Creating Unforgettable Characters (29 page)

ter. I know the character very well, maybe too well. But he's other than a commercial movie hero. If I didn't have to worry about that, I could do some interesting things with this character. But part of the job is trying to find a character that fifty million people are going to want to see."

In a case like this, the writer may need to rethink the character, or begin adding positive attributes to balance the flaws.

PROBLEMS WITH SUPPORTING CHARACTERS

Sometimes a supporting character takes over the story. Writers have two different viewpoints about what to do when this happens. Dale Wasserman says, "That's trouble. Because if a supporting character starts to take over, I'd take it as something wrong with the story idea or structure. And that I hadn't thought it through well enough to begin with. That happens pretty often. It generally indicates that you have contrived rather than constructed your story. And in the process of contriving, characters were not in balance and did not serve the story in right proportions."

Sometimes, though, this can be an advantage. Robert Benton says, "In
Places in the Heart,
Edna Spalding took over the story. Originally the story was about bootleggers in Texas. Edna came into the movie as a minor character and she just pushed everybody away. When I love writing the most is when a character takes over. When I don't like writing is when I have to drag the character with me. That means I know I'm doing something wrong. Sometimes a character taking over can be the best thing for the story."

Some characters are too obedient. It's as if the writer is manipulating puppets, rather than entering into a dynamic relationship with the characters, allowing them also to have their say in the story.

Shelley Lowenkopf says, "One of the things to get a beginning writer to do is to back off and leave the characters room to expand in the story. Sometimes it's vital to a sense of tension and suspense that the characters take on a life of their own."

STORY PROBLEMS VS. CHARACTER PROBLEMS

Sometimes a character won't come alive because it's a story problem, not a character problem. Kurt Luedtke comments: "When there's a real problem with a character, the first thought I have is not to fix the character but to lose him. When you start trying to fix him, you can always do things to make a character more interesting, but it's pretty artificial when you do it. It's not hard to think of a behavior that they have, or a tic or a past or a dress or a style. I don't say that it doesn't work as a matter of entertainment, but it makes me restless. I think it's a little bit cheap to come up with expedient solutions when another character might start taking on a life and be much more interesting. I'd rather lose a character that refuses to come alive and try to find one that will.

"Maybe there's a very specific story reason why you can't lose the character, but the story can be rather malleable. And if the character who won't come alive seems to be needed from a story standpoint, you've probably uncovered a story flaw. It's not a character flaw, it's a problem in the story, because if that person's critical and the story's right, why wouldn't they come alive? My suspicion is that you're button-pushing the plot. You need someone to walk in, throw a switch, and get off, and you may think that it's a nice story move, but if it's not working, I'd look at the story first.

"If I can't get rid of the character, because I need him for story reasons to do this thing, my next thought would be, That's a fragile story that depends on a character that won't work to do something; let's look a little more. There's a problem that looks like a character problem, but it's really a story problem."

TECHNIQUES FOR BREAKING THROUGH

Character problems are solvable. Experienced writers have many techniques that help them work through character blocks.

Gayle Stone: "Sometimes it helps to do a technique called 'free writing.' Basically, it's writing anything that you can about people that you know, people that you can imagine, scenes that you see, maybe just looking out your window and describing the view. This often helps you to begin making connections between what is coming out of your head and the solution to your plot, story, or character problem. "

Shelley Lowenkopf: "When I'm stuck, I look at the hidden agenda of the major characters, what they really want. Discovering the hidden agenda helps me understand the character again."

Kurt Luedtke: "If you're stuck on a character, get somebody else to read the pages. They'll say, 'I don't understand why he or she does such and such,' which can jar your vision. It can knock you out of what you're thinking about.

"If you continue to have problems, 'What if it for a while. 'What if this guy has no left foot?' 'What if something happened to this character when he or she was fifteen?'

"If you have a primary character that's not working, you've really got a problem. If you have a secondary character problem, you can more easily fix it. You might research it, or look for another character that can do the same sort of story things.

"If I had to pick one single thing to do, with primary characters or secondary characters, look at gender switch. It is incredible the number of things that will open up if you say, 'Well, if Dwayne is Susie . . ,' There is a different set of attitudes and a new excitement to the characters because of the stereotypical and two-dimensional way in which we inevitably treat men and women."

Karin Howard: "Sometimes you have a name and nothing happens with it. I think names are very important. Many names have associations with them. Getting the right name and the right association can make your character come alive."

James Dearden: "If I were stuck, I'd just talk to my wife. It's a question of airing the problem and hitting the ball back and forth, and trying to talk through it. That's why there's such a thing as great editors in the lives of great writers. They send their manuscripts off to their editors and they come back with notes and hints and suggestions. Which doesn't mean the writer didn't know his job. It just means that he couldn't see the wood for the trees."

Getting perspective on a character problem helps the writer see that it need not be overwhelming. Character problems are a natural part of the creative process and are part of both character and writer finding their way.

A CASE STUDY: DENYS FINCH-HATTON IN
OUT OF AFRICA

Occasionally, there are character problems that are never solved by the writer. This can happen with the best of writers. It is, perhaps, more difficult when one is writing a character based on a real-life person. Sometimes there is insufficient research material about the person. Sometimes there is not sufficient conflict or clear enough desires and goals to make the person a workable dramatic character. The solution to certain character problems will continue to elude the writer, no matter how skilled he or she is.

In 1985,
Out of Africa
won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay Adaptation, for Best Director, and for Best Picture.

Yet many critics felt that there was a flaw in the character realization of Denys Finch-Hatton. Kurt Luedtke, the writer, would agree.

I decided to use Finch-Hatton as a case study because the thinking that Kurt went through to resolve the problems that arose has much to say about the process of working through a character.

Kurt Luedtke: "Denys we never solved. The research was no help. He was a truly, deliberately elusive person who did not want to be known and took real steps not to be known. He tried to cover his tracks by telling all of his friends to read his letters and burn them. People have described him as similar to one of the African cats—like a leopard who moved only when there was a very specific reason. Even the natives didn't understand him. So I was never able to get anything very dramatic about him. Everything I knew about him tended to be negatives and I never found terrific ways to turn them into positives. It's an odd kind of writing problem. I think the truth about him is that he wanted very little and didn't want any appetite to control him. He was real rigorous about not wanting things. I never thought of terrifically interesting ways to dramatize "not wanting.'

"I think if I had loosened up a bit, discarded some of what I knew about the real Finch-Hatton, I could have written a character that could say, 'I don't care about your mind or about any of this, we're a little short of women in this country and what I love about you is your mighty fine skin and that's all I want.' I could have written a character with a very specific set of attitudes that at least would give an actor a set of things to do that would be a bit more active.

"But, as a writer, I think it would have been very difficult to deal with a real character and have him say things that I knew were not true. I would have had some ethical problems with it. I would have felt a real encumbrance because I was working with true material and a literary figure that I happen to care a lot about. If I had to cheat like that, I just wouldn't make the picture. If we're going to do that, we may as well not call it
Out of Africa
and let's name her Shirley and name him Bill. I just don't think we should do
Out of Africa
if we aren't staying within the boundaries. If you're going to make it up, let's really make it up."

There are a number of qualities that a character must have to be intrinsically dramatic. One of these is
intentionality.
"What does the character want?" is a question asked by many producers and executives. For Denys, the answer seemed to be "Nothing."

Kurt continues, "I never knew the real Finch-Hatton, but from what little I know about him, I suspect and believe that he was a very contained man who didn't really want very much, who had what he wanted. He is an intrinsically undramatic character. You could do a movie just about his external acts, since he did have filmic adventures, but the inner qualities are unknown. To the extent that Finch-Hatton is interesting, it's Karen that makes him interesting. It's her appetite and her needs and her motivation and her situation. The fact of the matter is, if we were really willing to fictionalize Finch-Hatton, this Finch-Hatton character is not the man you would have made up with Karen Blixen. If you stayed with the truth, Bror is a lot more interesting. I could have written the whole movie about their marriage."

But the film focused on the love story. So Kurt tried to define Denys in other ways.

"We tried a little bit to suggest that by being so self-contained, he has a problem. There was a scene that was made up but not inconsistent with what may have been the case, when his good friend Berkeley Cole is dying. It's discovered that Berkeley Cole for a good number of years has maintained a relationship with a Somali woman. Denys is startled to discover this and he says, 'Why didn't you tell me?' and Berkeley says, 'I suppose I thought I didn't know you well enough.' We were trying to make character out of what was our problem. We felt that if it was true that we didn't think we knew Denys

well enough, maybe what was true of us was also true of Berkeley."

In retrospect, Kurt considered changing some of the dialogue. Originally, it was written for a British accent. "I do think that some of those scenes play a little better with an accent. If I had known that we were not going to do an accent, I would have welcomed the chance to write through some of the dialogue, but that still wouldn't have solved the problem. It would still be a problem of a character that no one understood very well."

I asked Kurt what he would do differently. What can be learned from this situation? What would he tell another writer, facing the same problem?

"I think I would say, on a practical level, be careful of nonfiction, and understand how far you are or are not prepared to go to fictionalize someone. I don't think that there ought to be any rules about that. I have a great regard for the person who says, 'My job isn't history, my job is to deliver the best possible dramatic movie and that is what I'm going to do.' If somebody says, 'What do you think about
Patton?'
I would say, 'I think
Patton
is a mighty fine film, but it doesn't square with my understanding of Patton the man, from reading the history. But it's a great movie and I have no quarrel with it,' But believe me, the next time, if ever I'm involved with a situation where I'm being asked to utilize biographical nonfictional material, I'll be real careful about understanding whether I feel the facts are there and good enough as they are or whether or not I'm going to wind up being disappointed by the truth.

"And, as I think back on this situation, I'd say, Some of the problems we licked and some of them we didn't.

APPLICATION

When you encounter a character problem, first think through the central concepts in the preceding chapters of this book. If

you can pinpoint where the problem is (character isn't consistent, lacks dimensionality, no emotional life, values unclear, etc.), many of the exercises given up to this point can be helpful for breaking through the problem.

If that doesn't work, ask yourself the following questions:

■ Have I made my characters specific people, or are they too generalized?

■ Do I like them and understand them?

■ Are my supporting characters taking over the story? Is this takeover detrimental to the story, or is something interesting developing? Am I willing to follow my characters for a while, just to see what will happen?