Think Your Character Is Active? Think Again.

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Do your characters really drive your story, or do they just seem to? In this episode of The Storyteller’s Mission, Zena Dell Lowe uncovers the hidden pitfalls that make main characters passive and shows you how to craft heroes that truly capture attention. Writers, screenwriters, and storytellers will gain fresh insight into making characters more active, more compelling, and impossible to ignore.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] I spent a lot of time at a film festival recently, and it's amazing that these are films that actually made it into the film festival and there was a lot of good films in the film festival and yet.

[00:00:11] There were still a lot of problems with their stories, and again, it comes back to whether your character is passive or whether they are active. And I just have to stress this because I think what happens is a lot of times we think we're making our main character active, but then you have supporting characters who are the ones who are making discoveries or you have supporting characters.

[00:00:36] Who are the ones that are noticing clues. And then maybe your main character is like they take action as a result of that. And of course, you want your supporting characters to have their moment to shine. But I want to just go back to the basics here and recommend that whenever you have a main character, that main character is the one who is driving the action by making decisions.

[00:01:03] By instigating plans, by giving orders, by noticing things that nobody else notices by questioning things that nobody else is questioning. And sometimes what happens is, of course, they don't have. Power because there's somebody that's higher up than them who has the power and therefore is blocking their way.

[00:01:26] And so then the challenge becomes how do they still take action even though they've been told they can't, or even though they're not the person in charge, but that's part of the obstacle they have to overcome. So, let me give you an example. One of the screenplays, one of the short films I saw had to do with these young policemen who were only really solving the crime because of the orders that were being given to them by their higher ups.

[00:01:55] So they were following orders. So the filmmaker thought that he had active characters. Because those characters would be told something by their boss and then they would go and chase it down. And so that seems active and there's a certain amount of active there because they are actually taking action and doing stuff.

[00:02:14] But what really makes a character active is when they're the ones making the decision about what needs to be done next. And not necessarily be told something. In fact, it's even more interesting to us if they're told to do such and such, but based on their own reasoning power, they're like, eh, okay, I gotta follow that order, but that's not how this should be done.

[00:02:36] So now they have to find a creative solution to accommodate. The boss who's given this direct order and yet do what in their own mind or their conscience they know needs to be done. Now they're a far more interesting character because they're actually making decisions on their own. We want characters that can make their own decisions, and so having 'em make decisions that go in accordance with everything the boss tells them just isn't as interesting.

[00:03:06] It just makes them obedient. It doesn't make them clever. To that end. I would just encourage all of you to go back to your main characters and look at any instances where maybe a supporting character is the one who's noticing something, but it should be the main character so just look at that in your book. I mean, even the best writers on the planet get this wrong sometimes. And that's why I wanted to bring it up again.

[00:03:32] It is the kiss of death. And what makes your character interesting is when they are the one. They are the one, they are the one, they're the one who sees it. They're the ones that act on it. That's what makes them interesting. So when you brought that up, I immediately thought of Charlie's Angels. Why did that work?

[00:03:50] Charlie's not telling 'em the step by step. All Charlie is saying is, here's the case.

[00:03:55] He doesn't dictate how they have to figure out what's going on. whatever Charlie's bringing to them is ultimately the inciting incident that launches them off on that newest adventure, and then they get to dictate based on their own.

[00:04:08] And now you've got three characters, right? When you have three characters like that. You have to have all of 'em have their area of expertise where they get to make the decision and they, and now we see why they're important. So sometimes you have these multiple characters. There isn't one Charlie's Angel that's the most important they.

[00:04:26] Work because it's the three of 'em. Mm-hmm. So each of 'em have to have that moment where they, and several moments hopefully, where because of their input, they know where to go, where to take the investigation next. And it keeps handing off depending on the areas of expertise, but nobody's telling 'em how to pursue that.

[00:04:46] All that's being told to them is, we gotta solve this thing. Okay. And then they go and do it. And that's why we like them because they're all driving the action and they're relying on each other. See, and that's the thing that's tricky with Harry Potter too. So you've got Harry Potter, he's clearly the main character, but he can't do it without Hermione and Ron.

[00:05:06] They become very much, um, essential, especially Hermione one would argue. But Ron too. And sometimes I think that was a. Challenge because Ron didn't seem to bring as much to the table in terms of his smart. And yet they always tried to find a way for Ron to have an expertise in something that ultimately could help Harry.

[00:05:29] But at the end of the day, Harry was left alone to go and do the rest of it. 

[00:05:34] The point of that is that if you have multiple characters, they each have to have an opportunity to have an area of expertise. That's their hero moment. I mean, again, it's tricky because with Charlie's Angels, there isn't a main character who emerges.

[00:05:49] It's all three of them at once. But with, uh, Harry Potter. There are three main characters, but then Harry Potter's the main character, so it changes how it has to unfold. Nevertheless, they're the ones driving the action. 

[00:06:02] And that's important. They have to be creative, they have to be the ones. That make it happen.