Writing Stories and Stories.

One of my favorite parts of film making is writing.  It's the beginning.  It's nothing but possibilities.  It's the lump of clay that will some day be something more.  Everyone has a different process for doing it, some people outline, some people just type until something happens. I do both.

The great part about the writing stage is that it's the only stage in film making that's free.  Or at least really cheap, costing no more than the price of a notebook and a pen.  As such, it's the part you can do the most for practice.  Sometimes you just feel like writing, just like an artist feels like doodling.  It doesn't have to become anything.  Maybe you just write a scene, or a character or some dialog.  Maybe you write an entire short film that sits on your shelf for six years until you take another look at it and then decide to do it.  Maybe it's just practice.

I just recently got the writing itch and started two short screenplays. One is a "reality TV show" based on someone else's idea they told me I should write a few years back, the other is about two guys in a dive bar, one depressed as hell, the other oblivious to nearly everything around him.  Last night I realized that I was writing two very different ways.

I realized this after watching last night's episode of The Walking Dead.

My muse.

I won't write about the show here other than to say it was one of my favorite episodes so far. Instead, since Lost has been off the air for almost three years, I'll compare it to that.

There are two very distinct ways of writing stories.  There are plot driven pieces, "A group of survivors must get off of a deserted mysterious island," and there are character driven pieces, "Jack is an obsessive doctor, consumed with guilt over his dead father, striving for perfection and acceptance not only from his peers but from himself, and after a terrible plane crash, he is stuck on a deserted mysterious island where others look to him to be the leader."

Plot driven pieces define a goal and show progress or regress to it.  Character driven pieces define a character and put them in a situation to see how they handle it.  The best stories mix these two elements together to make something entirely believable.

The goal of Lost in a plot driven way was always something definable.  Whether it was just surviving, or opening the hatch, or escaping the Others, or saving Walt.  But without likable characters, no one cares if they live or die.  Which is why when some characters didn't make it, it was incredibly sad.  When Nikki and Paulo died, people were celebrating because we didn't have to have stories with them in it anymore.

Lost accomplished this in flashbacks, as well as on the island.  Everyone hates Sawyer until they see his life before the island.  Everyone thinks Locke is this heartless obsessive hunter until we see that the trap we think he is fashioning is actually a cradle for Claire's baby.  Then we like him a little more.  And we like him a little more not because he's a nice guy, but because he's more human than a caricature.  He is introduced as a Rambo archetype, but then becomes human, a real person who acts like Rambo sometimes, but who also has thoughts, feelings, ideas and values.

From this...

...to this.

And I'm doing my best just in case anyone out there wants to watch this show and hasn't yet to avoid any type of spoilers, but if you have seen it all, Michael Emerson's character goes from the most hated character in the history of television to a guy you want to give a hug to, and he does it all in one scene.  If you haven't seen the show and possibly want to, don't watch this scene because it's 10 episodes before the end, and tells a lot about what led to that point.  If you have seen the show, watch this again and see the scene Michael Emerson should have won an Emmy for.

While it's slightly expository, it works because he says up front he wants to explain.  And what he explains is his character.  Why he is what he is, why he did what he did.

This is why Lost worked as a show.  The plot was good, the mystery was enticing, but at the end of it all, if all the characters were as developed as Nikki and Paulo we wouldn't have cared about any of them. (For those who haven't seen the show, Nikki and Paulo are two characters who were shoehorned into the show in the middle of season 3 as survivors who had been there the whole time but never mentioned until that moment and after fan backlash about how annoying they were and how useless their plot line was, they were killed off right after they were introduced.  I'd say spoiler at the beginning of that, but if you haven't seen Lost, know that when they first show up you can take solace in the fact that they'll be dead soon.)  All the rest of the characters were developed so well that in the end, we really cared about them all.  We were happy for them when they were happy, we were sad for them when they were sad.  And we genuinely wanted to see them all do well because we were so invested in them as people.

Now rather than go on and on about Lost and forget what I was actually talking about (which I could do very easily.  Ask my wife.), I'll point out that character development is something that is often times disregarded for the meat of a plot driven story.  Most people when pitching a story, or when telling people what they're writing about, will tell you the plot.  "It's about a girl who falls in love with a vampire in high school, but also there's this werewolf who likes her too."  But when you get into who these characters actually are, it comes down to, "Well they're attractive.  The werewolf doesn't wear a shirt most of the time."

CHARACTERS!

Look at Harry Potter.  I'd argue that Harry didn't actually become an interesting character until The Order of the Phoenix, or part five.  Parts 1-4 were entirely plot driven stories.  He has to find the Sorcerer's Stone, or save the school from the giant snake, or stop Sirius Black or win the Tri-Wizard Tournament.  It isn't until book five that he's finally lost something.  It isn't until then that he knows the stakes, and is reluctant. That's when he feels the pressure.  That's when we see a character start making decisions based on their personality and their experiences.  It's the beginning of understanding the character as a human, not an archetype for the good guy.

It's the difference between Superman and Spiderman.  Superman always does good.  He never falters.  He powers through whatever is going on to save the day.  Spiderman lets his insecurities eat him alive.  He doesn't always do the right thing, and sometimes has to live with those consequences.  He can be arrogant, or flippant, he can be scared or intimidated.  He can let his preconceptions alter his present and future.  He can be selfish, he can be sacrificial.  As such, Superman is an archetype of a hero, Spiderman is a real character.

Spoiler Alert: 1962

Going back to the two pieces I started, one is about a story within a reality TV show, the other is about two characters.  The first I began writing knowing where the story was going but having no idea who the characters in it were.  The second I began writing knowing the characters, but having no idea what the story would go.  One is a plot driven story, the other a character driven story.

Entire movies exist being one or the other.  The Expendables: Very plot driven, little to no character development.  Garden State: Very character driven, little to no plot.  It's not a flaw in either of these films, it's how they're designed.  But neither are very balanced to the middle, they exist on the extreme edges.  A film like Rocky is a perfect blend of both.

It's important when writing to know how you're going to proceed.  Just like driving.  Are you going to follow a map to a destination, or are you going to just get in the car and see where you end up?  Are you aimed at something, or are you just going along for a ride?  Or both; do you know where you want to end up, but aren't following a map?

I believe your story can only get stronger by knowing who your characters are before you start writing.  What I've done for our latest project (Have you found the teaser for it yet? Hint: We released it on January 27, 2013), is write an entire back story to our main characters.  Pages and pages of their life before the story even happens, and before I wrote the first page of the script.  That way I feel like even though the audience may never know some of the details of their life that I've created, I do.  And when I write them, I know how they'd realistically react in the present, because I know how they reacted before, I know their life up to this point, I know their strengths and weaknesses, I know their fears and their loves and their proudest moments and their regrets.  This keeps them consistent and believable.  You wouldn't have a character who has been self serving and arrogant the entire show suddenly run into a burning building to save a cat.  It would be a ridiculous stretch, and the audience would not understand why it happened.  You need to understand as a writer that characters react because they're people, not chess pieces to forward your story.  They need to put themselves into checkmate, not have you push them into it.  They need motivations for being in your story, or else they just don't fit.

I'm glad you're dead.