i’ve been thinking of writing a story on a teen kid who slowly turns into a huge asshole around his friends and becomes a really bad boyfriend but he doesn’t realize who he’s become up until everyone has finally left him, and it does leave him so much disgust and filth to see what he turned into, and he really wants to make a change in that but what am i able to put in order for people to actually look forward to this character who had been so awful this whole time?? i wanna add family issues and stuff but that probably wont do much, i can probably give more details once i get a response. thank you !
#how can i make an absolutely flawed character relatable or be empathized with?
uncut pasture
candid ledge
explain the things from his perspective
is he being an asshole about someone -because he is insecure about losing the people he loves?
dare to really step into his perspective
before making it all crumble down around him
uncut pasture
his asshole tendencies come in insulty jokes and when he does it, he pulls no punches but he thought people would still see him as an approachable friend at the end of the day because thats what he was first known as
he got too comfortable with it basically
and as for backstory, he felt pretty left out from all the things his friends kept doing and that basically made him realize he wasn’t a friend group person, so he decided to put them all in the background and only talked to them when he was bored and stuff
he didnt think they were that valuable at that point so he didnt feel it would be such a big deal if he throws a few punches to them yk
but he didnt realize how much value they actually still hold to him until after he lost them because technically, they were still friends
sorry if it sounds messy rn TT
i just dont know if the whole feeling left out in the past thing can be justifiable for this guy
verbal hull
I know it may sound like a broken record, but you might find some clues in the “hero’s journey” story mechanism. I believe that every villain is in their head the hero of their own story… the point is that, if the revelation, transformation, and atonement parts… if you can flip it from there, compared to before it, then “a villain can still be a hero”.
verbal hull
he didnt think they were that valuable at that point so he didnt feel it would b...
What’s interesting right now, if you still only described the “how” and “what” of his “assholeness”, but what is important is for you, as the crafter of the story, to discover the “why”… and that’s what I think Kip is asking.
The CHARACTER may not be aware of the whys, but YOU need to… they may not know/understand, but in order for the “revelation” to work, internally, YOU need to make those decisions, even if it doesn’t show in dialogue or on the page.
uncut pasture
I know it may sound like a broken record, but you might find some clues in the “...
wait wdym by flipping it?
verbal hull
You want to be playing with the audience’s expectations, to make a successful villain. So, for example (just an example, you do you), if you start at the start, take everything from there to “death and rebirth” and make every mechanism/event the negative/opposite version of it. So say, Call To Adventure becomes Believe his own greatness, Meeting a Mentor becomes Destroy/Embarrass his best friend/allies etc etc… then at “death and reborn” make him do the ultimate prank (in his mind) that he has been creating on his “friends” the entire time, and cause him a “social death” so he can “look himself in the mirror” and have a “spiritual rebirth”. The rest can be as the normal story beats, going positive. The “FLIP” here is that the protagonist was taking the villain’s journey for the first half, and the hero’s journey the second half. Feel free to extend the villains journey longer beyond Death and Rebirth to further convince the audience that the character is on the villain’s path… it’s all up to you.
Just an example… any time you are at a story beat, you set up expectations in your audience. If you mess with them, you are setting up different expectations. To flip an expectation is to either reward the expectation in ways that the audience didn’t expect, or deny them the satisfaction so they kinda feel broken down, so you can rebuild a new expectation.
As with any “rules” or “structure”, they are made to be broken, but they can only be effectively broken if you already know what the original was meant to do.
Hero’s Journey, Three Act Structure etc etc, can (and should) all be messed with, so they become tailored to the story you’re trying to tell, as opposed to your story being limited/locked by them… I donno if that makes sense.
verbal hull
wait wdym by flipping it?
Donno if that makes sense, and again, you may not necessarily agree or use that structure, but knowing the more traditional story structures can, I think, still help holding up a mirror to what you were putting together, and hopefully make you see things you didn’t see (or didn’t cover) in your story.
uncut pasture
no it did you’re actually helping a lot
i appreciate it !! thank you
i didn’t actually know about the hero’s journey structure
verbal hull
i didn’t actually know about the hero’s journey structure
George Lucas basically wrote A New Hope based on it… so are a million other films (perhaps more subtlety), so you already know it even if you didn’t know it broken down like that on paper, as long as you have watched movies. It’s still just a tool though, to help you identify what you need to get to where you want to be, story-wise.
uncut pasture
that’s true
now I’m wondering if spending the first half of the film establishing the character is gonna be something the audience could go through without snoring
since the main goal of the film (getting motivated to change) technically doesn’t show up until at the midpoint 🤔
but then again, drive my car took 40 minutes to get to the point so hm
verbal hull
but then again, drive my car took 40 minutes to get to the point so hm
It all depend on what illusion do you want to create… a lot of the villain characters or anti-heroes, are still “liked” despite being really evil… because of how badass they are, for instance…
wheat kayak
i’ve been thinking of writing a story on a teen kid who slowly turns into a huge...
(I’m not a writer by any means so take this with a grain of salt)
Being flawed does not equal being bad. Your main character can still have a good heart and good intentions, but his actions could just say otherwise.
Here’s a few suggestions; maybe open with an “innocent” him, like a younger version of him, or even him as a child. Maybe just REALLY put it in his perspective by having him narrate and in the opening, have him establish who his friends and family are, how they’re good and close to him, etc etc
that’s my input as a non writer LOL
verbal hull
(I’m not a writer by any means so take this with a grain of salt)
Being flawed d...
Could, but I probably wouldn’t, because it hints at him being good, and are harder to pull toward “bad”… but anything is possible if you understand that it’s ALL an illusion, a magic trick you’re making for the audience. That said, you’re right, flaws doesn’t mean bad, some of the best characters on screen are flawed but good… or even like say Forrest Gump, flawed to a fault, yet incredibly good. Everyone has flaws, and a good character should be flawed… it all depend on how obvious the “flaw” is.
uncut pasture
I’m trying to get this character to be placed in a way where everyone around him doesn’t trust him anymore and the only people that could actually trust him are the audience
oh yeah im not sure if i made it clear but this character im talking about is supposed to be the main character
verbal hull
Yup I think I got it, just slowly dig at it, problem of writing is that you won't know unless you write it
rain fiber
I don't know what everyone else has said, but I love movies about awful people. I think the trick is to make them what I call "quietly awful," or the awfulness of them is something that brews under the surface but they are otherwise normal. Making them seem normal first and then introducing what's bad about their behavior is the best way IMO to have the audience sympathize with them. He has regular problems a teenager would have, show it from his perspective. Giving him a bad home life or something is cheap to me. Honestly, I think it's best to give him normal goals and aspirations that he tries to achieve throughout the story, that way the audience is along for the ride. He's in high school, maybe he's an artist of some kind and he wants to be famous for it. Maybe there's an upcoming competition or what have you that he spends part of the story trying to make something for. Think about Uncut Gems, that's definitely not a story about a "normal person," but just to illustrate my point about "being along for the ride." He has people that he owes money to, normal things go wrong for him like someone not giving him something back on time, the auction house screwing him over, the audience naturally wants to see the goal of the character in the story be met if it's something that they are passionate about. His issues at home are ones of his own making, but ones that people understand like his daughter not wanting to talk to him or his wife divorcing him. From an omniscient point of view we understand that he's an awful individual, but from a story perspective the audience naturally wants to see him succeed at his goals if large portions of the story are dedicated to him moving towards the goals, regardless of whether or not he's a likeable/good person.
uncut pasture
i didn’t expect to get so much help in this server TT
thanks a lot guys
i actually saw uncut gems and it breaks me to say i actually didn’t understand anything so i’m gonna rewatch it like rn
i liked good time tho
i think i saw it like a year ago
referring to uncut
rain fiber
see good time has a way worse person as the main character, but you're excited and invested because he has a main goal of getting his brother out of something bad (bonus that it's his fault he's in police trouble in the first place). A teenager might have more normal goals, so just make it something normal, people will naturally empathize from there.
if you end up making this movie lmk, i love movies about bad people
uncut pasture
ok i just had an idea i wanna know all your thoughts on it: what if my character’s trying to stray away from the insensitive, immature persona he was known for in middle school through making a story about it but the its feedback got so good around his school that his ego got the best of him and it slowly put him back on that persona
and it makes him realize that he’s never actually learned from his mistakes
could that work
i wonder
uncut pasture
since the main goal of the film (getting motivated to change) technically doesn’...
i just realized that i think with the synopsis i just made, i was able to solve this issue^^
uncut pasture
Ok i just saw uncut gems
I can say for sure that it has given me some inspiration but my direction for my character definitely isnt similar to Howard’s
verbal hull
used the dan harmon circle
All good, they are just tools anyways, one or another are not necessarily better or worse for you, as long as they make sense for you.
uncut pasture
All good, they are just tools anyways, one or another are not necessarily better...
using it made me realize my project is better off as a tv show
verbal hull
using it made me realize my project is better off as a tv show
Well, a story sometimes has a natural length, not always, but sometimes… and forcing it to be longer and shorter than it’s natural length, that it wants to be, is not always good. You have to almost treat your story as a person, and respect what “it wants to grow up to be”… I donno if that makes any sense lol
uncut pasture
Well, a story sometimes has a natural length, not always, but sometimes… and for...
i can send you the outline if you wanna see what i ended up with, theres a lot of information i ended up adding that i feel rlly couldnt be packaged in under 2 hours
verbal hull
Naw it’s ok, I prefer to not be overly involved on other people’s creative process, because I don’t want to bring my own colors into it too much, you know?