Big Mistakes New Writers Make With Character - Marc Scott Zicree

[@bunnytarot]

A L I E N S was a great example of distinct characters established immediately. Pvt Vasquez, she was such a great character, & of course Bill Paxton as Pvt Hudson, unforgettable! I’m gonna watch it tonight with that in mind. 🎥

[@Andrea-nom]

Aliens was great!

[@southlondon86]

Classic

[@TonyLS9A]

Apone waking up and chomping on his cigar. Priceless.

[@BryAnthonyC]

This man is awesome when he said he gives workers at restaurants chances to send in their stuff. I like hearing stuff about fresh talented people that can finally showcase their potential.

[@eastlynburkholder3559]

The audience must emotionally engage with the character. The plot must partially arise from the characteristics of 5he character. The movie is fun to watch and tells a story. Now if that is there, audience will never see or will overlook a multitude of flaws.

[@eastlynburkholder3559]

I have rear 5he other comments here, somebthat have opposing views. Which us king ir more important the skeleton, the muscles and the muscle attachments, or nerves and other parts of the nervous system? If inwere to ask this seriously, I shoukd be mocked severely. Plot and characters are not two things that one can say thar one is better or that one is more important. There is an emotional attachment that is necessary between the audience and the story. Since the character changes or oddky does not chsnge when a person would be expected to be changed by these events events, one can say the plot is nkt a separate thing from the characters. One commenter here said in essense plot is King and plot is all. I think this is based on a misperception of what character is. Character is not always revealed by back story or plot, but if you thought this, you would have to say plot us source of the story abd the entertainment. However, please understand this. Shsn I saw people working in the waterxsystsns, it because obvious to thise fixing the problems and designing the systems that what people complain about, what people say is the problem quite often is not the problem. In the water system problem solving, the problem could be 2 or more problems and the root problem is not always obvious. So I say the audience will complain about the costumes, the sets, the pacing ND will quibble about this or that bad point as they see it and they do not often say and I just did nit care about the characters which is the real root problem. The opposite is also true, the audience will ignore or overlook bad costumes, and a multitude if problems if they are emotionally engaged with the characters. The suspension of disbelief depends upon the characters feeling real which is sometimes called fersim7lotuds and the the characters seem real and if what they do and say I this scene feels like something that coukd happen in that fictuinal world, then the complaints about costumes and settings is mild ir non existent. Plot is not the driver of a story. A person described it as plot is what happens ir does not happen and character is why I care about if and how it happened. And that us not quite correct. The emotional engagement between the character and rhe audience us the why I care znd the writer has introduced the character in a way to make that happen. Some one said it is all lights and shadows on a screen until the viewer cares about the character. Focusing on plot is going about it from the wrong end like putting the cart ahead of the horse.

[@eastlynburkholder3559]

@@davidstorme8748 all movies znd TV shows have flaws. Like the good enough parents, a movie or TV show is good enough to entertsin but will never be perfect.

[@yapdog]

When Marc Scott Zicree says that the plot should serve the character, he's basically saying that the MC must have a story. In Aliens for example, Ripley's story has her dealing with the repercussions of the events in Alien (the first movie). She doesn't want anything to do with the new excursion, but she eventually does go (demonstrating that she's a good person who cares about others even after her ordeal). Then she has to earn the respect of the crew, badass Marines. Finally, she faces literal and figurative demons as she saves as many as she can. That's story. A good one. So, if your characters have nothing to learn and/or to overcome and/or to achieve, your screenplay/novel likely is all plot, no story. You can still succeed with it (many do), but your project would be so much richer if you add _some_ depth.

[@jpharrahill7655]

This is a problem I had with Drive My Car. By the end of the film all the characters ended up sounding like they had the same voice (that of the writer). They weren't distinct. Even someone using sign language seemed to have the same profound and insightful thoughts that all the characters had.

[@Winduct]

I think that's because they were Japanese.

[@walterpost9073]

I love movies because of the plot. I love Watchmen and Snowpiercer and They live and Tenet for what they have to say. I mean the characters transport the message very good, but it’s still the message that makes the movie great for me. Maybe I’m strange. Maybe for the writing process I have to watch my characters more closely.

[@michaelfalter7709]

8:21 "Know what you're trying to say and then remove the stuff that doesn't say that." Yes!

[@PanosSavvidis]

I never got this weird thing about building characters from scratch. Characters should arise from your story. You begin with something that happens and the characters are automatically there. Then it is obvious that you will proceed with the plot accordingly to the characters who arose from your first idea, tweaking and adjusting a bit both plot and characters to achieve strong emotions. We don't feel emotions because we get to know that someone's character is this or that, but because we see what happens to them. The excellent "come back" scene from the Titanic, works because of all the great character building throughout the movie, but what would be all this character building, if the plot didn't say that he would sacrifice his life for her by putting her on a small piece of wood and having himself literally freezing in the sea, before she let him sink in front of her eyes? What would be all this character building in Once upon a time in the west, if the plot didn't have that tremendous surprise about the reason he always carried with him the harmonica and all the process of revealing that to us? What would be all the character building of Citizen Kane if the plot didn't say that at the end of his magnificent and luxurious life, the only thing that remembered was a toy he was playing as a kid? I don't even get in to the fact that, this building of the characters, is also plot... I think plot and characters are absolutely equal, because, also, no clever plot surprise means anything if you haven't met the character that it happens to. But there is a notion I see very often, to devaluate the plot as if it is inferior to the characters.

[@futurestoryteller]

You're conflating story and plot. The story of Citizen Kane is that it is about a man who gets so caught up in the fantasy of wealth and success that he forgets to truly live his life. It's character driven already. So Citizen Kane is a bad example of a "plot driven by characters" because it's already a character study. The plot in Once Upon a Time is more concrete, but revolves around murder and corrupt railroad dealings. It's about land rights. The actual plot of the movie has nothing to do with Harmonica getting revenge, that's just an excuse that conveys to the audience why he's personally invested - in any way - in what's happening around the film's wider plot. Ironically this ends up being a really decent example of what you're apparently arguing against. Harmonica is motivated by _backstory,_ a character driven detail informed his behavior throughout the narrative, there was additional context, a catalyst that until the finale had occurred off screen. It doesn't really matter what order it was actually written in, but just try to imagine the likelihood that the ending of The Usual Suspects was as much a surprise to the screenwriter as it was the the audience. This might as well be impossible. He obviously wanted to write a story about the type of guy who will always get away with it, because he exploits people's weaknesses, especially their prejudices about the type of person who is powerful. That makes it a profoundly character driven story. Everything within the plot is going to come out of that. It's not that the plot details don't matter, but they are secondary

[@PanosSavvidis]

​@@futurestoryteller If the story of Citizen Kane is what you wrote, which it is, then what are the details of having him whispering upon his death rosebud and then showing us the worker who throws the sleigh in fire, on which was written the word rosebud, having already seen him in the beginning playing with that as a poor child? These are parts of the plot. If Orson Welles believed that plot is secondary, then the revelation whouldn't be so epic. He wouldn't force his mind to make these parts of the plot better and better! There are hundreds of movies with the same story and characters, why is this movie what it is? Because of that clever revelation, the way he built that huge surprise in the plot, not just because of the general idea. In other words, what created the emotions, was the way he shows us that he forgot to truly live his life, not the fact that he forgot to truly live his life. That "way", is plot. You said the same thing I said, but you didn't realize it. Same with USTW. You conflating plot and subplot. The main plot is the searching of his brother's murderer. This is what moves the story. The basis. The railroad dealings is secondary. It is there to fill up the main movie. Again, this plot details of having him blowing the harmonica throughout the whole movie the way he was blowing it accidentally by breathing when at young age his brother was on his shoulders and hanging on the rope and at the end putting the harmonica in the mouth of the murderer while he was dying and having him realize everything and even nodding that he remembers, is what elevated the movie! Give the story to someone who believes the plot is secondary, and you'll see a mediocre movie. Again, there are actually many movies with the same story, but mediocre plot and ultimately, mediocre as movies. I never said anything about plot driven or character driven. I was talking specifically about the scenes which made these movies great, which belong to the plot and which have never been born in the mind of someone who believes that the plot is secondary or separated from the characters. Don't fall into the trap of thinking with screenwriting guru terminology. Stories are not driven, they just are. It is all one. Plot is happening by characters, there is no story without characters. Plot is representing to us the characters and what happens to them. Not the trees and rocks! It is by definition driven by characters. It can't be something else. Naming a bad story, which plot can't represent to us the characters in a clever and rich way, as plot driven, is nonsense. Actually, all this plot and characters war is nonsense. Nolan and Spielberg, or top successful screenwriters who write their soul, would laugh on that notion of separating a story to plot and characters or devaluating one or the other.

[@seanferguson5460]

All good advice. There's a lot to process.

[@guitarhero8110]

So I'm assuming that movie he talked about 8 minutes in was the new Ghostbusters?

[@happybirthday146]

Totally.

[@HarryVoyager]

Just starting writing, and the part at 5:00 about respecting the characters really struck me. The first thing I wrote ran into a brick wall about halfway through. The initial chase was done, and it was a quiet part, and I could not at all figure out what the character would do that would advance the plot. Most likely they'd just say screw it and go home. The problem was I had not established sufficient motive for them to go through the impending trouble. Ended up writing that backstory, revising the beginning to include it and suddenly the story worked again. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm having the same issue with several stories. Definitely need to make sure to do that legwork even if it's something that won't be shown. And the bit at 8:00 just made me realize what I need to focus on for the current part that's giving me trouble :) (Now I just need to figure out how to hide a tragedy in a light comedy... Oops. )

[@G360LIVE]

A good formula for characters, I learned, is Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Trigger. If you keep those 3 things in mind when writing a character, then their behavior will always make sense.

[@batman5224]

One of the problems I have is that my side characters tend to be far more layered than my main character. Very often, the main characters in my stories simply roam around and ask questions. In some cases, a side character will almost completely take over the story. This is especially true if the main character is male. For some reason, I think I’m better at writing female characters.

[@DJMurdock]

if your better at writing side characters try writing your main characters like the side characters, for example your character could be on a date, or hanging out with a friend and have the side characters ask them questions. or the main characters introduction could start in the perspective of the side characters as a mystery, or the character doesn't know there past and is trying to find out. i don't know if this would help or not so good luck on what you do

[@RealJerkey]

You could play into that and write something where the main character just travels around and gets to know people

[@G360LIVE]

If you're writing a side character that is more layered than your main character, then that's likely your side character telling you that they are the main character, rather than the character you want to be the main character.

[@yapdog]

Try writing your main character (who is presumably male) as a female. Then switch the gender back if necessary.

[@amsheel9921]

If your character is asking a question, what answer is he getting and how does it affect him emotionally, psychologically and physically. What does this interraction tell you about the main character? Try to peel back the layers as much as you can.

[@KirksWorldTV]

Is it me or was he talking about helping with Ghostbuster's Afterlife?

[@happybirthday146]

I know, right?

[@yerabbit]

sounded pretty close!

[@starbright6579]

Great interview.

[@scottisitt]

This was great!

[@alextownley9388]

Love this guy!!!

[@saiganesh7944]

Great video ❤️❤️❤️your questions derive answers in a great way 💥

[@filmcourage]

Thanks Sai!

[@SriKandarpa]

good one 🙂

[@filmcourage]

What do you think is the biggest mistake writers make with character (using specific film/TV examples)?

[@kalinthealias9382]

Thanks!

[@filmcourage]

Thank you again Kalin! We are not worthy. Cheers!

[@fellowcitizen]

Q: What are most films about? A: Most films are about two hours. 🤣 (Someone please tell Disney before they adapt any more precious memories!)

[@idiworld1]

But isn't it like that you have to put what your plot doesn't say just to underline what it says?

[@williamlarochelle3160]

Don't like Mystery box format either - memo to JJ Abrams. Star Wars was very damaged by that and by sidelining Luke.

[@hiplessboy]

He uses an example of the throughline of a film, of a father and son, and the father shielding the son, but if it were about a father and a daughter, it could be about Ghostbusters Afterlife.

[@matthewrushmer238]

I thought it was the Ryan Reynolds Pokemon movie :'D

[@clintcalvert9250]

The Table

[@AdliberateVideoProduction]

Guardians of the galaxy is a great film where the characters are all individuals, even Groot

[@bratwizard]

What does "In violation of the character" mean, in this context?

[@G360LIVE]

If an event or plot twist occurs due to a character acting out of the bounds of their established behavior (i.e., without proper motivation), then that event or plot twist is in violation of the character. Now, can motivation be explained afterward (to avoid spoiling a sudden betrayal, for example)? Sure. But it still has to make logical sense for the character.

[@bratwizard]

@@G360LIVE Meaning that Grandma doesn't suddenly don her flight suit immediately after serving thanksgiving dinner, and take off in her harrier. jet.. :-)

[@bratwizard]

@@G360LIVE thanks for the clarification.

[@nubbinthemonkey]

"People need to be seen as human and as equal to 'us' in every way." He reveals his true arrogance in this sentence. Like all American liberals, he psychologically places himself and his circle of 'us' above an 'underclass' of lesser people. He feels it's up to him to be the savior of such unfortunate souls. This is why American movies become more and more unwatchable with each passing year." Frank Herbert's famous passage describes it perfectly, "Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It’s true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies."

[@futurestoryteller]

At least they're creative

[@Widiar0]

One could argue it was in a sense of us "the reader/watcher/everyone" .. not so much "equal to me as a great, famous writer". Equal in every way, in bad as well as good. That's at least how I viewed it. Then again, I try to view these things as they are and keep politics and my personal world view out of it. As he was talking about characters not being flat or "disposable", it made me feel it was more about humanizing characters than trying to portray "ideal (dull, flat, disposable/uninteresting) characters"; which makes them unlikeable and forgettable. It's obvious people ARE in different levels, classes, phases, situations and socioeconomic circles. "You have value just the same as US" could mean any of those or something else completely. (He is also successful in his career and somewhat idolized by some people, which makes him "in another level" in that sense too). I could also argue that judging anyone from one video based on one sentence is somewhat hypocritical, if you're making a point about "equality" of people. But I do agree about the generalization otherwise, about American movies and the hero and SJW complex/narratives and politics running the scripts and movies - instead of great plots and characters.

[@futurestoryteller]

@@Widiar0 I know, god forbid artists have anything to say.

[@G360LIVE]

@@futurestoryteller You're correct that artists do make statements in their work. Personally, though, when it comes to movies, I prefer a more subtle approach. For example, in Star Wars (1977), when Luke, 3PO and R2 are entering the Mos Eisley cantina, the bartender calls out to Luke, "We don't serve their kind in here, your droids. They'll have to wait outside." That's a statement concerning discrimination, yet it's not preaching about how evil that is. It's showing the audience an instance of discrimination and allowing the audience to decide how they feel about it. Too many movies, these days, want to preach and tell the audience how to feel. To me, that's really distracting.

[@futurestoryteller]

@@G360LIVE Star Wars is not subtle. I'm so sick of people talking about how the thing from their childhood was subtle but the things from their kids' and grandkids' childhood is so in your face. Like when people said Star Trek discovery was too diverse, not "subtle" like the OS. WIth their "subtle" inclusion of a Russian on the bridge, at the height of the Cold War, inside their straight up rainbow coalition. Even the guy in this very video says Twilight Zone was not "preachy." And he literally wrote the book on Twilight Zone. Half if not all the post scripts tell you the moral of the episode's story. It's not intellectually honest What it is is cognitive dissonance.