Kent Aristotelian-inspired Screenwriting

A Simple Guide to Complex Storytelling
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9925306-0-0
Verlag: Fountain Roark
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 155 Seiten

Aristotelian-Inspired Screenwriting takes you inside the heart and soul of the screenplay like no other book has done. Jason Kent explains how films can be written to make us feel like we are not only watching a story unfold before our eyes but actually living the lives of the characters. Drawing on fundamentals taught by Aristotle over 2000 years ago, Kent sweeps away much of the sand that has buried the essence of visual storytelling to reveal truths about scriptwriting, and also truths about life, and reminds us that films are primarily an imitation of life; so to understand the art of screenwriting you need to understand life itself. Kent explains Aristotelian concepts such as story unity, catharsis and complex plotting with a step-by-step script development process that will enlighten both novices and experienced screenwriters alike, and help to greatly improve their work. This book is essential reading for any film or television professional, as well as students, academics, or anyone interested in the art of storytelling or the complexities of the human mind.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kent, Jason

Leseproben

- Chapter 2 -

Anatomy of a screen character

Screen characters can be thought of as vessels to carry the consciousness of the audience. If done well they can transport the audience through the world of the story so the audience feels what the characters feel.

If characters are created well the audience will not only feel empathy for the character but for themselves, meaning that the audience is so invested in the character that the journey matters to their own lives, outside of the film.

Ideally people will feel what the character is feeling, like they are experiencing the emotions first-hand.

Human beings have natural empathy, which means that we understand the feelings of others. Some people are more connected and sensitive than other people, but we are all connected. We are basically pack animals.

This doesn’t mean we feel exactly the same way as others around us, but we remember similar experiences. For example, we haven’t all won tennis at Wimbledon, but most of us have won something, so we can relate. We empathize with other people.

The character with which we empathize doesn’t even need to be human. It can be a robot or an animal or anything with consciousness, at least, anything that we perceive to be human consciousness.

The question is, what is the basis for human consciousness? If we empathize with human consciousness, or our perception of human consciousness, then what specifically are we empathizing with?

Creating three-dimensional characters

Some screenwriting instructors suggest dreaming up encyclopedic amounts of information about your character(s). They advise the writer to produce pages of notes describing everything from the character’s hairstyle to their mother-in-law’s favorite color. This practice is putting the cart way before the horse.

We can’t know who the characters are or what they look like until we know the experiences they will have or their role in the story.

Describing a character in detail at the outset would be like building a spacecraft before we know where it needs to go. NASA never sends a space shuttle into the abyss without any direction or purpose.

So, there is no point in painting a detailed portrait of a character until you have at least some idea of what the story will be. As Aristotle says,

In a play accordingly they do not act in order to portray the Characters; they include the Characters for the sake of the action.2

For the purposes of this book and this screenwriting process, we will assume we are starting with a blank slate.

Character versus characterization

Before I discuss building a character, I should briefly outline the difference between character and characterization.

Characterization is all of the detailed information about the character, such as the way they look, dress and speak. These are mostly the superficial features – single-dimensional, tangible elements that we can see on the surface. Think of them as paint.

You can only stare at paint for so long because it is static – it doesn’t move or change. If you stare at the most detailed portrait for long enough, eventually you will lose interest. In contrast, a story moves. A feature film consists of over one hundred thousand different still images presented one after another.

So don’t imagine a still image; imagine all one hundred thousand of them or, better still, imagine a story. But what is a story?

Story is character and character is story

Character, or deep character, is who the character really is – what’s inside their head, their hopes and fears. Often this deep character is at odds with the individual’s outer appearance.

Prose writers can (and almost always do) write detailed characterization because in books we can’t actually see the characters. In films we can see the characters with our own eyes, so they don’t need to be described in as much detail.

Novelists can tell us the thoughts of characters, while in films this is not so easy – unless we use voiceover narration, which may not be possible or desirable. (We will discuss voiceover further in Chapter 7.)

So how do we build a character or create deep character without resorting to characterization?

Building a character with human consciousness

If our goal is for the audience to feel that they have become our character or reside within the mind of the character, we must start by imagining that the character is an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Then the character can be anyone – you, me, or the audience.

This character is like a blank canvas, upon which the audience can imprint their own thoughts, hopes and dreams.

We’ll refer to this blank character, as Aristotle does, as the agent.

The Agent

An agent is an empty vessel or a portal, a window from which the audience can see into the world of the film.

The benefit of starting out with an agent instead of a character is that the agent doesn’t allow anything to distract us from the true essence of the film world or the audience’s experience within that world. We are free to create a more perfect story or a pure story not weighed down with unwanted clutter or elements that detract from the heart and soul of the character.

Assume for now that we are planning the lead character rather than a supporting character.

You may notice that some of the best lead characters in films are not highly attractive or even physically unusual. They are often everyday men or women like Anne Hathaway, Sam Worthington, Tom Hanks or Russell Crowe. The type of person we could imagine we could be – not someone outstanding or special, just a normal likeable person; or, as Aristotle says,

… the intermediate kind of personage …3

So, try to imagine an individual as nobody and everybody all at once. A nothing. Here is our agent.

Figure 1

Who is he? What is he thinking? What is he feeling? Can you relate to him? What does he make you feel? Nothing?

You feel nothing for the character. You enter the cinema with your own thoughts and feelings, whatever they might be. You sit down and make yourself comfortable, waiting to be taken on a journey and hoping the kids behind you stop talking.

So who is this agent and where are you about to go? These questions are open to your imagination.

We could add some clothes and make him look like a real human being (and later we will), but for now he is everyone and no-one all at once. He is you, them and me.

Maybe he (or she) is a doctor, a drag queen, a robot, an astronaut, a jockey, a drunk or even a horse. Who knows?

With this empty vessel to carry the audience through the story, what next? First we need to know what the agent wants. We need to know his goal.

Agent’s goal

The agent’s goal is the most important aspect of his character. Like actors need to know their motivation for scenes, a writer needs to know the character’s goal in order to write those scenes.

When you write a character in action for the first time, you are like an actor improvising.

To write a character you need to know what the character wants. This is the same in life. Before we act, we usually need to know what we are doing or trying to achieve.

For the audience, a character’s goal is the key to understanding him. The goal is what we sense and feel about the character.

In films, if not in real life, people are defined by what they want and what they do as a result. We recognize people’s goals from their actions.

As Aristotle says:

… it is in our actions – what we do – that we are happy or the reverse.4

We can also make judgments based on a character’s appearance or other superficialities, but in film actions really do speak louder than words. If you want the audience to know your character, you need to show what the character wants through his actions.

We have several primal hopes and fears, and each hope has a corresponding fear. For example, people might hope to live long and fear sudden death, hope for joy and fear pain, hope for riches and fear poverty, or hope for success and fear failure.

To make our agent real we must install in him (and in the audience) both hopes and fears. This is how the audience will come to know who the agent actually is.

How do we give the agent hope and fear? More importantly, how will your audience experience hope or fear through the agent?

For the agent (audience) to experience hope or fear we must provide a source of those emotions, either by introducing something they want (hope for) or something they fear. We do this by creating conflict.

We generally talk in terms of two types of conflict: inner conflict and outer conflict. Let’s start with outer conflict.

Outer conflict

Aristotle writes that the incidents of a play,

… must imitate actions arousing pity and fear …5

Here is a very simple example of outer conflict that will likely elicit fear or a reaction from the agent.

Figure 2

Without having told the audience anything about the agent, and added no characterization, this illustration tells the audience what the character might be feeling: fear for his life. We all understand this fear.

Now we need to go deeper. We need the...