Character Hacks
CHARACTER HACKS —
I was talking to my Gotham students. They’re in a screenwriting 101 class. The first foray into screenwriting. And it’s my job, working with them in that first class, to work with them on structure. Hard.
Concept too. Bring in concept. Consider it. Or more than “it.” Several concepts, if that works. And look at them all from a perspective of, Is this screen friendly?
“Screen friendly” means, does it move on a screen? If it doesn’t move on a screen, it’s not a movie. It’s radio. But that’s not what I want to talk about today.
Today I want to talk about a story hack. Or, more specifically, a character hack.
See, one of the things that happens with stories is, newer writers don’t always push them hard enough. Newer writers hit on an idea. “Here is this nice idea.” And then build an entire story around pretty normal generic characters. The nice parents. The nice children. The nice people. Basically, “The Village of the Happy Nice People.”
Very few audiences tune in for “The Village of the Happy Nice People.”
Audiences tune in for drama. Conflict. A story problem that is hard to solve.
I want to give you all a story hack. The story hack I gave my students.
This isn’t necessarily something to follow through on and do with story, it’s something to think about to get ideas for story. It involves taking a significant story character and radically changing something about the character.
For example, say we take a story about a woman in her thirties searching for love whose younger sister just got engaged. In the current story, let’s say the younger sister is nice and hero worships her older sister.
Now imagine the younger sister is a high school drop out with a meth habit who is the lead singer in a Goth band.
Say we take a story about a nice kid with talent and a future in baseball. Except his nice dad wants him to come to work in the family auto shop as a mechanic.
Now, imagine Dad is muscle in a Russian gang. “No baseball for you kid, we’re the mob.”
Turning a story a little on its head considering it from different angles character-wise can give you new insights into story.
Does that mean you should go that extreme on a character change?
No. Not always. But, maybe. Maybe the story will get a lot more interesting stepping outside of “The Village of the Happy Nice People” zone.
It can also be educational to do a mental lead character gender switch. What if a story lead is not Matthew. What is if the story lead is a Mary?
How does story change there?
Think about characters in story, then think, how could I radicalize one character personality and how would that shift story?
Think, what if I changed the lead’s gender, what would that do? How would things change? Would any of these changes be interesting? How and why?
It’s a good mental exercise.
