-
Lesson 7
Reply to post your assignment.
-
3 Replies
-
Penny Wingert, Lead character is very likable but has deep wounds from being abused in childhood and needing to work to prevent being depressed. Second lead has a friendly attitude but needs help to feel secure , is vulnerable and insecure. What I learned from doing this assignment is connection is important to the audience.
-
Cherryl’s Connection with Audience
What I learned while doing this exercise: Even when I think I have developed these characters to death, there is always more to explore. It shouldn’t surprise me: Humans are complex. I also realize, I’ve spent so much time making sure each of these women is distinct. I can also expose a little more about how they are the same.
Characters I will use to INTENTIONALLY create a connection with the audience:
VEDA – Relatability and Empathy. It is hard to stand up to your parents sometimes, even when you’re grown. This is the core of Veda’s transformational journey. She spends so much time helping others in her therapy practice, and she’s never applied any of her own guidance to herself.
PHOEBE – Likeability and Intrigue. She’s the other woman and we want to know more about her. How did she meet and fall in love with Vernon Stout? Why did she “settle” for being a mistress for so long? She’s spunky and knows herself well, and the audience will like that about her. She’s independent, strong-minded, and often right about what she believes.
VONA – Likeability. The baby of the family, literally. She’s the youngest of the Stout sisters, and though she’s grown up away from them, she is a lot like them. She’s a budding photographer and has a gift for seeing “the real picture,” even in the things she’s not photographing. Everyone is shocked that the matriarch Coeur-Leigh has a fondness for her, but it’s hard not to love her. She’s spunky like her mother in some ways, mostly innocent, and curious in ways that make everyone in the house transform.
-
Madeleine’s Connection with Audience
What I learned doing this assignment is this: I can make my characters connect with the audience by making them relatable, intriguing, able to create empathy, and making them likable.
The characters with whom I am going to INTENTIONALLY create a connection with the audience are Anna-Maude and Tony.
Anna-Maude
A. Relatability – I will show her to be relatable by introducing her during Monsoon Season when she has to deal with a rattlesnake in her path. She quickly dispatches the snake, cleans up the mess she’s made, and warns a bystander, Tony, to be on the lookout for another. “Where there’s one there’ll likely be another, she says.
The snake is a metaphor for seemingly unsurmountable obstacles we all face. The fact that she confronts her snake head on is something we all want to do.
B. Intrigue – She is intriguing because she stands her ground with the snake then takes action. Later, we see her at work in the university museum cataloguing room receiving a human skull from Sheriff Sergeant Mike. He wants her to reconstruct the skull’s face, so he might be recognizable and then identifiable. The question is what kind of person takes on snakes and reconstructs human faces. Later, we see her help Tony lift his car’s wheel out of a pothole. Is there anything she can’t do?
C. Empathy – When she discovers her Uncle Jack’s dead body in her farm’s horse corral, she is devastated. We can feel her grief unfolding as she goes through the agony of watching sheriff deputies conduct a crime scene investigation. All of us have lost someone. Most of us have been a victim of crime.
D. Likability – She is likeable because she is a friend of law enforcement and helps them identify the dead by reconstructing their faces. Her friend Stella likes her. So does her dog, Bella, who goes where she goes, even into the cataloguing room at the university museum.
Tony
A. Relatability – We meet him as a bicyclist who is stopping at a convenience store for coffee and a burrito. Many of us are trying to stay fit.
We see the backs of his legs cratered with scars from an IED while he was an Army soldier in Afghanistan. All of us have scars, visible or invisible.
Later, we find out that he has PTSD and just wants to rest but is hindered because his father wants him to investigate his missing sister’s cold case. All of us find ourselves forced into doing something for family even though we can hardly take care of our own business.
B. Intrigue – On the surface, Tony is recuperating from a war injury and PTSD. Under the surface, he has returned to the valley where his sister went missing without a trace at 13 years old and where his mother drowned. Why would he want to recuperate where he has such terrible memories? Will he find out what happened to his sister? Does he have another motive for returning?
C. Empathy – When we see Tony’s visible scars, we feel sorry for him. When we see him intentionally struck by a truck and thrown into an irrigation ditch, we feel frightened for him. When we realize that he likes Anna-Maude, we want him to succeed with her.
D. Likability – He is patient with Delinda, who has a crush on him, even though he isn’t into her. He feeds feral dogs. He saves Anna-Maude from a house fire. We can tell he’s a good guy.
Log in to reply.