The Story Solution. Eric Edson
Racine in Body Heat is an exception to this “good-at-what-they-do” rule because in his chosen profession, lawyering, Ned (William Hurt) appears less than competent. But take a closer look. His real reputation has been built as a Casanova, a smooth and charming ladies’ man who beds women as naturally as most of his friends ride bikes. This is Ned’s true skill, and in the Casanova business, in his hometown at least, Ned has no equal.
4. FUNNY
We warm to people who make us laugh. We’re naturally drawn to folks with a humorous view of the passing parade. True wit is smart and filled with human insight. So if you can possibly bestow upon your hero a robust and playful sense of humor, do it.
In Die Hard, Officer John McClane (Bruce Willis) has his hands full as he battles an office tower full of terrorists. But John frequently breaks the tension by cracking wise.
Erin Brockovich takes on a multibillion-dollar utility company in a life or death class action law suit, but she frequently tosses off cute quips of sardonic wit.
It won’t be right for all movies. Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) in Dead Man Walking can’t josh too often while visiting prisoners on death row.
But generally, wit works well as a character component for lots of dramatic movie leading roles. Even among patients at a madhouse, roguish convict Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) exercises a cutting wit in the riveting drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Take care, however. Creating a hero with a sense of humor is one thing. Making fun of the hero is something else altogether and should be avoided.
5. JUST PLAIN NICE
Where you can, simply show the audience that your hero has a good heart.
We can easily care about kind, decent, helpful, honest folks, and we admire people who treat others well, relate with respect to people in humble walks of life, and who defend the weak or stand up for the helpless.
Remember Rocky Balboa’s (Sylvester Stallone) carefully tended pet turtles, the street waif he mentors, and the painfully shy girlfriend he courts? Even though he’s just a palooka, Rocky offers the world his caring and generous heart.
I’m not suggesting that you write characters who always put themselves dead last, or belittle themselves, or apologize endlessly. This sort of behavior only reveals low self-esteem.
Being a good person doesn’t mean volunteering for servitude. Just plain nice will do.
In the first scene of Men In Black, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) stops a van full of illegal Mexican immigrants as he searches for an incognito space alien criminal. Going down the row of frightened people, Agent K remains kindly, and in Spanish tells each illegal not to be afraid. When K figures out which one is the space thug he sends everyone else back on their way unharmed as he quips sincerely, “Welcome to the United States.”
Agent K’s only beef remains with criminals from outer space. To everyone else he’s respectful and kind. A nice guy. A brave guy. A skilled guy.
What’s not to like?
There are heroes who are not nice, of course, like Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets. But when creating heroes where nice is not an option, writers must provide other strong reasons to root for them.
6. IN DANGER
If when we first meet the hero he’s already in a situation of real danger, it grabs our attention right away.
Danger means the imminent threat of personal harm or loss. What represents danger in a particular story depends on the scope of your tale.
Most Action-Adventure movies start with an energetic sequence called the Action Hook. These hooks often involve immediate life or death risk for the lead.
But in smaller stories where physical life or death isn’t an issue, upfront jeopardy might be the danger of crushing failure, as in A Beautiful Mind, or permanent spinsterhood, as in 27 Dresses, or the loss of a life-fulfilling mate, like in Legally Blonde.
The beginning of Ray finds young Ray Charles (Jamie Foxx) standing alone by the side of a Deep South country road waiting to board a bus. Ray, of course, suffers the Unfair Injury of blindness. The bus driver treats him badly because he’s black. Then as soon as Ray gets to Seattle, he’s quickly robbed by a slick guitar player and sexually abused by the honky-tonk manager. Then another bar maven right away turns Ray on to drugs.
Danger abounds.
7. LOVED BY FRIENDS AND FAMILY
If we’re shown right off that the hero is already loved by other people, it gives us immediate permission to care about them, too.
How many movies have you seen that begin with a surprise party or other bash being thrown for the hero by a room full of adoring friends, as in Tootsie, Working Girl, or The Punisher? Or affection gushing for the hero from a doting mom, dad, sibling, mate, child, or best friend, like in Apollo 13, The Brave One, Edge of Darkness, and Contact?
8. HARD WORKING
Heroes we care about have an enormous capacity for work. People who work hard create the rising energy needed to drive a story forward, like Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) in Bringing Down The House, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) in Million Dollar Baby, and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in Avatar.
How many movies can you name where the hero is lazy or unengaged? Even Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) in Greenberg works hard at building a doghouse, pursuing a woman, and figuring out his own life as he commits himself to a path less traveled.
9. OBSESSED
Obsession keeps brave, skilled, hard-working heroes focused on a single goal, which is enormously important to any story. A driving obsession creates the plot — and that keeps your screenplay on track, rising relentlessly to a powerful climax.
Just be sure that your hero’s obsession remains a worthy one.
There are other qualities of character that can help create a hero audiences will root for, but these are the never-to-be-ignored basic nine. Use them liberally, no matter what genre you write.
Remember, we must bond emotionally even with heartless Anti-Heroes.
At the beginning of Scarface, small-time criminal Tony Montana (Al Pacino) is certainly not a nice person. But look at the character sympathy tools used to make us care anyway: he’s incredibly brave, very good as a professional criminal, often funny, suffers from the double Unfair Injuries of poverty and place of birth, is loved by his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and best friend Manny (Steven Bauer), lives surrounded by danger, works day and night, and is obsessed with success.
Eight out of nine isn’t bad.
Once you’ve hooked a reader into caring about your hero, your story can really begin.
SUMMING UP
• Early in every script, writers must win the trust of their audience and invite readers to become emotionally engaged with the hero by creating character sympathy.
• When an audience accepts a hero as sympathetic, they can then identify with that hero, project themselves into the character as their surrogate for the story adventure to come. Through identification, audiences can experience the emotional journey of a hero across boundaries of sex or species as long as that hero remains recognizably human at his core.
• Character sympathy should be kept in balance by not making the hero overly flawed or overly perfect — just human enough for viewers to care about her.
• It’s important that audience identification take place as quickly as possible to get viewers emotionally inside the movie world. So in the opening moments of any film, screenwriters must include these character attributes and circumstances to build hero sympathy that will foster identification:
1.