Creating Unforgettable Characters (20 page)

EXERCISE: Have you ever felt oppressed? What did your oppressor do to make you feel that way? Were covert or overt methods used? Imagine the response your persecutor might give to justify his or her actions. Could you create a villain in a story using this person as a model?

A CASE STUDY:
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
began as a novel by Ken Kesey, was developed as a play by Dale Wasserman, and then

became a film in 1975, with writing credit going to Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben.

When Dale Wasserman wrote the play, he had to re-create the supporting characters. The characters are memorable for their broad strokes, their thematic function, and their relationship to the main character, McMurphy.

Dale Wasserman sees each character as working off of the theme. "Ken Kesey's novel deals with the philosophy of the meaning of the rebel in society. It is the prototypical idea of the rebel against authority and what happens to him. Curiously,
Man of La Mancha
[also written by Wasserman] and
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
which seems so terribly dissimilar, are regarded as almost the same play because each of them deals with a rebel, an outcast of society, a man who won't conform. And in both cases, society is dedicated to the suppression or extermination of that man.

"The argument which I made in the play was about the standardization of society and the suppression of individuality. The whole argument is that we live in a society which must repress and discipline the individual for its own protection. It is protecting itself from the aberrations of the individuals. It's protecting its power, and unruly people threaten power.

"To make this point, I had to show the relationship between the suppression and the victims of the suppression. So all the supporting characters are victims in some way. It was necessary to differentiate each character very sharply, because victims en masse as in a concentration camp are really not very interesting. They might represent something, but they won't be well-drawn characters. I realized that it was very important that they not be a uniformed troop of some kind; so I went to great trouble to individualize them as sharply as possible.

"Each of the victims is a victim in a slightly different way. The Indian is a victim because Indians in the United States are victims. The man with homosexual tendencies [Harding] is a victim because society laughs at and scorns such people, so he voluntarily withdrew from society. The stuttering boy was a victim of a monster mother. The man who Sits around making bombs all day is a victim of the U. S. Army, which destroyed his ability to function in society. The man who seems crucified on the wall is a victim of medical society, which experiments with people by performing lobotomies to bring people into a mode of acceptable behavior. And even Nurse Ratched is a victim of a standardized and disciplinarian society that has made her into a monster."

To begin filling out the characters, Dale spent ten days in a mental institution.

"One of the elements I was looking for was the level of intelligence and education of these people, and their level of articulation. I wanted to look at the particular patterns of behavior that get these people designated as insane. There's a big variation in that. In some, you see almost nothing that would distinguish them from normalcy. But because they take drugs every day, their behavior is modified, held down.

"By watching them before they were medicated and after, I could see a whole range of behavior. After taking drugs, there is very little color in their speech. It's what you call utility speech. Before drugs it reveals itself in very wild, sometimes fascinating patterns. They have a mad logic of their own. And sometimes I was very impressed by the beauty of articulation of these people. It was not conventional, coherent, or grammatical."

Dale creates interest by working against the logic of the characters.

"Perfect logic in the way characters speak and act is dull. It's generally a lie. So I look for the illogical, the inconsistent, the out of place in a character, because those things are more revelatory than the straight line of the character. For instance, if there's somebody of a brutal nature, I also watch them very carefully because they will reveal completely inconsistent attributes; and sometimes the inconsistent attributes are the ones that truly reveal the character.

"McMurphy, who seems to be a rough and brutal man, teaches inmates to dance and does it with delicacy. He also, surprisingly, quotes poetry. He sometimes misquotes it, but somewhere inside of him he had a love of it. When I look at characters, I look at them with the supposition that perfect logic is dull."

Dale also analyzes the hidden aspects of the character: "I look for underlying drive and then find ways to let the audience see things that the character doesn't know about himself. This is true of people who seem to be acting from a professed set of motives and actually are acting out of another set of impulses entirely.

"Billy Bibbit doesn't understand what his mother has done to him. He protects his mother, who is really the destructive influence in his life. Harding blames himself for what is really not a matter of his own blame—his sexual nature. Nurse Ratched is really a powerfully and artificially repressed woman who is a perfect army model. The repression has caused her to become a man hater. Curiously, she has warmth and decency. These are the interesting contradictions. She does what she does for very good reasons, which does not alter the fact that what she does is very bad.

"There's an element that I love to emphasize and that is surprise. Principal characters rarely do that, but supporting characters often do that and it wakes up an audience and keeps them alert. In
Cuckoo's Nest,
Candy Starr was the surprise. Who expects a good-looking hooker in this milieu? Even when she brings her friend, that's a surprise. Not just one hooker, but two. And then also, they are really fun girls."

I asked Dale what the problems are that can come up with supporting characters.

"One of the worst problems is lack of fulfillment. There is time to fulfill your principal characters in a story but often auxiliary and very interesting characters are left dangling and unfulfilled. And I believe that whether the audience knows it

or not, it is very frustrating. I have seen instances where I desperately wished to know about what happened to auxiliary characters and there wasn't time.

"There is also a tendency to sketch in only enough characteristics that serve the character and leave the character otherwise not quite fleshed out. In movies that's almost a necessity because you don't want too much attention to go to contributory characters. It troubles me when it happens, though, because ideally every character should be interesting and shouldn't leave one baffled and dissatisfied. "

APPLICATION

As you look at the supporting characters in your script, ask yourself:

■ Do my characters all have a function in the story? What is their function?

■ What is the theme of my story? In what way do each of my characters help expand this theme?

■ Have I paid attention to the creation of my minor characters? If I use character types, have I made sure that they are not stereotypes?

■ Do I have contrasting characters? In what ways do they add color and texture?

■ What broad strokes have I used to define both my supporting and minor characters? Do these strokes relate to the story or theme, so they don't seem like imposed character schticks?

■ Do I have villains in my story? What are their backstories? The unconscious forces that drive them? Is there a perceived good that they pursue, using evil actions to achieve it?

SUMMARY

Many of the best stories are memorable because of their supporting characters. They can move the story, clarify the role of the main character, add color and texture, deepen the theme, and expand the palette, adding detail to even the smallest scene, the smallest moment.

James Dearden sums it up: "Within the context of reality, without overdoing it, you can make your little characters interesting. A lot of what stories are about is entertainment, not in a broad sense, but in a sense of keeping people's eyes moving and their ears flapping and their brains working. It's those little details that make something come alive."

Many writers and writing teachers have said to me, "You can't teach dialogue. Writers either have an ear for it or they don't." I agree that great dialogue, like great painting and great music, cannot be taught. However,
good
dialogue can be. There are methods of thinking through a scene and a character that can improve dialogue. Writers can train their ears to hear rhythms and speech patterns just as musicians can train themselves to hear melodies and musical rhythms.

You first need to understand what is good dialogue—and what is bad dialogue.

■ Good dialogue is like a piece of music. It has a beat, a rhythm, a melody.

■ Good dialogue tends to be short, and spare. Generally no character will speak for more than two or three lines.

■ Good dialogue is like a tennis match. The ball moves back and forth between players and represents a constant exchange of power that can be sexual, physical, political, or social.

■ Good dialogue conveys conflict, attitudes, and intentions. Rather than telling about the character, it reveals character.

■ Good dialogue is easily spoken, because of its rhythms. It makes great actors of us all.

There are a number of great dialogue writers. One of these is James Brooks. Read the following dialogues from
Broadcast News.
Then read them aloud, and listen to their rhythms. Notice that each line reveals something about the character. Notice, too, the difference between the dialogue of one character and that of another.

The assistant says to Jane:

ASSISTANT In every way but socially, you're my role model.

Or, in a conversation between Jane and Tom:

JANE

I saw the taped outtakes of the interview with the girl. I know you "acted" your reaction after the interview. Working up tears for a news piece cutaway. You totally crossed the line between ...

TOM

It's hard not to cross it; they keep moving the little sucker, don't they?

Or, in a conversation between Aaron and Jane:

AARON

Could you at least pretend that this is an awkward situation for you—me showing up while you're getting ready for a date.

JANE

It's not a date. It's coworkers going to a professional enclave.

Jane, unnoticed, reaches into the paper bag, takes a small box of condoms, and drops it into her evening bag.

Notice the elements contained in these examples. The dialogue of the assistant contains an attitude (toward Jane). Tom's dialogue shows both emotion (frustration) and a conflict of values as he strives for integrity in a career where the meaning of integrity keeps changing. Aaron's dialogue shows conflict and attitude. And Jane's dialogue shows inner conflict as she tries to balance her relationships with Tom and Aaron.

From the above examples, we can see that great dialogue has conflict, emotions, and attitudes. It also has another essential component: the subtext.

WHAT IS SUBTEXT?

Subtext is what the character is really saying beneath and between the lines. Often characters don't understand themselves. They're often not direct and don't say what they mean. We might say that the subtext is all the underlying drives and meanings that are not apparent to the character, but that are apparent to the audience or reader.

One of the most delightful examples of subtext comes from the film
Annie Hall,
written by Woody Allen. When Alvie and Annie first meet, they look each other over. Their dialogue is an intellectual discussion about photography, but their subtext is written in subtitles on the screen. In their subtext, she wonders if she's smart enough for him, he wonders if he's shallow; she wonders if he's a shmuck like the other men she's dated, he wonders what she looks like naked.

In
Annie Hall,
both Annie and Alvie understand the subtext of their conversation. Usually, however, the characters are unconscious of the subtext. They're not aware of what they're really saying, of what they really mean.