Character Discovery

I've been reading the great sceenplay writer Barry Parsons' blog on www.createyourscreenplay.com and it has a lot of very informative articles scatted throughout the site....

ONE CHARACTER IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR


Thoughts about screenwriting come from unexpected places.

During the Clinton Administration, I happened to listen to a radio interview with Gail Sheehy, who was then currently on tour touting her new book about Hillary. Sheehy made a comment about the relationship between Hillary and Bill that has dogged me ever since.

But not for the obvious reasons. Oon its surface, the comment appears banal. What Sheehy said about America's first couple was, "They know everything there is to know about each other."

I got to thinking, no wonder there's no drama in the lives of Hillary and Bill. They "know everything there is to know about each other." And the public knows everything there is to know about them.

If Bill and Hillary were a movie, the country would want to get out of the theater and go home. Two characters who know everything about each other -- the worst thing for a story.

Proven by the fact that successful screenwriters typically begin with the opposite situation. They create two very UNLIKE characters at the center of their story, a Hero and a Bonding Character, who know very little about each other.

Wouldn't you think that Bill, caught "in flagrante delicto," ought to be good dramatic fodder when his wife finds out? Not on the Bill and Hillary show. Because Hillary knows that Bill always forgets to get rid of the trash. She's expecting it. And so is the audience.

But there has to be a story there somewhere, doesn't there? Sure. The story of Bill and Hillary happened when they knew nothing about each other. When they first met. When through some event (and I'm not sure what that might have been) they were forced together.

As fascinated as I am by Presidential power, and marital infidelity, the thing that fascinates me more is the question, what is a story? "The King died, and then the Queen died." That's not a story, I'm told. But "The King died, and then the Queen, overcome by her grief, died of a broken heart."

That's a story. An old example. And one that suggests that a story needs two essential elements: events related by cause, and a situation that evokes emotion.

Some people vow that a story is always a conflict between Good and Evil. Others swear that the paradigm is David and Goliath. Still others claim that every story is a love story, or a journey, or a reworking of a myth, etc., etc. There are probably hundreds, maybe thousands, of views of what constitutes a story. Perhaps they all possess a part of the truth.

This much I know. Most screenwriters build their stories around two unlike characters. The writer creates a desire in the audience to see these characters "get together" in some way, which will happen at the end of the movie, usually (the writer hopes) in an unsuspected manner.

Sometimes the two characters marry, sometimes one defeats or overcomes the other, sometimes they agree to part--there are thousands of variations, but, unlike Bill and Hillary, the major characters never start out "knowing everything there is to know about each other." You don't have to look too far to find the real life screen story in the years of the Clinton administration.

Two unlike characters? Well see, there's this President, a little bit roguish, ladies' man, plays fast and loose with the truth, and then there's this Prosecutor, by the name of Starr, religious guy, bit of a zealot. These two guys are worlds apart temperamentally, and morally. They know squat about each other, really, and the Prosecutor's out to put this President in the tank...well, you COULD write the story, except that CNN already got to it. Great ratings, so I'm told.

by
Barry Pearson