WIM+AI – Module 3 – Lesson 8: Purpose Driven Supporting Characters

[Frank Gaide]

FRANK’S SUPPORTING CHARACTERS

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 discovered how to better separate the supporting characters from main characters or background. It’s a very fine line distinguishing who does what and why. The simple questioning approach in this lesson proved to be a deeper evaluating tool and guided my decisions.

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:

NICO CAPIZZI:
DETECTIVE LONG:
ANGELA MOSS:
HOOPER LUTHER:

BACKGROUND CHARACTERS:

Campground operator, Wedding guests including family, Various police and EMT, Bank tellers, Hair salon clients, Environmentalist demonstrators, North End gangsters and neighbors, Capizzi pizzeria staff, Bus station background

SUPPORTING CHARACTER 1:

NAME: Detective Long
ROLE: Local detective
MAIN PURPOSE: To discover why and how the wedding ended in a brawl with Lily’s parents dead: to interrogate Coop, the groom, and find the guilty party.
VALUE: His serious/rational questions add mystery and intrigue in an otherwise comic situation and creates anticipation about who the actual murderer(s) is.

SUPPORTING CHARACTER 2:

NAME: Nico Capizzi
ROLE: Wealthy grandfather to the bride, Lily, and disingenuous father to Izzy, mother of the bride: he runs a pizza empire from the North End, home to the local mob.
MAIN PURPOSE: Is to help Lily pay for her wedding and misdirect her understanding of dysfunctional family secrets while subverting Frankie’s attempts to reconcile with Lily after a 25-year absence.
VALUE: Nico’s history with the mob adds hidden danger to the mystery of the parents’ murders and possible clues that his pizza empire has something to do with it.

SUPPORTING CHARACTER 3:

NAME: Angela Moss
ROLE: Maid of honor
MAIN PURPOSE: Lily’s best friend and confidant.
VALUE: Angela is the commonsense sounding board for Lily’s problems and contrasts a cast of mysterious cutthroats.

SUPPORTING CHARACTER 4:

NAME: Hooper (Hoop) Huntley
ROLE: Best man
MAIN PURPOSE: Just by parading his threatening size and height, Hoop protects his brother, Coop, the groom from any threats and deflects any police suspicions away from him and onto himself.
VALUE: He adds more intrigue to the brothers’ mysterious background and directs attention to himself as another possible guilty party.

[Demethress Davis]

Deme’s Supporting Characters

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 that I have more supporting characters (maybe 3 ) which are minor contributors to the story. These characters are introduced in the middle of the story and do not appear until close to the end of the story. They all have the same purpose: to torture and kill Henry and the same value: to give Henry the courage to use his inner strength which he lost in the accident and bring Lillian’s Black heritage to light and terror reign to an end.

SUPPORT 1:

* Name: Jewel Stillwater
* Role: Neighbor and henchman to Lillian
* Main purpose: Jewel has to come out of her comfort zone to help Henry stop Lillian’s killing spree.
* Value: To give Henry the courage to accept his true identity, even at personal risk; to regain his self-worth and expose Lillian’s true heritage and end her terrifying hold on the town.

SUPPORT 2:

* Name: Sam
* Role: Neighbor and henchman of Lillian
* Main purpose: To alert Henry that he needed to get away from Lillian before it’s too late.
* Value: After Sam warns Henry, he ends up dead and Henry’s spider sense is unlocked and he begins to investigate who Lillian really is.

SUPPORT 3:

* Name: Paul
* Role: Henchman of Lillian
* Main purpose: To question Henry’s reason(s) for being in their town.
* Value: Paul’s interrogation of Henry brings intrigue and is the onset of Lillian’s mistrust of Henry.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  Demethress Davis.

[David Mailman]

ASSIGNMENT
Tell us your supporting and background characters.
Focusing on those supporting characters, fill in the basic profile for each.
Support 1:
• Name: Danielle: Leon’s nympho sister.
• Role: She is a threat to Leon’s reputation and Plato’s life. Her imprisonment in an attic is one of Leon’s secrets.
• Main purpose: To illustrate the precarious life and humiliation a slave could have.
• Value: She illustrates that Whites can be imprisoned by traditions.
Support 2:
• Name: Delilah: Sybelle’s and Leon’s or Plato’s daughter.
• Role: Sybelle’s agent at the plantation.
• Main purpose: She administers Sybelle’s drugs.
• Value: She makes destruction to plantation characters seem like magic.
Support 2:
• Name: Boland: The butler.
• Role: He represents Blacks who look down on other Blacks.
• Main purpose: A hostile threat who tries to undermine Plato.
• Value: A contrast to Plato, being a slave who was raised always subservient but high in the slave hierarchy.
Support 3:
• Name: Tattoo: The slave who tattoos other slaves to show whose property they are.
• Role: He has a special skill that further shows slaves as cattle.
• Main purpose: Serves as a setup for Leon’s final fate.
• Value: Represents a predictor of tattooing in Nazi concentration camps.
Support 4:
• Name: Alex: Leon’s son from his first marriage.
• Role: Leon’s love for him poses a serious threat to Leon.
• Main purpose: His death drives Leon insane.
• Value: Leon chooses between his life and a basic taboo of miscegenation.
Support 5:
• Name: Helen: Leon’s second wife.
• Role: She provides a sympathetic White to Blacks.
• Main purpose: Her pregnancy provides an excuse for Leon to kill Plato.
• Value: Illustrates how malicious traditions, like miscegenation, could drive people insane.
• Background Characters:
• House servant slaves, field hand slaves, White newspaper workers, Southern whites (pre Civil War plantation aristocracy, workers,)

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  David Mailman.