[00:00:00] Zena Dell Lowe: why do we like characters?
[00:00:02] is it about them that we like? How are they different than real people? it's one of the most important lectures you'll watch because it's the foundation of everything that we're talking about.
[00:00:11] Hello and welcome to the Storytellers Mission with Zena Del Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story.
[00:00:23] So, what I want to talk about today,is simply that back in the day, the idea was your character had to be likable.
[00:00:31] But the problem is is it actually didn't account for certain types of characters. What really is the key is not so much likability, although I think primarily we do want characters that are likable, but really what we want is the audience to connect to that character in some way. And sometimes we connect to characters that aren't likable.
[00:00:54] So likability isn't quite the right word or it's an incomplete word. Just because they're your favorites doesn't necessarily mean that they are likable characters. They're just your favorites.
[00:01:07] For example, Hannibal Lecter is not likable in the sense of how we think of Hannibal Lecter. Right. You know, he's not the guy you want to go and actually have a beer with. He's gonna eat your brains. but he is a wonderful, wonderful villain. And so, yeah, he's a favorite.
[00:01:28] So what does that mean? Well, it means then that there are more categories to this. The real thing that we're going for is making sure that our audience is sucked into their emotional journey. They have to, for some reason, feel emotionally connected. that's what we're building. that's the bottom line.
[00:01:50] Do they care enough to emotionally invest in your story? Whether it's a screenplay or whether it's a book. And by the way, the older I get, The more I'm willing to stop watching a movie or stop watching a series or stop reading a book if I'm like, I don't like this or I don't like this character. I don't give a crap life is too short.
[00:02:14] I'm running out of time. I don't have time to waste on bad characters. And I think a lot of people too, because the market is so saturated, a lot more people are just willing to stop. Back in the day, there was. Such limited options, they'd kind of hang it out. You know, they'd kinda hang in there, but today
[00:02:30] you have to make sure that the audience connects in some way. So that leads us to three different ways that that can happen. One is likability, which is simply where we like the character. What sorts of qualities would make a character likable?
[00:02:49] For example, a character with a sense of humor is always likable. We like somebody who can laugh, especially in the midst of crises. someone that. can make us chuckle. Or even if they don't make us chuckle somebody who has a sense of humor. So Tommy Lee Jones in the fugitive and he's, making some jokes with this team and we like him.
[00:03:11] We like Tommy Jones. He's really, really likeable. We like somebody who's really good at their job. if you have a character, a main character, who's really good at something, one thing, it doesn't matter if they're an absolute jerk to everybody else if they're really good at one thing We like that.
[00:03:30] So for example, dr. Strange. He was a complete jerk He was the best of the best in that particular field. And so we liked him Although he's a little, he's on the verge here, and I'll get to the other categories in a second. But nevertheless,you'll be hearing about the types of qualities that make characters likable, and you'll be experimenting with those.
[00:03:59] It's just about analyzing what are your favorite types of characters and seeing if you could identify the traits, the types of traits that make characters likable.
[00:04:09] And I think Paul, you had some good ones there.you zeroed in on a couple of things that are really like highbrow things that we do like about characters. And I think one of them was that they're good at their job. Is that true? What did you say?
[00:04:27] Well, I chose doc holiday, Gandalf, Peter Parker, Spider Man. He's funny. He of humor, sense of humor. He's loyal. He's got qualities that make him, we like him, but really why we liked Doc Holliday was that wry sense of humor. I mean, that's what juice in. So when you know, he's being told that he's going to die and, and, you know, he should give up drinking and sex and all that.
[00:04:54] And the, and the gal is like, don't I take care of you, doc? Don't I do this? And he says, yeah. Either that or you're the antichrist. And it's hilarious, right? We really like him or I'm your huckleberry. You know, he's just got this epic sense of humor that we just love. So those are the types of things that make, but he's also really good at something.
[00:05:21] He's the best. He's the only guy that could take on the bad guy at the end. Right. He's good at his job. He's good at his job. And he's got these other, like he absolutely loves his buddy Wyatt Earp. he's devoted to him. He won't sell him out. He won't betray him. He'll stand beside him even when he is barely able to stand and he's white as a sheet, he will do what has to be done.
[00:05:48] And even at the end of the film, he says, Wyatt you ever love me? You will go and you will live. You will leave here right now and you will go live, he doesn't want him to sit in this hospital room and watch him die, right? So it's a powerful scene. Oh gosh. It's wonderful. Right. And everybody loved him, loved him.
[00:06:13] It's probably one of the best roles. that Val Kilmer has ever had. And he's a great actor and he really brought that to the table. So again, you'll keep learning what makes the character likable, but keep analyzing it yourself. When you watch. A tv series or a movie or whatever be thinking to yourself.
[00:06:36] You're a screenwriter now. So you've got to always be there's one part of you that's enjoying it and then there's got to be the other part of you that's analyzing Why am I enjoying it? It's just the way it is and What I find is that, typically speaking, I'm drawn, and this partly is because of the Christian worldview thing, but typically speaking, part of what makes me drawn to certain characters is because they have some noble characteristics.
[00:07:06] Some God given ones. Now that doesn't mean they're perfect. I'm not saying that at all. But loyalty, I mean, let's you know Doc Holliday is actually a killer. I mean, you know, he's a bad guy in a lot of ways. He's a gambler, he's a not necessarily the noblest character and yet he does possess.
[00:07:25] Yeah. Yeah, exactly.So he's not perfect, but he possesses some noble characteristics. And I would argue, and I will continue arguing for the rest of the semester, that's one of the things we have to be looking at are these noble characteristics.
[00:07:42] These noble traits that we have to somehow incorporate them even in broken characters, there needs to be something noble about them or else they're not likable. Characters that are primarily selfish are not likable. So just keep that in mind. But again, For our purposes, when we talk about likability, we're talking about that special something that a character has that makes an audience attracted to them and want to invest in their emotional journey. But they don't always have to be likable. Another option is that they might be sympathetic and sympathetic is different than likable.
[00:08:30] See, sympathetic means Okay, this is a hateful person, but I'll allow it because I care about them anyway. There's something broken about them. There's something sad about them. There's something about them that sort of hurts my heart. And so I'm still invested even though I don't like them very much. And I'll give you an example.
[00:08:51] If you haven't seen the film, I recommend it. It's called about Schmidt and it's a wonderful film. With Jack Nicholson, where he plays Schmidt, Warren Schmidt, and Warren is not a likable character. He is a selfish SOB. He's a pathetic SOB. He's an arrogant SOB. But sympathetic, and as the story unfolds, see, part of what has to happen for Warren over the course of the telling, part of his arc, is that he has to become A decent person.
[00:09:29] He has to become a decent person. He has to be humbled. He has to recognize his failures. He has to stop pretending and you know, having all this pretense and, puffing it out his chest when really he's nothing and he's got to see that. And that actually is what makes him likable. is when he's finally humbled.
[00:09:50] So he has to become a decent person. But we're still invested in the story, even though he's a selfish SOB, because We can kind of relate to him on a different level. We're still invested in his journey. Another character that's sort of like that would be Jack Nicholson in as good as it gets. And so we're also, he's not likable.
[00:10:17] I mean, we like him in the sense that we laugh because he is so outrageously politically incorrect. he's racist, sexist homophobic. He Puts a dog down a garbage chute in the very first scene that we meet him in. I mean, that's just horrible. He's a dog hater, if you will. So, I mean, everything about him is so not likable and yet, Right away, we see that he has OCD and he's going flip, flip, flip, flip, flip and the locks and the lights and we're all of a sudden we're like, Oh, he's sick.
[00:10:59] And now we have sympathy and we can be invested. So what's the key? It's always about, can we then invest? Are we willing to invest in their emotional journey. Do we care long enough to stick around to see where they end up? And sometimes what you'll find is that we do care enough and then the writer doesn't do enough with it.
[00:11:24] And we get to the end and now we're angry. Because the character hasn't changed enough to justify the journey that we were willing to go on because we wanted and expected them to experience some sort of change,
[00:11:37] For our purposes though, we're just talking about the different avenues that we might be able to use to make a character attractive enough to the audience that they're going to commit to the emotional journey and get sucked into the story. So, we've talked about likability. Sympathetic. And the last one is intriguing.
[00:11:59] So sometimes you have a character that's not likable, but they're also not sympathetic, but by God, they are intriguing. We are interested, there's something about them that is really, really intriguing. So the one that comes to mind for me, whenever I think about this is the talented Mr. Ripley. So Matt Damon plays Ripley and he basically is a horrible human being.
[00:12:29] He's not sympathetic. He becomes a serial killer over the course of the telling. And he has a talent for taking people's identities of people that are above his station. and then he doesn't want to get caught. And so it just, it spirals, it gets out of control. It's like this web where then once somebody catches onto a secret, he has to kill them, but he has to keep getting away with it.
[00:12:50] And, you know, at the end of the story, he does get away with it. And we're intrigued and that's why we stay it's but it's like watching a trainwreck. It's awful to watch. We don't love him by any means. We're not even cheering for him. We just can't stop watching. He's so intriguing. It's like watching a trainwreck.
[00:13:12] And it's horrifying in many cases, those types of characters we're even repulsed at ourselves because we're fascinated. We need to know what happens, but it's awful. I think of Walter white from breaking bad. This is a great example of that.
[00:13:31] Great example. And who was likable? and sympathetic. Jesse was Jesse. That's right. So he's the one you're emotionally like you, you really care about, but you can't stop watching Walter White. He is so intriguing. but you know, at some point with characters like that, you're not even cheering for them to win.
[00:13:54] Because you can't, you know, it's like you just have to watch and see what happens. You're just fascinated, but you're not actually cheering for him to win unless it's to help Jesse at the end. But for himself, you're not cheering for him. You're just, you just can't look away. So that's a great example.
[00:14:19] Walter White. Okay, so these are the types of considerations then that you sometimes have to go back to. Because each one of these characters requires a different skill set to implement in the story. In other words, if I have a character that I know is not likable and I know is not sympathetic, then I don't want to make the mistake of trying to
[00:14:49] spend too much time trying to get the audience to feel sorry for that character. Rather, I need to understand what I have on my hands, and make sure that I sustain that over the course of the telling. Make sure that I'm able to continue to captivate the audience because of who this character is at their core.
[00:15:10] We can often get confused as we go. And so, you know, it's just a way to kind of keep on track. But it also opens up our possibilities. See, one of the things that happens in Christendom, especially, is that we, we tend to think that we can only have one type of character. And that's not true. Or we can only have one type of ending, a happy ending.
[00:15:30] But that's not true. See, a lot of times when you have a An intriguing character. You don't have a happy ending, but you have a biblically correct one. Or you're raising questions about it. Like sometimes. So if you've ever seen a film called a simple plan, okay. So a simple plan is about these people that find a bunch of money in a plane that goes down, it's clearly drug deal money, and they take the money
[00:16:01] and then it slowly but surely, it just ruins everything.
[00:16:04] you know, now they're like killing each other. Plus they're being chased by, the bad guys whose money it is. And by the end, their lives are destroyed. Spoiler alert. But it was intriguing and it explored an avenue of humanity. We would all be tempted to take that money.
[00:16:22] But why it supports a biblical Christian worldview is it shows the consequences of greed. So it's still a biblical Christian worldview, even though there's not a happy ending. You don't have to have a happy ending. You don't even have to have a redeemed ending. What you have to have is an ending that is true to the choices that the characters make that reflects a true biblical Christian worldview that's in accordance with those true consequences.
[00:16:49] So, for example, We would never want to glorify that choice, and let them get away with it, and then there's no consequences. That would be a glorification of that. Instead, even if one character gets to keep the money, they've lost everything. So What good is all this money if a man loses his soul? You know, what good is a man who gains the world but loses his soul?
[00:17:15] we can still have a biblical Christian worldview in that sort of story. So it opens up some options for us. And it also helps us to know what we have to accomplish to make that character work. And again, the acid test is always, did your audience stay committed? Stay in it, were they sucked in to the story.
[00:17:42] Thank you for listening to the Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better
[00:17:52] through story.
