The Naked Screenplay: Why Should I Care?
Penguin February 29th, 2008
Of the 3 questions: Who’s the hero? What does he want? Why should I care? This last one is the most important.
Why is it important? First, you need to understand why people go to the movies. Sure, they want to be educated, to be entertained, to laugh. But the major reason is to share emotions and experiences. There is an unspoken contract between the audience and the filmmaker: “I am coming to have these experiences, therefore, you must provide a vehicle for those experiences.” The gateway for those experiences is your hero or protagonist.
Your hero doesn’t have to be sympathetic or even likable. But your hero has to have enough interesting qualities that the audience will agree to follow his story. The audience needs to care what happens to your hero, otherwise, it’s going to be boring. Boredom is the greatest sin of all writing.
Whittled down to its essence, movies are all about values. The values of your hero, the values that you bring as a writer. As a writer, your duty is to reveal your values to the audience. Your values are revealed through your hero. If you have nothing to say, then the audience doesn’t care.
I said before that your hero doesn’t have to be likable, but he does have to be the “center of good”. Now, that’s not to say he has to be a good person. He just needs to be better than the world around him.
Your hero also has to have a wound. We talked about this a bit in research. Your hero needs an area where he can grow, whether physically, morally, or psychologically. It’s this wound that will hook the audience for the ride.
So, we finally get to the question: “Why should I care?” How do we answer that? With empathy. Our hero is the hook for the audience. Our hero is the vehicle for our values. How do we get them to ride along with the film? How do get the audience to care about the hero? Through empathy.
The audience needs to care about your hero. They need to be able to empathize with him. They need to relate to him.
Here’s some common ways to build empathy:
- Make your hero the victim of outrageous misfortune.
- Place your hero in danger.
- Look for empathetic traits to build into your hero: funny, good at what they do, nice
Along with those techniques, every reversal, every mishap, every obstacle that gets in the way of your hero’s progress, builds empathy.
Without empathy, you have no audience. Film is about hitting the emotions of your audience so they can experience something. If you hit the emotions, you can do whatever you like.
-Penguin
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