I would do anything to achieve my goal. Just don't ask me to do X.
Stop talking! Start doing!
I could be talking about myself but in fact I'm talking about my characters. If you take nothing else from anything I write in this blog, take this. Passivity is the single greatest block to good writing I have either had placed in front of me or have placed in front of my own self, I can't decide which. Characters must do. They can't just react. A character must drive the narrative, must make decisions that have consequences. You the writer must present your characters with choices to make and the story goes from there. Now each and every one of you out there in cyberspace are probably doing that already and are reading this thinking, "No wonder this monkey hasn't sold a script. He's a monkey. A passive character writing chimp." But I have a feeling many of you make the same mistake.
One of my pet hates is people who use bad analogies. "Life is like making a smoothie. It will only be as good as the quality of the fruit you use." AAAAAAAAAGGHH!!!! Wanker! However as someone who hates bad analogies, it is perfectly acceptable for me to use them. So here goes.
The writer is often compared to God. We are Gods of the universes we create, the people inhabiting them, the things they do and say. Taking this to be true, remember this. God, if you're approaching this from standard Western Catholic doctrine, also gives us free will. He gives us the ability to make choices. And this is exactly what you must give your characters. A story imposed on characters who are nothing more than cyphers is as obvious as testicles on a eunuch. Characters have things happen to them and then they react by making things happen. A character who talks and reacts then talks some more will not be interesting, unless that is the nature of the character and the writer is controlling him/her accordingly. Passivity due to bad writing is absolutely fatal. This is where many writers go wrong at first, me included, except that it's what I've been doing all along. I have interesting story ideas, some good scenes, maybe even one or two great ones, some interesting character ideas, but every single time the whole thing is undermined by characters reacting to events I make happen. I am as big a character as any in the film. "Hey, who's the bloke that's making all this shit happen? I wish I had the chance to do something about it." No such luck mate. Time to react to something else.It's been a huge thing for me to realise and it's taken me a long time to realise it. But the heavy lifting equipment is out, sweaty workmen are baring their arse cracks as they toil to lift it as we speak and I think soon it will be removed from my path and taken away to be destroyed.
Last year I attended a screenwriting conference in San Diego (more later) and I met a script consultant called Michael Hague. Now Michael Hague has written books, gives lectures and can easily be found in the library with a thousand others promising the secret to "Writing the Script That Sells." But if you don't know him I would urge you to seek him out. I met him after a lecture he gave and I paid a little extra for a half hour script consultation with him. It was he who made me see how I've been going so wrong. And it was in the course of the lecture he came up with the question to ask of your character, the question I have used as the title for this post. Michael believes strongly in, as he puts it, "clear, attainable goals." What does the character want and what are they doing to get it? And to create great drama and conflict work out what it is they are most afraid of and put it in their way as an obstacle to achieving the goal you have set out for them near the start of the script. "I would do anything to achieve my goal. Just don't ask me to do X" They absolutely have to solve/find/escape from/meet/kill whatever it is but they are terrified of meeting/doing/being/finding X. This feeds into motivations, characters arcs and other things I will talk about another time. But for now, if you ask that question of your characters, work out the answer, and place it as the primary obstacle in their way of achieving their goal, you'll be well on the way to creating a script that is in danger of working. I know I am! Take them out of their comfort zone, make them really work and you'll have an audience rooting for them. Even if the story demands they fail. One of my favourite films is Raiders of the Lost Ark for many reasons but that is one of them. Indianna Jones loses the ark as many times as he retrieves it again and in the end it isn't his. The point is they'll have gone out of their comfort zone to achieve something, which by the way can be absolutely anything in any genre. Think of any film that moves you. Chances are, there is a person struggling against something to achieve something.
The part of me that's been down for a while wonders how I could have spent so long not realising this. I guess you have to go through certain things to reach certain places. All I know is it's only in the last year or so I've started to understand just how passive my characters have been (because they haven't had clear, attainable goals and have instead been wandering around lost in the half baked narratives I've been providing for them) and more recently have started to understand what to do to rectify that. In the end it doesn't matter how I got here or how long its taken me to get here. The important thing is I'm here.
I could be talking about myself but in fact I'm talking about my characters. If you take nothing else from anything I write in this blog, take this. Passivity is the single greatest block to good writing I have either had placed in front of me or have placed in front of my own self, I can't decide which. Characters must do. They can't just react. A character must drive the narrative, must make decisions that have consequences. You the writer must present your characters with choices to make and the story goes from there. Now each and every one of you out there in cyberspace are probably doing that already and are reading this thinking, "No wonder this monkey hasn't sold a script. He's a monkey. A passive character writing chimp." But I have a feeling many of you make the same mistake.
One of my pet hates is people who use bad analogies. "Life is like making a smoothie. It will only be as good as the quality of the fruit you use." AAAAAAAAAGGHH!!!! Wanker! However as someone who hates bad analogies, it is perfectly acceptable for me to use them. So here goes.
The writer is often compared to God. We are Gods of the universes we create, the people inhabiting them, the things they do and say. Taking this to be true, remember this. God, if you're approaching this from standard Western Catholic doctrine, also gives us free will. He gives us the ability to make choices. And this is exactly what you must give your characters. A story imposed on characters who are nothing more than cyphers is as obvious as testicles on a eunuch. Characters have things happen to them and then they react by making things happen. A character who talks and reacts then talks some more will not be interesting, unless that is the nature of the character and the writer is controlling him/her accordingly. Passivity due to bad writing is absolutely fatal. This is where many writers go wrong at first, me included, except that it's what I've been doing all along. I have interesting story ideas, some good scenes, maybe even one or two great ones, some interesting character ideas, but every single time the whole thing is undermined by characters reacting to events I make happen. I am as big a character as any in the film. "Hey, who's the bloke that's making all this shit happen? I wish I had the chance to do something about it." No such luck mate. Time to react to something else.It's been a huge thing for me to realise and it's taken me a long time to realise it. But the heavy lifting equipment is out, sweaty workmen are baring their arse cracks as they toil to lift it as we speak and I think soon it will be removed from my path and taken away to be destroyed.
Last year I attended a screenwriting conference in San Diego (more later) and I met a script consultant called Michael Hague. Now Michael Hague has written books, gives lectures and can easily be found in the library with a thousand others promising the secret to "Writing the Script That Sells." But if you don't know him I would urge you to seek him out. I met him after a lecture he gave and I paid a little extra for a half hour script consultation with him. It was he who made me see how I've been going so wrong. And it was in the course of the lecture he came up with the question to ask of your character, the question I have used as the title for this post. Michael believes strongly in, as he puts it, "clear, attainable goals." What does the character want and what are they doing to get it? And to create great drama and conflict work out what it is they are most afraid of and put it in their way as an obstacle to achieving the goal you have set out for them near the start of the script. "I would do anything to achieve my goal. Just don't ask me to do X" They absolutely have to solve/find/escape from/meet/kill whatever it is but they are terrified of meeting/doing/being/finding X. This feeds into motivations, characters arcs and other things I will talk about another time. But for now, if you ask that question of your characters, work out the answer, and place it as the primary obstacle in their way of achieving their goal, you'll be well on the way to creating a script that is in danger of working. I know I am! Take them out of their comfort zone, make them really work and you'll have an audience rooting for them. Even if the story demands they fail. One of my favourite films is Raiders of the Lost Ark for many reasons but that is one of them. Indianna Jones loses the ark as many times as he retrieves it again and in the end it isn't his. The point is they'll have gone out of their comfort zone to achieve something, which by the way can be absolutely anything in any genre. Think of any film that moves you. Chances are, there is a person struggling against something to achieve something.
The part of me that's been down for a while wonders how I could have spent so long not realising this. I guess you have to go through certain things to reach certain places. All I know is it's only in the last year or so I've started to understand just how passive my characters have been (because they haven't had clear, attainable goals and have instead been wandering around lost in the half baked narratives I've been providing for them) and more recently have started to understand what to do to rectify that. In the end it doesn't matter how I got here or how long its taken me to get here. The important thing is I'm here.
posted by Garreth at 2:18 pm
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