SPOILER ALERT: The following series of posts are spoiler-heavy. But, seriously, the movie is from 1997!!! If you haven’t watched it by now…
In this post, I’ll be looking a little at how Brian Helgeland deals with his characters; how he sets up our understanding of who they are and how they arc.
One thing to notice is that each character is very focused. They have a single through-line, a single motivation that pushes them through the story.
For Bud, it is protecting women. For Exley, it is success. For Jack, it is a glitzy, glamorous life-style.
Helgeland does a great job of revealing each character’s through-line in dialogue and action.
One thing to definitely learn from is to bring your characters to their lowest point by attacking the one thing they truly desire.
Bud is all about protecting women. But it shows how low he sinks when he punches his love interest, Lynn Bracken.
Exley, an expert at traversing the politics of promotion, allows himself to become seduced and blackmailed such that his career is put in serious jeopardy. (cleverly entwining he and Bud together).
Jack, who lives the high life amidst the glamour of Hollywood, is brought back to reality when his shenanigans result in the death of a young actor.
Virtually every scene in the first third of the movie sets up who our protagonists are. Whether it is through dialogue or their actions, we see them single-mindedly pursuing their desire.
It is important to establish characters early. As an audience, we need to know what makes them tick right from the start.
And as a screenwriter, it is vital to bear in mind what is important to your characters. Ensure they have a focused desire, which you can attack through the actions of the antagonist.
It seems like Helgeland has asked himself what is important to his characters – and then conspired to force each character to do the exact opposite of what they desire. It is great writing, because it makes each character’s choice meaningful.
This tight integration of character and plot helps create a story where the stakes are not only high, but directly relevant to the character.
In short, a screenwriter needs to know their characters, so that the outworking of the plot is an ever-tightening vice where the protagonist is forced to make harder and harder choices. Choices that hopefully see the hero slump to his most outrageous defeat, in a sense, becoming that which he most despises.
By getting your hero to their lowest point, it forces them to dig down, way down, and makes their eventual victory all the sweeter.
The screenwriter’s task, then, is to not only create interesting characters with drive and desire, but to set up these characters so that the reader can quickly get to know them. Make sure that early scenes highlight what is important to the characters. Use both dialogue and action to do this.
In reading the screenplay, I did have a couple of questions.
- Does the three-protagonist structure require a condensing of the characterisation? (Not only is each character is in fewer scenes, but it is more difficult to track the multiple protagonists)
- Does a single-protagonist story have room for scenes that are less focused?
It is clear that, regardless of whether a script involves a single-protagonist or multiple protagonists, each scene must move the plot forward in some way. No screen story can support scenes that are dead weight.
Additionally, no matter the structure, early scenes need to establish characterisation. Later scenes will by necessity serve the plot more, but the hero must act to solve the story problems in the manner in which they have been set up by the earlier scenes.
So have some fun creating your characters. Find concise, interesting ways of showing what makes them tick. Have fun creating obstacles that cause them to make choices that drive them away from their desire. Ensure that you set them up early, and that they act consistently with how they have been set up. Take them to the lowest point they can possibly go, then witness as they dig deep down, rising to overcome all that has blocked their efforts for victory.