“Put your characters through hell!” – Pretty common advice, right?
There’s good reason it’s something we strive for. Conflict is the lifeblood of your screenplay. It keeps us engaged and – if done right – invested in the story you’re telling.
Even knowing this, though, it’s surprisingly easy to let ourselves off the hook and skimp on making things hard enough for our characters. To truly put them through hell.
Let’s look at a great example of how this can be done, and maybe give you a yardstick to measure your own screenplays by.
What putting a character through hell looks like
Want to see a character going through hell? Watch the first episode of Netflix’s limited series Maid.
I unintentionally binged all 10 episodes this week. That’s right. I watched the first episode and was so pulled in that I stayed up until three in the morning several nights in a row just to finish it.
And I never do that. (This girl likes her sleep.) It reminded me of those times earlier in life when I’d get so into a book that I couldn’t put it down, even when I had to practically hold my eyelids open with one hand.
This show grabbed me and did not let go. Thanks in large part to each episode’s relentless attack on the protagonist.
I found myself yelling (inside my head) at the TV: “Just let the girl up for air!”
So of course I want to examine how it does what it does so well. Care to join me?
SPOILERS AHEAD! (For the first 15 minutes of the episode.)
“What goes wrong?” IS the story
Here’s a list of what happens in the first 15 minutes of the first episode:
- Alex (protagonist) takes her 2-year-old daughter (Maddy) and leaves her emotionally abusive boyfriend (Sean) in the middle of the night.
- Alex tries to crash at a friend’s, but Sean knows where they are and is on his way.
- Alex and Maddy spend the night in their car in a public park area, but are woken at dawn by a cop who tells them they can’t sleep there.
- Alex goes to Social Services for help, but since she didn’t file a police report she can’t get housing at the DV shelter. And since she doesn’t have a job, she can’t get subsidized daycare. And without daycare, she can’t get a job… The social worker has one possibility for her… Value Maids. But Alex has to go to an interview right now, and can’t take Maddy with her.
- Alex has only one possible babysitter – her bipolar mom, Paula. Alex goes to Paula’s house… only to find it’s been Airbnb’d. She doesn’t know where Paula is.
- Alex finds Paula at a campground, and cautiously arranges for Paula to watch Maddy for the afternoon. (Finally, a breath.)
…And it just. Keeps. Going.
As you can see, the protagonist is set on a path forward but at every turn there’s something in her way. We stay on the edge of our seats hoping she’ll just get some kind of break.
But do we care?
It’s important to note that everything in the world can go wrong, but if we don’t care then we’ll just be fatigued or bored by it.
So how do we get a reader (or audience) to care?
It’s something that good screenplays start doing early, bonding us to the protagonist and creating empathy for them from the time we meet them. As I mention in this article about creating compelling characters, there are three go-to strategies you can start with. Maid uses all three.
- The spark of attraction: Alex is introduced as a vulnerable person (a young, somewhat frail-looking woman in a scary situation). This feels like both undeserved misfortune and jeopardy that creates worry. And she seems like a nice person (she’s a caring mom) so it’s easy to like Alex and start rooting for her.
- What she cares about: Alex is responsible for and trying to protect her 2-year-old daughter. Maddy is the most important thing to her, and Alex is willing to go to any lengths to take care of her. Maddy is why Alex gets up every time she’s knocked down. That’s how important these stakes are, and seeing it engages us emotionally.
- Contradiction: There’s something very compelling about the Alex character, and I think in part it’s because we’re curious about her and how she could find herself in this position: a victim of DV, homeless, desperate. Because she’s not a cliché… this girl is sharp, she’s funny, she’s tenacious, and capable. How did she get here?
Hell is relative
Putting your character through hell can be amazingly effective at hooking your audience and keeping them riveted. It creates tension and urgency that’s hard to turn away from.
And yet, even if we know this, it’s all too easy to give our characters a break when we shouldn’t. Check out Maid and see just how few breaks Alex is given. And the show is better for it.
Of course, it’s only truly effective when you first make us care about the character.
When we’re emotionally invested in a character, the bad things you throw at them aren’t just situations to get through. When we care, and we know what’s important to the character, then the problems and setbacks — and the character’s efforts to keep going — become meaningful.