Recently, I’ve been working on two projects. One of them you know. Kinetic. Another one you don’t. In both cases, rewrites were involved. When it came to Kinetic, the writer, Chris Dennis, took what was already a good script and did a page 1 rewrite to amp everything up several notches, turning it into a great script.
On the other project, the writer and I have been going through rewrite after rewrite for a while now – even I dusted off Final Draft and took a shot at a draft – and not getting anywhere close to what we think the potential of the premise is.
And that’s been kind of a mindf&%#. Why is it that with just a single rewrite, one script becomes so much better? Yet with the other script, it feels like we’re going in circles? So I sat back and I thought about it for a long time.
Finally, the answer came to me.
The main character.
The main character in Kinetic is awesome. He’s this tough man’s man with an inner rage he struggles every day to keep a lid on. He’s the middle America version of the Hulk. He’s just a really captivating character you want to watch. You’re always curious to see what he might do next.
The main character in the other script is your classic ‘safe protagonist.’ He’s a normal dude. He’s grounded in reality. There isn’t anything about him that stands out, that’s memorable.
This is an EXTREMELY COMMON problem in screenwriting. I pointed this out in my review of the Martin Scorsese, Eric Roth, Leonardo DiCaprio collaboration – Killers of the Flower Moon. That main character was just like this main character. Safe. Grounded. Nothing about him stood out. And, what do you know, Leonardo DiCaprio eventually decided not to play the part for that reason (he went over to play the more interesting bad guy instead).
All of this led me to realize that if a script isn’t working and you haven’t yet figured out a strong main character, it doesn’t matter how many times you rewrite it, it’s not going to work. Conversely, when you have a great main character, you can do a page one rewrite on everything else, and because your main character is so awesome, it still works.
That’s why Chris Dennis was able to rewrite an entire screenplay in 45 days and actually improve the script. Cause the hero, Clay, was so awesome.
Now before we get to the solution here, let’s first acknowledge why this happens. The main reason is because it’s hard to write a movie with an extreme protagonist. There has to be some level of “grounding” when it comes to your main character so that they feel realistic and audiences can empathize with them. And also so the journey itself feels grounded in reality.
It’s the difference between making Phil (Bradley Cooper) from The Hangover your protagonist versus Alan (Zach Galifianakis). Phil needs to be the anchor of the movie. That means he can’t fly too high. Meanwhile, since none of the emotional core of the movie rests on Alan, he could fly off to freaking Mars if the writers wanted him to. And we actually saw what happened when Alan became a lead character because they did it in Hangover 3. And the movie was terrible.
So I understand why this mistake is made as often as it is. The more exaggerated, exotic, eccentric, crazy, weird, your hero is, the harder it is to ground them. So most writers stay closer to the “everyman” option, hoping that creating a “real” person will automatically make the audience empathize with them. More often than not, however, it just leads to a boring character.
So how do we reconcile this? Well, there are three main categories you should be considering when building your hero. They are: INTERESTING, LIKABLE, SYMPATHETIC. You want to come up with some combination of traits that fit into these three categories. And the good news is, you can pack as many as you want into your character. You don’t have to stop at one or two or even three.
With that in mind, here are 10 traits you can add to your hero to make them more interesting, more likable, and more sympathetic.
1) Give your hero a vice they can’t control (Interesting) – In order to make characters interesting, you usually have to lean into negativity somewhere. That leads to conflict, which is what makes the character come alive. Like I was talking about above, for Clay in “Kinetic,” his vice is rage. It’s deep within him. He must battle to keep it bottled up every day. With Jordan Belforte in The Wolf of Wall Street, it’s excess. Drugs, alcohol, women. He needs it all the time. To understand how effective this is, imagine The Wolf of Wall Street if Jordan didn’t have an excess problem. I’m guessing the movie would’ve been pretty boring.
2) Make your hero really good at what they do (Likable) – This is a major reason why John McClane has become an all-time classic hero. He was a really really really good cop. He was always ahead of the bad guys in Die Hard. For more modern examples, check out John Wick and Ryan Gosling’s character in “Drive.”
3) Bully your hero (Sympathy) – One of the easiest ways to make someone feel sympathy for your hero is to have someone else hurt them. It’s even more effective if your hero isn’t physically or mentally capable of fighting back. This is the very first thing they did in “Joker” to make you like Arthur Fleck. They had a group of teenagers steal Arthur’s clown sign then beat him up.
4) Have your hero be kind to others (Likable) – This may seem obvious but if you need a “straighter” character and you’re worried about them being too bland, this is a good trait to add because it makes the character very likable. This is a big reason why Forest Gump was so popular. He was one of the kindest protagonists in history. If you want to go back even further, check out George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life. They may never make another character as kind as George Bailey.
5) Make your hero a little bit unstable (Interesting) – Again, when it comes to making your hero interesting, you have to lean into the negative. And a popular way to create interesting characters is to make them a little bit unstable. Like Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler. Sara Connor in Terminator 2. Cassandra in Promising Young Woman. The reason these characters work is because they keep the reader guessing. If someone’s unstable, you never know what they’re going to do next.
6) Have your hero save the cat (Likable) – Have your hero do something nice for someone early on. The audience forms their opinion quickly with characters. So what you show them do early has an outsized effect on how they’re perceived.
7) Give your hero someone to love (Sympathy) – I want you to imagine a psychopathic serial killer. Do you have any sympathy for them? I’m guessing not. Now I want you to imagine a psychopathic serial killer who loves his daughter more than anything in the world. Now do you have sympathy? You may be conflicted but you definitely have more sympathy than you did before. That’s the power of giving your hero someone to love. We like people who care about others and love people who will do anything for their family.
8) Make your hero an underdog (Likable) – The underdog is one of the more guaranteed ways to make a hero likable. Slumdog Millionaire Moneyball. Rocky. The entire family in Parasite. There’s one catch to this though. The hero must be active in trying to succeed. An underdog doesn’t work if they’re not trying to change their situation.
9) Make your character a little bit of an asshole (Interesting) – This is a dangerous one because if you go to far, you get the dreaded reaction of, “I never liked the main character.” So there’s a large emphasis placed on the “a little bit” part of this advice. Tony Stark is a little bit of an asshole. Starlord (Guardians of the Galaxy) is a little bit of an asshole. The idea is to have fun with it and not emphasize the “asshole” part too much. A reason I think this works is because we’re all kind of tired of having to be so polite in society. Watching guys like Stark and Starlord be kind of a dick stirs up a bit of wish fulfillment in us.
10) Make your hero very very very active (Sympathy, Likable) – Audiences absolutely LOVE characters who doggedly pursue their goals. From Indiana Jones to Clarice to Erin Brokovich. More recently you have John Wick, Robert McCall (Equalizer), and Howard Ratner (Uncut Gems). People like people who go after things in life. It’s no different in the fictional world of movies.
Keep in mind that every movie and every main character will have different requirements. Therefore, certain traits won’t work on certain characters. For example, the way that the story in JoJo Rabbit unfolds doesn’t allow for our main character to be very very very active. There’s more introspection. There’s more character exploration. So you don’t want to try and fit square pegs into round holes. Only add a trait if you believe it works for your character in your particular movie.
Good luck and I would absolutely LOVE to hear your tips for creating a more likable, more interesting, and a more sympathetic character in the comments!
