From Deal to Real: Another way of looking at transformation
The screenwriting classes I teach can be an incredible learning experience for everyone involved, including myself. For example, the current 1-week course Create a Compelling Protagonist, there’s been so much activity — great discussions as well as participants workshopping their story’s Protagonist — I’ve had to extend the end date of the class by at least a week, just to accommodate all the rich content that is being posted.
Here’s an example. One of the writers in the current class is Mark Grenier who teaches acting and improv which led to an extensive conversation online about the value of writers studying acting. Here is an excerpt from one of Mark’s posts:
I’ve been thinking about improv and character this morning. Would love to hear your thoughts, Scott, and everyone else.
In improv, we often talk about a character’s “deal” (or “game” or “point of view”). A character’s deal can be anything really, but it’s something that is more or less consistent, that happens repetitively (one definition of character is “what someone repeatedly does.”) For example, a character’s deal might be they’re always flirtatious. Stick them in a line at Starbucks, put them in a jungle in South America, take them to a funeral, and they’ll find a way to flirt. I recently read the screenplay for Elf and the main character in that has a very clear deal — he’s naive and innocent and only understands things in terms of being an elf. A lot of the comedy in that movie comes from his deal and putting him in situations that make his deal more ridiculous. Obviously this kind of thinking lends itself to comedy, but can it also work for drama?
It seems that for an improv scene or comedy sketch, a character only needs to have one simple deal. But to have a character that can remain interesting for an entire movie, it seems like a character may need to have other things as well. So in Elf, the character (Buddy) is innocent and only understands things in elf-terms, but he’s also someone who knows he doesn’t fit in, he needs a family and the love of his father. And while Buddy stays essentially the same, the core of who he is remains innocent, he does change. His deal undergoes change…
I’m also thinking about The Heat. Bullock and Mcarthy’s characters have very clear and contrasting deals, but they’re given other secondary aspects as well — Bullock is lonely, Mcarthy is alienated from her family, etc.
Any thoughts? When I’m writing I tend to overcomplicate and overthink everything. But it seems like a complex character might be made from a few simple ingredients — a primary deal or characteristic, one or more secondary characteristics or deals, and a transformation in some way over the course of the movie of that primary deal. In Elf, Buddy will always be innocent and playful, but now he’s also loved and knows his place in the world and understands how the world works. Bullock will always be a little uptight, but at the end she’s less uptight and has a friend.
Here is my response:
I just read through this entire thread — great content, people! — and let me try to pull together a post that responds to multiple points in play.
First off, I like the idea of a character’s “Deal”. For sketch comedy or improv, I can see why it works beautifully. It’s simple, clean, gives the actor a hook to work with, and can translate to the audience easily, too.
I’m sure you’re familiar with Whose Line Is It Anyway. They have improv bits where they give each actor what in effect is a Deal. You’re a doctor who’s afraid of the sight of blood. You’re a superhero called Vomit Boy. You’re a weatherman who is possessed by the spirit of Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”.
Heather made a good point about the difference between character and characterization, a reminder that for movies, unless we are dealing with characters of tertiary importance whose very existence is so brief, all we can give them is a clean hook to their personality, our task as writers is to immerse ourselves into our characters so they become more than a type.
But if I’m reading Mark correctly, Mark sees Deal as more than just about creating a type, rather it is a kind of centering dynamic, and that can have enormous value for a writer, providing him/her with a touchstone to understand and a foundation upon which to construct a character.
Philip mentioned the distinction between Want and Need, and there may be some additional relevance. I like to think of Want as Conscious Goal, that is by the end of Act One, it is the object of a Protagonist’s pursuit — I need to walk this floating house over to Paradise Falls… I need to find Buffalo Bill in order to save Catherine Martin… I need to get a rock hammer so I can dig my way out of prison.
But as noted in lecture and in other forum posts, while something is going on in the Plotline (External World), something else is going on in the Themeline (Internal World), and we can think of that as Need, what I sometimes refer to as Unconscious or Unexpressed Goal. This is about the “seeds of change that lie within” as Ovid says. It’s a character’s Core Essence, Authentic Self, True Nature, whatever psychological term you want to use. Often a Protagonist is disconnected from their Core Of Being (which is why I refer to the Protagonist’s typical beginning point in terms of their psychological journey as Disunity) and the whole point of their adventure is for that True Nature to move from Unconscious to Conscious. That is the dynamic that ties into their Need.
So per the movie Up, Carl wants to get the house to the top of Paradise Falls, but he needs to be ‘resurrected’ from his life-less existence he’s had since Ellie died. Bonding with his surrogate ‘family’ (Russell, Dug, Kevin) both compels and entices Carl’s need to emerge, and despite the grumpy, loner ‘mask’ he wears at the story’s beginning, his passion for life emerges, he embraces it, and eventually moves toward a Unity state, visualized in the story’s denouement where he, Russell and Dug are eating ice cream and counting red cars and blue cars, a family together.
We see metamorphosis in movies over and over and over and over.
In Casablanca, Rick moves from cynic by getting in touch with his idealistic nature.
In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy goes from feeling home-less to “There’s no place like home.”
In The Apartment, Baxter gets in touch with his inner “mensch”.
In Bridesmaids, Annie evolves from an infantile view of romance to a more grounded, realistic take.
In Tootsie, Michael goes from sexist to “I was a better man as a woman than I was as a man.”
In The Godfather, Michael gets in touch with his inner mobster.
So circling back to Mark’s point about a character’s “Deal”, what about this?
What if their Deal is something that exists in their Conscious realm. That is, this is the ‘mask’ they wear in public, it’s the shorthand for who they are and represent themselves as at the beginning of a story.
Like if I asked you about one of your friends, I might say, “What’s her deal,” and you’d say, “Oh, Annie Savoy? She’s a spiritual type using baseball as the basis of her personal philosophy.”
But that’s just a starting point. It can work in a sketch, but for a movie, we need to go deeper. We can use it as a touchstone for understanding what a character has done in their Life Before Fade In to scrape together some semblance of an existence, but it doesn’t represent where they need to go, not a reflection of their Authentic Self.
No, they need to go on an adventure. The Universe provides them with a call. Something happens. Wham! It plops in front of the Protagonist and forces them to change directions, leave the Old World, head out into the New World.
And what about this: Over time, the Protagonist goes from Deal… to Real.
So broadly speaking, their metamorphosis arc can start with, “What’s their Deal,” and end with “They got Real.”
That is their True Self emerges from the unconscious realm into the light of consciousness, and the Protagonist — over time — embraces that Core Essence, moving them from Deal to Real, Disunity to Unity.
I like the idea of Deal. It’s how I would pitch a character, to give a studio exec or producer a quick, thumbnail sense of who this person is or that person. But then because of the adventure they go on, they change. And as I sit here with this idea, I think it works: They become more Real.
As a writer and teacher, part of what I do is constantly look for language I can use to help me (and others) find access points into and through the creative process. I think this idea of a character going from Deal to Real is an interesting one.
How about you? Does it work for you? Make sense?
Click Reply and head to comments to share your thoughts.
Note: Not all Protagonists change. And sometimes if they go through a transformation, it is a negative one. However in most Hollywood movies, the Protagonist goes through a positive metamorphosis, part of the proverbial “happy ending”. But there is no formula for this, every story is different, every Protagonist is different, and we should feel free to follow the narrative wherever it takes us.
There is a follow-up class to the one I’m currently teaching: Write a Worthy Nemesis is a 1-week course following the same approach to screenwriting theory and workshop practices, and begins Monday, May 12. For more information, go here.