Seeing the patterns

Think about building your story by "seeing" the emergence of the characters in a pattern. Unique, yet composed of types that work for the movies. If you study movies long enough, you'll see certain typical patterns of characters cropping up repeatedly.

As a storytelling form, the feature-length movie tends to be tightly structured. Specific patterns are adhered to more than in the novel, the short story, the biography, etc. Movies as we know them have been in existence for less than a hundred years. In that time, though, they've evolved their own unique storytelling form.

Past generations of screenwriters discovered what pleases and what displeases their audience, and today's screenwriters are following suit. The story pattern we see at the movies is largely the result of writers responding to the desires of the audience.

In a way, writing a movie is like writing a sonnet — there exists an evolved convention within a writer is expected to work. It's a blessing because the writer doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, and a curse because the creative process is never unfettered.

The good news is that, as in most other endeavors, knowledge and understanding is power. So let's do some stargazing into the galaxy of screenplay characters to find the patterns of the modern screenplay.

Not all Hollywood movies parade their constellation of characters as blatantly as American Graffiti did, but most advertising displays the two main characters, and sometimes a third character as well.

© Universal Pictures

One final comparison and I'll spare you any further extension of this metaphor.

Think of the Hero as the Pole Star — He or she is the character around whom all the other characters revolve.

I'm not prescribing a recipe. I'm describing the nature of 90% of successful movies. You're the writer. You can choose to work within the patterns I'm describing or not. But to make that choice intelligently, you need to know what the patterns are.

Room for creativity and invention within the patterns is almost infinite. Knowing the convention and its patterns will not stunt your creativity or board up your muse.

The Hero — then what?When you've decided on your Hero, where do you go next? There are numerous options.Early in my career, I struggled to create satisfactory connections between my Heroes and the other characters in my stories.Why was I struggling? Because I was thinking about story and characters in a literary way, a "straight line" way— HERO— INCITING INCIDENT— GOAL— RISING ACTION— etc., etc.Even worse, I just assumed that drama consisted mainly of "conflict" between two entities: Protagonist and Antagonist (Hero and Villain).

That’s okay for Literature and stage.Not for movies.My scripts didn’t always work, and so I struggled.One day, after enough years of this writer’s angst, and after studying enough movies, the light dawned.I discovered that the essential appeal of the screen story, unlike many literary forms, was not to be found in the conflict the villain created.

Surprise!

Of course the villain's important, but in my analysis of movies, I learned that the villain often got less screen time than another secondary character who had a lot of scenes with the Hero.

Look at these movie posters. Two characters are prominently depicted on each poster.

Neither character is the Villain.

What does that tell you?

Certainly, this idea of the "second character" intrigued me, because I'd been giving the second largest chunk of screen time to the Antagonist.

Then I rationalized that, well, this other secondary character existed because the Hero had a romantic interest, or else a Buddy.

But that didn't prove out either, because I found many movies where the character who got second most screen time was neither a lover or a buddy.

When I was preparing to lead seminars on screenplay writing, I did a deeper analysis of the character layout of successful movies.

I started by studying the role of Heroes and Antagonists in hundreds of movies, and even though I was reluctant to accept the fact at first, I discovered that the typical movie story is dominated by a personal relationship between two other characters—the Hero and what I called at the time the "second most important character."

That’s all. Just those two characters. When I first explored this principle, there wasn’t any information about screenplay writing that dealt satisfactorily with this "second most important character."

I named this character the BONDING CHARACTER. And then by studying movies further, I deduced four things about the audience’s response to the Bonding Character that truly surprised me:

Defining the Bonding Character

1. The more unlike the Hero and Bonding Character are, the better the audience likes them and gets involved in their relationship.

These examples show two popular unlike pairings:

The secret of The Bonding Character© -- the key
...concept for creating a dynamic screen story.

The Bonding Character© is Barry Pearson's original
.. concept -- a new strategy in the creative process of
.. screenplay writing.

It's simple to understand, it's proven, and it works.

The 14 most popular movie genres and how to.pick
...the best 2 for YOUR screenplay.

(To do a test pick of the ideal mix of genres for your
...story idea or screenplay, visit the GENRES page.)

The 3 basic phases of writing a screenplay story --
...creating the story, shaping the story, and preparing
...to write the draft.

You'll learn how to work through each phase
...in a highly creative way.