Film Courage: How do you follow a character's
journey through their emotion and not through plot points?
Kelly Edwards, Staff Writer, Author, Producer: Okay, well a lot of that has to do with your
obviously your when you're figuring out what you want to say and I think it depends on your
you're doing tv film with a film you obviously have a major dramatic question they're going to
answer that by the end either they're going to get what they want or they don't get what they want
and in television you're obviously doing it over a longer stretch of time and there may
be mechanisms if you're doing streaming versus broadcast either you want that person to have to
learn that lesson over and over and over again on the comedy side or on the drama side it's going to
be a week to week if you're going to keep doing the same thing essentially right and then on the
on the streaming side sometimes there is an endpoint right look at Queen's Gambit there's a
there's a feature structure underneath that and so she gets to the end of the of her want so but when
you're figuring out what the character you need to figure out who your character is for me what I do
as a practice is I do a character aria which is and I think other people have different ways of
talking about this I actually heard I think the screenwriting life has a podcast Meg LeFauve
and Lorien McKenna do this whole thing about and they think they call it aria but they do
it song what is that your character singing of that want for me I always called it an and aria
from way back which is just on on a on a single page I just do a monologue where the character is
yelling at someone the antagonist about what they want and why they want it and it helps me focus
and I think it's it was a practice that I always did for my for my fellows it helped them focus on
how that character moved in the world what do they sound like so do they have a dialect do they have
a southern drawl whatever that is and then what is it that they want and why do they want it and
how do they plan to get it and I think that when you are able to focus that character
you may or may not ever use that I think oh usually at some point usually in a movie it comes
at the low point somewhere there's a a a moment where they lay it all out there I just want this
and sometimes that want has changed but there's always a I just want this thing and obviously
they need to know in the beginning but that thing sometimes this thing usually changes
over time but you want that character to be so clear in their goal that there's no mistaking
that that's what the want is and usually in like a procedural it's I want to catch the bad guy
so I'm going to make then all these steps and quite honestly quite it it does help if you go
I need to do x, y and z in order to get there that way we as an audience know oh that's what
we're on the ride for we know what's going to happen I need to get the package from point a to
point b then I go I know what I'm looking at so but finding out that characters want and really
understanding that character's want is is key and then emotion the emotional part underneath it is
is the why why do I want it I want the the the the promotion I don't know that anybody
cares about you wanting a promotion I want the promotion because I'm going to win my wife back
then I care if that character's thing that they want so much is motivated emotionally
that woman is the only one who understands me or I screwed up and I need to get her back or
that underpinning of the of the emotion is going to drive and keep us on the road for the entire
length of that episode series or whatever it is so I do think that those are important really key
drivers for your otherwise there's no story it's it's all about the story why is the emotional
truth so important in the writing process what my pr my own personal emotional truth or any writer
yeah any writer whether it's you critiquing another writer for yourself well I think I
actually think we sort of talked a little bit about this already which is the the
more honest the more authentic the the writing the more truthful it is the more it resonates
it just bumps up like crazy and you can tell when someone's willing to give that and when someone's
hedging their bets so I do think that that's that's how we understand each other
as if you're giving as much of your emotional truth as you possibly can
right yeah we've all read books where it's an autobiography and some seem a little rosier
maybe or their intentions seem a little rosier than maybe what the situation turned out to be
sure we can always kind of feel like okay I feel like I'm not getting the real story
or I'm getting like a pr version right I read one recently that's a pretty big one
that is out right now and I went I'm not buying it like I just thought it felt really manufactured
and and it was unsettling because I thought well there's some real story there that I'm not knowing
and they're not allowing me in they're giving me the sanitized version so you could tell you could
tell when a I don't know if you could tell of a ghostwriter but you can tell someone else's when
someone else is when someone is not really being 100 and then that's not really a very satisfying
book is it right unless it's a show of someone who's maybe somewhat delusional not like crazy
no but really in in terms of why they did something their intentions and think seeing
themselves I mean everybody sees themselves as a hero and that's just how it is so but but sort of
like the way they would convince themselves that they did the right thing and it really wasn't so
you're kind of seeing this character that's very broken but but I think in many cases yeah if it's
let's say a business leader or whatever and they're writing this thing where they tried
their hardest and it was really because they wanted for the greater good and you're seeing
through that then it is hard to right okay yeah no give me the give me the real give me the
the broken messy part that's the more interesting part how often as an executive would you read
a screenplay that would make you cry well as you can tell I'm a big crier so I'm not going to say I
read a ton of them that would make me cry but remember many times I was in the comedy
department so I spent a huge chunk of my career doing the comedy thing and then but I someone
asked on Twitter recently they said what's the like the best script that you've read as a from a
newbie and there was a script that a couple of writers a team of writers had written after a
very fraught development period where they had not been entirely truthful about their
intentions they were trying to do things that would sell as opposed to things that they loved
and at a certain point I don't think they were going to mind that that I tell this
story but at a certain point I pulled them aside it was towards the end of the program and I said
okay what's going on here I go because this isn't working and they were trying to do
something really sci-fi like well we thought we could they're not that many writers who look
like us in sci-fi and we thought we could sort of basically they're trying to game the system right
and and I said well this is feels like a matchup between Hunger Games and game of thrones and
something else thrown in there he said so what is your favorite show and they said this is us
and I said then you have to write your version of this as us and I'm going to say a couple weeks
later they delivered a script that knocked my socks off and I was sobbing at the end of page one
and by the end of page three I was just a puddle and a co-worker walked by
I was I was in the office super early it was like seven in the morning my co-worker walked by and
and stopped and said are you okay and I was like no it's a really good script and I was wrecked and
it's still probably one of the best scripts I've read to this day it's just and these the the pair
had just rolled out of college had just rolled out of NYU dramatic I think dramatic art school
we live in the drama program and I think that's why I say that there's there's talent everywhere
we we ended up getting another there was another team of the this I think the season before
I want to say maybe 2015 again they just come out of college so age is not a factor
obviously I'm making a career and I'm in my 50’s (late 50’s)
so age is not a factor when you think about the talent that's out there and when you get people
who are so willing to again be emotional and and be truthful there's you can feel them on the page
in this script then it just is undeniable so and then I will also say I also read scripts
that I read a lot of scripts of things that have already been produced that I know have made me cry
and I just want to see well how did they do it so my own process is I read a ton of scripts even now
I usually put them up on Scriptation I think it is the app and I go and I circle things and
I let go this is a really cool way of doing something or I love this turn of phrase and
does this feel like it's something that I can kind of use or I love the formatting in this and
this is how they made the action go faster and this is how they use their dashes or their
their introductions and and I learn from other people and other writers so and hopefully
implement some of that juicy goodness into my own scripts but but I would say I could probably count
on one hand the number of scripts that have made me cry but that doesn't mean that I haven't been
moved and I've been moved quite a bit by people's honesty and their willingness to go there.