The Perfect Stranger Syndrome

No, this has nothing to do with Balki and Cousin Larry. I just couldn't resist using that video. This does, on the other hand, have everything to do with the most necessary thing requied to make sure your audience really cares about what is going on in your story.

Every book on screenwriting says you should get your plot moving as soon as possible. But none bother to tell you that there is such a thing as launching your plot TOO early. And the results can be disastrous.

I have noticed a strange pattern in spec scripts that begin their action very early. These are scripts were the inciting incident takes place within the first five pages. Sometimes within the first scene. The first plot point occurs, the main conflict is engaged, and the story begin moving forward at a steady pace from there. From an objective point of view, it would seem as if these writers were doing everything right. They had a steadily-developing storyline. They had active protagonists pursuing goals while struggling against a conflict. Yet, I as the reader, couldn't seem to get myself to care about anything that happened in these scripts. No matter what occurred in the story, I remained disinterested.

This wasn't due to a lack of conflict. These scripts had plenty. There were also decent stakes at play. It wasn't due to a dull premise. Theses scripts had promising premises. It was the protagonist. I just didn't care about him/her. No matter what they did, or what they said, or what danger they were in, I couldn't give two craps one way or the other. I didn't care if these persons lived or died.

It wasn't that these protagonists were unsympathetic. They weren't child molesters or kitten stabbers. They seemed like decent, respectable people. But, I just couldn't identify nor sympathize with their plights. No matter how long I stayed with them in the story, they seemed like strangers. Perfect strangers.

The problem was that the writers chose a quick-starting plot at the expense of their own characters. And in doing so, they ignored a rule of story setup that has major impact on audience identification.

If you take a look at the first 5-10 minutes of any good movie, you will see that the protagonist does not spend this time really accomplishing anything significant to the plot. But, this is simply because there is yet no real reason to accomplish anything. The inciting incident has not yet occurred, direct conflict has not yet engaged, and there is no need for the protagonist to take any direct action because the spine has yet to fully form. Instead, what we see is the protagonist living in his or her daily life. We see them at home, at work, or having fun. We meet the people in their lives and get a sense of the protagonist's personality by the way he/she interacts with these people. We see an environment and how our protagonist fits into it.

In this environment, the audience might see that the protagonist is a 40-year old loser who works a lame job in an electronics store and has nothing but a huge collection of action figures to keep him company (The 40 Year-Old Virgin). Or the audience could see their protagonist is an on-the-edge cop who lives alone in a houseboat with a dog, drinking and thinking about suicide (Lethal Weapon). Or, the daily environment could be as intense as that of a young, cocky intelligence operative who routinely goes way too far in pursuit of his mission (Casino Royale).

This is the protagonist's status quo. This is what life is like for him/her before the movie begins, and this is how it would continue if the plot events set into motion by the inciting incident never occur. This is the average daily life that will soon be changed forever by the events of your story.

The audience needs to see this. In order for your audience to identify with your main character, they must first get to know that character. They need to learn who this person is, how they act, how they treat people, what makes them tick. Not only that, they need to understand who this person REALLY is. What do they want in life? What do they need out of life? What problems do they face? Is there something about their personalities that causes problems? If the audience is going to go on a journey with these people, they need to care about them. These characters need to become, in some small way, their friends.

Then, somewhere around page 12 or 15, the inciting incident occurs. Something happens that has an unavoidable impact on the protagonist's life and the story is suddenly thrown into gear. The character must now start acting or face terrible consequences. And if you bothered to correctly set up the protagonist's status quo, the audience suddenly CARES. By being introduced to these people and the intimate details of their lives, the audience becomes emotionally invested these characters. They may see a part of themselves in the character, or identify a problem in the character's daily life similar to their own. Hopefully, they have also grown to like or respect the character and feel affection for them. Then, when the inciting incident throws everything into chaos, the audience is already on the protagonist's side and ready to root for them. The protagonist is not just some random person in trouble, but one of their friends.

This is where the scripts indentified in the opening of this article failed. They forced their protagonists to take action right off the bat. No time was given to properly introduce the characters to the audience, and thus give the viewers any reason or opportunity to empathize with the characters or care about what goes on in their lives. As these stories continued to unfold, rather than becoming more and more engaged with the characters' situations, the audience continues to feel as distanced and aloof to the characters as they were on page one. You can't expect the members of an audience to care about people they know nothing about.

When it comes to creating character-audience identification, the first 10-15 pages is the now-or-never time. Once your plot gets going, no time can be wasted looking back. You've reached the point of no return, and now your story is on a one-way track that must constantly move forward. Taking time out after this point to establish character information or to get to know your people would slow story momentum to a halt. The cause-and-effect of your story sequences would be lost and the scene would seem like an unnecessary sidetrack. Only the brief amount of time before the inciting incident allows the freedom and opportunity for the audience to leisurely get to know your protagonist, their wants, and their needs.

If your story includes a subplots that revolves around some internal struggle or flaw in your main character, this should also be established in the setup. These types of subplots almost always deal with problems that existed before the movie began. Thus, they are part of the status quo. They are the “outer stories” already at play well before the “inner story” (the main narrative) kicks in. Throughout the course of the narrative, the outer and inner story will interact and help bring about each other's change. If that outer story has not been established at the film's beginning, you will have missed an opportunity and may be left with a far more shallow, simple story experience for your audience.

The opening minutes of a film are also extremely important when it comes to helping audiences recognize and understand character arcs. In order for the audience to see and understand the change characters undergo, they must first have a firm idea of what the character was like before that change started to occur. Character change is a direct effect of the conflict faced in plot events. If you start your plot too soon, it will seem like there is nothing in the character to change.

Now, this is not to say that you should not try to hook your audience into the story as soon as possible. You shouldn't feel obligated to have five or ten minutes of screen time with just character development before anything substantial happens. If you feel you must put an important story event right in the first scene in order to grab the audience's attention, by all means do so. There are many feature films that follow the episodic TV model of opening with a “teaser” -- a big event that rouses the audience's curiosity and persuades them to continue watching. But once you do that, make sure to slow things down and allow time for the audience to learn everything they need about your characters and their world before the plot hits the point of no return.

To illustrate this, I will use one of my favorite study scripts, Fargo. Fargo has not a single protagonist, but rather dual protagonists with conflicting goals, so it luckily gives two examples on how to properly set up a protagonist.

The first interior scene of Fargo introduces us to our first protagonist, Jerry Lundegaard (played by William H. Macy). This first scene gets down to the brass tax of the story right away. Jerry wants to enlist two hired goons to kidnap his wife and hold her for ransom. Once the scene reaches its goal by establishing this story information, the writers are confronted with a choice. The first option is to move the story ahead right away to its next logical plot point: the kidnapping of Jerry's wife. But if the story were to move this fast to its “point of no return” (the action that sets into motion the entire progression of events for the rest of the film), Jerry would remain a flat and underdeveloped character. At best, the audience would consider Jerry to be something of a weak, ineffective villain, rather than one of the story's two protagonists.

Luckily, the writers had the wisdom to take the time to let the audience “get to know” Jerry, to understand and empathize with him and his actions. In the next scene, we see Jerry at home. We see his wife and son and how Jerry interacts with them. We learn how Jerry is not give much respect in his own home, as he is completely overpowered by the dominant personality of his father-in-law Wade (which will become important story information later on). Next we see Jerry at work at the car dealership, trying to lie to an irate customer. By watching Jerry in this innocuous scene, one that really has nothing to do with the film's plot, we are given important character information to understand Jerry. We now know that beneath his innocent exterior, he is completely dishonest. We also see that Jerry is nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is. He is a terrible arguer and panics while under pressure.

The film's second protagonist, police chief Marge Gunderson (played by Frances McDormand), is not introduced until the beginning of the second act. (Note: It is very unorthodox to wait this late in a script to introduce a protagonist. Fargo is a unique case in this regard, and it is also the strongest evidence that the film has dual protagonists rather than a single one. -- (EDITOR'S NOTE: Since the original publication of this article, my evaluation of Fargo has changed significantly. It is now clear to me that Marge is the film's antagonist -- the force which directly opposes Jerry, the film's morally-bankrupt protagonist. Fargo thus presents a reversal of the traditional good guy/bad guy dynamic.)

The second act gets Marge's storyline moving right away. We meet Marge only seconds before her “call to action.” Three people are killed. Marge's phone rings. She wakes up to answers it and hears the news. She is propelled into the story. But think of how anonymous Marge would remain to the audience if we cut from this moment right to Marge investigating the case. Once again, the writers have the good sense to hit the pause button so we can get to know our new character. We are greeted in the next scene with a quiet, uneventful breakfast with Marge and her husband. Though nothing really happens, we are given a wealth of quick and important character information, such as: Marge is pregnant, she is married to a nice yet dumpy guy who seems to have taken on the motherly role in the relationship, and that Marge has a pleasant, yet dull marriage. Marge's next few scenes continue on a slower pace, even as she investigates the killings. We continue to get to know Marge on a personal level by watching how she interacts with her deputies; how she, a pregnant woman, shows enough guts to slide down a snowy embankment to check out the murder scene while her deputy Lou doesn't even want to leave the road. We gain affection for Marge when we see how she corrects Lou's mistakes with humor and patience.

We like these characters only because we have gotten to KNOW them. We care about what happens in the story because we were given an opportunity to care about the people these events happen to.