I hope you’ve been enjoying Writing Advice Wednesday for the last few months, but I’m trying something different for the rest of the year’s posts. As well as a relevant video essay I’ve found, I’ll be giving you writing exercises to jump-start your new script or novel. It’s exercises like this that form part of my One Hour Screenwriter course, which will help you write an entire feature film script in 22 weeks. You can purchase it at the shop here. You can also read testimonies here that show how this process has worked for a variety of writers.
This week, it’s time to feel…
Writing with Empathy and Emotion
This is a two-minute exercise that might change the way you think about film.
Sit back and remember the first time you walked out of a movie thrilled, stunned or amazed by the power of what you just saw.
What was the name of the film that produced that first profound effect for you? Write down the name of the film.
Now write a brief description of the most memorable scene in that film. By this I mean a scene in which something happens to someone.
What physically was happening in the scene you remember so vividly?
Was the scene you described a scene in which the character is incredibly vulnerable? Is it a crossing a border scene or a scene about entering a new world? Is it a release scene after an intense scene where something terrible or unsettling happens to the character?
What we remember most clearly is pain and vulnerability.
Creating vulnerability is the most powerful tool you have to bond your audience firmly to your character. Moments of character vulnerability (physical, emotional or spiritual vulnerability) are what make a film truly memorable.
This is something that you know already intuitively. It is an important trigger in all the films that you love best. You may not be consciously aware of it. But it is right there in plain sight and your own experience proves it.
Think of any truly memorable scene in a favorite movie and some kind of character vulnerability will be central to the moment.
Remember a time when you felt really vulnerable, alone, rejected, humiliated, unloved, or misunderstood. Remember the exact words or actions that made you feel that way. Quickly write the circumstances as you remember them.
Remember a time when you felt physically at risk, afraid, or in danger. It doesn’t matter if the danger was real or not. What’s important is that you feared for your safety.
Remember the exact circumstances that frightened you. Quickly write scenario as you remember it.
Remember a time when you were on the threshold of something brand new. Quickly write how you felt leaving your old life, old friends, old job or old circumstances behind.
Explore what it was like to face the complete unknown and dive into an uncharted or untested set of circumstances or a new situation.
How did it feel to cross the “border” into a new life or embark on a new journey? Was it sad or thrilling?
Loss always makes us vulnerable and something isn’t thrilling unless there is a little bit of danger attached. Danger always makes us vulnerable.
Remember a time when someone you loved or trusted betrayed you. It can be a small personal betrayal or a larger more public betrayal.
Remember the details of what that betrayal was and how it was revealed to you.
Remember how it made you feel. Quickly write about the situation as you remember it.
Now write the answers to the above questions for your character.
Write a list of possible events that could make your character feel really vulnerable, alone, rejected, humiliated or unloved.
List the specific actions or circumstances that would make your character feel that way.
List the kinds of things someone could say or do to evoke those feelings in your character in the present.
Write a list of situations in which you character would feel physically at risk, afraid or in danger.
What physical circumstances are most likely to make your character feel panic or terror?
What situations does your character find most physically challenging or frightening?
What new threshold does your character cross? How is that a fearful, sad or dangerous prospect for him or her?
Write a list of possible situations in which your character might feel betrayed, be set up for a fall, or played for a fool.
List the most hurtful possible things that could happen to your character in the story.
Video Essay of the Week
Lessons From The Screenplay gives us two very different examples of detectives pushed to their limits, and how they handle being faced with incredible adversity:
Let me know what you think of this week’s writing exercise by emailing me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you as we go forward with more of these writing exercises. Next week, it’s time to make it all about you…
Until then, remember- all you need to do is Get Started and Keep Going!
– Laurie
Power of Imagination Profile
President Barack Obama
“Out of (Obama’s) perceptiveness comes a distinct way of seeing the world. Obama emphasizes the connections between people, the networks and the webs of influence. These sorts of links are invisible to some of his rivals, but Obama is a communitarian. He believes you can only make profound political changes if you first change the spirit of the community. In his speeches, he says that if one person stands up, then another will stand up and another and another and you’ll get a nation standing up.”
Fictional Character Examples
Three Factors of Character Type
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A Character Type is made up of three key factors:
1. Immediate Tactics: This is how a character reacts to a specific challenge, opportunity or threat (often unforeseen). It is a character’s immediate tactical response or actions in dealing with a problem or obstacle in the short-term.
2. Long-term Orientation: This is how the character views the world, sees his or her role in it and is what a character believes is true about life and love. It is a character’s overall personal philosophy and view of self and others.
3. Strategic Approach: This is how a character goes about leading or getting things done over the long haul. It is how a character works with others overall. It is how a character plans, takes charge or commands others to achieve a larger goal. Strategy deals with the art of of obtaining a grand overarching longer-term objective.
Each of these key factors results in fight, flight or embrace/submit response. Character is action. There are the three possible actions a character can take in any given situation or circumtance. He or she can confront the challenge, opportunity or threat (fight). The character can withdraw from it (flee/flight) perhaps to regroup or do reconnaisence. Or a character can embrace something (submit) and perhaps co-opt, cajole or cooperate with the adversary.
As Power of Imagination character, President Obama consistently acts in the following manner.
Immediate Tactics
Power of Imagination characters embrace an immediate or unexpected opportunity, challenge or threat as something to be communicated to or with others. These characters are compelled to embrace others and ask them to share their perceptions as well. They want all parties to embrace the common good inspired by their vision.
That’s why President Obama constantly sees “teachable moments” in difficult unforeseen situations and circumstances. During his candidacy, he responded to charges of anti-white racism on the part of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, with a long thoughtful speech on racism, exploring the distrust and anger on both sides. When another issue of racism came up during his presidency his response was to invite the white police officer (Sgt. James Crowley) and the black professor (Dr. Henry Gates) involved over to the White House to share a beer.
His automatic response to most unforeseen situations is to try to improve communications. In his own words, regarding the U.S. financial melt-down he said in an interview on CBS’ Sixty Minutes on March 22, 2009:
“One of the things that I have to do is to communicate to Wall Street that, given the current crisis that we’re in, they can’t expect help from taxpayers but they enjoy all the benefits that they enjoyed before the crisis happened. You get a sense that, in some institutions that has not sunk in. That you can’t go back to the old way of doing business, certainly not on the taxpayers’ dime. Now the flip side is that Main Street has to understand, unless we get these banks moving again, then we can’t get this economy to recover. And we don’t want to cut off our nose to spite our face.”
Notice President Obama’s use of “on the one hand and on the other hand” discussion of the financial crisis— trying to see the issue from all sides, harmonize, unify and bring the two sides together for the greater good. He is consistently criticized for this kind of rhetorical balancing act. The conservative Heritage Foundation called attention to and took issue with this Power of Imagination speaking style in President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech on December 10, 2009, saying:
“In many ways, the speech was typical Obama, a masterpiece of one the one hand, on the other hand… On the one hand, President Obama, appropriately defended the use of force in the interest of national security – as in Afghanistan — and correctly referenced the just war concept. On the other hand, he stretched the term security to include prosperity and welfare, not simply freedom from harm.”
Long-term Orientation
“People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one. In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone… That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another… The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”
“Consider the president’s leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there’s a conflict, because if there’s a conflict, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it..Health care is a paradigm case. When the president went to speak to the Democrats last week on Capitol Hill, he exhorted them to pass the bill. According to reports, though, he didn’t mention the two issues in the way of doing that, the efforts of Senators like Ben Nelson to use this as an opportunity to turn back the clock on abortion by 25 years, and the efforts of conservative and industry-owned Democrats to eliminate any competition for the insurance companies that pay their campaign bills. He simply ignored both controversies and exhorted..Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it’s uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can’t tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.”
Strategic Approach
A Power of Imagination character’s overall method of working with others toward a goal is to step back or withdraw for the good of the group. These characters don’t want to impose themselves on others too stridently. They are extremely patient and are willing to work through thorny problems or difficult issues by listening to all sides. These character don’t particular seek individual credit. They much prefer to be subsumed in the team.
Their challenge as leaders is to step forward decisively and make the hard and potentially divisive decision on their own. President Obama doesn’t personally exhibit a lot of passion, a sense of urgency or boldness. He is known as “No Drama Obama” and is famous for his patience calm personal style.
His Power of Imagination Immediate Tactic: Embrace along with his Long Term Orientation: Embrace combined with his Strategic Approach: Withdraw creates a measured approach which is directed at building consensus rather than taking a principled stand that may be divisive or cause conflict. The leap of faith required from this kind of leader is to stand up and do the right thing regardless of what turmoil, disruption or animosity it might cause. Taking that kind of personal stand is President Obama’s biggest challenge as a leader.
Power of Conscience
In contrast to The Power of Imagination, a Power of Conscience leader is fearless about taking a divisive personal stand. In the excellent film, Invictus, Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) seeks to over turn a democratically arrived at and popular decision to disband the Afrikaner rugby team the Springboks. In the film, Mandela says: “In this instance the people are wrong… The day I am afraid to tell them that is the day I am no longer fit to lead them.” Power of Conscience leaders are always striding ahead of the crowd to do what is right regardless of the controversy or conflict their decisions may cause. These Character Types have their own challenges and must make their own very different leaps of faith. Read more about Power of Conscience leaders Nelson Mandela (as portrayed in Invictus) and Queen Elizabeth (as portrayed in The Queen) on my blog.
As a final note, no Character Type makes an inherently good or bad leader. Each Character Type leads from his or her own world view and beliefs about what a good leader is or is not. Each kind of leader has strengths, weaknesses and faces specific emotional challenges. Each type of leader is called on to make a leap of faith in order to be truly great.
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Here’s a list of the biggest sleeper hits of the last ten years. What patterns do we see? Only two could be classified as drama, and both feature foreign locales and are about foreign nationals. Two are documentaries (one is a comedic practical joke video). Four are comedies. And two are horror films. Here is the run-down.
Sleepers come seemingly out of nowhere. They are the little films that confound expectations, attracting enthusiastic audiences that happily spread the word. Sometimes they come from the studio system, produced almost as an afterthought, but mostly they’re produced well off the radar. On occasion, they upend the established order by opening at No. 1 at the boxoffice. But more typically they start small, building over time, hanging on in theaters as more heralded movies come and go. Often the filmmakers involved meet with initial rejection before wildly triumphing in the end. In the process, they expose the limitations of Hollywood’s conventional thinking about what makes a hit.
10. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (Sony Pictures Classics, 2000)
Budget: $17 million
Domestic gross: $128 million8. “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight, 2008)
Budget: $15 million
Domestic gross: $141.3 million7. March of the Penguins (Warner Independent/National Geographic, 2005)
Budget: $8 million
Domestic gross: $77.4 million6. Jackass: The Movie (Paramount, 2002)
Budget: $5 million
Domestic gross: $64.3 million5. “Juno” (Fox Searchlight, 2007)
Budget: $7.5 million
Domestic gross: $143.5 million4. “Saw” (Lionsgate, 2004)
Budget: $1.2 million
Domestic gross: $55.2 million3. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” (IFC, 2002)
Budget: $5 million
Domestic gross: $241.4 million9. “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” (Lionsgate, 2005)
Budget: $5.5 million
Domestic gross: $50.4 million2. “Napoleon Dynamite” (Fox Searchlight/Paramount 2004)
Budget: $400,000
Domestic gross: $44.5 million1. “Paranormal Activity” (Paramount, 2009)
Budget: $15,000
Domestic gross: $107.6 million
The full story and video clips from The Hollywood Reporter
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The excellent film, Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela is a great study in Power of Conscience leadership.
The Power of Conscience character leads by showing fairness, firmness, consistency, justice and providing a good example. These leaders believe that they have responsibility for others and a duty to protect the rights of all. They are particularly sensitive to those who are disenfranchised, disadvantaged, disabled or unable to fight for themselves. When he defeated the white Afrikaners politically he felt bound to protect their rights and interests as well. These characters believe that equality and the rule of law is humankind’s salvation.
Power of Conscience leaders tell potential supporters: “Follow me. I know what’s right. I will be just. I will be fair. I will be responsible.” They argue: “Come along and fight the good fight. Do what is right. Justice will prevail. Don’t argue. I know the right path to take.”
The insistence that they know what is right can get these leaders into trouble with supporters. This scene in Invictus, illustrates Power of Conscience leadership philosophy very succinctly.
As in Invictus, Power of Conscience characters tend to personalize their work, making their mission to improve the world an inseparable part of their own identity. In life, Mandela has said: “The struggle IS my life.”
An unwillingness to compromise on moral ground is the hallmark of these leaders. In life, Mandela never compromised his principles to avoid punishment. He refused several opportunities to get out of jail, which required him to recant or renounce one of his stands on justice or equal rights.
The best Power of Conscience leaders are “servant leaders” who have the humility to serve the greater good of others. Power of Conscience leaders teach their followers to lead by example and to be of service themselves. This is illustrated in a wonderful scene with Matt Damon, playing Springboks captain Francois Pienaar, where the two men talk of leading by example. Mandela poses the essential Power of Conscience question, “How do you inspire a people to be better than they think they are?”
Improving themselves, others and the world at large is of paramount importance to Power of Conscience characters. They are disciplined, principled and challenge others to take the moral high-ground. In life, Mandela has said, “The time is always ripe to do right.”