WEEK 1 DAY 5: Insights – Character Wound – GOOD WILL HUNTING

[Sherry Miller]

This scene is powerful…so revealing of character vulnerabilites. Of course….because both their pasts have been cracked open to experience pain all over again. Skylar’s wound is losing a loving Father and his support – loss. Will is more complicated. Not only did he suffer abandonment but cruelty. He knows “aloneness” too well. What provokes revealing their wounds?They’re in bed with each other, being intimate. Will is shirtless and wearing a cross (protection?). Both are vulnerable, starting to trust each other. What sets Will off is Skylar inviting him to go to California with her. He finds excuses. She says she just knows it’s right. She “feels it.” He’s scared of feelings. All hell breaks loose when she asks,”What are you afraid of?” Both relive their pasts and the wounds as if new. Will falls into survival mode, gets angry, and reveals he was beat up as a kid, cigarettes put out on his skin. Skylar’s story is more loving yet she feels the loss of her Father’s death. What’s bizarre is when he says he has a job he can’t leave. A janitor’s job when he’s a math whiz. He can certainly find a new job. But being a janitor is a lonely job that protects his feelings, gives him security. Each character threatens the other’s wounds by angry words, and ultimately expressing Love. Skylar challenges him to say he doesn’t love her. Will hesitates, says, “I don’t love you” and walks out. Wounding her once again with loss. For Will, his new wound is a perceived one. She can’t possibly love him. She’ll only hurt him in the future. She’ll only “take it back.” Rejection he can’t bear to feel again. Powerful. The breakthrough, the character reveal: Skylar admitting love for him by demanding he say it to her. And then she hears, “I don’t love you.” She cries and we know she’ll return to California without him. For Will, knowing someone may really love him, just may encourage him to get the help he needs. With psychiatric help, he may just follow her. I will post a scene from my book after a rewrite. I need to consider a breakthrough. And let my character experience her wound of abandonment anew.

[Rebecca Sukle]

Rebecca’s Character Wound Insights

Will learned to cope with the wounds from his childhood abuse and abandonment by creating a world where he feels comfortable. To bury his wounds he walls off his emotions. Never experienced love from anyone growing up, he fears vulnerability if he allows himself that emotion. Fight, flight, or freeze (PTSD) shows the damage done to him as a child. He refuses to give up the control he has over his life by loving and following Skylar to California only to be abandoned again.

In my script I show the wounds of an educated woman in a patriarchal society who’s only existence is helping her husband to succeed. When he decides to abandon their comfortable life to gamble on literary fame, she must battle her panic to create a survival plan for her and the children.