3 We Need Someone to Care About – a Character

Creating a Character

We’ve got our big idea, our premise. Perhaps our big idea has a character in it. Perhaps it does not have a character in it. You can see that some of the premise examples in the previous chapter have a specific character, like  Barbie and our made up story about the average guy becoming mayor.  Others, like Captain America: Winter Soldier do not have a specific character in them. Either way, we are going to have to figure out exactly who is the main character in our movie. We have to answer the question: who is this movie about?

How do we decide who this character is?

In Captain America: Winter Soldier our premise doesn’t have a character in it, so we have to come up with the main character. This is vitally important: your movie has to be ABOUT someone. We are going to focus on ONE main character in this book. Yes, there are numerous examples of movies with more than one main character. However, we are just taking our first steps on this screenwriting journey, so we are going to stick with one main character.

If we don’t care about someone in a movie, then we are not going to care about the movie at all. Movies work because we have emotional investment. The audience’s emotional investment hinges on caring about a character. Your theme may be WHY writing this movie is important to YOU, but without an engaging character, the movie will not matter to YOUR AUDIENCE.

Caring about a character doesn’t mean liking a character. The main character may not be a good person or a likeable person, but they better be an interesting character.

As you think about your movie, think about what person would have the most AT STAKE in this story. This person has the most to win or lose, not just physically, but emotionally. In Captain America: Winter Soldier, the main character could be Nick Fury. It could be Black Widow. It could be Sam Wilson. Besides the fact this is part of a movie series (not just the Marvel movies, but the Captain America series), there are clear story reasons why Captain America needs to be the main character.

Nick Fury doesn’t work as the main character because he is too embedded in S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury isn’t going to completely dismantle the organization the way Captain America does. Further, Captain America is the only character who actually fought HYDRA in WWII. Captain America is the one who thought he destroyed HYDRA during WWII. HYDRA surviving and infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. means that Captain America didn’t finish the job. Emotionally, it means more to Cap. Throw in Cap’s best friend working for HYDRA (and we will get to how that works when we go over subplots) and suddenly the stakes have been raised even more for him.

Look at your premise and figure out what character will have the most to gain or lose, both physically and emotionally, in the story. Two things can help you to determine your main character.

• Think about your movie as a trailer, a preview. People are sitting there in the theater (or watching another movie at home) and on comes the trailer for your movie. Who is the most prominent character in that trailer? That’s probably your main character.
• Think about a really intense moment in your film, a moment not too far from the end (it’s the climax, but we will discuss that in detail later), a moment when everything could go wrong. Who is the character struggling the most in that moment? That’s your main character.

Next, you have to know what this person’s status quo is. You have to ask yourself: what is their normal?

At the beginning of every movie the main character has their normal life they are living. That’s their status quo.

In Winter Soldier, Captain America is working for S.H.I.E.L.D. going where Fury tells him to go. He’s trying to adjust to the modern world too. We see him at the start exercising, learning some modern tips from Sam Wilson, and getting a mission from Fury. All of that happens in the first few minutes. We clearly and efficiently learn what Cap’s status quo is.

Likewise, in Legally Blonde, we are immediately on a California college campus. We see that Elle’s life is about her sorority friends and her boyfriend. She already has her life planned out: she is going to marry her college sweetheart. Within the first few minutes, her status quo is established.

As part of determining your main character, decide on the main character’s status quo so you know what their life is because the plot is going to disrupt their life completely.

Once you have your main character and know their status quo, then you ask those questions from the last chapter: why, how, and what. Take Legally Blonde: we need to ask the question why is the main character going to Harvard? And then how is she going to survive Harvard? And lastly, what is getting in her way at Harvard? For The Godfather, why does the clean son have to save the family? How does he save it? What is stopping him from saving it?

From those questions, decide on your character’s goal. The goal is simple and direct. It is something tangible and not emotional. Elle’s clear goal in Legally Blonde is to get Warner back. That is the answer to why she is going to Harvard.

Often, the goal is to return to the status quo. Something upsets the status quo (we go over this thoroughly later, don’t worry) so the goal is to get that back. That’s the case for Legally Blonde and The Wizard of Oz.

The goal can also be aspirational, wanting to change their life or the lives of others, like in Rocky. Rocky’s status quo stinks. Fighting the champ is a way to get out of this depressing status quo.

Remember that your main character has to have a goal, something they want, and that goal is direct and not emotional.

The main character also should have what we call a personal desire. The goal is external and drives the plot. The personal desire is internal and it motivates the goal. The goal is a way to achieve the personal desire. The main character is not always conscious of the personal desire. They could be, but they don’t have to be. In the movie Rocky, the goal is to win the fight. The personal desire is for Rocky to prove he’s not a bum, he’s worth something. In the end (spoiler alert), he doesn’t win the fight, but he does prove he’s worth something. We have seen the almost squalid life he lives. We have seen him try to make connections with Adrian. We have seen him lament never getting a chance before. In the end, he shows everyone, including himself, that he is special.

In Winter Soldier, Cap’s goal is to stop HYDRA. His personal desire is to find his place in the modern world. We have seen Cap struggling to find where he belongs in a world he does not understand and struggling to translate his values to this modern world. So his personal desire is connected to that, which is one of the major themes of the movie. The personal desire is tied to the major theme. In our made up premise about the average guy running for mayor, his personal desire is to be an agent of change in his community. The theme for our story was to show how an average person can force change, so, clearly, the main character’s personal desire represents that theme. 

Write down who your main character is, their status quo, their goal, and their personal desire. These do not have to be set in stone right now; in fact, you may not be absolutely clear about their goal just yet. That’s OK because we get into that in the next chapter. At this stage, though, you should know who the main character is and who they are as a person.