Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Casting Your Stories 3: Glimpsing a character's other side

I did a series here on pivotal scenes, based on my study of Paddy Chayefsky work and ideas. Those posts focus on story, but they could easily be read as how to reveal the essence of characters, usually their dominant aspects, through choices and actions. Logically, that should be this post, but I’ve decided point to that earlier work and not reinterpret it in this post. Instead, I’ll share some of what I’ve discovered about how small but significant moments reveal the less dominant aspects of characters, often leading to deeper connections with readers and audiences. 

I've never forgotten Damon Knight's advice on creating important characters – make them 70% (good or bad) and 30% (bad or good). This came back to me while I was binge watching The Wire. A young drug dealer (D'Angelo) is established early on as a ruthless character who has committed murder at a young age. He's also intelligent, sporadically out-of-control, and completely committed to the drug dealing business. But, after all this plays out through several episodes, he takes the time to advise a younger dealer on getting out of "the game" and returning to high school.

Suddenly, a bad and scary character is showing he cares for others. In fact, he even takes risks to protect the younger man.

Not bad as far as illustrating the 70/30 rule of thumb. To me, it was a good illustration of how important it is to give the audience a clear idea of the dominant character traits before introducing something different. It also did something else. It opened up new story possibilities. I had to wonder whether D'Angelo would keep to his dedication to the game himself. It also created a degree of empathy, not just because it revealed this positive dimension of the character, but because the advice D'Angelo sacrificed to provide was rejected and his protégé ended up dead.

David Simon provided the same sort of surprises elsewhere in The Wire. For instance, the most active and thoughtful and, in some ways, horrifying drug dealer, Stringer, is tailed at one tense point. Instead of ending up revealing more criminal activity, the detective discovers Stringer studying business at the community college. He's an able student who immediately applies what he's learning to one of the organizations front businesses, but also to make the drug dealing more effective.

Note that the 70/30 is accomplished by talk (advice) and action (study). It can also be achieved is less deliver on the part of the character. In comedy, Freudian slips, where a character uses the wrong word can often be surprising and revelatory. An accidental disclosure in the Mary Tyler Moore Show is one of my favorite 70/30 moments. Mary is admiring a picture Ted Baxter has hanging on his office wall. It shows Ted shaking hands with a celebrity (as I recall from seeing the show years ago). Mary touches the photo as she points only to reveal that the face of Ted has been pasted over someone else's image. It's funny and surprising, but it's also a humanizing moment for a character who has often been an insufferable blowhard. Mary's reaction, trying to smooth it over, is well within her character, but the vulnerability of Ted is memorable and a special moment for the audience to connect with and care about him.

In the cases of D'Angelo and Stringer and Ted Baxter, the characters have a lot of time to show their 70% sides before revealing something new and unexpected. Usually, and a series (as opposed to a feature film), many episodes pass before the character is established to the point where revealing the 30% doesn't undercut the 70%. An exception to this was a brilliant pilot for Hill Street Blues. The police captain Frank is a powerful advocate for his people and their work, which puts him in conflict with Joyce, who is an equally talented and determine public defender. Within that first show they clash, only to have the two of them revealed as a couple in the last moments of the show. It's an effective, even tour de force, instance of going from the 70 to the 30 rapidly. If you have a Steven Bochco level of talent, give it a try.

To summarize, dialogue, action, and accidental surprises can be used to bring something new to a character. This can make characters more authentic, put doubts in the heads of readers and audiences so that the story is less predictable, open up new story possibilities, foreshadowed later story developments, make character choices more difficult (and thus more interesting), and create empathy. I've also noticed that in some cases these acts set up new relationships and make subsequent teamwork between very different characters more realistic.

I'm still exploring this, but I strongly suspect that in drama most of what the character is trying to achieve fails when they are acting in 30 mode. Often this explains why their usual approaches (70) are diametrically different. Their skills can't take them where their hearts want to go. Or disappointments have led them to hide or overcompensate for gentler tendencies.

On the other hand, in comedy, the softer moments often lead to something positive for the character. They may have success in those smaller goals or enhance connections with other characters.

Is this surprising? Usually, we expect the heroes of dramas, acting in their dominant modes, to achieve their goals. But is completely acceptable, and often expected, that the protagonist in a comedy will fail to achieve the primary goal.

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