Wigs on Mannequins

One Christmas, many years ago, my mom gave each of her three boys an interesting present. She had been busy downloading music from the internet (in the days when such use was rampant and unpunished), and she found the song "Chopsticks." The famous ditty that anyone could play with two fingers. But she didn't just find piano versions. She found full orchestra versions. She found jazz versions. Mamba versions. So many artists took this simple tune and turned it into fun, full fledged art. My mom downloaded those songs and burned them onto a CD for each of us.

On the cover of the CD, she wrote, "Chopsticks - sometimes all we lack is the will to see it differently."

God damn, she's deep! I will never tire of repeating that phrase out loud or in my mind. It's really one of those phrases to live life by. It's also one of those phrases to think about as you write screenplays.

And that brings me to the topic - Wigs on Mannequins.

Cliches, stock characters, cardboard characters... they all stem from the same thing - we lack the will to see it differently. But sometimes we see that a change needs to be made, but we don't know how to do it. Then we try some tried and true methods and, wouldn't you know it, we have another cliche, stock character, etc...

Let's take a common stereotype from film days of yore - The Damsel in Distress.

Pretty much some hot girl whose only defense mechanism is the ability to stand still and shrilly scream as danger approaches. Thus, she has alerted some manly man to come and rescue her.

Well, that doesn't fly these days.

So writers have changed it up. Now, instead of a screaming, defenseless woman, they have the tough "don't take no shit from nobody" woman. Ooooh, she's in your face. If she gets mugged, she'll challenge her assailant to a drinking and arm-wrestling contest.

And now a new problem has developed. She's totally cardboard. Yeah, she's tough, but there's no personality behind it. There's no character foundation on which to build that toughness.

But screenwriters have a solution to that too. It's called backstory. Hmmm... let's wait for the action to die down a bit, and then she'll tell her partner why she acts so tough. She was very meek in high school, but then one day her father was showing the signs of a heartattack (dead parents are always gold for character development). She rushed him to the hospital, but he was a tough guy and didn't feel it was a big deal. She goes to the duty nurse, but she was too meek to get them to give her father priority. As a result, they wait for hours. By the time they see him, his heart muscle is too weak and he dies soon thereafter. Our heroine vows to never be meek again.

Yeaaah. Time for a tissue and a stiff drink.

That sucks. That's no reason for her to be tough. But this crap is what screenwriting books tell writers to look for. "Find that moment that made your character who he/she is." "Give us a compelling backstory."

A cardboard character with a backstory is a mannequin wearing a wig. Neither is taking one step forward. You can't dress your weak characters up in fancy stories from their past to make them appealing. That doesn't explain who a person/character is.

An event does not create a person. A life creates a person. And, just as accurately, a person creates their life.

"Hannibal Rising" took the greatest villain of all time (Hannibal Lecter) and handed him a justification for being a cannibalistic serial killer - he ate his sister to keep from starving during WWII. Booooo!! Lecter was a perfect character before! He didn't need his actions explained. He was just Hannibal f-ing Lecter. An evil, yet masterfully intelligent, psychopath! By giving him this melodramatic, only-in-Hollywood backstory, they castrated a wonderful character.

People are who they are. The best characters are created when writers realize that basic truth. Sure, a character can change, but they must change in the confines of who they are.

Let me give another example. In Boy Scouts, there was an adult named Steve. He was a character in himself. A man who was obsessed with safety, never willing to let a risk be taken within his eye-sight or ear-shot. Once, a joke was played on him at random (he had the misfortune of grabbing the wrong plate of food). Under his mashed potatoes was hidden a chicken foot. Yeah, great prank, right? He squealed and jumped from his seat. He went outside, hopped in his car, and drove away for several hours. Were we baffled! He came back and explained that when he was young, his grandmother cut the head off a chicken before his eyes. The headless chicken then ran after him spouting blood from its neck. He's had a fear of chicken ever since.

Okaaaay.

The thing to remember is that the chicken didn't make Steve who he was. Lots of people have seen headless chickens at a young age. They don't turn into Steves. It was because of who Steve is that this event became a significant moment in his childhood. Steve created the moment, the moment didn't create Steve.

So, the take home lesson from this is simple. A cardboard character is one who has no life. A mannequin. Simply slapping some backstory onto him/her might look nice and all, but it doesn't solve the problem. A character needs to be built up from the foundation. They are who they are. And it takes several drafts to find who they are. Quick fixes are no fixes at all.

So please please please don't have the heart-to-heart of elaborate backstory in an attempt to give depth to a character.

Now that I've done nothing but bitch and moan for this whole post, maybe I'll post some of my theories on creating real characters. Maybe later.

-TJ