undeserved misfortune RSS

BREAKING BAD, DEADPOOL, DIE HARD, ERIN BROCKOVICH, flawed protagonist, fortitude, higher ideals, humor, sympathy, THE SOPRANOS, transgression, undeserved misfortune - June 01, 2022

DEVELOPING SYMPATHY FOR CHARACTERS

Very often, readers and talent (and audiences) are looking for characters who are sympathetic, particularly the protagonist. We need a degree of sympathy if we are to emotionally invest in the character’s story. Some writers take this desire for a sympathetic protagonist as a demand for a protagonist without vulnerabilities or flaws; it’s Captain America or nothing. That isn’t the case. We can and should be able to find sympathy for characters despite their flaws, in the same way we do for our flawed fellow humans. There are a few tried-and-true ways to develop character sympathy, even (or especially) with...

ELEVATING THE SET-UP

I’ve read a lot of scripts in which the core set-up is predicated on the characters being dumb and doing dumb things. In some genres (comedy, horror) this is usually fine, and perhaps even a plus. But generally it’s cheating; forcing stupidity onto the characters is an easy way to get the story ball rolling. The stronger approach is to elevate the set-up, and the way to do that is to make the characters as intelligent as possible. We can still get the story ball rolling, but instead of relying on easy choices, now we have to look for new...

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