The Protagonist: Using Character Clusters
I've just started this series on working through the whole Story Elements Checklist to expand the discussion on each element – and already, I've gotten a little
stuck trying to figure out how I could approach the next story element (or even what the next story element should be!).
No, really, I know what I need to handle next is the protagonist. But I've already written a lot of posts on that, actually.
Creating Character: The Protagonist
Rules of Character? Don't Ask Me
What Makes a Great Protagonist? Case Study: Jake Gittes
Character Introductions
Collecting Character
So today I wanted to focus on just one particular trick of creating a well-rounded or deep or interesting protagonist, and that's by using the characters around the protagonist to illuminate facets of the protagonist.
The characters you surround your main character with will tell us a lot about your main character. In real life our families, friends and significant others say volumes about who we are as people – through both the choices that we've made and the things that we had no choice about. It's exactly the same in books and films: the characters who surround your hero/ine should be characters in their own right, but they can also reflect a lot about your hero/ine. Let's look at just a few examples:
THE ANTAGONIST
The person whom the protagonist is fighting is often a dark mirror of the protagonist; in many stories we see that it wouldn't take much for the hero/ine to become the antagonist, metaphorically speaking. In fact, Belloq says pretty much exactly that in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. The hero/ine and the antagonist often want the same thing, whether it's an actual object, like the lost Ark of the Covenant; or money; or a power, like control of a town (IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) or a country (THE LION IN WINTER), or a family (ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST); or a person: a child (KRAMER VS. KRAMER), or a lover (five billion romantic comedies). And sometimes the only thing that distinguishes the protagonist from the antagonist is what methods they're willing to use to get what they want; the hero/ine, we hope, is moral about it (though crossing the line is almost an inevitable part of any story), and the antagonist is willing to lie, cheat, hurt or kill for it.
MENTOR
The annoying – I mean, amazing - thing about a good mentor is that they know the protagonist better than the protagonist knows her or himself. From Glinda to Yoda to Hannibal Lecter, the mentor often represents the hero/ine's higher power or superego, sometimes both, and always holds the key to the life lesson the hero/ine most needs to learn. And the great thing about a mentor character is that they're allowed to be on the nose and say exactly what it is that the hero/ine needs and wants, and why they're too screwed up to ever get it (unless of course they do exactly as the mentor tells them to).
LOVE INTEREST
This character generally plays a dual role: the love interest can also be the antagonist (in most love stories), an ally, or a mentor. The object of desire is very often the opposite of the hero/ine – and thus represents all the qualities that the hero/ine needs to become whole.
ALLIES
The sidekick, the roommate, the best friend, the love interest, the brother or sister – all of these can illuminate different sides of the protagonist, whether it's by providing contrast to the protagonist's character traits or helpfully pointing out why the protagonist is wrong about what s/he wants in every possible way.
But I've noticed that the allies of a protagonist often fall into a combination that I call a CHARACTER CLUSTER – and when you become aware of these clusters, you might find you can use them to your own advantage.
The Freudian Model: One type of character cluster you see a lot is a hero/ine with two sidekicks, one of whom is all superego, one of whom is all id – like Harry Potter balanced between hyper-academic, hyper-rational Hermione, and more earthy, appetite-driven Ron. Then there's Luke Skywalker balanced between spiritual mentor Obi-Wan and appetite-driven warrior Han. And James Kirk balanced between hyper-intellectual Spock and hyper-emotional Bones. As you can see from those examples, this is a very effective cluster; the hero/ine acts much as the ego does to balance between the two extremes of thought and action, and this superego-ego-id cluster feels familiar and right to us because that Freudian model is so ingrained in our consciousness.
You could say that Jake's agency operatives in Chinatown are id and superego characters, but in that case I think those two function more as Jake's good and bad angels, two very different sides of his character. But maybe that's a difference that's apparent only to me!
Another interesting cluster uses a more Jungian model. In The Wizard Of Oz Dorothy has to deal with external representations of her anima (inner woman) and animus (inner man) in the forms of Glinda and the Wizard. And Miss Gulch/the Wicked Witch is an extreme form of the destructive anima. In Sense and Sensibility you see extreme forms of the destructive animus (in the form of the passive male relative John Dashwood) and destructive anima (in the form of his bitch-on-wheels wife Fanny). This pair makes a great villainous team I think partly because they are such archetypally warped forms of the animus/anima. A reader or viewer may not know anything about Jung but will still be able to recognize these characters.
Sense and Sensibility contains another character cluster: the polar opposite model. In this story we have two sisters: one all sense, and the other all sensibility (passion). Each one needs to assimilate the qualities of her sister to be a truly balanced woman, wife, and human being, and we see those arcs play out in the story.
Another kind of character cluster is the Three-Brother or Three-Sister cluster. It's used brilliantly in The Godfather, which modernizes the fairytale story of the dying old king with three sons, one of whom will take over the kingdom. The whole question of a story like this is "Which brother will win?" And of course, the youngest and least likely brother is the one who prevails.
Jaws uses a three-brother structure – Sheriff Brody goes out on that boat to hunt down the shark with Hooper, the oceanographer, and Quint, the ship's captain – and it's Brody, the least likely to prevail on the water, who faces down and kills the shark after the other two have failed. (You also have the contrast of Hooper, the intellectual scientist, and Quint, the crazy ship's captain - a kind of superego/id pairing again).
And Cinderella is the iconic example of a three-sister structure – again, the youngest sister prevails.
But you also see the three sisters show up as three female villains that operate almost as one person– as in Heathers and Mean Girls. And you can see three evil brothers at work in The Matrix in the form of that triple agent.
Then there's the Motley Crew cluster: the team of vastly different oddball characters that gets assembled to perform a certain task in caper, heist, and war movies like The Magnificent Seven, Ocean's 11, Armageddon, and Inception.
The Three Supernatural Allies is another classic character cluster, seen in Harry Potter (Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Hagrid), and Sleeping Beauty (Flora, Fauna and Meriwether), and more ominously in Macbeth (the three witches) and the Pre-Cogs in Minority Report.
In The Matrix we see another kind of trinity: Morpheus, Trinity and Neo – a modern version of the pre-Christian Father/Mother/Son trinity that patriarchal Christianity de-feminized into Father/Son/Holy Ghost. The Matrix is full of references to all kinds of world religions, and the character trinity is part of that story's thematic image system.
The Wizard of Oz uses a three-ally cluster in a different way: the three allies, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion, represent three specific character traits – brains, heart and courage - that Dorothy must assimilate into herself during this inner journey in order to be able to face Miss Gulch/the Wicked Witch as a strong, confident woman instead of a scared little girl.
And Harry Potter uses a Janus type of character cluster constantly: not only are Harry and Voldemort two sides of the same coin, but also that two-sidedness is carried out in pairing after pairing in that series: Harry and his useless cousin Dudley, Harry and Draco, Snape and Quirrell – and in imagery, too: the Janus head of Quirrel with Voldemort as a bizarre tumor on the back of his head; the idea that Harry and Voldemort have wands made from the only two feathers that a particular phoenix ever produced.
Hopefully that's enough examples to start making sense! Can you think of other kinds of character clusters? I'm sure we could all name dozens if we just started to think about it.
- Alex
----------------------------------------------------------
Screenwriting Tricks For Authors, available on Kindle and for PC and Mac - now at $2.99.
stuck trying to figure out how I could approach the next story element (or even what the next story element should be!).
No, really, I know what I need to handle next is the protagonist. But I've already written a lot of posts on that, actually.
Creating Character: The Protagonist
Rules of Character? Don't Ask Me
What Makes a Great Protagonist? Case Study: Jake Gittes
Character Introductions
Collecting Character
So today I wanted to focus on just one particular trick of creating a well-rounded or deep or interesting protagonist, and that's by using the characters around the protagonist to illuminate facets of the protagonist.
The characters you surround your main character with will tell us a lot about your main character. In real life our families, friends and significant others say volumes about who we are as people – through both the choices that we've made and the things that we had no choice about. It's exactly the same in books and films: the characters who surround your hero/ine should be characters in their own right, but they can also reflect a lot about your hero/ine. Let's look at just a few examples:
THE ANTAGONIST
The person whom the protagonist is fighting is often a dark mirror of the protagonist; in many stories we see that it wouldn't take much for the hero/ine to become the antagonist, metaphorically speaking. In fact, Belloq says pretty much exactly that in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. The hero/ine and the antagonist often want the same thing, whether it's an actual object, like the lost Ark of the Covenant; or money; or a power, like control of a town (IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) or a country (THE LION IN WINTER), or a family (ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST); or a person: a child (KRAMER VS. KRAMER), or a lover (five billion romantic comedies). And sometimes the only thing that distinguishes the protagonist from the antagonist is what methods they're willing to use to get what they want; the hero/ine, we hope, is moral about it (though crossing the line is almost an inevitable part of any story), and the antagonist is willing to lie, cheat, hurt or kill for it.
MENTOR
The annoying – I mean, amazing - thing about a good mentor is that they know the protagonist better than the protagonist knows her or himself. From Glinda to Yoda to Hannibal Lecter, the mentor often represents the hero/ine's higher power or superego, sometimes both, and always holds the key to the life lesson the hero/ine most needs to learn. And the great thing about a mentor character is that they're allowed to be on the nose and say exactly what it is that the hero/ine needs and wants, and why they're too screwed up to ever get it (unless of course they do exactly as the mentor tells them to).
LOVE INTEREST
This character generally plays a dual role: the love interest can also be the antagonist (in most love stories), an ally, or a mentor. The object of desire is very often the opposite of the hero/ine – and thus represents all the qualities that the hero/ine needs to become whole.
ALLIES
The sidekick, the roommate, the best friend, the love interest, the brother or sister – all of these can illuminate different sides of the protagonist, whether it's by providing contrast to the protagonist's character traits or helpfully pointing out why the protagonist is wrong about what s/he wants in every possible way.
But I've noticed that the allies of a protagonist often fall into a combination that I call a CHARACTER CLUSTER – and when you become aware of these clusters, you might find you can use them to your own advantage.
The Freudian Model: One type of character cluster you see a lot is a hero/ine with two sidekicks, one of whom is all superego, one of whom is all id – like Harry Potter balanced between hyper-academic, hyper-rational Hermione, and more earthy, appetite-driven Ron. Then there's Luke Skywalker balanced between spiritual mentor Obi-Wan and appetite-driven warrior Han. And James Kirk balanced between hyper-intellectual Spock and hyper-emotional Bones. As you can see from those examples, this is a very effective cluster; the hero/ine acts much as the ego does to balance between the two extremes of thought and action, and this superego-ego-id cluster feels familiar and right to us because that Freudian model is so ingrained in our consciousness.
You could say that Jake's agency operatives in Chinatown are id and superego characters, but in that case I think those two function more as Jake's good and bad angels, two very different sides of his character. But maybe that's a difference that's apparent only to me!
Another interesting cluster uses a more Jungian model. In The Wizard Of Oz Dorothy has to deal with external representations of her anima (inner woman) and animus (inner man) in the forms of Glinda and the Wizard. And Miss Gulch/the Wicked Witch is an extreme form of the destructive anima. In Sense and Sensibility you see extreme forms of the destructive animus (in the form of the passive male relative John Dashwood) and destructive anima (in the form of his bitch-on-wheels wife Fanny). This pair makes a great villainous team I think partly because they are such archetypally warped forms of the animus/anima. A reader or viewer may not know anything about Jung but will still be able to recognize these characters.
Sense and Sensibility contains another character cluster: the polar opposite model. In this story we have two sisters: one all sense, and the other all sensibility (passion). Each one needs to assimilate the qualities of her sister to be a truly balanced woman, wife, and human being, and we see those arcs play out in the story.
Another kind of character cluster is the Three-Brother or Three-Sister cluster. It's used brilliantly in The Godfather, which modernizes the fairytale story of the dying old king with three sons, one of whom will take over the kingdom. The whole question of a story like this is "Which brother will win?" And of course, the youngest and least likely brother is the one who prevails.
Jaws uses a three-brother structure – Sheriff Brody goes out on that boat to hunt down the shark with Hooper, the oceanographer, and Quint, the ship's captain – and it's Brody, the least likely to prevail on the water, who faces down and kills the shark after the other two have failed. (You also have the contrast of Hooper, the intellectual scientist, and Quint, the crazy ship's captain - a kind of superego/id pairing again).
And Cinderella is the iconic example of a three-sister structure – again, the youngest sister prevails.
But you also see the three sisters show up as three female villains that operate almost as one person– as in Heathers and Mean Girls. And you can see three evil brothers at work in The Matrix in the form of that triple agent.
Then there's the Motley Crew cluster: the team of vastly different oddball characters that gets assembled to perform a certain task in caper, heist, and war movies like The Magnificent Seven, Ocean's 11, Armageddon, and Inception.
The Three Supernatural Allies is another classic character cluster, seen in Harry Potter (Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Hagrid), and Sleeping Beauty (Flora, Fauna and Meriwether), and more ominously in Macbeth (the three witches) and the Pre-Cogs in Minority Report.
In The Matrix we see another kind of trinity: Morpheus, Trinity and Neo – a modern version of the pre-Christian Father/Mother/Son trinity that patriarchal Christianity de-feminized into Father/Son/Holy Ghost. The Matrix is full of references to all kinds of world religions, and the character trinity is part of that story's thematic image system.
The Wizard of Oz uses a three-ally cluster in a different way: the three allies, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion, represent three specific character traits – brains, heart and courage - that Dorothy must assimilate into herself during this inner journey in order to be able to face Miss Gulch/the Wicked Witch as a strong, confident woman instead of a scared little girl.
And Harry Potter uses a Janus type of character cluster constantly: not only are Harry and Voldemort two sides of the same coin, but also that two-sidedness is carried out in pairing after pairing in that series: Harry and his useless cousin Dudley, Harry and Draco, Snape and Quirrell – and in imagery, too: the Janus head of Quirrel with Voldemort as a bizarre tumor on the back of his head; the idea that Harry and Voldemort have wands made from the only two feathers that a particular phoenix ever produced.
Hopefully that's enough examples to start making sense! Can you think of other kinds of character clusters? I'm sure we could all name dozens if we just started to think about it.
- Alex
----------------------------------------------------------
Screenwriting Tricks For Authors, available on Kindle and for PC and Mac - now at $2.99.
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