Film Courage: Chris, we had this comment come in overnight and so beautifully written I wanted
to read it it's from user half Xbreed23 and they write “I think a lot of writers have an obsession
with their characters which keeps the story from growing because they're too in love with them
nothing is greater than the story, nobody is greater than the story.
Story is the sun, characters are flowers. The story allows characters to bloom.”
Christopher Riley, Screenwriter, Author, and Instructor:I love that, I love that. Awesome,
yeah. I think that's right, characters are in service to story and by story we don't mean plot.
The story is the totality of the characters doing what they do as they struggle with all
of the challenges they face and a beautiful line that doesn't support the story has got to be cut.
I think one of the great challenges is after I’ve said we should dig into our own defining moments
when we base a character on ourselves and it becomes too autobiographical that can limit us
because one of the things we have to look at are the characters flaws and complexities and I don't
want to think about my complexities my where am I a hypocrite put that on the page for the world
so if if I'm not willing to let the character and the story go where they need to
I can end up kind of wrapping duct tape around that character and preventing them from
pursuing their own life and this sounds absurd unless you're a writer
characters will surprise us characters say things we did not know they were going to say
that's such an electric exciting moment when that happens I can't quite explain how that happens
yes if we treat our characters like the whatever antique Barbie and Ken dolls
that we don't want to take out of their boxes because they're too valuable in their perfection
we will hamper the story that that could unfold if we let them cut loose a little bit it's a
great analogy yeah so being too precious like you have your collection up there
and you can show it but you can't really do anything with it right yeah you got to get
the dolls out of the boxes and play with them and that's the point of all of this
character development is to get to the place where we can now get them out and play with
them and put the astronaut doll in the gemini capsule and blast it off and see what happens
and let barbie and ken fight it out and see what happens that's that's the play
that happens when we get past all this character development and we actually start writing pages
that's that's where the fun is that's where the life comes so character development is not an
end in itself the story is the end Chris I heard you say in maybe a Michael we see video that a
story is a hero's struggle against an obstacle to reach a goal yes so I first came across that quote
from television writer Bill Idelson reading an article in the Writer's Guild magazine
and I just have found that to be the E equals M C squared of the physics of storytelling
it gives us three elements gives us our hero gives us a goal and then the obstacles
against which the heroes struggles that's not everything that happens in story
but it allows us to understand at an elemental level what is happening in the story so
in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln it's the story of Abraham Lincoln struggling against
all of the forces of the U.S. house of representatives who don't want to outlaw slavery
to pass an amendment to the united states constitution outlawing slavery now I didn't try
I just gave you the hero gold obstacle but I gave you a log line
for the movie and the log line was just the hero goal obstacle dynamic put into a sentence
it brings the story into focus
it'll it identifies the single action that Aristotle said that a drama needs to be about
and it puts the focus on the character's struggle so if a story is the hero's struggle against an
obstacle to reach a goal then the story juice is in the struggle and
we so we want to spend most of our page count
dramatizing that struggle that gives us force and focus for a story it helps us know
what the story is so we can judge what serves the story and what doesn't what's a distraction
I just find it to be such a clarifying lens a story is not only that there's also
Claudia Hunter Johnson wrote a great book called Crafting Short Screenplays that connect and she
talks about the power of connection and disconnection between characters and how
much emotion comes from connection you can think about a touch a kiss as a connection
or two characters whose eyes meet and they realize against all odds they're actually on the same side
or a disconnection of betrayal and just to say betrayal we feel the emotion that goes with
that and then there are missed connections near misses longed for connections that never happen
all of that swirls around heroes struggling toward goals against obstacles so I find that to be
so so useful when I’m figuring out the structure of a whole movie or the structure of an individual
scene we can think about even the sprawling three movies or three books of lord of the rings
it's all about Frodo carrying a ring to mount doom to destroy it struggling against all the forces
of Mordor it's a single action across all three three-hour long movies and the filmmakers never
lose sight of what the story is the story is Frodo struggling against the forces of Mordor to destroy
the ring lots of stuff happens in that movie and we also we actually kind of feel the energy drain
when we step away from that central thread when we're with Mary and Pippen in the trees
we sort of feel the temperature turned down on the urgency and the focus of that Tom Bombadil which
for readers of the book they know there's maybe a hundred pages about some guy named Tom Bombadil
has nothing to do with Frodo trying to get rid of that ring and so rightly that just falls out
of the movies because it doesn't serve the imperative of movies which is all
about what happens next and hero goal obstacle helps us to know what we mean
when we say well what happens next is what happens next as the hero's struggling toward the goal
forgive me you talked about this other movie and that is that Blood Diamond yes okay and I have not
seen it but if I'm keeping with what I believe you said was sort of this premise it seems like
they're all their common goal is this diamond or these diamond mines and having access to them well
so each in this case we've got two protagonists we've got Leonardo Dicaprio whose goal is
make all the money he can from these diamonds and then Djimon Hounsou whose goal is
rescue my son and so here we've got two stories that intersect and so we could call that I think
Robert Mckee calls that a multi-protagonist story which is which is to say you've got
multiple protagonists each with their own goal and they succeed or fail individually
you can also have buddy movies or movies with several people on a team all struggling toward
the same goal and they succeed or fail together and Mckee calls those plural protagonist movies
plural protagonist movies are more of the classic structure that we see in say Hollywood movies
multi-protagonist movies are more arthouse things they're much harder to do but those movies like
Crash and Traffic and Magnolia that's where you see and babel multi-protagonist movies and I think
that's what's going on with blood diamond right and so the real goal though isn't this diamond the
real goal is is the realization that this father loves his son and he's trying to save him from
yeah so it's an interesting thing you've got sort of your stated goal
I I'm going to rescue my son I’m going to get that diamond
some characters have the wrong goal or their need for growth is far more important than their stated
goal Leonardo Dicaprio's goal he's got the wrong goal he just wants to be rich he wants diamonds
that's the wrong goal what he really needs to do is find something that is worth more than diamonds
and that's people that's love and he does so the audience recognizes that and they say oh you
didn't get your goal but you grew in the way you needed to so I can still feel good about that but
if you die along the way it's bittersweet and so that's cool it's it's not the the neat bow whereas
Djimon Hounsou the dad who's looking to rescue his son it's not really a story about his inner growth
for him we are invested in him actually achieving his goal of rescuing his son
which will require his son's transformation so that's where we get the transformation and the
emotion that accompanies that in that story and those two end up being intertwined at the
end but they they unfold independently for the first good part of that movie
you said that mostly art house cinema does sort of like these multi protagonist films
well if you've got a multi-protagonist film it is going to be probably less of a blockbuster
and so yes you may end up having an art house film if you do that studio films are going to be
the more classic single story that we're telling whether with one protagonist or
many working together so like a or a plural protagonist story a lot of
protagonists working together would be the Oceans 11,12, 13 movies you've got a team of people
who are all trying to pull off the same heist and they succeed or fail together.