But exactly how does a writer create character sympathy?
Fortunately there’s a recipe, a list of nine ingredients for use in creating a sympathetic response when bonding an audience to your hero.
The more sympathetic attributes included, the more richness, power and depth you give to the most important character in the movie. As a general rule, never write any screenplay without using at least five. And you’re probably better off including six or seven.
Here are the personality traits and story circumstances that create character sympathy for an audience:
1. COURAGE
Not optional. Your hero has got to have guts.
Every lead character who connects with an audience, who gains and holds our emotional involvement for two whole hours, must reveal from the outset their courageous nature. Moviegoers only stay interested in brave heroes. We admire people who face the world with courage and we come quickly to care what happens to them.
We identify more readily with flawed people, yes, but those flaws cannot include a lack of courage because only brave people take action, and only action can drive a plot forward.
Scripts about just plain folks without guts, people who remain frightened and unsure of themselves and who never get around to pursuing a plan, simply don’t grab our imagination. If a hero can’t get up the spunk to take charge of her own fate, the writer has created a passive central character. This remains one of the major reasons so many new original screenplays don’t sell.
Using Hero Goal Sequences® will automatically turn passive heroes into active ones.
Every movie lead worth her salt wants something. Something highly specific. And she must have enough guts to take the risks necessary for chasing after it. The hero makes the story happen.
The same goes for smaller stories and family dramas, too. A gentle bravery must be seen in the hero there as well.
In Unforgiven, we first meet hero William Munny (Clint Eastwood) struggling to eke out a living for his two kids on a small pig farm somewhere on the desolate Great Plains. Since his wife died, Munny struggles on alone to support his young children (courage). Even in the face of impending financial ruin he attempts to be fatherly and gentle with his kids (more courage). We soon learn that Munny is a recovering alcoholic. Now in loving honor of his wife’s memory, Munny continues to hold onto his sobriety so he can do his best raising their children alone (yes, more courage). It quickly comes out that in bygone days Munny was a notorious gunman who possessed an almost death-wish fearlessness when facing down other killers (twisted courage).
All this we learn about the hero of Unforgiven within minutes of meeting him.
We’re first introduced to Erin Brockovich as she’s interviewing for a job in a doctor’s office. We learn Erin is unemployed, a single mom, and she’s diligently trying to support her three children (courage). She fights an uphill battle to gain the doctor’s interest in her as a potential employee (hopeful courage).
We find out Erin lost her last job because she missed work when her child was extremely ill, demonstrating Erin’s complete commitment to her children’s well-being (courage). Her ex-husband was “useless,” so she got rid of him (courage).
She’s always very honest and forthright (courage) but she ends up trying too hard and doesn’t get the job. Then her car is smashed by a speeding Jaguar and Erin hires a lawyer to seek damages (courage). After losing the case because she’s too honest on the witness stand (courage), Erin isn’t shy about telling off her attorney (courage). Then Erin pushes onward hunting for a job, any job, so she can feed her kids (courage).
And the title credits haven’t even ended yet.
The heroes in a great many scripts by newcomers do not exhibit courage up front and it’s clear from the start that these screenplays are in trouble.
2. UNFAIR INJURY
Life is seldom fair.
How does it feel when you get passed over for that promotion and watch the job go to some incompetent suck-up? Injustice stirs our passions like few other things.
And for a screenwriter, that’s just great.
After courage, the second quickest way to bond an audience to your hero is to place that character in a situation where blatant injustice is inflicted upon her. A good 75% of successful movies start with the hero experiencing some form of Unfair Injury.
In Working Girl, hero Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) labors long and hard as a savvy secretary who keeps her incompetent stockbroker boss out of trouble with his clients. She asks only for an opportunity, the chance at a promotion which she richly deserves. But her male stockbroker co-workers steal Tess’s good ideas, abuse her talents, mock her, and try to con her into bed. No one takes Tess seriously. Still she struggles courageously on, a victim of Unfair Injury.
See how it works?
At the start of Wall Street up and coming stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) gets stiffed for payment owed Bud’s company on a stock trade by an unscrupulous client. A cowardly supervisor forces Bud to pay for the loss personally, even though it wasn’t Bud’s fault.
I could fill this book with examples.
Unfair Injury also puts the hero in a position where he’s compelled to DO something, take action in order to right a wrong — an excellent place to start any movie story.
3. SKILL
Very, very few films are ever made about incompetent losers.
We admire people who possess the grace, expertise, and mental acumen required to become masters of their chosen work. It doesn’t matter what your hero’s field of endeavor might be, as long as he’s expert at it.
We can forgive a great deal if, when it’s time for him to get down to business, a hero delivers the goods.
William Munny in Unforgiven isn’t merely a former gunslinger. Back in his drunken killing days he’d been one of the very deadliest gunmen anywhere, one of the most feared and fearless. Munny used to be the best.
And similarly, in any cop movie or professional warrior/fighter story, the hero can be introduced to the audience as a drunken burnout, even a lousy husband and unreliable father, as long as he is brave and respected and when the mission/case/ fight starts, the hero’s professional skills remain top drawer.
This is even the situation in The Wrestler, when Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) proves to us that for all his faults, he was and remains one of the best showmen in professional wrestling.
This character sympathy tool works just as well for heroes from more humble walks of life, too. In Collateral, hero Max (Jamie Foxx) isn’t just a cab driver. He’s the cleanest, most street-savvy and time-accurate cab driver anyone has ever met.
Novice scripts all too frequently begin with the lead character getting fired from some lousy job because he screwed up. Then the hero bee-lines straight to his favorite sleazy bar and fires down a row of shots while his bartender buddy tells him what a hopeless jerk he is. After that, he hangdogs it on home where his girlfriend blasts him with a withering harangue about how he’s a fool, lousy in bed, constantly stoned, and an all-around lazy ass. Usually the hero receives this verbal thrashing while watching television and sucking up a brew, occasionally interjecting, “But gee, honey…” Then after his girlfriend storms out with her suitcase in hand, this hero lights up a joint, sinks back into the sofa and says something like, “Bummer, man.”
He has displayed no courage, everything bad happening is his own fault, and he isn’t good at a single thing. But the audience is now expected to care what happens to this guy next. Sorry, we don’t.
(TIP: When any story requires your hero to get fired, make sure the reason for her being canned is not her own fault. Make it an Unfair Injury.)
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