Interesting and deep are not the same thing.

A quirky character grabs your attention. A unique premise pulls you in. But neither one gives a story depth. You can have a story that’s fascinating and hollow, or profound and lifeless.

The best hooks you with the unexpected, then holds you with something true. The strange gets our attention. The soulful pulls us deeper.

So how do you build the deep part? You already know the answer, even if you’ve never named it.

It’s loss.

Here is the single most important sentence I teach about audience empathy:
Empathy is built on vulnerability. And vulnerability is always built on some kind of loss.

We don’t bond with a character because they’re clever or capable. We bond with them the moment they stand to lose something. Look at Dr. Robby in The Pitt. He is the most skilled, most composed person in the room — and none of that is why we love him. We love him because of what the day strips away.

He’s working the anniversary of the mentor he couldn’t save during COVID — a wound that never resolved. He loses a child on the table. He loses a young shooting victim he’d treated like family, and the boy who’s like a son to him blames him for it. By the end of one shift, every load-bearing wall in this man’s life has been pulled down, and we find him on the roof, closer to the edge than anyone should be.

His competence impresses us. His losses are what bind us to him.

Loss is the one thing that transcends culture, race, religion, age, money, and politics. We lose our innocence, our mentors, our people, eventually our lives. Life is a series of losses — and how a character copes with loss is what reveals who they are.

That’s not a screenwriting trick. That’s the whole game.