12. How to Make Your Characters Credible and Believable

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:     

In this episode of The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, Zena proposes that the acid test of a story is: does it work? By that, she means does the audience buy it?  Are the characters credible or believable? Zena then goes on to discuss two common ways in which the credibility of a story may be undermined.

1. If the writer rushes, or fails to take the time to allow the characters to transform in a believable way over the course of the telling. 

2. If the writer tries to justify character actions or choices according to a false worldview, whereby what we instinctively know to be true about the psychology of the human person is ignored or violated in some way.

At the end of the day, it's essential that one's story rings true with the audience - we must believe that the characters could or would do whatever it is that they do in the story.

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SPECIAL THANKS

The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe would like to thank composer Carla Patullo for the original music she graciously permits us to use in the intro and outro of this podcast. To find out more about this amazing talent, go to  www.carlapatullo.com

Transcript

Ep 12 - Transcript

Tue, 10/13 8:47PM • 15:31

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

character, believability, true, anakin, storytelling, episodes, credibility, believable, justify, worldview, dark side, rule, podcast, principle, george lucas, seduced, story, power, credulity, problems

SPEAKERS

Zena Dell Lowe

Zena Dell Lowe  00:04

INTRO: Hello, and welcome to the Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story. 

Zena Dell Lowe  00:13

TOPIC INTRODUCTION: If you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you might have noticed a pattern. I generally present a fundamental story principle, a universal rule that is meant to apply to all storytelling across the gamut. No matter what genre, it is a basic rule of storytelling. And then I'll follow it up with techniques and tools that you can use to illustrate that principle. However, a lot of times, I'll present a principle and then I'll follow that up with an example that actually breaks the rule. So, what is that about? Well, all rules are meant to be broken. It is perfectly acceptable for you to break a fundamental story principle. The key is that you better know what the story principle is, how it works, and why you're breaking it, because the acid test at the end of the day is always: does it work? Now, when I say, "does it work?" I'm really referring back to this principle of believability and credibility. What our audience expects is for everything to make sense in your story. They need to buy it. They need to believe it. They need to be convinced that you are giving them an accurate demonstration of what your character is like and what they are capable of doing. Believability, credibility, is one of the foundational principles of all storytelling. And even though rules are meant to be broken, I can't think of a single example where that rule can be broken and still create a great story. Now, certainly, there's certain genres that might take that rule and bend it, things like Monty Python, where they're stretching the bounds of credulity, they're making something so absurd. But the only reason the joke works is because it's grounded in reality. So, the real underlying rule or principle, the real acid test of all storytelling is, does it work? Is it believable? Do we buy it? Does your audience buy it? Having said that, I want to look at a couple of elements that I haven't had a chance to dive deep into in the last couple of episodes. One of those is this idea of believability and credibility. The fundamental story principle that I'm talking about right now is that the finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature for better or for worse over the course of the telling. However, the character needs to grow in a believable way. So, today we're going to talk about believability and credibility, and we're going to unpack, first and foremost, what that means to make sure that your story, that your characters, are believable and credible. Then, we're going to talk about two possible ways to undermine that credibility, the first one being: if you do not take the time to develop a character, if you try to rush, and the second one being: if you give false reasons for the way they are, if you try to justify behavior that does not ring true to what we know to be true to human psychology. 

Zena Dell Lowe  03:26

PRESENTATION: So, let's start with this idea of creating characters who are unbelievable, or who lack credibility. Now, one of the things I've mentioned in previous episodes is the difference between characterization and true character. Characterization is the list of qualities that I could come up with about a person through research, interviews, or simply by watching and taking notes. These are your character's physically observable attributes. True character, on the other hand, is revealed by the choices a character makes under pressure. Now, this is important, because the characterizations that you give your characters must make sense in terms of what your character accomplishes in the story. You must give your characters the characterizations necessary for them to be able to pull off whatever it is that they're supposed to be able to do. They must be old enough or young enough or worldly enough or naive enough to say or do whatever it is that they say or do, all in the right proportions. 

Zena Dell Lowe  04:28

By way of a bad example, I give you the film Entrapment. Now, this movie came out years ago, but it's so good at illustrating this point that I still like to use it. It stars Sean Connery, who plays an art thief and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plays the insurance agent who's sent to somehow entrap him. Now, there are so many problems with this story, not least of which is the fact that Sean Connery was about seventy years old at the time this film was made. I'm not even exaggerating. And Catherine Zeta-Jones was about thirty, and yet, we're supposed to believe that they're involved in some deep, romantic entanglement. Gross. But that's not the only reason why age is a problem. Now, at one point in the film, Sean Connery attempts to escape a tight situation by walking across a tightrope that's strung between two very tall skyscrapers. The guy is seventy years old. Now, most people couldn't pull this off even in their prime, let alone in their latter years. But even if we did, by some stretch of the imagination, give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he could still pull this off even at that age because of his vast experience of doing so, they push the bounds of credulity far past the point of believability when he slips at one point. And then he's dangling on a wire by one hand, trying not to fall to his death. And then somehow, using that stellar seventy year old upper body strength that we've all heard so much about, he manages to hoist himself upright, reset his footing, and voila, he safely reaches the other side. Now, listen, I am a Sean Connery fan, same as anyone. But come on, this is just not believable. There's no way a man of that age would be able to pull this off, unless maybe it's Tom Cruise. Barring that, the character's age simply eliminates this possibility. And if they really wanted us to buy that he could still do this, then they would have needed to justify why we should buy it. They would need to show us that even though he's seventy years old, he's still buff like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Show him working out, show us his muscles. They would've needed to show us that he still has been doing exercises to practice his balance. They needed to give us extra information that would give us permission to willingly suspend our disbelief. They did not. We have to believe that a character could or would do whatever they end up doing, which means they need to possess the right characteristics to convince the audience that their actions are credible. So, that's one kind of believability to look at, but here's another way that this is violated. 

Zena Dell Lowe  07:11

Oftentimes, what happens is, you get in a hurry and so you rush it. You simply do not take the time to develop whatever needs to happen in your character to convince the audience that they would or could do whatever they have to do. So, for example, if anybody out there watched Game of Thrones, this was one of the huge problems with the end of the series of Game of Thrones. Now granted, there are so many problems with the last season of Game of Thrones, it's hard for me to know where to begin. But one of the major ones was the character of Daenerys. And here we have Daenerys/Khaleesi, who was set up from the very beginning to potentially, maybe be the savior of the whole kingdom and the true heir to the throne. And yet, her father was crazy. We know that her father went crazy and had to be killed. There's a lot of setup to go with this, but what happens in the last season is they end up wanting to show that she follows in her father's footsteps and Jon Snow, of course, has to stop her because she kind of is crazy. And so what they do is they have this terrible scene where she goes to attack the Citadel and she's on her dragon, and instead of stopping when she's supposed to, it's like she goes nuts and she starts burning the whole town. Well, it's crazy, because we never see this the whole time. All we ever see of Daenerys is this character who's committed to justice, this character who hates people who abuse others. She hates people that are in power positions who exploit or take advantage of the weak. So, we don't believe it. We don't buy it. They rushed her transformation. Now, we could have. We could have believed it. If only they had taken more time to show us that transformation, because there are things that they try to show that would have justified this potential outcome, but unfortunately, they never fully developed it. And so, at the end of the day, it just felt like it was stuffed on us. It was forced down our throats. And this whole time that she's riding a dragon around, burning the city, they have to show her at a distance. They can't even show a close-up, because what are they going to do, show fire coming out of her eyes? I mean, it's so absurd. Like, it's so crazy to think that she went so crazy that she couldn't even come back to reality. It just doesn't make sense. 

Zena Dell Lowe  09:39

Now, in addition to the potential of undermining credibility by not taking the time to develop your characters and let them evolve, another mistake that is often made is that the writer tries to justify a particular behavior based on a false perspective of humanity. They simply are not in touch with true human nature enough to justify what their character's doing, and so they try to falsify something to make it believable. So, for example, Anakin Skywalker. From episodes four, five and six, we get a pretty good picture of what Anakin Skywalker is supposed to be like. And episodes one, two, and three are supposed to, basically, expand on that, show us, flesh out what we've learned already in episodes four, five and six. So, what we've learned in four, five, and six is that Anakin was seduced by the dark side. He was seduced by Darth Vader, right? But then, when we see episodes one, two, and three, what happens is, George Lucas decides to try to justify Anakin's foray into the dark side by doing this weird thing with his wife where Anakin thinks that he can use the power of the dark side to stop his wife from dying in childbirth, and that's why he does it. Well, the thing is, that undermines everything we know to be true about a) Darth Vader and that world, but also b) about sin nature, about what it's like to be human and to be tempted by sin. 

Zena Dell Lowe  11:18

Let me tell you something. Sin is incredibly alluring. If it wasn't attractive, we wouldn't do it. And guess what? One of the greatest temptations is to be powerful, to have power and control over other people. It is not a stretch for someone to be seduced by the dark side. We have all been seduced by the dark side, metaphorically. We have all done things that we know to be wrong, not because we accidentally fell into them, but because we deliberately chose them, because we liked it. And that was the problem with George Lucas. He wanted to try to justify Anakin's behavior and perhaps even make him sympathetic. But you know what made him sympathetic already, what would have made him even more sympathetic, is if we could have seen ourselves like it is for us when we wrestle with the dark side. We want sin. We like it. That's why it's so dang powerful, and if we would have just been able to see a character truly seduced by the power that it offers, it would have been far more alluring to us, far more interesting. As it was, it was just silly. It was just silly and not necessary. It was completely unnecessary, and I would argue that part of the reason why that happened is because George Lucas didn't fully understand the kind of character he had created and the kind of dynamic he had set up, and how that relates to our true, real experience as human beings. Because it does. 

Zena Dell Lowe  13:01

So, this is why I am constantly harping on worldview. The worldview that you approach your story with will ultimately give you an advantage or a disadvantage to be able to convey a story in a way that your audience buys. If your worldview happens to be false, then you're going to do what George Lucas did and you're going to miss the gold. And that is why it's important for us to keep evaluating our worldview. Do we have a true view of reality? Do we know what it truly is like to be human? This is also why you should write what you know, because if we write what we know, we're more liable to write what is true, and therefore your audience is going to buy it. We want to know the details, remember. We like the nuances. We want to get into the nitty-gritty, and that's why it's important to look within and see what is really, really true in terms of humanity and how we are in our human condition. So, the upshot of all of this is that we have to believe that a character could or would do whatever they end up doing, which means, not only do they need to possess the right characteristics that convinced the audience that their actions are credible, but we also need to take our time as the writer to develop those things and let it happen in a timeframe that we find believable and also that matches the true characteristics of humanity as we know it. We have to understand how people work. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:33

CALL TO ACTION: Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that this episode has been helpful. When we come back next week, we're actually going to jump into a couple of other ways that we might be undermining our credibility and not even know it, because this is such a key, important aspect of all storytelling. If you've enjoyed this podcast, would you please subscribe and possibly even write a review? That would be so wonderful for us. If you have a question about storytelling, in the notes section of this podcast, you will see a link to my website. You can actually leave me a voicemail message with your question. You just click on the button and leave a message. Easy peasy. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:41

OUTRO: You have been listening to the Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.