Viewing Assignment:

Iron Man (and maybe Iron Man 2...you aren't missing a ton if you skip this one, but Iron Man 3 is pretty good if you want to dive in all the way)

Alien and Aliens (These are both actually good, though vastly different)

Shane Black has a thing about Christmas.

For those of you who don't recognize his name, he's a very successful screenwriter and director. His latest film was Iron Man 3. So, you may not know his name, but you've heard of him.

Here's the thing. Of the seven movies written by Black, five of them are set during the Christmas season. For the two non-Christmas movies, he was either a co-writer or had been hired to do a rewrite of a current script. That means that of the five scripts that he had a significant say in, 100% of them are set at Christmas.

That's a little weird. Right?

He's talked about this in interviews, about how Christmas is a unifying force that both brings characters together but also amplifies their loneliness. That's a good reason. Using a holiday to focus on your characters makes some sense. But still...100% Christmas movies? That's pretty darn weird.

But, one thing about Shane Black, all obsessions aside, he writes some amazingly interesting characters. These are people you want to spend with and find out a lot more about.

Part of how Black shows us these fascinating characters is through their setting, and the Christmas season plays into this a little. In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, we meet the main character trying to steal toys to give to his nephew (yeah, we actually meet him as a kid in a prologue, but never mind that). You'd think a guy stealing toys would be creepy, but he does it with a lot of charm and humor and we end up liking him. This initial interest is something that is based on what we can observe. He's stealing, but he's witty and he looks like Robert Downey Jr. So, we get interested.

Getting pulled into a character this way is like being attracted to someone when you first see them. You may think they look nice, but remember, that's not a safe thing to bet a relationship on. You are going to need more than a great introduction. Because, in characters and in dating, it's what the person does that really matters. Their decisions and actions reveal who they actually are. That's what really makes us fall for someone, whether he is in a book or she is standing in front of us.

The famed writing teacher Robert McKee talks about this difference between what we first see and how a character grows by using the terms characterization and Character. Characterization is the collection of little things that we can see and measure. These are generally things we see in the beginning: if she has an accent or a twitch or wears a special kind of shoe or walks with a limp...the list goes on for a while with all the things that fall into this category. On the other hand, Character (did you notice the big C?) is about what they do, what decisions they make...especially decisions under pressure.

The thing is, we don't get access to Character right off the bat. When we see that cute person across the room or on the first page of a book, we don't know what big important decisions they are making, and we really don't want to. Remember the surface of the pool of water from the last chapter. Chances are, you probably want to give your readers a little bit of time to admire the surface. A little bit of time with characterization is a good thing. It lets us warm up and get to fall for the character at our own pace. Give them a chance to fall in love-at-first sight with your characters, because soon, you are going to have to show them the hidden depths, and those parts aren't always pretty.

So, to get the most out of introducing and building our characters, let's talk about the steps of our relationship with them.

First off, our readers need to meet the characters, and the most important of these are the protagonist and antagonist. Supporting characters should get a chance to stand out, especially when you have an ensemble cast, but in most stories, it's the two main characters you really need to introduce well. Let's focus on the protagonist.

The moment we meet a character is of utmost importance. You and your hero only get one chance to make a good impression. It's the same in writing as it is in dating. You don't want to blow it right off the bat.

So, in order to hook your readers into a long-term relationship, your characters need a few things in particular. At first they need to be vivid, identifiable, and we need a hint that they will be active in shaping the Story.

The first of these is the need to have the character stand out in some way, to have them be vivid. This is the first step of good characterization, but it doesn't mean there is a need for lengthy physical descriptions. Many of the most interesting characters are only described with a few words. Remember that dumping too much exposition and description can slow things down, and the beginning of a story is dreadful place to be slow.

Like using description in general, a good technique is to find the one or two details about a character that stand out, especially if they relate to the other elements of the introduction. Is there something about the character's job or position in life that we will need to know? Maybe that is shown in a few words about how they dress. In Wool, Hugh Howey shows us the main character Jules with just one sentence. "A young-looking woman in overalls, a hard hat on, brown braided hair hanging out the back, was leaning into a wrench nearly as long as she was tall."

Does the character have a problem that is holding her back? That's something you can show too. When we meet Offred in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, we are given no description of her at all. We simply experience her world through her experience.

Or is the hero doing something that will help us see some part of ourselves in her actions? That can also be quickly shown.

These questions deal with making a character identifiable, and luckily, this isn't too hard of a job to tackle. Have you ever noticed how nobody ever reads a horoscope and says, "That's not me at all!" Our brains are wired to look for connections, and this makes identification a natural tool for you as a writer.

The late writing coach, Blake Snyder, wrote a book called Save the Cat. The main idea in the book is in building identification with characters by having them do just what the title says...save a cat (or something similar). Introducing characters doing something admirable and perhaps selfless is a technique that has been used to great effect in books and movies. We admire characters like this, and want to be a part of their lives and journeys.

But, just be careful and make sure you fight against the cliché with this technique. There are a number of films and books where this approach is overused. Think of ways you can adapt it and make it all your own. In the beginning of the animated film The Incredibles, the hero does actually rescue a cat from a tree, but how he does it is so funny and surprising that the cliché is completely turned around.

Remember, small, cute mammals don't have to be in danger in order to spark a reader to identify with your characters. Anything that allows the reader to see a part of herself in the protagonist will do the trick. The feeling for readers, when they find a similarity to latch onto, is almost like they are in an exclusive club with the character.

There are a lot of other techniques that are similar to identification. You can make the character fascinating by giving him something like an interesting job (treasure hunter or superhero or a wizard detective are just a few examples). Giving characters paradoxes or juxtapositions in their inner and outer presentation can also make them fascinating. You can give them qualities we admire. The character might even also be a great leader or have a quirky sense of humor. The possibilities go on and on.

And there are also two other big techniques, ones that relate closely with identification: generating sympathy and showing a reluctant hero.

Reluctance is something that lots of teachers/theorists recommend, and one of the biggest uses for it is in making a character relatable. But no one ever says why. It's about being able to identify with or relate to the character. If your hero just jumps into peril and complication without a second thought, most of us will think that's a little weird. How many of us actually want to wade into the middle of an ongoing fight or jump off a cliff? But if the protagonist holds back a bit, and finally decides to step into the middle of the trouble when there are no other good options, it's going to make more sense to the reader.

Reluctance gives you the ability to avoid the cliché of having a totally predictable hero type as your protagonist. We've all seen too many stories where the hero is nothing more than a hero, where there is no depth. That's why it's so hard to make a good Superman movie. It goes back to the big rule...Don't Be Boring. Superman may show a bit of reluctance in some films, but he's a good guy through and through, which gets old after a while. Iron Man, on the other hand, is usually far from boring (we will talk about the one exception later).

Sympathy, obviously, can be a broad concept. The most common approach we have is to put the character through hell somehow and let the reader feel bad for them. This can take many forms, from being bullied to being in pain. But, alone, trying to generate sympathy isn't good enough. The reaction of the character to this stress is the really important part. If your protagonist is horrible about whatever bad thing happens to her, acting like some evil reality TV star, we will drop the book like it's a ticking bomb and run away. But, if she can deal with it in a decent, human way, we will be drawn to that character. Readers can generate sympathy for that person and will want to stick around for more.

This urge to stick with a character brings us to the real key about character introductions. It also shows us why identification is more important and long lasting than sympathy.

What we want to do, with any or many of these techniques is give the readers a character that they would want to spend a few hours with. This goes for heroes, villains and supporting characters. We want every one of them to have something that makes us want to hang out with them for the duration of the book, and hopefully longer. Again...why?

This gets pretty fascinating (but I've already outed myself as a complete nerd, so who's surprised I'm into neuroscience stuff). Long story short, there are parts of your brain that don't know what's real and what's imaginary. While your conscious mind knows that you are reading a story, the older parts of your brain experience a good story as if it is really happening. So, when you read about a vivid, interesting character, your limbic system is telling you that you've got an awesome new friend, or sometimes, that you are living that character's life.

So, having a character that we can identify with is a good way to trick a reader's brain into really being hooked. If we learn some of how the character's thoughts work works, we can relate to her struggles, even if they are very different from our own. If a character goes through a hard time and doesn't act like a total jerk about it, we start to become his cheerleader. If she does something that we would do (or at least would like to think we would do) like saving a cat, then we see a bit of ourselves in the character's mirror.

With that groundwork laid for the reader's relationship with our characters, we are almost ready to move onto the next stage, development of the arc. But, there is one more technique that is very helpful to plant in your stories first...the ghost.

Now, when I bring up this tool, I'm not talking about paranormal or horror stories. Instead, a character's ghost is some kind of an inner problem or flaw that holds him back from the change that he must make in order to reach his outer goal.

And this internal struggle is often the source of the change that is at the heart of the character's arc. At its root, the ghost is about setting up some kind of internal roadblock. It is something within the character that prevents her from doing what she needs to do. This can be doubt, fear, uncertainty, a certain moral conviction, or any number of internal blocks. Basically, the ghost is the source of character changing inner conflict, and it is generally something that happened in the character's past.

In the first Hunger Games novel, Katniss (and her whole family), are haunted by the death of her father. By the time the book starts, Katniss has taken on the roles of father and mother in order to take care of her sister Primrose. Her mother was crippled by depression and Katniss has been forced to break the law and put her name in repeatedly for the games, just to keep food on the table. And when Prim is chosen as tribute, Katniss' need to protect her sister comes again to the front and...well, you probably know what happens.

For Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie, his own past greed and inflated ego make up his ghost. When he is captured by the bad guys and told to build a big weapon out of spare parts from his company's weapons, he is forced to confront his legacy and his change begins. Interestingly, his ghost reforms in the persona of his business partner, who won't let go of the greed and power, and Tony is forced further along his arc.

The ghost gives our characters a starting point to grow from. It starts us off in the interior world of what we are writing. It adds layers that make characters more satisfying and memorable. And, once you have the ghost and inner need in place, then work on the character arc can really begin.

Basically, the character arc is all about the interior change that the character goes through. She starts off one way, and ends up different. It's not about the exterior goal, but instead about changing from being one kind of person (influenced by the ghost that keeps her from attaining her outer goal) to being a different kind of person. The character will do things differently and make different decisions by the end of the story.

But, it's important to remember that not every character in a story will change. And not even every protagonist will change. Especially heroes with fascinating jobs, like Indiana Jones. They are designed to amaze us the instant we meet them and we want them to stay that way. But, as we've talked about, it's easy for characters like that to become shallow and clichéd. After a while they become boring.

For an example, let's look at Tony Stark in the Iron Man movies. He went through a big change in Iron Man 1 and it was awesome. He kind of did in 3 and it was still pretty darn good because Shane Black made sure it was all funny and filled with Christmas tinsel. Plus, in 3, Tony has to heal himself from PTSD, so that's a big internal change. But then there was Iron Man 2 where he deals with a mess his father made and also has to invent a new element as a cleaner power source to flush toxins from his system. Seriously, in the film Jarvis has to calculate how many green smoothies Tony will have to drink each day to stay healthy. That's the change he had to make...more kale and inventing some new element. Could they have come up with anything lamer?! I like kale and I think that makes for a lame story.

So, avoid this if you can. Make sure your characters have a little internal struggle and a noticeable change. It makes them more interesting and, again, identifiable.

Now, going through this work on figuring out how your hero is going to change and developing an arc of growth for your characters is hard work, and if you stop to think about it, it can seem pretty artificial. Think about the last time you made a big change in yourself or that you learned an important lesson in life. It doesn't happen that often, does it? But, the fact is, we don't write books or stories to be carbon copies of real life. We want them to be a bit less random and to give us the things we don't normally get. We want our characters to go through a crucible and come out new. Part of this desire springs from our own desire for some form of change and growth in our lives and some of it is from our history. We've been telling stories like that all over the world for as long as we can remember. Joseph Campbell analyzed the similarities in all the old stories and distilled their structural similarities into what he called the monomyth. One of its central aspects is the transformation of the hero.

Remember one key point...this process of growth and change for the character is what Story (another capital letter!) is all about.

But, keep in mind that the change does not have to be for the better. If a character starts out in a good spot in life and is crushed by the end of the story, we call that a tragedy. And, as we said earlier, character change is not an absolute necessity. If the hero makes plot shaping decisions throughout the script, then it's okay if that he doesn't change. Look at Indiana Jones or James Bond. Not a lot of change going on there, but we still love these characters.

The big question is...how do you show this change in the story? It all comes down to those decisions. At the beginning of The Hunger Games, Katniss isn't sure what to do with her future. Fortunately, she decides to save her sister and the story moves forward. Unfortunately, after that, Katniss has a horrible time deciding anything. (Whoa...did I just rank on The Hunger Games?) Okay, to give the book credit, her decision to save her sister buys her a ton of sympathy and goodwill, and she is a reluctant hero, which means we can identify with her and we see that she's not a monster like those District 1 psychos. But, after this point, she is really hesitant about any decisions, and that does get a little old. She is often quite passive (until book 3) and is a bit of a pawn. Other people, be it President Snow or Rue or the Gamemakers are the ones making decisions about the action and Katniss is just pulled along. It's the one flaw in an otherwise wonderful book.

But, we can also look at this differently, through the lens of Katniss' character arc. If we see her inner need as the inability to decide, then we are given a very satisfying reversal when she makes the decision at the end to eat the poisonous nightlock berries with Peeta. It is a decision she could not have made at the beginning of the story. But, is that enough payoff to justify a whole novel filled with inaction? That's for you to decide. Just know the risks if indecision is your character's big flaw.

That said, we have to take a brief look at Hamlet. In the beginning of the play, Shakespeare shows us Hamlet being ordered by his father's ghost (see where the term came from?) to avenge his death by killing Hamlet's uncle. Throughout the first four acts, Hamlet is riddled with indecision over what to do. But, he is neither inactive nor reactive. He confronts his mother, kills the old guy Polonius and two of his best friends. He stages a play (within the play) to determine his uncle's guilt. He tells the woman he loves to go become a nun instead of staying with him. There is no question, even though Hamlet isn't sure about the morality of killing his murderous uncle/stepfather, about whether he drives the Story or not. And in the end, he makes the decision that he couldn't at the beginning.

In contrast to Katniss and Hamlet, Ripley from the Alien series (Only watch the first two films, trust me!) has no problem making decisions. She knows just what needs to be done and isn't afraid to tell everyone. Her problem is different. In the first film, a creepy horror story set in an enclosed space, she's just one of many characters trying to survive. By the second story, which is an action film through and through, she's damaged goods. The trauma of her first encounter with the alien was so overwhelming that she is living her life in fear. She is constantly running and it's only her love for the orphaned girl Newt that can make her change and face her fears in a direct and really satisfying (I dare you not to cheer at Ripley's "Get away from her" line) way. In this huge moment of reversal, a hero who wanted to run away for the whole movie stands up to the most monstrous fear she can imagine.

It's at this point, at the climax, where Character and Story come together and show us how they are really just different aspects of the same thing. Character is revealed by decisions made by a character. Story is the journey from making one kind of decision to a previously unthinkable decision.

Let's look at this in action...

Ripley in Aliens and Tony Stark in Iron Man 3 are both damaged heroes, but they are both clever and interesting. We've seen them survive against horrible odds in earlier stories, so we know how tough they are. In these sequels, we see how post-traumatic stress has left them both nearly crippled and that is the ghost that holds them back. And when the call to adventure comes, we completely identify with and understand their reluctance. Then, though they are pulled in against their will, they both have the position and expertise that makes them vital decision makers in the story. They remain the primary drivers of the story. Our empathy for them continues to grow as they are nearly powerless against deadly opponents. And, in the end, it is their love for others (Newt and Pepper) that drives them to face their fear, change and become whole again. They come through their journey as new people, both taking a new direction with someone they love at their side. (And Katniss does much the same in Mockingjay...but we will save that talk about her and her sister Primrose for a later time.)

On the tragedy side, it's Hamlet's love for his dead father that motivates his final revenge against his Uncle Claudius. Hamlet overcomes his inner limitations and does change in the end, but since the play is a tragedy, he also dies.

All of that is powerful character work and it results in great stories. We are introduced to the characters in a way that makes them mostly likeable, or at least fascinating. We see a problem, or ghost, that gives them something internal they must overcome. Then, when they are forced into the main problem of the story, their reluctance only makes us feel more for them. They drive the story with their decisions and force themselves to grow out of the best possible motivations to become a new person.

All of these things are tools that you can use in all of your stories. You can move beyond simple, surface level characterization to hook your readers. You can have your characters make decisions that show us who they really are and that drive the story. You can give them inner problems that hold them back and must be overcome before they can reach their outer goal. Work on these skills and your readers will love to hang out with your characters.