Characters drive the story
At the heart of a good story is the character(s) who drive it forward. In this blog entry, author Wes Marshall talks about the protagonist of his project in relation to Jason Mitell’s Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling.
At the Heart of Character
by Wes Marshall
There’s lots of debate about what makes a good TV show or movie. Some exalt cinematography and set dressings. World renowned screenwriter Richard Walter contends that story is most crucial. But in Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, Jason Mittell discusses how character may be the most crucial element of screen media. Mittell quotes Damon Lindelhoff–the showrunner for Lost and Watchmen–who says, “It’s all about character, character, character… Everything has to be in service of the people.” (Mittell, 2015, p. 118) While I may side more with Walter – and certainly story and character are intertwined – there’s no denying that character is important for any piece of media you are writing.
Mittell mostly focuses on character for television series. This is a very specific type of storytelling, since you have to extend a plot over multiple seasons of a show. For more serialized shows, you have to develop characters enough to keep people interested but not enough to change the show. I always found this an interesting idea for older shows that rely on cookie cutter plots: Monk for instance. An astute detective with an anxiety disorder must deal with his mental health while solving crimes. So many episodes have Monk confronting his mental illness and ultimately growing from it–-just for him to be knocked back to his original state by the end of the episode. If Monk solved his mental health issues there’s no longer a show. This is the fine line that Mittell discusses, the idea that “lessons rarely stick since the episodic nature of conventional prime time storytelling demands a return to a narrative status quo each week.” (Mittell, 2015, p. 138) Another one of my favorite examples is Larry David’s two rules of writing an episode of Seinfeld: no hugging, no learning.
In the project I directed this semester, Juniper Spring, this idea of no growth is flipped on its head. Just like longer form films, our short couldn’t follow the Seinfeld rule–it just wouldn’t be an interesting story. And in rewriting the script this was a big consideration. What growth did we want our protagonist Amara to see? What we ended up settling on was a woman who didn’t have much control over her life. She had a job she didn’t like, was with a man who wasn’t good for her, and ended up getting pregnant when she didn’t want to. However, despite this sort of oppressive nature of her life, she has some fire deep down. She’s not like her friend Camilla who accepts the status quo. She wants to break free from it. And the inciting incident, the pregnancy, causes her to. She decides to take control and seek out an organization called Juniper Collective to get an abortion. Through this process, she finds her voice. In her showdown with the Watcher (antagonist), she stands up for herself, negating his narrative that she’s just a lost woman being brainwashed. No, she says: she chose to get an abortion and she chooses what she does with her life. Then, the man is killed – once again taking control out of her hands. But once she realizes the difficult moral position the Juniper Collective is in, she decides it’s worth it to fight for what’s right, and once again takes control of her life and joins the movement. I think in theory this is a great character evolution and I think in general we did a decent job at portraying it on screen.
Mittell also discusses the role the actors play in developing a character. In a TV series, since different episodes are written and directed by different people, it’s really up to the actors and producers to define who that character is. Actors themselves bring a lot to this process. This was also true during our production. It was great to work with the actor who played Amara, Gabby Adrianse, to find who her character was. I think Gabby brought a lot to the role that we didn’t originally have in mind for her. I originally saw Amara as more scared, meek, and timid. But Gabby herself was pretty strong willed and started to play Amara that way, and I think it worked for the betterment of the project. I liked how Gabby brought a strength to the character–a strength Amara would need to survive in the fascist dystopia of our storyworld. Plus, before each scene Gabby and I would talk about her motivations and what she wanted. She got very easily what I was going for, and sometimes took a few takes to find it, but always got there in the end.
Overall, I thought Mittell’s piece was really interesting in regards to character writing for television. It brought up some really interesting ideas that I’ll definitely take into consideration if I ever write TV in the future–like the idea of the audience having a surrogate to connect to. I think character is a really important part of any writing you do, and we tried our best to embody it in our work during the production of Juniper Spring.
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Book chapter:
Mittell, J. (2015). Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. (pp. 118-163). NYU Press.
Image credit:
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko, courtesy of Pexels