Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Who Am I This Time?? Lesson 3: Be A Hero...Interestingly
One of my favorite teachers in the whole world, screenwriter Venable Herndon, used to say that in the first few drafts of any screenplay, everybody in the script would just POP with life...except the hero. You'd know less about her, like her less, feel less invested in her character than, say, Johnny the Shoeshine boy who has two lines.
Venable said there was a very good reason for that.
Your hero is you. You are your hero. Because writing a script is a way of exposing yourself, you, the writer, often do this terribly crafty thing to protect yourself/your hero.
You write the hero really, really dull. You protect the hero from too much awkward attention by making her a snoozer.
Perhaps you are the exception to this rule. Perhaps your hero crackles with personal electricity.
Still, it's something to consider. And it doesn't hurt to review your screenplay, your character sketches, and your background notes for hints that this just might be true. But it's vital, for the life of your screenplay, for the life of you, for your hero to be a whole person, with a rich inner life...and a lot of exposure to scary, dangerous, and horrible things...internal or external. Remember, screenwriter Robert Towne liked to say that what he really needed to know was what his character was afraid of. The rest was gravy.
So try this.
Exercise
Take your lead character and create a scene where she suffers from something so horribly embarrassing...you wouldn't want it to happen to you. Something so bad, it hasn't even shown up on any of the realtiy shows. Write for at least 10 minutes.
Reread your scene. See, you're not dead. And I bet you know a whole lot more about your character, too.
One of my favorite teachers in the whole world, screenwriter Venable Herndon, used to say that in the first few drafts of any screenplay, everybody in the script would just POP with life...except the hero. You'd know less about her, like her less, feel less invested in her character than, say, Johnny the Shoeshine boy who has two lines.
Venable said there was a very good reason for that.
Your hero is you. You are your hero. Because writing a script is a way of exposing yourself, you, the writer, often do this terribly crafty thing to protect yourself/your hero.
You write the hero really, really dull. You protect the hero from too much awkward attention by making her a snoozer.
Perhaps you are the exception to this rule. Perhaps your hero crackles with personal electricity.
Still, it's something to consider. And it doesn't hurt to review your screenplay, your character sketches, and your background notes for hints that this just might be true. But it's vital, for the life of your screenplay, for the life of you, for your hero to be a whole person, with a rich inner life...and a lot of exposure to scary, dangerous, and horrible things...internal or external. Remember, screenwriter Robert Towne liked to say that what he really needed to know was what his character was afraid of. The rest was gravy.
So try this.
Exercise
Take your lead character and create a scene where she suffers from something so horribly embarrassing...you wouldn't want it to happen to you. Something so bad, it hasn't even shown up on any of the realtiy shows. Write for at least 10 minutes.
Reread your scene. See, you're not dead. And I bet you know a whole lot more about your character, too.
