protagonist

Did it before. Can do it again

Maximum Z acts, animation, characters, comedy, determination, fantasy, notes, perseverance, persistence, progress, protagonist, rewriting, screenplay, screenwriting, script, structure, westerns, writing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The biggest note I’ve received on the animated fantasy-comedy is that my protagonist needs to be more involved; be the thing that drives things forward, and how what she does affects those around her.

The challenging part is figuring out how to do that while keeping a lot of important story details.

Challenging, but not impossible.

Just as I imagine this task becoming more insurmountable the more I think about it, I’m reminded that I did a major overhaul on my western that involved the same thing. The protagonist needed to be more proactive in driving the story forward.

The end result had A LOT of changes that required a new approach. It took some time, but I was able to accomplish that, and the script ended up being better for it.

No reason to think I can’t repeat it this time around.

Thus the revising is underway. Slow, but steady.

I’ll get there.

Lead shielding not required

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Even if you’re not a comic book nerd, you probably know what that glowing green rock is, or at least have heard of it.

For the truly uninformed, it’s kryptonite, aka The One Thing That Can Harm Superman. It drains his powers and makes him decidedly non-super.

And it’s also incredibly necessary, because without any kind of weakness, Superman is pretty much unstoppable, which is BORING. Who wants a hero who can’t be defeated? Who always wins? Why should we care about him if there’s never any doubt he’ll succeed?

A protagonist needs some kind of weakness or flaw, like kryptonite provides for Superman.

Bonus – it also adds to the conflict.

I recently read a script where everything went perfectly fine for the protagonists. Every obstacle they encountered, they overcame with ease, then casually moved on to the next thing.

Where’s the conflict in that?

If a protagonist’s road to their goal was a long and empty straightaway of perfect asphalt, low gas prices and nothing but green lights so they get to their destination ahead of schedule, is this a story that would hold my interest? Not really.

But what if that road were nonstop twists and turns, laden with potholes, overly aggressive drivers, and a poorly timed construction project blocking 3 of 4 lanes AND the protagonist was running out of time to get somewhere they absolutely had to be? That is a story I’d want to see.

The protagonists in this script had no flaws. Everything always worked out for them – sometimes with little to no effort on their part. I told the writer they needed to do the opposite. There needed to be conflict for these characters at every turn. What was going to stop them, or at least slow ’em down?

Included in my notes – “What’s their kryptonite?”

Your hero needs to have a rough time in reaching their goal. (CONFLICT!!) Overcoming obstacles both physical and emotional is what provides the opportunity for them to learn and change. Without that, they remain stagnant and the reader/audience won’t care about them, let alone if they achieve their goal.

What’s your protagonist’s kryptonite? What’s stopping or at least hindering them from achieving their goal, and how can they overcome it? Does that help them grow and change?

Superman always finds a way to overcome his run-ins with kryptonite. Can you say the same about your protagonist?

It may not pretty, but at least it’s something

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This isn’t saying the Mona Lisa isn’t pretty. It was just tough to find a picture of people looking at art.

Some exceptionally helpful notes continue to come in on the latest draft of the animated fantasy-comedy spec. For the most part, very supportive and encouraging, along with some great suggestions for small fixes here and there.

But one note really hit home – not because it was overly negative, but because it touched on something that I’d been uncertain about.

I won’t go into too much detail, but it involves how in one sequence the focus shifts from my protagonist to set up the backstory of some important supporting characters. Even while I was putting it together, it seemed kind of odd and I wasn’t entirely sure it worked, but felt it was “good enough for now”.

Nevertheless, something about it still didn’t seem right.

Numerous options rolled around in my head as I strained to come up with a solution, but still nothing. Also not helping was that constant trepidation when dealing with a rewrite. Would I be able to come up with something that works the way I need it to?

So I decided follow one of the most important tips for writing, screen or otherwise:

I just sat down and started writing. I knew what I wanted to accomplish – have the protagonist be part of it, which helped guide things along.

And thus the words did flow.

Revised and totally new scenes were churned out over the next 60 minutes or so. As is my usual m.o., there’s probably more in the new stuff than I’ll need. Trimming the fat later shouldn’t be too challenging, but I’d rather have more than I need than come up short.

I also managed to come up with a few details that I could plant early on in the story that would pay off later, and came up with a joke that actually made me laugh out loud. Hopefully others have the same reaction.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. Confidence and enthusiasm for this script continue to build.

But don’t get me wrong. There’s definitely more work that needs to be done, but this is a pretty encouraging step.

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A friendly reminder – just two weeks to go until the Maximum Z Winter ’22 Script Showcase goes up (Dec 2), so make sure to send in the details about your spec screenplay or TV script ASAP.

All the info is right here: https://wp.me/prjnO-8yJ

From the archives: Introduce your character with character

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BETTIE, mid 20s. Don't let her all-American looks fool you. Trouble goes out of its way to avoid HER.
BETTIE, mid 20s. Don’t let her all-American looks fool you. Trouble goes out of its way to avoid HER.

Author’s note: had a great in-person notes session this week. Among the many topics we discussed was character intros, and what made for a good one, as well as a not-so-good (i.e. boring) one. That reminded me of this post from April 2014. Enjoy.

“When we, the reader, first meet an important character in your script, how do you describe them? What are the important details?

A lot of the time, the emphasis is on their physical traits – “tall”, “imposing”, “blonde”, “handsome”, “drop-dead gorgeous”, etc.

Or maybe it’s a simple adjective or two – “bubbly”, “funny”, “a nice guy” and so on.

These are okay, but you have to admit they’re kind of dull, which makes it more challenging for us to be interested in wanting to follow their story.

So how do you fix this? Time to ramp up that creativeness and really focus on what kind of person this character is, rather than what they look like. Unless a physical description is a key character trait, don’t worry about it.

One of the most memorable intros I ever read described the best friend of the teenaged protagonist – “James Dean cool at 15.” That’s it. Pretty effective, and in only five words.

Doesn’t this give you a better idea of what this character is like than say, “cool and aloof?”?  This is the kind of writing that catches our eye AND makes an impression.

A former co-worker of mine used to describe a very talkative friend as “If you asked him what time it was, he’d tell you how to build a watch.” See how it goes beyond the good-but-simplistic “chatty know-it-all”?

Cliched as it sounds, we really are painting pictures with words – not just for the story, but the characters in it. You’re already crafting a unique and original story, so why not develop a unique and original way to tell us about the characters in it?

This isn’t saying you should always strive to be clever and witty about it, but at least try for something different. This is just a small part of showing off your writing skills.

Take a look at how you introduce the characters in your latest draft. Does it really tell us what you want us to know about them? If not, how could you rewrite it so it does?”

The spark is lit once again

Maximum Z characters, comedy, creativeness, creativity, deadline, determination, fantasy, inspiration, motivation, perseverance, persistence, plot points, protagonist, rewriting, screenplay, screenwriting, script, story, storytelling, writing, writing process , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I hadn’t realized it had been quite a while since I’ve written about how my writing has been going, mostly because there hasn’t been as much of it as I was hoping, and what there has has been proving to be a bit of a challenge. Therefore…

The past few months have been me working on rewriting/overhauling the fantasy-comedy I wrote last year. For some reason, it just wasn’t clicking for me, hence the lengthy break.

So when I decided the time was right to dive back in, I really had to figure out what the problem was.

I still loved the concept, and a lot of what I’d already written, but something still seemed off. So I went to my tried-and-true practice of “take a step back for a closer look”.

What was it I liked about the story? Did the way it played out seem like the best way to tell it? What could be done differently, yet still yield the same results (or something even better)?

When I was first putting the story together, I must have gone through at least half a dozen different ways to start it. Each one had it’s own pros and cons. I don’t strictly adhere to “this plot point HAS to happen on THIS PAGE”, but I do what I can to stay in the neighborhood.

As I wrote down scenes I wanted to include, a pattern started to emerge. If I started the story THIS WAY, that would lead to THIS happening, and maybe I could rearrange a few things so as to get the full impact of what I was going for.

Then another realization came to me. The story was working, but my protagonist was the wrong character. Another character initially created as a big supporting role seemed to hold more potential, plus having things revolve around them would really punch up the tone of the story.

More pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.

Because of this drastically new approach, I don’t have the option of just recycling scenes from the previous draft. Each scene has to be rewritten to accommodate this new perspective and really play up the impact this new protagonist has on everything around them.

It’s a challenge, but the new story is slowly coming together. My enthusiasm for putting myself through all of this and my confidence in the story is as strong as ever.

I’ll admit this is also taking longer to than I wanted it to. My initial hope was to have completed the outline a while ago and have a new draft done by the end of the year, but that ain’t gonna happen.

Instead, I’m totally fine with the rest of 2021 being all about hammering out the outline and its subsequent fine-tuning. Kicking off the New Year with pages isn’t a bad way to go.

As we head into the weekend, here’s hoping for a whole lot of productivity for everybody’s current projects.