If You Want To Sell A Screenplay Write A Sympathetic Main Character

If You Want To Sell A Screenplay Write A Sympathetic Main Character - Jeffrey Alan Schechter

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After moving to Los Angeles, Jeffrey Alan Schechter quickly established himself as a versatile writer, able to work in all genres from action films to family comedies, from pre-school to adult drama, from live action to animation. His writing has earned him a Gemini Award as well as nominations for two Emmy awards, a Writers Guild of America award, a Writer’s Guild of Canada award, and a BAFTA award.
Over the years Jeff has worked with dozens of studios and networks including Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, ABC, NBC, The Discovery Channel, Nickelodeon, The Hallmark Channel, the BBC, VH1 Films, RHI, and The Walt Disney Company.
Jeff is the author of a book on story structure titled My Story Can Beat Up Your Story! and is a noted speaker and lecturer on screenwriting. Jeff is the founder/creator of WritersRoom Pro software, a digital writers’ room for secure, remote creativity and collaboration.
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Пікірлер: 67

@chasehedges6775 Жыл бұрын

Making a good, sympathetic character in a good book, movie, or TV series is always important because those kind of characters are always endearing and you’ll follow them anywhere.

@mikesarno7973 Жыл бұрын

Selling out isn't creating art that people want to buy. Selling out is creating something that people want to buy that you know isn't art but can pass for it.

@azia3337 Жыл бұрын

You have to write what your passionate about it can’t be forced especially characters but good advice

@filmcourage Жыл бұрын

What are your thoughts on writing a sympathetic vs. unsympathetic main character?

@corpsefoot758 Жыл бұрын

People who want more accessible income as artists are unfortunately bound to the audience’s whims, and so since most audiences simply like characters they can root for (possibly due to “projecting” personally onto them), we have no choice but to write that way if steady income is the goal There are definitely places for other types of protagonists to roam free, but I don’t think it’s debatable that such genres/outlets are far less popular across broader society 🤷‍♂️

@chasehedges6775 Жыл бұрын

In my opinion, you should always strive to make your character, whoever they are, as sympathetic and likable as you can. However, you need to make sure to make sure that they are flawed.

@sonnyboyd10 Жыл бұрын

Sympathetic characters are better written and in my opinion more enjoyable. But unsympathetic characters such as the OG Superman where his only flaw was Kryptonite. Can easily be just as enjoyable as long as the plot is well written.

@joaomarcoscosta4647 Жыл бұрын

Well... Ideally, I want the main character to be charismatic - in the sense that I can't turn my eyes from the screen, and I want to see what they will do and what will happen as a result. But that doesn't mean I want them to be "likable," at least not in the sense that I would want to befriend them or project myself into them. Main characters who are mostly assholes are often very entertaining to watch. (And even when they are not always "entertaining"... It can be quite a ride to follow their story.)

@subtitlesonplease Жыл бұрын

I like the idea that any character can embody both traits.

@caseestarr Жыл бұрын

Most sensible and relatable interview yet.

@PoetryInHats Жыл бұрын

"I'm going to buy this one but I'm not going to forget this one." So freeing!

@Hyplum Жыл бұрын

Great video as always.

@sun018 Жыл бұрын

Wow! Sure got me thinking! Thank you so much best wishes from Ireland 🙂🍀

@filmcourage Жыл бұрын

Cheers! 🇮🇪

@Texastentialist-ls9kz Жыл бұрын

I really dig this channel.

@chasehedges6775 Жыл бұрын

Same here. It’s awesome

@filmcourage Жыл бұрын

Thanks for visiting!

@eugenebatiste Жыл бұрын

Honesty in art is essential to make successful artist.

@chasehedges6775 Жыл бұрын

And making sure to tell a good story within likeable and relatable, lovable characters.

@eugenebatiste Жыл бұрын

@@chasehedges6775 I don’t believe that a good story makes a good movie at all. 😔 The 80’s action genre is littered with proof.

@eugenebatiste Жыл бұрын

Rom coms too. Sure you can Knick pick genre films, but overwhelming shitty stories are produced more than phenomenal ones. How many citizen Kanes and godfathers can mankind produce? I just want to make something you can watch for the weekend. #sharknado

@MacIntoshMann Жыл бұрын

@@chasehedges6775 you need to watch some paul schrader films. your whole perception of what makes a good movie is deeply, deeply flawed.

@chasehedges6775 Жыл бұрын

Love this content. It’s great!

@filmcourage Жыл бұрын

Thanks Chase, our best to you and your work!

@chasehedges6775 Жыл бұрын

@@filmcourage 🙏🙏

@sonnyboyd10 Жыл бұрын

Good stuff. You guys are always dropping gems 💎

@flirtwd Жыл бұрын

I believe that it’s also a moral factor.

@thereccher8746 Жыл бұрын

He's confusing sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is shallow. It's a surface level comprehension of their pain. Being able to physically feel their suffering is the key to a good character. Even if that character is by all rights a terrible human being, there has to be a humanity in that person we can identify so we can connect to them.

@donnabailey566 Жыл бұрын

I actually prefer the word interesting or relatable, rather than sympathetic. Writers might think this means to write a character who's nice all the time. Nice is not necessarily interesting. My two cents.

@chasehedges6775 Жыл бұрын

Good point

@theTeslaFalcon Жыл бұрын

While some sympathetic characters are interesting or relatable, sympathetic (root word: sympathy) is more associated w the emotional bond between the character & the audience. I can't relate to being called by a wizard to destroy a ring to save the world, nor is the backstabbing in a royal court particularly interesting to me. But once I got to know Frodo Baggins & the Shire, I sympathized w his desire to protect the innocent farmer folk from the malevolent evil they were blissfully unaware of. Once I got to know Neddard Stark, I was emotionally invested in his hunt for the truth & desire to get home & away from King's Landing. If Frodo was simply a rogue w a devil-may-care attitude, I would've be less invested in his quest. If Ned was just as duplitious as the rest, his beheading would've been just vs tragic. Thus the emotional investment goes 2 ways: positive toward the hero & their quest & negative toward the villian who stands in opposition. Sometimes we watch to see evil fall more than to see the quest succeed.

@DaveKatague Жыл бұрын

I think by combining several of film courages deep dives into character development for an audience, e.g Eric Edsons 9 character traits for audience sympathy, mixed with books like the Secrets of Story by Matt Bird, and his new book secrets of character, the Disney 5 minute rule, Filmento’s alita: how to manipulate the audience, and the storytelling laws by Pixar, you start to see patterns of what makes an audience root for a main character. Uniqueness, desire and complexity. Desire, fear, and misbelief. By us knowing what the character wants and needs and who they need to become to get it, we can become invested in that inner journey. Can’t wait to add this one into the mix. :)

@jespervalgreen6461 Жыл бұрын

But those are not the same thing. Take the movie Der Untergang: the interesting character of course is Hitler, played masterfully by Bruno Ganz, and without him there obviously wouldn't have been a story. But the sympathetic character is Traudl Junge, played by Alexandra Maria Lange as an initially naive everywoman, and without her, there would not have been a good story: she's the witness, she's our eyes and ears, she's our way in to this hell. And yes, you could characterize her as relatable, but she's relatable only because of her circumstance, and the real Trautl Junge recognized that as well; this is her story (the script draws on other sources as well, but without Junge's autobiography there wouldn't have been a story). So, for my money there's nothing wrong with having a character who's just nice and decent and not too complicated, whose function in the story is to be the witness, and through whom the viewer or reader can gain access to the world of the story. This character, by their function in the story, cannot be too complicated or interesting in their own right, as that would stand in the way of that function. This is not to suggest that that's the only way to tell a story with a sympathetic character, nor that you could not tell a story about e.g. Trautl Junge in her full human complexity, but that would be another story, and a different story. So, you don't need all of your characters to be interesting, just as you don't need all of your characters to be relatable or evoking sympathy, and often, but not always, those traits may be mutually exclusive. And that's my five cents.

@subtitlesonplease Жыл бұрын

🤔 Sounds like a projection of your definition of sympathetic. Writers aren’t monolithic, so most wouldn’t assume sympathetic = nice. Sympathy is an interesting word to build from or implement. You can have the most vile character and still have moments of sympathy. How do you gather sympathy? Being vulnerable, relatable, human, transparent etc. They come under the umbrella of trying to build sympathy

@cobymarcum1442 Жыл бұрын

Sympathetic like Rambo or like Predator? I’m confused… 🤔 (Just kidding. Interesting perspective from the guest speaker. Film Courage has interesting content. 👍 Good videography on this video by the way. 👏)

@j.f.fisher5318 Жыл бұрын

I'm tempted to say anyone who says making a character sympathetic is selling out doesn't understand either A) writing/what "sympathetic" means in a writerly context, or B) the human condition or C) both. Unless one is writing specifically a villain protagonist (not merely an antihero) and it is somehow VITAL to the characterization of the protagonist that they have never done anything kind or noble in their entire life, AND that they have never loved or been loved by anyone in their entire life, AND that nothing unjust has ever happened to them in their entire life, then there's no legitimate reason not to make the character sympathetic. And such a character isn't human, because every human being has those things in their life at some point. If we don't show those things, we are chosing to dehumanize a human being for some reason. So unless there is an artistic reason to dehumanize them, it argues not creativity but lack of knowledge, skill, and understanding. If we are portraying say, staff at Auschwitz, and we don't show them hanging out with their friends at the resort for Nazi mass murderers, we are choosing not to show that side of their lives, not because that side of their lives doesn't exist. We are choosing to show a shallower and less fleshed out - and I'd argue far less horrifying - version of their characters by presenting them though the dehumanizing lens.

@TheJadedFilmMaker Жыл бұрын

theres a few gangster movies where they didnt put ANY effort in at all to make the lead likeable in any way. i know its a gangster film but we wanna root for the hero of the story. one that comes to mind is a Tom Hardy movie called Legend. i just wanted him to die throughout the whole film lol. I think another one was Black Mass with Johnny Dep. was totally rooting for him to die asap. and i dont think that was the point of the film . even considering we are talking about gangsters.

@KirkRedgate Жыл бұрын

If you look at Mavis in Young Adult she is the least sympathetic heroine imaginable but it's a great film.

@leonoradompor8706 Жыл бұрын

Yesszzz amen amen amen***

@Thenoobestgirl Жыл бұрын

I know

@porudoryu Жыл бұрын

THe title should be "If You Want To Sell A Script Get A Real Paying Job First". Now that I think about it some characters that pops into my mind are the likes of Mike Erhmantraut & James McGill (BB/BCS), Abby Anderson (TLoU2), Kyle Crane (DL1), Ethan Hunt (MI franchise), Furiosa (MM:FR) and many more... Great advice and thanks for doing this Film Courage guys.

@bullinater7686 Жыл бұрын

Abby? Sympathetic? Had to do a double take there.

@corpsefoot758 Жыл бұрын

I think he just described why I never … got into Tarantino movies at all lol (With the exception of Inglorious, for obvious historical reasons)

@JeffMesserman Жыл бұрын

Hmmm...I must disagree a bit here, respectfully. All of QT's main characters are nothing if not sympathetic. Just because they're mostly dirtbags and criminals does NOT make them unsympathetic. Django? How can one not sympathize with his plight. Sure Vincent Vega is a lowlife but he did everything in his power to save Mia's life (one could argue that was purely self-preservation but I don't buy that - he clearly was smitten.) Mr. White? He had a code of ethics. Granted, a criminal code but there was a skewed honor system in his dealings. And don't even get me started on Jackie Brown and poor hapless Rick Dalton. Dripping with sympathy. I would argue that it's because Tarantino's rogues gallery are so intentionally sympathetic that his films are so successful. With some. Not with everyone, understandably.

@DamienLeone84 Жыл бұрын

Tarantino has written soo many remarkable sympathetic characters even if a lot of them are villainous. Prime example: I never met one person who was rooting for Samuel Jackson’s character to be killed in the diner during Pulp Fiction because even though he was a murderer, he was genuinely seeking redemption and the audience empathized with him. Aside from that character, other sympathetic Tarantino characters include The bride, Jackie brown, Mr Orange, Mr white, Shoshanna Dreyfus, Django, Schultz…the list is endless.

@corpsefoot758 Жыл бұрын

@@JeffMesserman I should’ve been more clear: by “sympathetic”, I meant that I’d be rooting for them to succeed, or at least care enough about them to dig into their backstory and try relating to their motivations on a personal level As it stands though, the strongest impression I get from any of his leads in Kill Bill, Reservoir, Pulp etc. is just “narrative means-to-an-end”. Which is all well & good from a purely creative point of view, but not so much from an emotional one. At least for me 🤷‍♂️ As for Dalton, I haven’t seen any of Tarantino’s newest stuff (Hateful Eight etc.), simply because I didn’t like what I started to hear about his lack of action on Weinstein, his treatment of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill 2, the whole plagiarism thing with Reservoir in general etc. etc.

@genethedancinmachine5483 Жыл бұрын

Tarentino movies are all so fake and overacted. And all ww2 movies are propaganda

@josephl9619 Жыл бұрын

i agree with this and i enjoy these videos but i wish there was more emphasis on young writers going out and living life and writing about their experiences. Am i being too romantic? maybe i am. But “come to hollywood, write lots of screenplays, make contacts, try to get noticed, if you work hard enough you might get a career” just sounds uninspiring and demotivating to me. I do wonder if better advice would go out and experience the world as fully as you can especially in areas the push past boundaries of most people experience, and keep writing concienciously while youre doing that.

@FranticAnimations Жыл бұрын

Unfortunately, that's the reality.

@joshuaknoll925 Жыл бұрын

Regarding the sellout comments near the end, I think the best way I've heard it phrased is that you need to make something that other people find valuable. Making something that only you like is all well and good but don't expect other people to contribute their time and resources towards making it a reality.

@filmcourage Жыл бұрын

Who is your favorite unsympathetic character?

@chasehedges6775 Жыл бұрын

I honestly have no idea

@corpsefoot758 Жыл бұрын

Tony Soprano 🤘

@JeffMesserman Жыл бұрын

Arguably, Alex from A Clockwork Orange. And yet people love him. Presumably because he's bucking a rigid totalitarian social system. He's obviously the PRODUCT of a world gone haywire. Still...tough to defend someone who commits actions as odious as his as sympathetic. (But since it's Kubrick, all bets are probably off anyway!)

@gvphdYT Жыл бұрын

Robocop

@beebuzz959 Жыл бұрын

Jack Nicholson's in As Good As It Gets.

@DerianMcCrea Жыл бұрын

Doesn't Sympathy create relatable characters? It sells because it makes sense to the viewer. If a story written, for humans, has a character that people can't relate or sympathise with... That's a dead story.

@paulonius42 Жыл бұрын

Doesn't give us anything useful to understand what makes a character sympathetic. Doesn't say anything useful to tell us what makes a script unproducible but memorable. He doesn't say anything of any value, nothing specific enough to be of use to writers.