Today I’d like to talk about relationships.
Not real life ones. You’re on your own with those.
I’m talking about relationships between the
characters in your screenplay.
Here are 5 tips for improving them:
(1) Use Differing Points of View
This is an efficient way to establish a watchable
dynamic between two characters. Give
them opposing opinions on an issue.
A classic example is Luke, Han Solo and the
Force. Luke believes in the Force. Han Solo thinks it’s a myth. Simple, engaging character opposition.
Ideally, these opposing points of view should
influence the characters’ specific actions, putting the two characters in
conflict. In Star Wars, differing points of view lead Han Solo to abandon Luke
for a while, but of course he comes around.
(2) Start Them Apart
Whenever it makes sense, start your characters
off in a state of conflict. You want
somewhere to go with an on-screen relationship, and for most genres it’s
ultimately going to have to go in a positive direction. So give those relationships lots of room to
grow by starting them off as rocky as possible.
I’m not saying every relationship has to begin
with a brawl. Maybe one character
doesn’t trust the other and reveals that in subtle ways. Maybe one character underestimates another’s
skills. Maybe one character is secretly
envious of the other. All of these
dynamics have the potential to provide conflict and interest in a film.
(3) Use “False Alarm” Conflict
If it doesn’t make sense to portray genuine
conflict in a particular relationship, then you may want to work in a brief
moment of “false alarm” conflict. False alarm
conflict is when there’s no real conflict at all, but for a moment the audience
is led to believe there is.
For example, I read a script that spent some time
with a happy couple. This particular
story didn’t call for any conflict between these two characters. The writing was strong, but the scenes with
these two characters still lacked energy.
One solution was to rewrite this relationship entirely, but there were
strong reasons not to do that. A more
viable solution was to create some false alarm conflict by having the woman tell
her guy she was really angry with him and wanted to break up, but then reveal
she was just messing with him. For a few
moments, even a relationship devoid of any real conflict got the benefit of
having some.
(4) Create “Emotional Action”
The best filmic relationships involve a lot of
change. They progress. They develop. They move. In fact, this emotional action, the action of
characters moving closer together or further apart, may be the most important
“action” in a script.
That’s why the basic relationship arc works so
well. It goes like this: The
characters start off opposed/apart in some way.
Gradually (as shown in several specific moments in the script) they
begin to grow toward each other. In a
time of crisis, they pull apart. At or
right before a key climactic moment, they come back together.
It doesn’t have to be – and shouldn’t always be –
exactly like this of course, but there should always be something like this,
some trajectory of change for at least one of the relationships in a movie –
and ideally more than one.
So when you’re writing a scene, try asking
yourself: Are any two characters growing
closer or further apart in this segment, and if not, should they?
(5) Take It Slow
Change takes time – especially change in human
relationships. For that reason, you
don’t want to rush your characters either in or out of those
relationships. It’s important to show
gradual change, whether it’s gradually increasing intimacy or gradually
deteriorating respect. In the same way
that character arcs work best when they progress over time in noticeable
increments, relationship arcs almost always work best when you take it slow.
