Too Much Cat Poop or Not Nearly Enough

It’s a Process

The goal of this blog is to work through the process of writing a script. That process can be frustrating and slow at times. This is one of those times. I was working on the antagonist and I discovered I was creating a character I found far more interesting than the protagonist. This isn’t unusual for me. Remember how we talked about creating characters who aren’t us? The first pass on Harlan was okay. He was a little too similar to me in some regards. There’s a lot to work with but I think he’s a little one dimensional. He didn’t have teeth or edge. By that I mean that he didn’t really have major problems he had to tackle and wrestle with. Sure, the main theme was being addressed but that was pretty much it. There wasn’t a lot of room to work. The antagonist on the other hand is uglier. He has more problems and issues to deal with. In general he’s a more fully realized character. Perhaps you’ll disagree but I think he’s got more going on than Harlan.

For comparison here's the original character work up for Harlan.

 

This Guy Has Issues

Nathan, the antagonist, has problems. He’s got a wife he might despise, a son he doesn’t understand or connect with, and no sense of purpose. He needs to change (more on this misnomer later). Here are a few points that really got my attention. As you look at these remember that the goal here is to get inside the character’s head. To see things the way they see things. If this were written from the perspective of his wife, son, or friends it would probably be very different. This is probably how Nathan would see himself if he were being hard on himself. His perspective and the reality aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Home life: Married to a woman he met while in the Air Force. They were very young, had a kid, and are both too stubborn to get divorced. They don’t get along. They stay together because they have a kid and neither is willing to be the bad guy and leave the kid. His son is 16, a musician, and politically active in the way a rebellious 16 year old is politically active: he is vehemently opposed if he thinks his dad would support it.

Relationship to family: Has a very traditional relationship with his family. He sees himself as the disciplinarian and bread-winner. Believes his dinner should be on the table when he gets home, the paper and a beer in front of the tv, and his son making him proud on the football field. In reality his family never eats together; he usually eats a frozen tv dinner. His son has no interest in football and instead has long hair and plays keyboard in a punk/hip-hop/reggae/classical fusion band. He does get his beer in front of the TV though, probably too much.

This guy’s relationships are a mess. Maybe the solution is a divorce. I doubt it. He and his wife have stuck it out for 16 years. There has to be something there for people to do that these days. Divorce doesn’t have the stigma it once had.  Does he really believe his food should be on the table when he gets home? Is that just what he thinks he believes and it’s not that important to him? I think this is probably his way of communicating his desire for family dinners and what that means to him. Does he want the paper and beer in front of the tv? Or does he need to feel like he’s safe and loved when he’s at home? I really want to hear a punk/hip-hop/reggae/classical fusion band. Does that exist?

Married: Yes because she hasn’t asked for a divorce and he’s not going to

I like that he thinks they’re playing marital chicken. They’re going to stay married until one of them blinks. Why has she stayed with him for so long if she feels the same way? Why has he?

Sex life: desperately wants to have an affair because he and his wife never have relations. This is his primary “love language” and he needs validation.

If you haven’t heard about or are just kind of fuzzy on the “love language” thing you can check it out here. It might be a bunch of baloney (or bologna if you prefer) but things like this are great for writers since it helps to codify behaviors. It’s difficult for people to feel loved if their “love language” isn’t being spoken to them. This character clearly needs to learn his wife’s love language and she probably could stand to learn his.

Ethics: Has a very rigid ethical code in regard to his employer. He would never lie, cheat, or steal from his employer. Doing these things in his private life is fine as long as he thinks it “doesn’t hurt anyone”. Extremely loyal to his employer.

This guy desperately wants to be a part of something bigger than he is. I like that about him. He’s willing to put all of himself into something and follow. This can certainly put him in a position where he’s loyal to something that doesn’t deserve his loyalty. He could find himself being loyal to a person or organization that doesn’t value or reciprocate that loyalty. If he works for a big box store it’s likely that they see him as just a replaceable cog. Is he aware of this? Does he know he’s easily replaced but still insists on being loyal?

A little bit of cat poop spoils the whole cake

One gram of cat poop in a 10 pound cake and the cake is ruined. For characters that’s not the case. We want our characters to be flawed and have problems. Harlan is flawed and has problems to be sure but I don’t think there are any cat turds in that cake. Nathan on the other hand has loads of cat turd in his cake. (I’ll stop with that analogy now). So as I worked on Nathan I realized I liked this guy. He’s interesting. He has a lot of room to grow. He needs a hug and (if I were a hugger) I would give it to him. I would hang out with Harlan but I would get involved in Nathan’s life.  So what if I combined the two characters? What if Nathan’s problems were Harlan’s problems? Let’s look at Harlan 2.0. He’s older and has more cat turd. (I couldn’t resist)

Economic class of family: Lower Middle Class

Home life: Married to a woman he met while in the Air Force. They were very young, had a kid, and are both too stubborn to get divorced. They don’t get along. They stay together because they have a kid and neither is willing to be the bad guy and leave the kid. His son is 16, an athlete, and politically active in the way a rebellious 16 year old is politically active: he is vehemently opposed if he thinks his dad would support it.

Relationship to family: Has a very traditional relationship with his family. He sees himself as the disciplinarian and bread-winner. Wants his dinner on the table when he gets home, the paper and a beer in front of the tv, and his son should share his enthusiasm for all things nerd. In reality his family never eats together; he usually eats a frozen tv dinner. His son has no interest in fantasy or sci-fi and instead plays football, baseball, and basketball and cares about the prom and homecoming. He does get his beer in front of the TV though, probably too much. His parents are extremely supportive but he’s afraid of letting them down so he keeps a lot of what he sees as failures to himself. He wants them to think he’s got it together more than he does.

This Harlan has money problems, a rotten marriage, and a son he can’t connect to. He hides his problems. Maybe he just thinks he can fix it. Or maybe he doesn’t think he can fix it and has given up.

Education: Recent College grad with a degree in computer science. Graduated high in his class.

He’s smart and his degree matches up with his way of thinking. His views tend to be binary. Yes this works or no it doesn’t. If it isn’t binary he has a hard time finding a solution. “My wife and I don’t get along so we can’t get along.” “I’m loyal to the company so I will remain loyal to the company.” I’m not saying computer engineers think this way. I’m saying the computer science version of Harlan thinks this way.

Faults: sees epic struggles of good vs. evil in small interactions. He was a part of a team when he was in the military. He was valuable and did things that mattered. He needs that feeling and thinks he can get it through loyalty to his employer even if that employer is a faceless corporation like WalMart. He is dishonest about his military experience. He was in the service between actual wars and never saw anything remotely like combat. It was just a job. He thinks it should have been something more and makes it sound that way to when he talks about it. He’s searching for that feeling of purpose and usefulness he imagines he once had.

Why does he lie about his military experience? What does that do for him? Do people believe his lies? Does he feel like his experiences should meet an expectation from his war veteran dad? Do his lies make him feel more important?

Greatest fear: personal and professional failure. Specifically a failure to achieve what he thinks are reasonable expectations of “success” in his life. That he will be seen as he sees himself: a fraud who didn’t do anything of note and is stuck in a life with no future.

This is a pretty good fear. Especially the fear of being discovered as a fraud. Would people see him as a fraud? He certainly thinks so. His lies will be revealed in the story. We have to confront the main character’s greatest fear and I feel pretty good about this one.

Those are some high points about this version of Harlan. He’s a person with more texture. He has problems to confront through the story. The first pass gave me someone with the imagination we need for the fantasy world elements. This pass keeps that but adds problems he needs to escape with this fantasy world. Problems we’ll get to confront in the story.

If the black hat doesn’t fit

Unfortunately, now that we’ve combined the protagonist and antagonist into one troubled protagonist we still need an antagonist. I think this version of Harlan needs someone who isn’t as morally flexible as he is. Someone who asks more questions and sees the world in a far less binary way. We’ll start with a name. Nathan Helm works for me. Nathan is the antagonist. Nathan will be someone who doesn’t value loyalty the same way Harlan does. Nathan wouldn’t accept a marriage just waiting to die. Nathan will force Harlan to reevaluate his life. We’ll have to wait until next time to meet Nathan.

Spare a dime?

One of the catch phrases of writing is that characters must undergo change. I disagree. Characters don’t change. A character should be the same person at the end of the story that they were in the beginning. People don’t change. Aspects of a person will be more or less dominant depending on where they are in their life and the choices they’ve made but they don’t change. Let’s take Ebenezer Scrooge as an example. He seems to undergo a huge change. He starts out as a selfish, money-grubbing jerk. At the end of the story he’s generous, kind, and friendly. That’s change right? Yes and no. Yes, he’s changed because he behaves differently. No, he’s still the same person but the generous, kind, and friendly aspects of his personality are now dominant. We see through the course of the story that he had the capacity for kindness when he was younger. We see how he could have been that person all along if his life and his behavior had been different. If he hadn’t let the events in his life determine what aspects of his personality were dominant.

The same should be true of Harlan. He’s starting out as a person in desperate need of change. Does he need to change as a person? He can’t. He will always have these experiences and the capacity for being the person he is at the beginning. In the end he should appear to have changed though. If we focus on his relationship with his wife we can already see that there’s probably more to it than he thinks. He’s operating under the assumption that his marriage has failed and it’s going to end. That doesn’t make it true. He also hasn’t pulled the trigger on ending it. He hasn’t even had an affair. Why not? If I do this right (and I probably won’t) we’ll see that Harlan has the capacity to be a loving husband and father. These things are within him but they’re buried under a lot of cat poop that he has to dig through. In the end, if he’s dug through the cat poop enough, it won’t be a change in who he is as a person. Instead it will be Harlan being the better version of Harlan that he could have been all along.

Next time we meet Nathan Helm (probably)

Have any questions? Ideas? Think I’m completely wrong in every way? Let me know in the comments.