Pat Verducci, Writing Coach, Teacher and Mentor: This exercise is actually really helpful
and what I ask them to do is to sit down and imagine their character is in a room
with someone else in the movie that they trust.
Film Courage:
How much easier is it for the writer if they know from the beginning what the character wants?
Pat: A million times easier, it's a million times easier if you kind of know what the
character wants. But there's always a starting point. You think they know what they want at
the beginning and you start writing with that and then it can shift and so I think it's the
most important thing. Like I said earlier, when I do consultations with people it's the singular
most popular problem in the script is what do they want, how are they trying to get it, what are they
doing to try to get it, how does that make them face something in themselves and how do they grow
and do they finally get this thing or do they get it in a way that they didn't expect?
I always try to start out like what do they want because I’ve learned over the years like I need to
know what that is because that's the engine that drives their actions through the story
and when I don't know that and I start to write I'm just kind of like just driving over here,
I'm driving over here. I don't know it and it just ends up being I throw out a lot of pages
so I think you can start like what is their emotional need do they want love do they want
revenge what is it that's driving them and then what's the specific thing they think is gonna get
is gonna satisfy that need and how do they pursue that and you may start with that and you may shift
it as you start to write you realize oh that's not what they want at all they want this other
thing so then you're gonna have to go back and kind of reverse engineer what you did but
it's okay that's the process and a lot of times characters goals shift in the movie like in
get out which is a great movie Chris he wants to go impress her family in the middle of the
in the middle of the movie his goal shifts to like I need to get out of here they're gonna hijack my
body and my brain right so so that that shifts in in the story but but that's good that's okay but
he still has a goal throughout that drives him and you've said before that sometimes when you
sit down to write that your character sometimes starts to tell you what they want in a sense yeah
I just had an experience with this barf thing that I did this thing that I just vomited out like I'm
just gonna write right right and I was just like I kind of had the plot in my head because again
this side the left side is so dominant in my brain and I was just like okay this is when this happens
and then suddenly she's in the middle of the scene and like there's a flashback where somebody's
she's curled up in a ball in the bathroom and someone's throwing movie magazines at her
from the 1940s and I was like then I went back into the scene I'm like well that just happened I
don't know what happened to her but something happened to her and then I kept writing
and then again when I went back that was where all that whole backstory is what
the whole thing is really about why she's doing what she's doing
what she's gonna have to face in the story but that was never in my brain that that would ever
happen I would that there were that flashback was just going to pop up in the middle of my writing
but it was great they she started talking to me she started telling me stuff that happened to her
and I was like okay what if we can't figure out what the character wants oh wow yeah
what if you can't figure out what the character wants again a very common issue right some
strategies that you might do to try to figure out what the character wants is to figure out
what they're afraid of what are they afraid of like what are they scared of and what do they want
that's in contrast to that does the could their want come from wanting the opposite of that fear
do what I mean if they're afraid let's say they were had a traumatic past or traumatic childhood
could they really want just the perfect family could you start from fear and generate a want
as the opposite of that that's one way to kind of try to generate some ideas about
what your character could want one thing that I often do with my clients and my students is
I have them write a monologue and monologues in movies are we're not supposed to write monologues
it's one of the rules but what this exercise is actually really helpful and what I ask them to do
is to sit down and imagine their character is in a room with someone else in the movie
that they trust another character that they trust and that other character says
what do you want and this character tells that other character what they want
and I ask the writers to use all their five senses to describe this dream that they have
and just to allow that character to talk to the writer and describe what they want with no
preconceptions and usually out of and I say write for five minutes and don't stop so just stream of
consciousness I want this and somewhere in there is the is a kernel of something that they can
actually grab onto and hold on to so again giving an invitation to your character to speak to you
about what they want so if they don't know what the character wants it doesn't necessarily mean
they need to abandon it that that character is not really connecting with them no okay no it's just
that they don't know yet they have to listen they aren't listening they're trying to like put things
on the character if you step into the character and let them talk they will tell you things
so let them tell someone else in the movie what they want what are the ways a writer
can create stakes for their character oh great question so obviously stakes are really important
for characters because they create suspense and tension around the goal right so if they don't
achieve what they want to achieve something terrible will happen they will lose something
there Linda Seger wrote this really great book called how to make a good script great it's not
just for rewriting you can use it to write a first draft but she actually has a really
great chapter on stakes and what she came up with is a list of what is a list of stakes for
any human being and I'm going to try to remember off the top of my head but it's like survival
love and belonging security security the aesthetic which is a sense of order control
self-actualization which is self-expression so the loss of any one of these things on this list
is devastating for a human right survival physical survival oh my god I'm dead right
love and belonging if we don't have love and belonging we're basically dead safety
and security we also need that if we don't have it it's going to be bad right so all of these stakes
one way to think about that is to look at her list and I think it's online somewhere if people want
to check it out but but look at that list and and think about it in relation to my character's goal
if they don't like for example if I don't make that person love me what will I lose love
which ones on this list am I gonna lose and if you if you watch a lot of movies and you think
about this and you think about the stakes that the writers have set up for their main characters
usually it's everything on that list except for one or two things they stack the stakes
for the main character so it's just not love and belonging it's also safety and security it's also
self-actualization it's actually maybe later in the movie something happens where now it's
survival I'm gonna die they pile on the stakes and every good writer has to be able to articulate
what the character's gonna lose if they don't get what they want again everything is connected to
the character and their goal so if they don't get this thing what will be lost and the more
you can stack those stakes for your character the more tension and suspense and kind of like we're
just gonna be like oh no they're not gonna if they it's just gonna create in the audience this
like connection and fear that they're not going to get what they want which is what you want in the
story so just like the is that Maslow's hierarchy of needs yeah so I think at the at the very bottom
of it or area I'm trying to think if I flipped it so self-actualization I think is is the last one
yes and then survive safety and survival yeah okay and Linda Seger created the screenwriting version
of that list nice yeah okay and so if you took like a Jenga piece if we take one of those away
then that that's going to raise the stakes no matter what it is yeah okay yeah interesting yeah
like like I was thinking about the movie coco the Pixar movie Coco about the little kid Miguel who
has to go to the land of the dead so he can find his ancestors so that he can become a musician
which is what he's meant to be right and I went through Linda Seger's list of all those stakes
and he had everything except one and it that's just good writing he's not just gonna physically
possibly die he's gonna lose his family he's gonna lose safety he's gonna not be who he's meant to be
like everything like this kid is gonna it's gonna be horrible if he doesn't achieve his goal and
so again the writer has to be able to understand and articulate what's at stake for the character.
Do you always know what your character wants?