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CHARACTER TECHNIQUE: CUTTING EXTRANEOUS CHARACTERS
connect. For fiction writers, probably the key concept of an archetype is the notion of a shadow. The shadow is the negative tendency of the archetype, a psychological trap that a person can fall into when playing that role or living out that psychology.
Wise Old Man, Wise Old Woman, Mentor, or Teacher
Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli in The Lord of the Rings;
Sonny in The Godfather;
Can make visible the deeper reality behind the senses and can balance and control the larger or hidden forces of the natural world.
Sherlock Holmes,
Hercule Poirot,
the master swordsman in Seven Samurai,
Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire,
Creating Your Hero, Step 1: Meeting the Requirements of a Great Hero
Make your lead character constantly fascinating.
2. Make the audience identify with the character, but not too much.
his desire and the moral problem he faces—in short, desire and need, the first two of the all-important seven structure steps.
Make the audience empathize with your hero, not sympathize.
What’s really important is that audiences understand the character but not necessarily like everything he does.
Always show why your hero acts as he does.
Creating Your Hero, Step 2: Character Change
“Character development”
The Self Expressed as a Character
You have to determine the range of change of the hero at the start of the writing process, or change will be impossible for the hero at the end of the story.
I cannot overstate the importance of this technique. If you master the range of change, you will win the “game” of storytelling. If not, you will rewrite and rewrite and still never get it right.
the bigger the range, the more interesting but the riskier the story, because characters don’t change much in the limited time they appear in most stories.
But what exactly is this “range of change”?
you can show a character going through many changes in a story, but not all of them represent character change.
They’re just not character changes.
True character change involves a challenging and changing of basic beliefs, leading to new moral action by the hero.
certain kinds of character change are more common than others.
Child to Adult
coming-of-age
Good Will Hunting,
Adult to Leader
The Matrix,
Braveheart,
Schindler’...
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Cynic to Participant
Metamorphosis
Creating Character Change in Your Story
“build”
Always begin at the end of the change, with the self-revelation; then go back and determine the starting point of the change, which is the hero’s need and desire; then figure out the steps of development in between.
By starting with the self-revelation, the end of the character change, you know that every step your character takes will lead to that end.
the revelation itself and the setup.
moment of revelation
setup
hero must be hiding something from himself.
CHARACTER TECHNIQUE: DOUBLE REVERSAL
a need and a self-revelation.
challenges and changes his basic beliefs
takes new moral...
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advanced technique for showing character change in a story
