimmick then that will quickly be imitated and become stale. Whereas, the more banal films Denzel Washington does with Tony Scott, the more iconic his character in Training Day becomes to my eye.
Just looking at the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscar nominees of the last decade, roles including Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood, Ellen Page in Juno, Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married and (it wouldn’t be a blog post without him) Bill Murray for Lost in Translation really stand out (and that’s deliberately not including actors winning for real-life characters in Monster, Capote, The Hours or Milk). This is who they want to play. It can’t be coincidence that the screenplays of all of these films were also – at least – nominated for their Oscar categories.
Not that the awards themselves are the priority… but I’m just saying that, if you can write a screenplay that lures Daniel Day-Lewis from being a cobbler for a few months, chances are that finding funding might be a little easier! 
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Does Superman need to hit people?
(WARNING: May contain fanboy trying to be objective!)
Originally, this was going to be a post called ‘Does the bad guy have to die?’ but the recent announcement that Chris Nolan will be ‘Godfathering’ the next Superman film has me contemplating the fate of the Man of Steel on the silver screen.
When Superman Returns was on over Christmas, the usual jibe that the plot is ‘Superman lifts a series of increasingly heavy objects’ (Oops…possible spoilers ) started appearing on twitter and that what we all really wanted was to see Superman scrapping with some kind of giant beastie. But this instantly brings up the other general moan about Superman; that he’s ‘just too powerful’. So who’s he going to hit?
When DC Comics published The Death of Superman in the 90s (and had a younger me sobbing unashamedly) they created the mysterious creature nicknamed ‘Doomsday’.
For anyone who hasn’t read it, the premise is basically that Superman and Doomsday duke it out across American and into Metropolis. A lot of the actual plot or story is carried by the rest of the cast (Lois Lane and other less powerful superheroes) looking on, reacting in horror and helplessness. But, having re-read this story older and slightly more cynically, I did start to wonder why Superman didn’t just throw Doomsday up into space. But, again, doesn’t that just count as the ‘lifting a heavy object’ plot?
Hmmn. So what to do?
I’ve always thought that – apart from Lex Luthor – the best nemesis for Superman is that, for all his speed and strength, he still can’t be in two places at once. He can’t save everyone. To my mind, at its best, Smallville gets it right, primarily as the onus is on the Clark Kent/ Superman balance. Most episodes DO end with him turning up and punching someone in the nick of time to save his friends. But the fun of the episode is always whether Clark will find where he has to get to and who he has to punch someone and, more specifically, if he can get there in time without Lois noticing.
And I think this where Bryan Singer’s Superman went badly wrong. There was no mention of Clark for entire second half of the film. I’m not saying that Clark needed to be bumbling around Metropolis exploded. But the fact that the Daily Planet was evacuated and no one thought once to say ‘Hey, has anyone seen Clark?’ showed a different concern from the film-makers. But perhaps the Smallville structure only works due to it being an ongoing series than standalone feature that needs a third act.
To those who say that the ending of Superman Returns was anticlimactic, I can only say that (as is usual) the problem with the Ending was the Beginning and the Middle. But I do have a huge soft spot for the film – Superman, as a concept, is far more optimistic (or, indeed, soppy) than the likes of Batman in much the same as the difference in tone between Star Trek and Star Wars. But if the film had been as uplifting as the teaser trailer below, I, for one, would have been amazingly happy.
But ultimately, the finished film seemingly could not make up its mind what its main plot was. I’d say that the key flaw with Superman Returns wasn’t only that the makers decided against a big punch-up climax, but they really didn’t deliver on the Lois/Clark/Superman triangle either. Even if the film had ended with Supes pummelling Lex Luthor into villainous Spacey-chunks, we still probably wouldn’t have cared that much.
So while my answer to whether Superman has to hit people is probably ‘yes’… it’s not why I’ll be buying my ticket. What about you?
Friday, November 20th, 2009
Introducing your Character
I’ve been doing a lot of scriptreading work lately and have spotted a recurring problem that sometimes we can all forget about.
A while ago, we talked about the concept of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Circumstances and how it’s maybe easier to get an audience on side with a ‘normal’ character only for them to get sucked down a magic wyrmhole etc. This is all very well, but what I’ve been noticing in a lot of what I’ve been reading is that that ordinary character is often quite dull until the fun happens at the inciting incident. Which is pretty bad! So I was trying to think of some better examples:
Yes, he’s using Ghostbusters as an example. Again. Thing is though, it’s ‘cos it’s good. Take Venkman: His inciting incident is when he’s kicked out of the University and starts up his own Paranormal Investigations & Eliminations service (”some call it fate, some call it luck, some call it karma...”) But before any of that happens, he’s already interesting. Not only is he using a telepathy test to pick up girls, someone has painted ‘Venkman, Burn in Hell‘ on his door. I’m intrigued by this guy - and that’s before we know the world’s in peril.
On the other end of the scale, ‘Se7en‘ opens with Morgan Freeman as Det. Somerset routinely picking lint off his jacket, placing his well-ordered badge, notebook, pen and flick knife into all the correct pockets - ready for work as the sounds and sirens of the city emanate from outside. When a fellow officer describes a murder scene as a simple crime of passion, Somerset’s response of ‘Just look at the passion all over this wall’ shows he sees things differently. But his methodical, well-ordered approach and his soothing metronome show he has set up his own barriers to protect himself from the horror of the city he seems to love and hate.
While the plot hasn’t got going yet, both these characters become fascinating and that’s partly because we get a good glimpse of their flaws (or their ‘character need’, if you like). Venkman needs to start taking what he does seriously if he’s ever going to save the world and Somerset has perhaps become too guarded and detached from the world to stop himself despairing.
Both are very different, one funny, the other foreboding. But both really make the characters captivating long before the high-concept turns up. Also, perhaps more importantly, we’re hooked long before page 10 which is when, as a reader, I can put the script down if the writer hasn’t grabbed me!
Any other good examples you can think of how the character hooks you before the plot? Genre and non-genre ones are all welcome. Happy writing!
