Eric Edson, Screenwriting Profession at California State University Northridge (CSUN): This evening we're going to take a look at character categories and I hope it's
going to be fun I think it will be fun I have I picked six six particular
categories I obviously I can't do all 14 in one night we will be falling asleep
here but we will talk it through and what what the examples are and I picked
examples for specific reasons I'll tell you when we get there some like for
instance some adversary characters in major motion pictures are pretty obvious
right and therefore I picked one that isn't obvious so you can see the other
side of it too okay
now then perspective Erik does like the Greeks doesn't he what is character you
know in a screenplay or a novel and they are both important because they are very
different and we'll get to that in a second about 400 BC what's his name feel
frost Asst Theophrastus was a Greek philosopher and he sat down and made up
this list it was about you know 70 types long but made up a list of types of
people based upon predominant predominant attitudes flatterer
garrulous boor reckless superstitious and so forth I'm not quite sure why he
did it because he was a philosopher not a dramatist but it just turned out that
one of his students was named Menander and Menander as some of you obviously
woops Menander went on to make a career out of writing somewhere around 100
comedy plays based upon these character types using the types of people in
exaggerated form too create comic characters Menander
basically was the first comedy writer first playwright comedy writer in
history as far as we know and he did quite well he had a good career at it
but attitude types do not relate to plot function and what we must concern
ourselves with and obviously as I eliminate other possibilities here we're
talking about plot function and that is where we go to the 14 character
categories early on I mean this was Moliere was doing this you know to
almost 2,000 years later using the types the exaggerated types all of which was
swell but the plots were not necessarily
dependent upon those characters feeding into them okay I just typed in character
categories and googled it and this is what came back this is contemporary this
is a few months ago round character flat characters stock character one
dimensional three dimensional but again this has nothing to do and misses
completely story purpose and that's what we're looking for the story purpose of
characters because the storytelling function of a character in film is
critical it's absolutely critical work even more critical than it is in novels
right so every character present in your screenplays and scripts other scripts
they have to be there to serve the plot the story and moving it forward and
there's only two ways that they can serve a story they either are there to
help or to hinder the progress of the hero that's it and let me tell you this
is this is why that is true okay and then we have to back up a bit and I have
I have had lots of students through the years who come in with
attitudes towards story and character that they have learned from teachers and
professors of English and of literature and in other words from novels and the
difference between novels and motion picture visual storytelling couldn't be
more extreme and plan and separate absolutely separate first of all here is
how a novel works number one it is subjective subjective they are it is
always an interior monologue which means there is a narrator writing it or
talking it and talking to you the reader that makes it subjective it is the
opinion of one person basically and even when the story is written in third
person or third person omniscient you know like the voice of somebody looking
down from heaven upon the scene and describing everything and then jumping
from inside the head and feelings of one character to inside the head and
feelings of another character that too is completely subjective because some
God is narrating it too in writing in novels
you've got sentences in paragraph and they can own at paragraphs and they can
only focus on one thing at a time what a sentence describes the sunset and
describes the way the trees are blowing in the breeze or whatever it is and then
the next single thing gets addressed one thing at a time so what happens is well
it only works in that the reader provides everything else from your own
memories your own oh yeah I remember then you kind of fill in the details and
help create that fictional world of the novel in your own imagination and that
too is subjective the whole process here of reading and enjoying a novel and
experiencing that story is subjective three novels can take side trips they
don't have to be read in one sitting they can and will
try war and peace you're going to be having several sittings to get through
it yes but that means there's less focus on plot not always but in general it is
looser it is looser the plot thing is looser
let me see I was just thinking about Ernest Hemingway book but for Whom the
Bell Tolls anybody read it grand total of one okay I know it's another era of
another era I was I was a Hemingway a fan when I was in my teens you know and
I compulsively read them all kind of stuff but for Whom the Bell Tolls is a
really great book but the main story is it takes place in revolutionary Spain in
the mid 30s just before World War two Francisco Franco as a dictator - had
taken over Spain and the rebels were in the mountains fighting to return to
democracy and that's the main plot but there is one character in it by the name
of Pilar a woman by the name of Pilar as I recall she was she's about 50 years
old I can't remain that's the image that
still the subjective image that still stays with me all these years later
right but she's taking all the risks of all the other people she risks death
every day when they go into battle and so forth but Hemingway grew so fond of
her that for almost 90 pages he takes a sidestep and writes her entire story and
her entire backstory and it's wonderful I mean it's him writing prose which is
wonderful by definition and then some 80 or 90 pages later he comes back to the
main plot and continues you cannot do that in visual storytelling that is a
quality only available in novels in literature or form you can't do that
plot can be looser because it's not limited to two hours only and has to be
seen in one sitting describes feelings and thoughts that you
know the narrator goes from inside the feelings and thoughts of one and
describes them and describes the other so we can subjectively know people's
emotions okay now here's the movies film is exactly the opposite visual
storytelling is as utterly objective as novels are subjective when we go into a
theater and sit down and the movie begins everybody in that audience sees
exactly the same thing every everybody there is we don't bring our own
imagination to it we see the exact same thing everything has been decided the
set the the lighting the costumes the blocking everything is taken care of and
does not require our imagination to feed over it and secondly instead of one
thing at a time motion pictures give to us a deluge of information all at once
hundreds of individual there's motion and there's color and there's speech and
there's action physical action and it's all happening at once and that's why
it's such an overwhelming art form it is the most overwhelming and / you know
personally involving art form so far that there is in the world because of
this deluge of information no side trips you got basically you got approximately
two hours to tell your story beginning to end and then everybody goes home it's
not done in small little bites like you would read a novel over time it has to
be complete in two hours and that means no side trips none and because it is
utterly objective that means the only way we learn
really about character is by what they do behavior in film is character in
novels that can be describing go inside and you know this and that is going on
inside no sir you don't you can't do that I'm not saying that there isn't
dialogue and people can say ouch because they're feeling pain or something but
for us to know it and to share it it has to be behavior which can be seen
three-dimensional visual and that is why when you build a story a visual story
you are providing the plot that will allow your characters but specifically
your your key character to take this journey and demonstrate who they are and
demonstrate how they grow and how they change by the end that is very
completely different really then then novels okay therefore all characters
must serve the ends of in that two hours making that hero's journey his or her
trip through whatever your story is they must feed into that and they have to
either help or hinder the hero and simultaneously be providing conflict
visible present tense conflict so that's how we arrive at the 14 character
categories now you saw this last time here it is again and I just want to run
these past you one more time these are in the book no these are in the book
don't worry about that but uh this is the first half of them and tonight I've
got examples of hero adversary love interest sidekick mentor and endangered
innocent the gate Guardian we will save its it's usually more of a lesser part
than the others and we'll save it for another time and then these are the
other seven and these we will get to over time as we
analyze the pictures that we're going to be looking at right although I'll say
off the top of my head adversary agent is extremely important because most
adversaries have helped and that helped the ones who do the bidding of and take
the orders from in one way or the other the adversary
they are adversary agents and there's various ramifications of who that can be
but that is the purpose storytelling purpose they serve and down here it's
not really last on the list in terms of importance at all I don't know how it
arrived down here but the helper follower allies of the hero are people
who do the same but for the hero helper followers there's all kinds of different
lungs Ocean's eleven that's a one hero movie Danny ocean is the hero he has a
sidekick rusty that's another category we're going to take a look at and then
he has his team all those other guys the the terrific you smaller parts but they
are key to the enterprise and they are all helper follower allies okay beyond
the 14 characters of course you have atmosphere characters the under fives or
the extras they don't really have a category I haven't given them a category
here because they do not serve a direct plot storytelling function what they are
saying it crassly I suppose are props they are there to make the world they're
there for verisimilitude to make the world this fictional world for this
particular story feel real and sometimes they have a few lines you know the the
sassy waitress who you know has a quick quick cute quip and drops the bill and
we never see her again she has no story function it's just milieu just to give
it depth and they don't advance the plot and something else that's useful about
having the character categories is once you assign a role to one of your
characters and pick them out of because all of these can provide subplots all of
them once you pick a particular individual and you paint them and create
them and make them three-dimensional and once they are in a category they have to
stay in that category you can't change categories okay
when it happens and I've seen it happen a few times and it just destroys movies
what's it called the deep end anybody seen the deep end Tilda Swinton I think
stars in well that alone tells you something it starts out very interesting
and it's about Tilda Swinton who whose son who is you know late teens and
applying to college and something happens and and then all of a sudden it
looks like it's going to ruin his entire life and there's bad guys and gangsters
trying to blackmail mom and she's running around trying to fix it and set
it all right but a very strange thing happens at the midpoint of that movie
his mom just kind of gives up and falls in a frump and one of the adversary
agent characters who works for the bad guy at the midpoint decides to take up
the flag of hero and all of a sudden the mantle of hero changes from her to
someone else and he is the one who goes forward and resolves the story and it
doesn't work it eliminates the emotional connection we have with the characters
it's changing horses midstream and psychologically for your audience it
just doesn't work