Little Miss Sunshine to Dead Poets Society: Writing More than One Main Character

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   From Little Miss Sunshine to Dead Poets Society: Writing a script with more than one main character. by Jacob Krueger   This week, we’re going to be talking about a whole bunch of movies, but they all have one thing in common. They all have more than one main character.   There’s a lot of debate about the question of whether new screenwriters should write scripts with only one main character, or whether it’s okay for them to write scripts with multiple main characters.   There are even some famous gurus who say that “multiplot” structures are just plain bad and that nobody should ever write them.   It’s a good thing nobody ever gave Robert Altman that advice, (or at least if they did that he never took it) or we would have missed out on a whole chapter of film history!   We’d also have missed out on a lot of other hugely successful movies, The Squid & The Whale, Little Miss Sunshine, Crash, The Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, The Godfather, Dead Poets Society, American Beauty, True Detective and the entire library of Quentin Tarantino.   And at the same time, there are genuine risks when we break point-of-view and start telling a story from the point-of-view of multiple main characters.   So what do you need to know about writing a script with more than one main character?   In general, if you stay with your main character, very little bad can happen to you.   If you stay with one character, very little bad can happen to you because you just have to focus on creating the journey of that character. Which is a far more intuitive process for most writers-- it feels more like our lives.   In my life, for example, I don’t know what my wonderful TV Writing teacher, Merridith, does when she goes home. I only know what she does here in front of me at the Studio. Unless I literally follow Merridith home, that part of her life will always be hidden from my view.   In my life, my experience of my relationship with Merridith happens only through my eyes. Only in what I get to see.   And so, when we follow only one character, what happens is it allows us to feel like we are watching the movie through their eyes. And this is natural for us structurally, in that we’re used to experiencing the story of our own lives in this way.   The other thing is that we end up with 95-105 pages that we get to dedicate only to one really specific journey. And that just allows us to dig deeper in one place, rather than digging shallowly in many places.   When we start following multiple main characters, our point-of-view starts to shift.   In narrative, they call it “omniscient point-of-view,” when suddenly we are sitting in the place of G-d, rather than sitting in the place of any single human being.   And this is not the way we’re used to experiencing our lives.   That doesn’t mean it can’t be a compelling experience. It can, especially if it connects to the theme of what you’re trying to write.   But if it’s happening for superficial reasons, rather than organic ones, there’s a good chance you’re going to run into trouble.   So, the real question is not if you should pull your audience, and yourself, out of the point-of-view of the main character, it’s why you are choosing to do so.   In less successful screenplays, we often get pulled out of the main storyline to follow another character so that the audience can learn a little bit of exposition.   In these cases, it’s often a manipulative technique by a writer who has not yet developed the craft to weave that exposition into the structure of her story.   If you’ve watched crappy action movies, you’ve seen this all the time. You’re following the main character, and then you suddenly pop out and follow the bad guy. And the bad guy isn’t doing anything interesting, he’s just sitting there twirling his mustache, laying out his plan for the audience.   The writer’s goal when this happens is usually just to create a little more tension for the audience. But this approach usually does the opposite of creating more tension, because rather than allowing us to experience the twists and turns as the character experiences them, instead it lays all the writer’s cards on the table, and it reminds you that you are in a movie and not experiencing things like you do in your real world life.   In fact, this kind of sloppy exposition was famously skewered by Mel Brook’s in SpaceBalls. Rick Moranis has just made his dramatic entrance as Dark Helmet (“how can anybody breathe in this thing”) and then he and Captain Asshole lay out their whole plan to steal oxygen from planet Spaceball. And finally, Rick Moranis turns directly to the camera and asks the audience “Did you get all that?”   So if you are bumping around different points of view just to serve your audience, you are probably in danger.   At the same time some of the greatest movies of all time follow multiple points of view.   The Usual Suspects follows multiple points of view, not only in its 3 layers of storytelling, but also within each layer.   The Godfather is built primarily around Michael Corleone, but it also follows multiple points of view of Vito, Sonny, Fredo… even Luca Brazi!   Little Miss Sunshine is primarily built around Dad’s point-of-view, but also follows the multiple points of view of Olive, Grandpa, Mom, and Uncle Frank.   True Detective follows multiple points of view as it cuts between the Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey characters.   Dead Poets Society follows multiple points of view, following each of the boys, the Robin Williams character, and the group as a whole.   So there is a long history of great movies and TV Series that follow multiple points-of-view.   Generally, when great movies follow multiple points-of-view, they are doing it for a couple of reasons.   Sometimes you are more interested in exploring a world than exploring a character. You want to drop into that world and you want to see that world from multiple characters’ points of view.   Sometimes you want to understand a conflict from multiple people’s point-of-view.   This is something I got obsessed with for years. I wanted to write two main characters on opposite sides of the same war.   For an example from a recent movie, in Dunkirk (you can listen to my Dunkirk podcast here) we change point-of-view a lot. Because Christopher Nolan is telling a story of a world— the world of Dunkirk-- and he is telling a story about how different kinds of people relate to the same problem.   Sometimes you change point-of-view to explore a theme.   This is what Dead Poets Society does. Dead Poets Society bounces around with different characters, and each character is going through a journey in relation to the idea of “sucking the marrow out of life” versus “choking on the bone.”   And while some characters are sucking the marrow out of life, other characters are choking on the bone. And while some characters are choking on the bone, other characters are sucking the marrow out of life.   And the whole movie is just constructed as an exploration of different characters wrestling with that same problem. And in that case it is telling the story of The Dead Poets Society, not just of one dude.   Little Miss Sunshine is a movie in which every character is going to go on a journey in relation to winning. They are all losers, and they are all going to try to win, and they are all going to win but first they have to lose, they have to recognize that they are losers.   For an example of a movie in which changing point-of-view doesn’t work, let’s go back to the subject of last week’s podcast: Atomic Blonde.   As we discussed last week, Atomic Blonde is essentially a mash-up of… every movie we’ve ever seen.   It’s Quentin Tarantino meets The Usual Suspects, meets True Detective--Charlize Theron’s character is supposed to be doing the Keyser Söze thing-- she is telling a story and there are all these other stories that are happening that may or may not be true, but you don’t really even understand what those stories are.   And then you have these weird shifts in point-of-view where suddenly the secondary character just starts talking to you as the audience.   And, at first, it seems kind of cool. “Oh what cool style--they are breaking the fourth wall and that is really cool.”   But then when you try to get to the big payoff it doesn’t pay off. Because you’re wondering, “Well what did she make up and what did she actually see?” It can’t all be a fabrication, because this guy was literally just talking to you. It wasn’t all from the main character’s point of view, even though she’s the one narrating the story.   So, one of the problems that you have when you start changing point-of-view is that you have to decide-- if the story is being recounted by somebody else-- how true do you want to be to their point-of-view?   Do you want to show things that they haven't actually seen? Or are you willing to show things the way that they told themselves the story of it?   For example, in Forrest Gump we are 99% with Forrest, but for 1% of the movie we are following Jenny alone. And we are following Jenny alone because of the tug in Forrest’s heart around Jenny.   So what does all this mean?     When in doubt, tell the story of one character. If a piece of you tugs you towards another character, then write that character.   But don’t write that character to explain something to the audience. Write that character because, as you were writing your main character, something tugged at you and made you feel like you needed to go on a journey with this other character.   ...