WIM+AI – Module 3 – Lesson 5: Audience Connection to Characters

[Frank Gaide]

FRANK’S LIKABILITY, RELATABILITY, AND EMPATHY

You want to become a master at getting the audience connected to your lead characters. The more you are, the better the journey will be for those watching your movie.
Have fun with this! It is a master skill.

I SEE MYSELF WRITING two great, marketable screenplays every year going forward and teaming up with a manager/friend. Short term, I imagine a very difficult but valuable and rewarding six months going balls to the wall in this class.

COMPLETING THIS ASSIGNMENT, I continue embracing the progression of lessons, understanding how each tool is built on the last. I discovered it necessary to create separate folders for each character: organizing only needed character elements and eliminating everything else from my brainstorming sessions with AI. I plan to create future files for structure and scenes. Finally I learned how intrigue creates more depth and motivation for all characters.

PROTAGONIST: Bride – Lily

LIKABILITY: Lily is a happy bride2be. She volunteers at needy shelters on Cape Cod. A healthy local environmentalist who sits in trees to protest their removal while caring for birds in nests, even lost cats.

RELATABILITY: She’s happy and in love. Anxious yet thrilled about her dream wedding. She’s just another child of a broken marriage. Concerned over money, wedding costs, and her future in general.

EMPATHY: She falls from a tree while protesting and the injury affects her wedding plans. It causes a cash setback to purchase everything needed for her green wedding. Not to mention the added stress of her bitterly divorced parents meeting for the first time in years: and the unknown feeling to see her dad after his 25-year absence: it’s nerve racking.

INTRIGUE: Is there a hidden agenda behind her push for a green wedding? Why go through all the trouble? Is it a match to light a fire between her warring parents? And why are Lily and Coop, her groom, encouraging the pranks.

ANTAGONIST 1: Bitterly divorced mom – Izzy (Isabel)

LIKABILITY: Izzy is a great listener filled with encouraging advice for all of her hair clients: who doesn’t like a psychiatrist who they can share all their problems with. Like any good mother, she only wants what’s best for Lily, even if lily doesn’t know it yet!

RELATABILITY: She represents those who were ever rejected/left holding the bag and struggled to get their lives back on track: she built a successful business post-divorce. Now feels the urge to exact a little revenge on Frankie, her ex.
EMPATHY: She suspects that someone she loves – Lily (her daughter) – might hate your guts: feeling that rejection hurts when you give everything of yourself.

INTRIGUE: Why is Izzy so determined to humiliate and punish Frankie (her ex) by exchanging dangerous pranks with him? And what damage will the escalating pranks create.

ANTAGONIST 2: Bitterly divorced dad – Frankie

LIKABILITY: Frankie is extremely polite to anyone: even when he robs a bank. And he’s sure to share some of the loot with the needy. He gives all his cash to Lily, so she pays for her wedding needs; selfless. Honest attempts to help Lily build eco wedding decorations, even if he fails clumsily.

RELATABILITY: The nervous uncertainty that comes when he reunites with a long-lost love, Lily, through his own making: guilt-ridden. His hidden fear of violence dealing with Izzy (his ex-wife) and Nico (his ex-father-in-law) who he secretly blames for their divorce.

EMPATHY: He was thrown out of the family: ostracized and shamed in front of family and friends.

INTRIGUE: He lies about his present life except for the guilt and love he feels for Lily: but to what end? And why is he so willing to exchange dangerous pranks with Izzy? Does he plan to commit suicide by divorce? And what damage will the escalating pranks create.

[Demethress Davis]

Deme’s Likability/Relatability/Empathy

MY VISION: I am a EGOT writer who is very successful and revered by the industry for writing amazing stories that will live on in history.

What I learned from doing this assignment is each time I do these lessons I see how my characters are beginning to take shape and I feel that by the end of this they will have so much depth, subtext and intrigue that everyone will be clamoring to play this role

PROTAGONIST:
* Likability: Henry receives a surprise promotion at his job and is given a party. He buys his son one of his favorite toys for his birthday and takes his wife and son out for a celebratory dinner. We see that Henry is revered at work, clearly he is liked and appreciated.
* Relatability: While driving to the restaurant, Henry gets into an accident. We have been in cosituations: hurt on the job; falling down the stairs, being hit by a car, falling off a bike or just stepping off the curb the wrong way and breaking your ankle.
* Empathy: Henry’s wife dies and his son is in a coma. We feel for Henry as we have family, friends or may know someone who has died tragically.
* Intrigue: Henry struggles with his past, fighting the guilt of causing his wife’s death. He hides inside the bottle and drugs to find false strength.

ANTAGONIST:
* Likability: Lillian is known as “The Good Samaritan” in the town. She takes in lots of homeless, gives them jobs, lodging and food. She is liked by everyone.
* Relatability: Lillian feels the need to be in control of her life and what happens around her. She hates making mistakes.
* Empathy: Lillian’s mother died giving birth to her and she never has had that mother-daughter bond she sees others have.
* Intrigue: Lillian conceals her true ID of being the head of a White supremacist klan in the town and unbeknownst to her is her Black heritage. Her sole purpose is to kill as many Black people as possible, along with anyone who isn’t loyal.

• This reply was modified 5 months, 4 weeks ago by  Demethress Davis.

[David Mailman]

Module 3 – Lesson 5: Audience Connection to Characters
2. Brainstorm one or more ways you can present your Protagonist through each of these:
Likability:
Giving other slave children his food.
Smiled at by young female slave and not knowing how to respond.
Relatability:
Playing with Leon as a child.
Playing with other slave children.
Protecting Leon when he is beaten by Union soldier.
Empathy:
Being dragged from his mother when sold.
Threatened with a bloody whipping when six-years-old.
Hugs cat after being frightened at first meeting with Master and being threatened.
Puzzling over whipping of slave children.
Being beaten by visiting White children.
Being beaten by Leon’s father after beating Leon in a contest.
3. Just to get the experience, give us one or more ways that your Antagonist could be presented through each of these:
Likability:
Giving a crying Plato his toy when Plato dragged into plantation house.
Beating up visiting White children attacking Plato.
Stopping a slave from taking food from younger slave.
Affection for and from his mammy.
Relatability:
Affection for plantation horses.
Sadness during selling plantation stock.
Empathy:
Being beaten by his father when he loses to Plato in a contest.
Being knocked down by Black Union soldier and kept back by other soldiers.

• This reply was modified 5 months, 1 week ago by  David Mailman.

[Brian Bull]

BRIAN BULL. – Likability/Relatability/Empathy

My Vision: I’m a writer that producers want to work with and can’t wait for my next script!!!

“What I learned from doing this assignment is…?” I am confident there will many places to add Likability, Relatability, and Empathy as I get further along with the story and script.

ASSIGNMENT
2. Brainstorm one or more ways you can present your Protagonist through each of these:
Likability: Tom Walker loves movies and enjoys sharing stories with others about his experiences in the movies
Relatability: Everyone enjoys and are intrigued with movies, in some ways Tom Walker is a celebrity but friendly and a regular guy.
Empathy: One of his props started a fire and burned the set down.

3. Just to get the experience, give us one or more ways that your Antagonist could be presented through each of these:
Likability: Odd sense of humor.
Relatability: El Jefe has a job to do and no one will stop him from doing it.
Empathy: Parents murdered. Trying to make ends meet so he can be with his family.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by  Brian Bull.