Here are my notes from a session taught by Michael Hauge, consultant, screenwriter, industry expert, and author. His newest book is Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds: The Guaranteed Way to Get Your Screenplay or Novel Read
The basic element of a good story, the primary goal, is to create an emotional experience for the reader. As a writer, it is key for you to know how to elicit emotion.
The three basic elements of a story are Character (Hero- person driving the story,) Desire, and Conflict.
There are four key desires in movies:
- To Escape (escaping from a bad situation)
- To Retrieve (go out and get something/ rescue)
- To Stop (to stop something bad from happening/ stop a killer)
- To Win (winning the love of another/ winning a game or competition)
These desires satisfy the need for a goal that is visible. Along with the main desire are invisible goals (ie: subplots) but the main desire is the driving force.
Readers must identify with your heart. A good question to ask is “Why will the reader empathize with my hero?”
Five immediate ways to have readers identify with the character are:
- create sympathy for your hero
- put your character in jeopardy
- make your character likable (one way to do this can be opening the story with close friends or other people who like the character – the reader will then like them too.)
- make your character funny (example: Wedding Crashers)
- make your character powerful and good at what he/she does
Readers must identify with the characters up front, and your challenge as a writer is to do this immediately, not half-way through the book.
Ask… what does my hero long for? Is there a deeply held desire that they are paying lip service to because to go after it would be too frightening?
Ask…What is your character’s wound? Is there an unhealed source of continuing pain? Is there something in the past that the character has suppressed?
What is the source of the wound?
Then as a result… what is the character’s fear? (example: If they get too close to someone, they run the risk that the person will leave them.)
Fears can turn into beliefs. For example, a man who was beaten as a child may have difficulty letting anyone see who he truly is because then they will believe he should be beaten. This is his fear, but also his belief.
Ask… What is your hero’s identity? The person we present to the outside world may be a false front to protect us from our emotional fears.
Ask… What is my character’s need? The need is something the hero cannot necessarily express. Often, it is the need for connection.
A trick for figuring out a character’s identity is to determine how your character would answer this:
“I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve my goal, just don’t ask me to ____________”
A spin on the sentence for Romance might be “I’ll do whatever it takes to find the man of my dreams, but ____________” or “I’ll do whatever it takes to find the man of my dreams, just don’t ask me to __________________, that’s just not me.”
What is your hero’s essence? If you could strip away beliefs, things they fear, etc. – what would you have? These are the deep down qualities.
Asking all of these questions, and having a full understanding of the hero relates back to your primary goal- to create an emotional experience for the reader… eliciting emotion.
If you have defined the character and desire, the conflict creates the emotions and the emotions grow out of the conflicts.
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