Greetings, screenwriters.  As you know I’m always trying to find new areas of information that you wouldn’t normally hear in a screenwriting class, screenwriting course or screenwriting workshop.

Currently, I’m excited to share more information about character and character growth as it is essentially what makes a film work.

When you think of the great action movies – the first Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, the Bourne movies – they distinguished themselves not because their plots were better or they had better action sequences; they distinguished themselves because of their great protagonists (and secondary characters) who had interesting and believable character arcs.  As a result, we bonded with these characters and felt their journeys were ours as well.  It felt real.

Compare these movies with every Stephen Segal movie you’ve ever seen.  Great action sequences and sometimes plots but never great protagonists, and as result they became mediocre efforts in their genre and were easily forgettable.

So what is the difference between how these great heroic characters evolve in a film and the relationship to how we actually grow in real life?

Mainly the difference occurs in the time this happens.  In real life, people do change, there’s no doubt about it.  It takes heroic measures and a great willingness to confront but it definitely happens.  But usually this takes years.  It definitely very rarely happens over night.

In a film, a character can radically change in a matter of months, weeks or days.  This occurs because that’s the time we have to tell the story.  It’s not realistic at all but it mirrors the steps a person undergoes when confronting real obstacles and in overcoming these obstacles is forced to grow.

In a film, these obstacles are called plot points.  In effect, we are throwing huge obstacles in the face of our character (a plot point is defined as an action or event which comes out of the blue and turns the story around in a new direction) — and because of these unexpected occurrences, the character now has to deal with aspects of his character he wouldn’t normally want or care to confront.

People don’t want to change.  We all are comfortable staying in our little ruts.  It’s painful to change.  It’s scary to change.  So we force our characters to change by making them deal with unexpected and grave situations which they will either overcome (and become heroic) or not overcome (and end up being victims).

The protagonist in Kramer vs. Kramer has his wife leave him and is forced to be a real dad, the sweet kid in Spiderman inadvertently turns into a superhero and has to deal with the pros and cons of power, Juno gets pregnant and has to grow up fast and make adult like decisions, same for the slacker in “Knocked Up” who finds out he’s a dad and has to step up to the plate and be responsible for the first time in his life.

How you handle the way your characters change and grow in your screenplays will define how good of a writer you are or are becoming, how deft you are in charting the mysterious growth of man, and how keenly you can observe your own attempts at growth to realistically portray it in others.

This is a vast and rich subject and we will continue to mine this material in future discussions.

For now, KEEP WRITING!  That is our mantra always.  GB

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters.  As you all know, this is where you will find material you don’t normally learn in screenwriting courses, screenwriting classes and even small screenwriting workshops.  It is a place where topics can be discussed in detail.

I want to talk more about the character arc of your protagonist and how one goes from one emotional extreme to another.

A great character arc doesn’t jump steps.  This happens often in mediocre or bad films where the person was cowardly and then quickly turns into a hero.

That’s jumping emotions.  This doesn’t happen in real life.  It takes way more steps for a coward to finally achieve bravery.  We need to see those incredibly difficult stages one must go through or it comes across as phony and we don’t buy what’s happening on screen.

For example, take someone who is a drunk and all the challenges that person must overcome to get sober. There is denial, going through detox, missteps, self pity, anger and all the rest of it until finally that person comes out the other end and gets clean and sober.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  It’s usually two steps forward and one back and then dragging oneself back towards the light.  It’s never easy.  Change is hard.  People generally don’t want to change until they’re forced to.

That’s why we have plot points.  People are forced to deal with the things they are afraid to confront – their personal demons, their fears and anxieties.

Great screenwriting is about understanding ourselves and our fellow man.

It’s delving deeply into human nature and observing and actualizing the emotional heart of others and ourselves.  It takes great insight and compassion and the ability to confront the complexities of who we are.

We can never learn enough or know enough about people on this journey of ours – to become great screenwriters.

We learn two things here then – the stages one must explore to show convincingly how a person grows or disintegrates during the course of a story and an understanding of what a story is truly about.

It’s rarely about ideas or concepts:  It’s about emotional growth – Think of 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Bourne Identity, Juno, even a comic book like Superman Begins.  It’s about going from one emotional extreme to another and the greater the arc or journey, the more emotion we can explore, in effect, the more we get to write about.

There is much more to be discussed on this topic, and we will hopefully do just that.

Until next week, KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters.  As you know, I attempt to provide screenwriting information you won’t normally find in a typical screenwriting course, screenwriting workshop or screenwriting class.  This week I want to discuss the screenplay for The Hobbit, which came out over the holidays.

David Freeman, a good friend and fellow screenwriting instructor and I saw this film and talked about it at great length after the screening.  David teaches the class Beyond Structure which I always promote to my students because you will learn a lot at these week-end seminars.  He’s especially good when discussing character and how you bring greater emotion to your stories.

He ended up writing a long post on his blog about The Hobbit and the character problems it had.  Here are some of his points that I’d like to share with you —

THE PROTAGONIST:

The protagonist Bilbo isn’t interesting enough.  We discover he’s fussy/prissy but not much else.  He’s clearly also lacking a strong motivation for joining the dwarves who want to take back their mountain kingdom.

How can we make him more compelling as a character?

He could be intellectual, observant, well-read, curious,  socially awkward, afraid of intimacy, etc.

Because Bilbo lacks dimension he comes across as a bit shallow.  In other words, he’s got no psychological depth.

Even more problematic, Bilbo has no character arc – He leaves his home because he’s bored and wants adventure.  With a motive like that, no character arc is possible.

As he discussed using Lajos Egri as our guide, stories are really about how a character goes from one emotional point to another.  The protagonist can start our being loyal and trusting and end up being cynical and suspicious.  Or they begin with trust and end up feeling betrayed.

What would the emotional journey be of someone who is bored?  He ends up not being bored.  Would that move us emotionally?  It doesn’t and as a result The Hobbit has great visuals and lots of action but not much heart.

In relation to this, Bilbo isn’t empathetic enough.  There’s not a lot of rooting interest here.  Compare this with Frodo in the Lord of the Rings trilogy who has a nice comfortable life in the shire but is given the responsibility to save all mankind and leave the comfortable world he knows to face death and the Orcs.

He is an everyman who has great responsibilities thrust upon him.  In times of great duress and conflict (like a war or natural disasters) this can happen to anyone.  Potential heros are torn from their homes to face unspeakable hardships to help others or fight evil. They are forced out of their comfortable lives.  That is someone we can root for.

In the case of The Hobbit, there is no pressing reason Bilbo has to leave the comfort of his home.  The dwarves have been homeless for many years and Bilbo has no real connection to them or their quest.  We watch his hardships without really rooting for him or feeling what he is going through emotionally.  And there is no real character arc.

It’s strange that Peter Jackson after having done so many things right in The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy could have made so many basic screenwriting errors here in The Hobbit.  The movie is visually stunning but emotionally flat.  We need to identify those problems that even the best filmmakers in the world can easily make so we don’t go down the same path.

For a more detailed analysis of this film go to David’s website where a full critique of The Hobbit is available:

http://www.beyondstructure.com/article_hobbit.php

We will talk more about character issues, character arcs and rooting interest in the weeks to come

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters.  More things you may not have learned in your screenwriting class, screenwriting course or screenwriting workshop.

We continue our discussion today on creating great characters.  I’d like to take a larger view of this topic before plunging into more advanced aspects of character and character development.

I myself have learned the most about character from a book written in the 1950’s – The Art of Dramatic Writing – by Lajos Egri.  For anyone who hasn’t read it, I would recommend Egri’s book highly.  He writes mainly about plays but everything he talks about relates extremely closely to screenwriting as well.

Egri discusses in great detail how one develops the character arc for the protagonist.  He first points out though that before one does this, one must be clear about what the story is about.

For Egri, a story is always about going from one emotional extreme to another – For example, it’s a story about going from trust to mistrust (The Music Box), or Hate to Love (just about every romantic comedy you’ve ever seen) or Aloneness to Kinship with Others (48 hours).

This is what your English professor was referring to when he spoke about theme – but he spoke about theme in an intellectual way – For example, “Pride goeth before a fall” or some such nonsense.  I don’t believe great stories are about intellectual concepts.  They’re about great characters who change in some significant way.

Once we nail what the story is about emotionally, i.e. the movement of the story, then we can carefully chart the steps the protagonist takes to move emotionally from one extreme to another.

As an example, (using Egri’s book) let’s take the steps from Love to Hatred:

1. Possessive love

2.  Disappointment

3.  Doubt

4.  Questioning

5.  Suspicion

6.  Testing

7.  Hurt

8.  Realization

9.  Bitterness

10. Reevaluation and failure to adjust

11. Anger

12.  Fury (at self)

13. (Fury (at object)

14. Hate

You see how we move inexorably from one stage to another. It feels real because it follows the steps of real human emotion.

For example, #12 and #13.  It’s very true that often we get angry at ourselves for being duped, but that quickly turns to even greater anger at the person who duped us.  It’s much easier to hate others for hurting us than hate ourselves!

Also, look at #5 and #6.  Isn’t it true that when we are suspicious we often find ways to test those we’re suspicious of?

Think about the character arc of your protagonist.  Where do they start their journey emotionally and where do they end?  The more extreme the emotional journey the better it will be for your story.  Chart out their path and then find events that will force them to grow.  We’ll discuss in greater depth as the weeks continue.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hi, everyone.  We’re moving forward in our discussions to a new area of screenwriting.  Creating Great Characters, character development – in fact, all things character.  As you know these are ongoing communications I present that hopefully go far beyond what you normally learn in most screenwriting classes, screenwriting workshops and screenwriting courses.

We have much to cover here but before we launch into this, we will discuss a movie that broke one of the standard rules of creating great characters and suffered badly as a result.

I am referring to “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” an earlier film from the Judd Apatow camp.  I was looking forward to this film with great anticipation as I loved “40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up.”  They both had great characters, rich and well defined, and their premises were simple but ingenious.

Judd Apatow did not write or direct this movie so we will not lay the blame principally at his feet.

We have much to learn from good movies but we have even more to learn from those that don’t work, because they provide valuable insights into why we have screenwriting rules and the danger we get into when we break them.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t break rules, but there must be a damn good reason for doing so, and in this case, there was none.

The rule I’m referring to is that of character arcs.  Classically in a film, we have a plot point (defined as an event that comes out of the blue and turns the story around in a new direction) to occur at the end of ACT 1 – the protagonist is then forced to face the very thing he’s been trying to avoid his whole life.

As a result of this plot point, the character must grow to overcome the obstacles that now face him.

Think of “40 Year Old Virgin.”  Steve Carrell meets a woman who is truly amazing and he must keep her by overcoming his immaturity and virginity or pay the consequences.

This plot point is there to service the character – not the other way around.  The plot grows out of the needs of the character.  So we first think character, then we think of a plot that would force the character to face the very things he refuses to face and force him to grow.

This is what makes a great movie.  It’s character, not plot.  A good story is wonderful and crucial but a story is a story is a story.  It doesn’t move us emotionally, only the development of character makes us feel and uplifts us.

So in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” we have a sad sack character, who is way too sensitive, who gets dumped by his girlfriend, Sarah Marshall.  He decides to get away from it all by going to Hawaii – where – you guessed it – his girlfriend is also staying with her new boyfriend in the same hotel.  Now this is a huge co-incidence, but a movie can certainly sustain one big co-incidence.

Unfortunately, this overly sensitive protagonist who feels incredibly sorry for himself, continues to feel sorry for himself until about 75 minutes into the film. There is little if any character growth and in no time at all we start to get annoyed with this fellow.

The comedy wears very thin after awhile and comes occasionally from raunchy jokes and situations that have nothing to do with the characters but is simply there to get a cheap laugh.

So we see why we have such a thing as a character arc.  It was not conceived by some overly clever know-it-all who simply wanted to shackle us with rules – it was discovered that a character’s growth was the essence of what made a great movie and what keeps us interested and surprised as audience members.

We ignore this rule at our peril.  And again, that is not to say good and great movies cannot break this rule, that there may be a great movie where the character doesn’t really change – “Forrest Gump,” for example.  Forrest doesn’t change during the movie, but everyone around him does.  The protagonist in “Being There,” same thing.  He doesn’t change, but everyone around him changes.  This can work and does work.

From now on do not simply disregard movies that you feel are flawed, find out why they’re flawed and let’s learn something from their errors.  Let’s hear from you.

Until next week then, when we shall continue our discussion of creating great characters – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters.  As many of you  know, I want to provide information not normally garnered in a screenwriting workshop, screenwriting class or screenwriting course.  This is another one of those times.

I just saw a post on our Secrets of Screenwriting board on Facebook about being smart in regards to when you send out a script.  When is it ready?  How do you know it’s as good as it can be.

It used to be in the good old days you could send out a script that was about 70% there and it would still sell.  The studio execs figured there would be plenty of rewrites and they had development money to pay for that.

That’s not the world we’re in now.  Studios and independent production companies want a script that’s just about perfect. That means it has to be about 90% there.  It has to great with maybe a polish to be done before it goes into production.

Michael Arndt, the screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine said something in an interview I will never forget.  “You’re only as good as the feedback you’re getting.”

No truer words could ever be said by someone who knows what they’re talking about.  The biggest mistake I see most screenwriters make is that they send out their script before it’s ready.  This hits home for me because I’ve been guilty of the same mistake more than once.

It’s natural to see why this occurs.  We all are exhausted and tend to get burnt out when we do multiple rewrites.  We just want the damn thing to be done already.  But does that mean we’re now making the best decision when we just throw up our hands and say:  “Okay, I’m done with this,” and then send it out to the wolves?

Hardly.  We need to get professional level feedback from other writers who’ve had films made or optioned, directors, producers, development people or any trained professional who knows how to help writers raise the level of their writing to the point that their screenplays are now actually marketable. That means the structure is totally sound, the characters are clear and compelling, the dialogue is polished and has subtext and the climax is extremely satisfying.

How many rewrites does it take to get your screenplay to this level of excellence?  Many.  It’s crazy to think you can do a first draft, second draft and even third draft and expect the material is as good as it can possibly be.  It took me 10 drafts of my second screenplay (getting feedback from director and story development execs) before everyone felt good about sending the script out.  I was willing to go that distance because I really believed in the project – eventually we were able to attach Wes Craven, the great horror director, and he did a pass of his own.  This film, Deadly Blessing, did get made eventually.

You have to truly believe in your project to be willing to do this.  If you’re ambivalent about the story and aren’t truly committed to it you won’t go this distance.  This is how I know as a writer that I’m truly committed to any project, that I’m willing to do as many rewrites as it takes to make the script better and better.  I may get frustrated, whine and complain, but in the end I will do it!  And when I see I’ve improved the script another 10 or 15% or whatever it is, I know it was worth it.

If you have step back from your screenplay, do that.  It’s always good before making this most important decision that you’ve really thought this through, just as I advise writers to take time before launching into a rewrite.  You need the energy and commitment to continue.  You need to be clear that what you’re doing is right and will make the script better.

Take a deep breath.  Think about it.  Get great feedback.  And if you can make it better – you need to do that.

I’ll talk more about related issues in the future.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters.  As you know I’m always looking for ways to impart information that you don’t usually get in screenwriting workshops, screenwriting classes or screenwriting courses.  Here’s more of that.  We have been discussing private moments in films and how they elucidate the inner lives of our characters.

So once we have the moment we want to convey, how do we express it to the reader in the most economical and powerful way possible? We do it by communicating what the character is experiencing. And how do we experience anything?

Through the senses. So we need to communicate the sensory experience of the character. What is the character seeing (most important), hearing, touching, smelling, etc.

And let us not forget thinking. It is not true that you cannot convey what a character thinks in a screenplay. You can do it if you’re clever. By how a character reacts to a line of dialogue or an action we can certainly glean what that person is thinking – he can recoil, he can roll his eyes, he can gasp, he can refuse to talk, he can mutter, he can babble, he can gag.

All these things give us an insight into the thinking process of the character. I want to be inside your protagonist, not see him or her from an objective point of view. So how do you take me inside that character?

You have to be in that moment yourself to honestly convey it to me. In your imagination you need to experience that moment in a new unit of time, to be there yourself, to feel it all, see it all, imagine what it looks like, how it smells, what the silk feels like, what the lash of the whip is really like against bare skin.

And only then can you convey that to me, your reader. It is not an objective process – you must be there emotionally – and when your eyes well up with tears because something sad occurs in your story or you actually get goose bumps when a chilling moment occurs, then you know you are in that world.

Otherwise, you’re simply transcribing events or emotions from a distance and we as your audience will not feel them with poignancy or power. You, the writer, have to be there to express it. And that takes time and the power of your imagination. And calmness and clarity. But it is the thing that separates great writing from mediocre writing.

That’s all for now. We’ll resume with a new topic next week. Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, screenwriters. We have been discussing private moments in films.  As you know I attempt to provide insights into areas of screenwriting you would not normally be able to get in screenwriting courses, screenwriting classes and your average screenwriting workshops.

The more I think about these precious moments, the more I see the specialized writing we all do in films, as something much more akin to poetry than any other form of writing – whether it’s writing novels, stage plays, non-fiction, etc.

We are attempting to communicate a great deal of emotion, character development, theme and revelation of life’s little moments in the least amount of words possible.

That is what sets us apart from those who write page after page in novels about what a house looks like or those who write for the stage and reveal their characters and theme through vast amounts of dialogue.

We are doing something very different. We are painting pictures for people and through those specific, finely wrought pictures hopefully saying so much more than could ever be expressed by pages of description or dialogue.

When you think about any wonderful movie that has stayed in your mind – it is rarely the dialogue you remember but the picture.

This is also what poetry is about. It is about the images conveyed, metaphors and similes. As I think William Carlos Williams wrote – “No ideas except in things.” What he means by that is a poet expresses everything through concrete imagery – comparing life or love or emotion to something tangible –

Like this poem from Edgar Allan Poe – “And all my days are trances/ And all my nightly dreams/Are where thy grey eye glances,/And where they footstep gleams-/In what ethereal dances,/By what ethereal streams.” In those few words so much is expressed – a whole lifetime of experience and longing and maybe even regret.

A tremendous amount of emotion and thought is expressed by a limited amount of words. It takes great economy and work to achieve this – and it is what we are attempting as well. It’s easy to write reams of stuff, it’s very difficult to condense it down to a few choice words and pictures that say it all.

That is what we labor at – the thing that Waldo Salt said took so long to find when he was writing. Once you have the visual image the scene is about – then the dialogue and everything else comes easily.

Let’s keep working on that William Carlos Williams quote.    More of this in the future —  For past posts on these ideas please visit my website at:

https://www.glennbenest.com

And for those of you who live in Los Angeles, consider joining my professional screenwriting workshops.  I have new classes starting in January.  Contact me at: gbenest@pacbell.net

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone.  As you know I try my darndest to provide insights that you don’t normally get in screenwriting courses, screenwriting classes of any kind and even screenwriting workshops.

What other tricks are in the arsenal of the great screenwriters?  Private poetical moments.  Moments when a character simply is drawn in by the mood of his environment or something going on around him.

We have seen this many times in films – the character simply appreciates a bag being blown across the sidewalk – American Beauty – a transcendent moment perhaps like the feather falling in Forrest Gump – the awesomeness of our universe and how tiny we actually are in it – Contact.

The character is swept up in the mood of a scene – smoking a  joint in his tiny apartment, really digging music – but not even aware that extremely tragic events are occurring all around him – this is from a screenplay from one of the writers in my private workshop.  He completely captures that blissful oblivion of being on drugs when his sister is urgently calling and he’s too stoned to know it.

Look for these poetical moments.  They can express ideas and emotions that we could never express in words.  Yes, great pictures are worth a thousand words and this relates to screenwriting as much as it relates to any visual medium.

How do we find these moments?

I’m glad you asked.  We will discuss this next week.

Until  then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this:

Hello, everyone.  As you all know I’m always searching for areas of discussion that aren’t normally taught in screenwriting workshops, screenwriting classes and screenwriting courses.

Our last discussion concerned private moments, and I have been thinking a lot about these particular incidents in the past week. How great it is when we get private moments for our protagonists, which are really a small window into the soul of our heroes and heroines.

This is not an issue for novelists as they have ample opportunity to tell you all about the inner thoughts of their characters.  This is not a luxury we possess.  We don’t have the ability to tell you what our characters are thinking, but that doesn’t mean we can’t show their expressions, how they react to situations, what they say, and also what they don’t say about what’s going on inside of them.

So here is our dilemma – We don’t want on-the-nose dialogue (which simply means the character says exactly what he’s feeling).  For example:  The character says:  “I hate it when you do…”

This is not nearly as interesting as the character recoiling at something, trying to get the hell out of there, trying to change the subject, or doing a million other things that show how much he hates it when his girlfriend smokes in bed, etc.  He coughs, he opens up the window, he takes out an air freshener and goes to work.

Think of all the great characters in the sitcom The Office and how they’re constantly reacting to Steve Carrell doing asinine things (or used to do asinine things).  Hardly ever does anyone tell him, “I can’t believe what an idiot you are!”  They can’t, they work for him.  But we know from their reactions just how horrified they are by what he does and says.  This is in fact the essence of the comedy on that show.

As screenwriters, one of our primary directives is to show, not tell.  Don’t tell me something, show it.  Then I get to participate in the scene.  You don’t hand it to me on a silver platter.  I, as the reader, or audience member, want to figure things out.

I want to be active, just like I want your protagonists to be active!

Okay, this is very simple and even obvious and yet one of the hardest tasks we face – how do I show it?

Private moments can be a godsend for something like this.  When someone is troubled, they sit in a corner and mope or stare out the window or smoke dejectedly on the porch.

Always look for insightful private moments for your characters.

For past posts on these ideas please visit my website at:

https://www.glennbenest.com

And for those of you who live in Los Angeles, consider joining my professional screenwriting workshops.  I have new classes starting in January.  Contact me at: gbenest@pacbell.net

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

Share this: