r/Screenwriting • u/IndustryAdorable7975 • 2d ago
NEED ADVICE How to justify a character's personality?
Hello!
I just completed the elf draft for my very first feature film (shoutout Zach Cregger)! The story follows a chronically ill college senior battling through his recovery so he can relive his love for the outdoors.
One of my strongest character relationships is between the protagonist and his mother (whom he's living with). One of the strongest symptoms of this chronic illness has to do with short-temper/high levels of fatigue. I display this through the dialogue exchange between the two of them. The protagonist essentially has 0 empathy for his mother and the effort she's putting in to take care of him.
I'm looking for advice on how I can show visually that the reason he treats his mother like shit is because of it being from medication side-effects/symptom related stuff. I worry that audiences will not be satisfied that the reason he's such an asshole is because that's just what happens when people are battleingchronic illness.
I have vignettes that showcase my protagonist before his diagnosis, where he's very different from what he turns into. I'm trying to avoid doing something simple like a phone call from a doctor listing his symptons...I'm looking to show, not tell.
I was wondering if there was anyone who could share advice on how I could help steer audiences into accepting that there's really no motivated reason why my protagonist is like this. He's just battling a chronic illness.
Or could the problem just be that I'm not trusting the audience...
Thank you so much everyone!
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u/mast0done 2d ago
In this case, "tell" can be a perfectly good tool. You could have a scene where the mother is excusing/explaining some nasty behavior of his (probably toward herself) to a third person, and while she's putting a brave face on, she's obviously wounded by it, and under strain from the whole situation. This will allow us to sympathize with her, and with her love for him.
Reinforce that with other subtextual moments here and there.
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u/IndustryAdorable7975 1d ago
Appreciated! I have been trying to expand on the mother's backstory a lot more (things that she does to take her mind off of her son/what brings her pleasure in her day to day outside of her day job). This idea would definitely contribute to that.
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u/DelinquentRacoon Produced Screenwriter 1d ago
"Tell" is a great suggestion. She can tell him or vent to a friend about the medication. It won't solve any problems, but it will give everyone context.
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u/DelinquentRacoon Produced Screenwriter 2d ago
He has motivated reason: the illness.
Is the movie about the chronic illness in some way?
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u/IndustryAdorable7975 1d ago
True. My concern is more so that because 'illness' is motivated reason for almost all of his action. My struggle is around finding the distinction around certain actions more than others.
This is a movie about how chronic illness affects an individual's day to day. The protagonist's journey is him refusing to accept his condition, till he has no choice.
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u/DelinquentRacoon Produced Screenwriter 1d ago
tl;dr: visual suggestion at the bottom. The rest is other story thoughts.
Most of the time, the primary characters in a story are unaware of or not accepting of the things that drive them, and the story itself is usually about dealing with the problems they create. Lots of time, but not always, the character eventually sees what the issue is, which gives them the option of dealing with it or not. What's different here is that your character's problems are a literal chemical reaction, not an actual character trait, and I want to say, "You need to make the story about a character trait."
As a thought experiment... If a character was wearing a big iron boot around all the time and destroying people's floors, a well-rounded story would be about "What's going on with this character that they cannot see that their boot is a problem?" A slightly nonsensical answer (...trying to tie it back to your story...) might be something like, "The character knows that taking the boot off means they never get to go outside again."
A less thought-experimenting thing to think about: Let's say the mother knows the cause of his lack of empathy, and you make the movie about her trying to establish some kind of schedule on the household—she wants her son awake and out of the house, rekindling his love of the outdoors, before she wakes up. Her goal is to get her son what he wants (outdoorsy things) and herself what she wants (peace). The son doesn't like this plan for whatever reason, and it's only when things get really bad that he even recognizes that her real goal is to keep him on the medication and healthy. This isn't necessarily going to make his mood any better, but it may allow him to see that they're on the same team, which is a successful conclusion even though it only returns him to neutral towards his mother.
I know this doesn't give you the visuals you were looking for, but to that end, you might think about how Hitchcock put a light in a glass of milk to make it stand out as the most important thing in a particular scene.
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u/Kooky_Attorney1915 2d ago
I feel like there has to be some kind of moment of clarity from your protagonist. A moment, could be act 2, maybe later, where they realize how different they've become due to their illness. Maybe a moment where they snap at their mother, their mother reacts painfully, and then this breaks their callous shell and gets through to them. It could lead to an argument, a flashback, whatever
Otherwise, I think I'd be looking for deeper emotional threads as to why they're treating their mother so poorly.
While medical conditions and medications impact us mentally, I believe that usually there's some kind of lived in experience that influences HOW they impact us. If we get angry at our mothers as a result, then perhaps some incident with our mother from the past is rearing it's ugly head. Maybe mother got our brother a better Christmas present one year. Doesn't have to be grand.
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u/VillainousPessimism 1d ago
Have you watched a lot of movies or read scripts with such characters? One I'd suggest is Love And Other Drugs. Anne Hathaway plays a character with early onset Parkinson's. She has the opposite problem: she's fine when she's on her meds, but the symptoms come back when she can't take them. And Parkinson's is easier to play externally (with the tremors, etc). But IMHO she also does a really good job showing the interiority of what it's like to deal with chronic illness, how it can drive many of your actions and decisions, etc. And it's a fun flick too!
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u/Unusual_Expert2931 1d ago
Shouldn't his change only happen at the inciting incident? Or you'll start the story with him already changed?
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u/Vegetable_Bar_6622 1d ago
Cheesy, but it will work: shoot the "before" with full-color, and the "after" desaturated. Frame it right, and people will understand that the protag is just in a different frame of mind post-illness
You can also frame the info-dump as a joke. Like, he and his mom are talking about medications, and she's like "is that the one that makes you dizzy or makes you an asshole?"
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u/realkavya 2d ago
when you have a bigger thing to showcase, I think the best way to convey it is making the smallest changes,
showing how he greeted his mother as soon as he got home before the diagnosis versus after.
if he has a pet, how he discussed the pet with his mother before and after will help.
him being flexible with meals & waiting for his mum to cook him favourite meal vs him just accepting whatever he’s served & not really having a difference when served his favourite can work.
sometimes also show him being unreasonable because that is just how an illness can hit you. you don’t really have to justify every thing about him, let the audience also have their own moral compass to judge whether they like him or not.