Character Type: Artist

Those of you who have followed my blog for some time or taken courses with me through Screenwriting Master Class know how fascinated I am with character archetypes, specifically how there are five — Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster — which recur in movies over and over and over.

Some might see archetypes as a sort of reductionist approach to writing when in my experience, it is precisely the opposite.

By working with these five Primary Character Archetypes, we can identify the core narrative function of every key character, then use that knowledge as a guide as we build them out in a limitless number of ways.

One approach is to use an extensive array of Character Types available to us. So this week, I am running a series in which we will explore several Character Types and consider how writers can use them to create unique, compelling figures in our stories.

Today: Artist.

How does the creative mind work? What are the inner forces the spawn great art? Why are some people drawn to give expression to their unique vision of life?

It is questions such as these that give voice to a longstanding fascination in Hollywood movies with Artists. Much of the persistence which filmmakers have demonstrated in dipping into this particular well again and again for stories arises from the knowledge that the masses are ever curious about the artistic mindset. Some of it, however, must derive from the filmmakers themselves who are, after all, artists in their own rights.

There have been numerous biographical movies about artists including Frida, Pollock and The Agony and the Ecstasy:

Charlton Heston as Michelangelo

Oftentimes Artist stories focus on the ‘madness’ of creativity such as the 1956 movie Lust for Life with Kirk Douglas portraying the brilliant but tortured existence of Vincent Van Gogh:

In some cases, the Artist’s struggles manifest themselves more in the physical than psychological realm as with the 1989 movie My Left Foot featuring Daniel Day Lewis, who learned to paint and write with his only controllable limb — his left foot:

The Artist appears in movies also as fictional characters like Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear) in the 1997 movie As Good As It Gets:

As Simon’s character demonstrates in the scene above, the Artist can get a sudden inspiration. Combined with their passion to express that vision in some physical form, the Artist character type can be about communication, but also about the intensity of their creative experience.

To see the world differently. To feel life fully. To immerse oneself in the experience of the creative moment. That is the domain of the Artist character type.

What brainstorming can you do with an Artist character type?

One obvious area to mine is this: Artists are about visual expression. Since movies are primarily a visual medium, they would seem to fit hand in glove. So what if you have a story that is weighed down by too much exposition, too much expression of backstory? Why not explore the possibility that one of your characters is an Artist? If a picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words, then what better way to cut excess dialogue by giving a character the ability to speak through what they draw, paint or create.

You can also widen the scope of what we may typically think of art. The central concept of the movie Butter did precisely this: “In Iowa, an adopted girl discovers her talent for butter carving and finds herself pitted against an ambitious local woman in their town’s annual contest.”

Artist as Attractor, filled with passion for living. Artist as Mentor, a distinctive perspective of the universe. Artist as Trickster, living on the fringe of society and the welfare of strangers.

What can you do with an Artist character type?

Tomorrow: Another character type.

[Originally posted February 12, 2014]