The Story Solution. Eric Edson

      The early pages in any successful script are all about winning the trust of your reader.

      A producer hunkering down in his leather chair to read your screenplay must allow you, the storyteller, to sweep him away on whatever ride you’ve got in store. It’s necessary to begin the journey by convincing that producer it really will be worth his while to jump on in through Alice’s looking glass with you. So you must make things personal. You need to lure, tempt, trick or cajole every reader into an emotional relationship with your hero as soon as possible.

      Your reader needs to care deeply before she can be brought to feel deeply.

      How is that done?

      By appealing to the universal goodness in human nature. Successful writers build stories that engage our better instincts and tap into a natural human predisposition to feel concern when we see another person in trouble.

      But in order to bond with any hero in hot water, the reader must first, on one level or another, like them. So the most critically important step when beginning every screen story is to introduce the hero in a way that fosters immediate character sympathy.

      This remains true no matter the story’s genre, or whether the lead is a classic good-guy type or some moody, morally questionable Anti-Hero.

      MAKING YOUR HERO SYMPATHETIC

      Hollywood spends a lot of money trying to convince you to like the hero. Movie stars get paid vast sums, in part, because the producers rely on a star’s track record of infusing into every role they portray a warm and sympathetic personality to which people are instinctively drawn.

      Think back to the beginnings of films that have stuck with you. When did you first know you cared about the hero?

      Immediately upon meeting the decorated young war hero Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in The Godfather, we’re given reasons to like him. The same is true for the astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) in Apollo 13, the almost-princess Giselle (Amy Adams) in Enchanted, and even poor Sweeney (Johnny Depp) at the start of Sweeney Todd.

      But of course, every time I emphasize to students the vital need for creating sympathetic heroes, there’s always someone who wants to play the exceptions game.

      “Well, hey, what about Groundhog Day, or As Good As It Gets, or Heathers? None of those heroes are in the least bit likable!”

      And I reply: Take a closer look.

      When we first meet Melvin Udall, the hero of As Good As It Gets, he drops a little doggie down an apartment garbage chute because it’s peeing in the hall. And Melvin (Jack Nicholson) says awful, insulting things to everybody who crosses his path. So isn’t this character the grotesque opposite of sympathetic?

      Personally, I find Melvin Udall to be one of the most brilliantly conceived, completely sympathetic screen heroes ever written.

      From the start of As Good As It Gets we’re shown that Melvin is a man locked inside a prison called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. His personality isn’t his fault, he was born that way, so he suffers at the hands of unjust injury.

      And at least he has the guts to confront people. He insults them to their faces — a quality that sometimes the rest of us wish we had.

      Then Melvin becomes the first man to recognize waitress Carol’s (Helen Hunt) true inner beauty. We like Melvin because he has the good sense to be drawn to a woman we already care about.

      The fact that Melvin is a highly successful romance novelist reveals the truth of his inner being. He longs desperately for love, but trapped within a psychological condition that — as manifest in Melvin — drives everyone away, he can only suffer.

      While we laugh at Melvin’s off-handed nasty barbs, our hearts break for him, too. We’re rooting for Melvin to bust free from his self-imposed isolation and find his way to happiness. He quickly earns our sympathy.

      Inventing a hero we care about does not mean creating a flawless person. We see more of ourselves in people who mess up, who say dumb things at exactly the wrong moment. Those are the qualities we feel comfortable with. Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) we like. Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) we like. Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) in The 40 Year Old Virgin we like.

      KEEPING CHARACTER SYMPATHY IN BALANCE

      As important as flaws and weaknesses are, you must be careful to balance those flaws with strengths.

      Remember the 2002 romantic comedy Life or Something Like It? Probably not, because few people saw it. This film tells the tale of a local TV newswoman who, while on assignment one day, hears from a homeless street prophet that she has only a few days left to live.

      The hero, Lanie Kerrigan (Angelina Jolie), is an annoyingly shallow person, impressed with her own small-time local fame and bleach blonde hair. She’s engaged to one of the dumbest, most narcissistic baseball players in movie history and she thinks her life is perfect just the way it is. But after hearing the prophet’s prognostication about her imminent demise, Lanie begins to rethink her relationships and accomplishments and eventually comes to see the meaninglessness of it all.

      Life or Something Like It tanked at the box office. In my judgment it failed commercially because the script as written gave us a hero so selfish and vain the filmmakers landed too far inside flawed character territory. Lanie Kerrigan possesses no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and the audience can’t help feeling maybe her quick and painless death would be best for all concerned.

      For an audience to ride the emotional white water rapids of your movie you first must get them into the canoe. When a person finds your hero sympathetic, they identify with that character. They project themselves into your hero as their surrogate for the adventure ahead. Then the audience climbs aboard eagerly and commits to your emotional movie ride.

      Now they trust you.

      A RECIPE FOR CHARACTER SYMPATHY

      Identification with a sympathetic hero should