Here's how...

There are three sorts of adventure film that routinely include weak women characters.  These  characters are there because they are thought of as being merely  ‘love interest’ (romantic or paternal) for a male protagonist.

The standard screenwriting model of 'one protagonist on a chronological journey' is a great model, but it isn't the only one (I deal with more than 20 different models in my work).  Its big problem is that if wrongly used its protagonist-centered approach can create tunnel vision. It can make you as writer feel that a good story means everything you write has to be about servicing the protagonist. This is what's behind the idea of love interest, which translates into an entire character being included merely to show the emotions of another character.  BTW, I really wish we could ban terms like 'love interest'.  They really are recipes for  two-dimensional characters.  

You need to reject four assumptions
You can make these 'love interest' women characters  richer and more complex and increase the suspense and richness of the film quite easily, but you’ll need to reject four standard assumptions about protagonists   These assumptions are that:

1.     The most interesting character is automatically the protagonist
2.     Protagonists must be proactive and cannot be reactive
3.     There is only ever one protagonist
4.     The same person stays protagonist for the whole story

Heresy? Crazy? Stay with me. These answers work.

Remedy 1 Use a Mentor Antagonist  
This remedy involves you rejecting two assumptions. The first assumption you need to reject is that the protagonist is automatically the most interesting character.  The second assumption is that the protagonist must always be proactive, not passive or led by another.

The Mentor Antagonist is a character type I’ve identified. Oddly, I seem to be the only person who's picked,  it, despite its many appearances, so don't be surprised if you don't come across it elsewhere.  It’s not to be confused with Christopher Vogler’s Mentor figure.

Mentor antagonists don’t appear in all stories, only in stories that have a very specific content: stories about a normal person being caused problems and/or being intrigued by an enigmatic stranger.  Examples are Rain Man, Foxcatcher, The Elephant Man, King Kong, Collateral, Silence of the Lambs, Jean de Florette and many more.

Mentor antagonists are strange, unpredictable outsiders, sometimes sinister, sometimes benign, who take a  less interesting but normal person on some quest or adventure, sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes both. In benign versions  like Rain Man, the mentor antagonist teaches this normal person some wisdom about life, often a wisdom born of pain and the adventure or quest is one of the spirit. In sinister versions like Fox Catcher, the mentor antagonist is dangerous, often murderous,  and the normal person has to escape.  

We’d all agree that the most interesting character in all of these films is the enigmatic outsider character.  But in all of them, the enigmatic character is NOT the protagonist.  They are an antagonist and the normal character is the protagonist, even though this normal character is  less interesting and is reactive. Now, this is not theoretical. It's good strong writing technique.   It's about how you, as writer,  keep your story interesting.  The enigmatic outsider must be seen from the outside so that they remain mysterious, unpredictable and terrifying.

If you make them the protagonist we see their motives. They lose their mystery. They become normal.   And because your story already calls for a normal person to deal with a strange one, you end up with two normal people, one a little strange but understandably so. Result: boring.

How to improve the boring woman character
In films where the woman is the boring ‘love interest’ and the man is a boring nice guy protagonist (as in Passengers, Wedlock and Solace) you can improve the script instantly and massively  by making the boring woman the protagonist and turning the man into an enigmatic (and in darker films),  sinister mentor antagonist.

You swivel the film so that everything is seen from the woman’s point of view. It’s her story. She is locked into a situation with a man who is at best strange and enigmatic,  and, in the darker films, actively dangerous (think Silence of the Lambs). In the darker versions, you have instant  suspense and tension in addition to the existing external threat.  In the benign versions you’ve made the enigmatic outsider more poignant, more complex.  

In both cases you’ve not only created a much better female character, you’ve created  a much more interesting male character. Win-win.

 Note that  FoxCatcher has two protagonists, the two brothers both faced with the dangerous Mentor Antagonist, Du Pont.

If we rewrote Solace (which has three normal partners) we could  make the strange psychic  (played by Anthony Hopkins),  an enigmatic mentor antagonist  with two protagonists disagreeing about him.  We could make the current anodyne female FBI agent our interesting protagonist number one, in conflict with the present anodyne male FBI agent - changed in our new version into interesting protagonist number two. They could be at odds about the psychic’s motives and behavior. Perhaps one could feel that rather than rather than helping find the serial killer, the psychic might indeed be the serial killer.

One final practical thing about mentor antagonist stories. You will often think of the enigmatic outsider character first – because they are so interesting.  Don't fall into the trap of automatically making them the protagonist. To make your story powerful you might need to turn your interesting characters into a mentor antagonist and invent a new and less interesting normal person to be the protagonist -  so that that your enigmatic outsider is seen only from the outside and stays mysterious and unpredictable.  Remember, the most interesting character is not necessarily the protagonist. Good stories are about suspense and interpersonal conflict.  Be guided by your content.

By the way, a perceptive YouTube video has actually  picked out that Passengers would have been much more suspenseful had it been created as the woman’s story.  I completely agree. I’ve given a detailed breakdown of how the film Wedlock could have been fixed in an identical way in my books Screenwriting Updated and The 21st Century Screenplay)
You can check out the YouTube video I mean here


Remedy 2   Make sure the female buddy in your buddy movie is interesting and involved in a conflict with the male buddy.

To do this,  you need to reject the idea that you must have only one protagonist and that a protagonist can never change into an antagonist.

Buddy movies are films in which two friends, or two people who end up friends, are involved in an adventure.  In films like Lethal Weapon, which involves two male police officers, and Thelma and Louise,  which is about two women, there is one normal partner and one wild card. In these, both partners are protagonists in the adventure plotline (what I call 'the action line').
They are both different versions of the same protagonist in the action line, each fighting the joint enemy but in their different ways.  However,  in their personal interaction (what I'd call 'the relationship line' and what is often called 'the subplot') one character stays the normal person (that is, the protagonist) and the other is an unpredictable wild card (antagonist) causing the sensible one trouble.   Hence, the same character can be a protagonist in one plotline and an antagonist in another.  This way you avoid having Tweedledum and Tweedledee. 

Unfortunately, when this story has a woman as one of the two friends when the other friend is a male,  the woman is often boring, with little to do except be rescued or decorative. She becomes the 'love interest' -  either the man’s romantic partner or a daughter figure. The answer here is to set up a normal-person-plus-wild-card situation, where the woman is either the protagonist in both plotlines (action line AND relationship line), or the woman is a protagonist in the adventure, but a wild card unpredictable antagonist in the relationship line.
Here are some examples.

1. Romancing the Stone    In the action line,  both characters are protagonists, or rather, different versions of the same protagonist.  Both fight the common enemy (in their separate ways).  However,  in the relationship line the woman is  the normal partner and the man  is the wild card antagonist.  Hence they both fight the enemy in the action line, but in the relationship line we're in the shoes of the woman, who stays protagonist while the man becomes an unpredictable wild card, seen from the outside.
2.  The African Queen   In the action line, both characters are protagonists, or rather, different versions of the same protagonist. Both fight the common enemy (in their separate ways). However,  in the relationship line the man is the normal partner and the woman is the wild card antagonist. Hence they both fight the enemy in the action line, but in the relationship line we're in the shoes of the man, who stays the 'normal' protagonist while the woman becomes an unpredictable wild card, seen from the outside.  

Notice that the woman can be either the normal one or the wild card, but making her one of these will instantly make her more interesting, and having an antagonist-protagonist relationship will improve the whole film.  Notice that here, as in the mentor antagonist model, the change creates conflict in the inter-personal relationships.   It provides unpredictability and suspense.  (BTW, those of you who've read my books will know my view that you can write multiple protagonist films more easily if you approach all of the members of the group as different versions of the same protagonist. In my view,  successful Buddy Movies are just one sort of multiple protagonist structure)


Remedy 3   Double Journeys Form – make sure you have two heroes on two separate journeys
Here, you need to reject the assumption that there is only ever one protagonist.

Double journey films are films in which there are two characters travelling together or apart or in parallel.  They are films in which the story demands that we follow two characters in their lives together and in their lives apart. They are not like buddy movies because the partners in buddy movies either stay physically together for the whole film or are only briefly apart. Double journey films include films  as different as Finding Nemo,  Brokeback Mountain, The Queen and Lives of Others. 

These films have three main plotlines.

1.     Each partner has a story when they’re apart.
2.     They have one story that they share.
3.     They  have one when they are together.

In the one they share we will usually see one character in more depth than we see the other.

The two will be different versions of the same protagonist, often two opposing views of a  social role or two opposing social roles or taboo.

When a woman is involved as one of the partners, the 'love interest' problem can creep in.   A clear example is Cold Mountain, in which Nicole Kidman, as the faithful lover waiting for her man, has no plot and is given nothing to do. In Cold Mountain, all poor old Nicole is given to do is wait, presumably because the male partner  is being thought of as the sole protagonist, the hero on his journey home - so it  probably didn't occur  to the film's creators to give the woman anything to do until the man came back into her life.  She was there solely to be wait and to be inspirational to her man.

You could instantly energize and enrich the story and the issues it raises around war by making the woman the man's mirror opposite. In this model, as the man goes into moral decline ( into what he says in the film is a damaged version of himself) the woman moves from passivity into  a more proactive version of herself. She does something, perhaps actively assists escaping slaves. This way, she would travel a journey too.

Notice that a 'mirror image' story like this not only creates a much better woman character, but also, enriches the male partner because of the contrast between the two journeys.  BTW, Double Journeys movies, like Buddy Movies, are in my view, as you might have realized,  another instance of multiple protagonists. However, Double Journeys differ from Buddy Movies because, as well as two versions of the same protagonist, in some films you have mirror images or opposites of the same protagonist.

The moral of the story
So there you are. Three ways to turn boring female characters into interesting ones. And notice, it’s all about changing your attitude to the conventional views about protagonists. Rejecting the assumptions I've mentioned increases suspense and mystery and can actually rescue a struggling film and turn it into something very powerful.

Forget the idea that narrative is always the same.  It isn’t. The one hero model is a fine model, I love it, particularly Vogler's model, it's brilliant. But it's not the only model. As I say, in  my work I isolate over 20 different types of structure that don’t fit that model.  I repeat, that model is, as I say, great. It's just not appropriate to certain stories, which actually often use multiple plotlines, nonlinear as well as chronological, as well as using the protagonist differently.  To assume the one hero model is the the only one immediately blinds you to solutions.

Be guided by your story content.  Different story types demand different structures and many of them involve more than one protagonist and characters who don't obey the rules that govern the one hero model.

For an overview by me of the different sorts of parallel narrative - ensemble, flashback, fractured, nonlinear etc  here's a YouTube video

Hope that was useful.

www.lindaaronson.com

I've been having some correspondence with a writer who has written a film that has multiple  storylines and multiple protagonists but been told by a number of people who have read the script to pick a hero or heroine and make the film about just that character. I thought readers might be interested in the issue since it’s one that often comes up.
As you’ll all be aware I am a great supporter of films that involve multiple protagonists and multiple storylines. I think scripts are often wrecked because a script that has its interest specifically in being about a group is turned into a story about one of the group - with the other members of the group simply appearing from time to time being, well, colorful.  This is a bit like turning the The Full Monty into a story about one man putting on a striptease show not a group, or perhaps making The Magnificent Seven into The Magnificent One. 

Some stories are about groups, full stop, and they won’t work with a ‘one hero’ structure.

But films that use multiple storylines each with their own protagonist are not always the answer.  Many fine films consist only of one hero on a single linear chronological journey. It depends on the  story you want to tell.  Content dictates structure.  If you do decide to use multiple storylines (and there are many different types of structure that will permit you do that ) you will hit all kinds of challenges. These include the need to have connections between your storylines (or your audience will rightly be asking ‘what is all this about? Why these characters and no others?’) and you will always have a battle to create and maintain pace, meaning, closure and how and when to jump between stories - simply because all parallel narrative scripts do. It’s the nature of the beast. 

But there are many types of multiple storyline structure
Note that I said there that there are many types of structures that use multiple storylines and multiple protagonists, not just one. For example, Pulp Fiction has multiple storylines and multiple characters but it's structured very differently from The Full Monty or Traffic, both of which also have multiple storylines and protagonists. This is an important point to remember because conventional screenwriting theory lumps together all types of film that don't fit the one-hero-on-a-single-chronological journey. They are clearly not all the same. I stress, the  plotting and character problems in a film like Nashville are completely different from such problems in a film like Pulp Fiction.   In The 21st Century Screenplay I have isolated six categories with many subcategories (for example, there are many different types of flashback).  But meanwhile, hybrids are appearing all the time and we must expect more. Screenwriting structures are diversifying all the time.

Here is what the writer said:

Writer to Linda 

• Any of [the 6 characters in my film script]has a strong enough story to build an entire film around...yet I'm being pushed to 'pick a hero/heroine', which feels wrong & unnatural. I'll stick to my guns, but is there a section in your book that throws light on aforementioned? 
• Each person that's read script identifies with a different character according to (reader's) gender, sexuality, colour, educational/cultural values & personal/sexual prudery = for me this is a positive, it's what I aimed for.

• Ergo it's logically impossible for me to 'please' all readers.

• There isn't ONE main protagonist - each character/character's storyline is strong enough for a film in its own right = for me a positive

Linda's reply
Sticking to your guns...
First of all I’d say don’t  stick to your guns about anything before you’re very sure that the people picking the problems are wrong. Maybe they’re right and you do need a one hero storyline because the story material is really mostly about one character. Alternatively, assuming that what you are intending to transmit does require a group of characters, maybe your readers have picked inadequacies in the way you are creating your group story but are offering the wrong solution.  Very often when people tell a writer to focus on one hero and not the group it’s a case of there being something wrong with the multiple protagonist script but the wrong solution is being offered.   Perhaps your multiple protagonist films is indeed coming over as characters in search of a plot and you need to invent a  plot that unites and explains them.  Maybe there is, generally, insufficient connection between the storylines so that they feel random.  Maybe you are just not getting what’s in your head on to the page. You are certainly not convincing your readers that your film is at present holding together as you feel it is. 
I was given this very good piece of advice many years ago by a very good and very experienced producer: ‘If one reader thinks there’s a problem, it might be just their idiosyncratic view.  If two people have the same problem, sit up and listen. If three readers have the same problem you have some fixing to do’ 
 
'Logically impossible to please all readers?'

The writer says:
Each person that's read script identifies with a different character according to (reader's) gender, sexuality, colour, educational/cultural values & personal/sexual prudery = for me this is a positive, it's what I aimed for. Ergo it's logically impossible for me to 'please' all readers.

I'd say - not necessarily. If the characters are sufficiently connected and all contribute towards an interesting message you may be able to please them all. They are clearly not pleased at the moment, so you have a choice either to  dismiss their opinion and seek another audience or to do something to make them enjoy the script.

Not one main protagonist
The writer adds
There isn't ONE main protagonist - each character/character's storyline is strong enough for a film in its own right = for me a positive.

Fine!  Lots of great films have multiple storylines and multiple protagonists, but there needs to be a connection between them that answers the question: ‘why these six characters and not another six characters?’or your audience will get restless and irritated.  They will be asking (and who can blame them?) 'Why these characters? What’s the connection?  What’s the intention of the film?' 

Is the writer confusing multiple protagonist form with tandem narrative structure?
I haven't read the script, but the more I look at the writer's comment  that 'each character/character's storyline is strong enough for a film in its own right'  the more I think the writer might be confusing what I term 'multiple protagonist form' (which is about a group of characters on a joint 'adventure' which is either a quest, a reunion or a siege, social or physical) and another sort of group story which I've termed tandem narrative, which also has multiple storylines, each with its own protagonist, but which is very different and needs handling in a very different way.  What is tandem narrative? I've explained this as 'equally important storylines running together in tandem in the same time frame on the same theme'. It's the form of films like Traffic or Nashville, where characters have separate storylines – rather than being involved together in a joint quest, siege or reunion. Tandem films follow individual characters off on their own journeys.  Sometimes these characters don't even know each other.
From the sound of things I think the script is a tandem narrative. But I think the writer might be trying to think of this according to the guidelines I've set out for multiple protagonist form, which don't apply. I'll discuss this further later. First let's look at the issue of connection in these films.

Connection in Multiple Storyline films,

Whether you're using tandem narrative or multiple protagonist narrative (or any other kind of parallel narrative for that matter) it's not enough simply to have fascinating characters. From the audience’s point of view the issue is not that the characters are each individually fascinating.  It’s why the filmmakers have put these particular characters together in a film. The audience questions are, as I've said : ‘why these characters and no others?’ ‘What is the connection?’  ‘What is the intention behind  the film?’  And crucially: 'Why am I sitting here watching this?’  

If there is no proper connection, people will feel resentful.  For example, many people reject the film Babel out of hand because they felt the Japanese girl’s story was insufficiently connected to the others. No matter that they loved the rest of the film.  Babel by the way is in the form  I've termed a 'fractured tandem' film, that is, it has equally important stories on the same theme but is fractured.

How to make connections in tandem narrative films
Tandem films are normally connected by a theme.  For example, a simple type of connection in  film about six people having very separate adventures would be something like: all six are versions of ‘a bizarre person living in London’ with the theme being: ‘bizarreness in all its forms is difficult to cope with but is something we need in this world’. 

Typically in these films connections are made in some or even all of the following ways.

1. connections through date (e.g. six differently bizarre people are having their separate adventures in London on the same day )
2. through place (e.g. six differently bizarre people are having their separate adventures in the same part of London on the same day)
3. through an object (e.g six differently bizarre people are having their separate adventures in the same part of London on the same day and they all, one after the other, sit in the same seat on the same bus as it travels its designated route up a major road in their area).
4. connections through plotlines – that is, characters might appear in more than one storyline.
5. conections through a 'Macro Plot'.  There is often what I call  a macro plot, that is, an umbrella plot line on the same theme as all of the other stories, but one that links all of the differently bizarre characters together physically AND by theme.  For example  London is blanketed by a terrible fog (symbolic of the confusion and anonymizing aspects of city life which makes us need more bizarreness in our lives),  that is causing pneumonia and traffic accidents to the populace, including the bizarre characters.

The writer concludes
I will however fight with myself to form a character hierarchy & see what that brings forth...
My issue is character democracy 

Let's pause here.  You're not being asked to create a character hierarchy. This comment is another reason that I feel you might be getting confused with multiple protagonist form, in which you have  a range of different version of the same type of protagonist, including what I've called 'the instigator', that is, the protagonists who causes the story.  The instigator in the multiple protagonist film The Full Monty is the Robert Carlyle character, the man who has the idea of the striptease.  I'd say your issue is to explain what is similar about your characters, why they have not been chosen at random.  
Regarding 'character democracy' I think you have to ask yourself here: ‘to what end?’  What is your intention in putting these particular characters into a film together?  Sometimes it helps with this sort of thing to ask yourself what the audience is supposed to be thinking and feeling and discussing when they leave the cinema. Sometimes this can clarify your intentions. 

Or is it consecutive stories form?
There are, as often happens in these parallel narrative forms, different ways to tell our story.  We could, for example, tell the stories of our six differently bizarre characters in yet another way. Let's imagine we use the idea of each of the six using the same bus seat on the same day. You could construct the film by following each of the characters in turn off the bus and into their own story.  Once that story is complete or semi-complete, you could return to the bus with the next bizarre character getting on. You'd then somehow unite the characters at the end.
That structure would be a form I've given the name of 'consecutive stories'.  You can have that in simple or fractured forms. My  hunch is that our writer is thinking of a tandem narrative structure.

But do you need to invent a hybrid?
 More and more I'm being asked to help with complex film scripts that are blending different types of parallel narrative.  You may need to create your own particular hybrid.  How to do this?   I'd suggest you start by looking at what I've isolated, checking my guidelines in The 21st Century Screenplay and seeing how you can merge them, always keeping an eye on pace, connection, meaning and closure.  That is usually a lot of help. After that, unfortunately, you are on your own.  Writing alas isn't easy.  Ever wondered why top writers can command such large sums?  You get the picture.

To sum up... 
In conclusion, for anyone wrestling with this sort of problem, I suggest checking out first the many articles on this site under the tab Practical Writing Advice  then look at my chapters in The 21st Century Screenplay on parallel narrative, particularly the chapters on Tandem Narrative and Multiple Protagonist narrative. These explain what plot and character components work in successful films of each kind.  Also read the section in that book entitled 'Lost in the Telling'.  This includes discussion of Multiple Protagonist and Tandem films that don't work - and crucially, why.Make doubly sure that you have chosen the particular structure that suits  the story you want to tell. 

If you’ve ever wondered why so many experienced film and TV writers have serious doubts about scriptwriting theory it’s because it works on the assumption that all stories are about one dynamic proactive hero on a single chronological journey when they clearly aren’t -and professional writers have personal experience of this. As just one evening’s TV viewing will show you, many films and much TV drama involve multiple protagonists, time jumps, flashbacks, fracturing, multiple storylines and non-linearity.  Here are ten types of film that the conventional model - useful as it is for certain types of story,  doesn’t help you with.
:

1. Films and TV like Rain Man, The Elephant Man and The Shawshank Redemption – in which a normal, but often passive reactive protagonist is troubled by and learns from a much more interesting charismatic dynamic wild card outsider (a ‘mentor antagonist’).
2. Films and TV like The Full Monty or Calendar Girls or Little Miss Sunshine that are about a group of heroes (not just one) all on the same quest or involved in the same siege or having a reunion.  
3. Films and TV like Traffic or Nashville about a group of people all with separate but interconnected stories on the same theme.
4. Films and TV like Brokeback Mountain or The Queen that feature two characters, each a different versions of the same type, each having their own separate story as well as a story in which they appear together.
5. Films and TV like Blue Jasmine or The Story of Pi that need flashbacks jumping back and forth between the past and the present
6. Films and TV like Twelve Monkeys or The End of the Affair that involve a ‘woodshed incident’ in which an incremental flashback gradually reveals and explains a traumatic event
7. Films and TV where we see different perspectives on the same event like Rashomon
8. Films and TV where we see different outcomes from the same event like Atonement
9. Films and TV like Pulp Fiction or The Joy Luck Club or City of God that show a series of separate stories consecutively and often in fractured form, linking them at the end.
10. Films and TV like 21 Grams or The Hours where one event triggers a number of stories, that are fractured and told in a nonlinear way

If you are interested in writing in these forms (and frankly, I don't think you'll have a career in a few years' time if you don't have some idea how to do them, particularly in TV, because they are now so prevalent) I  provide practical guidelines for these forms (and more) as well as in the conventional one-hero model in my book The 21st Century Screenplay.

UPCOMING SEMINARS
(in conjuction with the National Film and TV School of Australia AFTRS )

Sydney: 22-23 February 2014.
Melbourne: 1-2 March 2014
Two-day seminar New Structures for Film and TV (including material  originally created for BBC TV Writers' Festival on how to use nonlinear structures in short and long form TV series)

This seminar on how to construct a wide range of nonlinear and multiple storyline films that don't fit the conventional model is the only one of its kind in the world. It has proved extremely popular internationally particularly with experienced writers, but is suitable for writers of all experience levels, also screen editors, directors and script development executives.
PLease note: numbers are limited.  Full details and bookings via AFTRS

I had a query from a new writer yesterday and I thought this person expressed a common problem, namely, just  when do you walk away from a script?  Well, in one sense you never do. Even if they never go anywhere they are still in some way active. Which is not surprising since you've poured yourself into them. We never leave them emotionally. That's why they still stay in the bottom drawer. What I said to this person was as follows. I hope others will find it useful.  Think about trying what I suggest. You may surprise yourself .

WRITER: When do you know when to put your story down.  When do you know that you've taken the story as far as you can and it's time to let go and move on?
LINDA You ask a very big question, moreover,  one a lot of writers would like to know the answer to.  I have a question for you.  What’s to stop you putting your story down for a while and having a go writing something else?  Your first story isn’t going to run away, and you won’t be the first writer to have a script rejected which is then picked up after they’ve had success with a different project.  Also, getting away from the project that you’ve been so attached to for such a long while will probably do the project good.

No successful writer even wrote just one thing. Very often you  have things on the back burner that you come back to from time to time. Sometimes,  alas,  some of the best things you write are not loved by other people and some of the things you think are just okay have people telling you they are life-changing. That’s the way it goes.  The thing is to keep writing. 

Here’s a challenge for you -  really, it’s just a bit of fun. It’s an exercise.  You can lose nothing by it and you have everything to gain.  Put your existing script in a safe place where it can sit for two weeks.. Now,  go to the first section of my book, the section on creativity under pressure. Find a story trigger and  brainstorm twenty ideas for a film – more if you can. Remember, the rule is, brainstorm uncritically. Put your inner critic aside or you will block. The idea is to get as many ideas as possible, even if some are terrible or cliched or derivative. You will find, if you relax, that some really good ideas also come out along the way, and that's what the process is about.  Choose three and spend a few days thinking about them (just in your odd moments here and there).   Finally, choose the best and try developing it using the method I show you in the book.  It will be fun and the chances are that your new baby will start to take a hold on your affections too. You haven’t forgotten your first, but now you’ve got a second. Hope that helps

A couple of people have been asking about the difference between writing for film and writing fiction. This is a very interesting question.  At the simplest level, for fiction you need more story!  It's a truism that the easiest fiction to adapt is a novella or short story.  But above and beyond that, there is a definitely a different contract between the audience for film and the audience for fiction. I don't know why.  Film audiences get very impatient if a film doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Fiction audiences will wait for even fifty pages (fifty minutes of screentime at least) before anything much happens.  Readers will tell their friends: 'the first fifty pages are a big slow, but then it's terrific'.  Film audiences faced with a slow film where nothing is happening and/or  there's no character progression tend to throw things.
Film audiences seem to want 'a point', even if the point is that there's no point (as in 'Hidden').  Novels can end up with everyone going home and no great climax. Film audiences hate that. My motto is 'fiction is about the journey, film is about the destination'.  In other words, the 'point'.  In film, character is what character does. In fiction, it's often what the character thinks, rather than does.  Usually, in fiction, the action is much more leisurely. Also, dialogue in fiction goes on for much longer and is often not very lifelike. Dialogue in film needs to be very life-like indeed.  If you're writing a film, you really need to think in terms of a chain of events that cause the character to react in character, with each event causing the next, rising to a climax.  Film audiences are perhaps much less forgiving.
A propos of nothing much at all.  Here's a little pic of one of my young adult comedy novels by the way, Rude Health, a laugh-out-loud teen comedy about the Maths teacher from Hell , first published by Pan Macmillan, which was a Waterstones Book of the Week, and  also included in a UK Virgin Trains Young Passenger Gift set. And because I'm a writer I cannot help but boast about the lovely reviews it got... Sorry!  You have to boast about the good 'uns when you get them, and I really LOVE that cover.

 'A truly funny book' The Times UK
'To laugh yourself stupid, pick up Rude Health'   Girlfriend
'Linda Aronson is one of the best comic writers ... another first rate tale of a teenager in trouble'  Daily Telegraph UK
'Fabulously entertaining' Achuka UK

I was writing a response to a question on the Linked in  Screenwriting  discussion group and I thought it might be useful to others, so I’ve put it here. A lot of people were suggesting planning, but I thought there were a few other possible issues.
The question is:
Is it a right way of approach to work on character development before working on outline/structure of the story/screenplay?
One of my friend says due to character development i couldnt able to proceed further and thats why i got stuck in the middle of my screenplay process.
But I beleive in giving importance to Character dev in scripts, so i started Developing Characters after deciding a theme for my Short...
What is ur Opinion regarding the process which i follow?
What ever the UR opinion, Comments are always welcome

And here’s my response.

Take heart from the fact that you are stuck: it's the writer in you telling you that something is wrong, and that's a good instinct. Many people would just keep writing on and on, to no purpose. Meanwhile you,by being stuck you're on the road to getting it right. Did you know Mozart wrote to his father complaining that he'd never finish Act 2 of Don Giovanni?  If Mozart had problems, there's hope for all of us!

As so many people are saying, your problem is lack of planning. It's a very common problem, so you're not alone. We've all been there. Script structure is a craft, but it’s always maddening because every script presents new structure problems. 

As  for whether to work on character before story and whether one can spend too much time on character, it’s very easy indeed to get stuck working on character or theme, then to believe that everything you know about the character and theme is in the script when in fact it's still in your head and not actually on the page.  For example, I once read a script that had a character who was supposed to be a loner.  But there were no scenes showing that character on its own, actually being a loner.   Character can only be demonstrated via action.  Your story must reveal everything that you want to say about character and theme via very specific action.  In other words, if your message 'slow and steady wins the race' you need to create a storyline like the hare and the tortoise fable, not a story about a tortoise who has some unconnected adventure. That sounds easy. It isn't. We all love writing and we can easily get dragged off the point.

So, don’t think about a character in isolation. Think about what it might do, how it might react.  Think about how the character's specific characteristics can be demonstrated in action, how the  action can put the characters in jeopardy.  For example, if your intention is to write about a miser, create a plot in which the miser has to spend money.  That way, your central character concern is at the heart of the central plot.  Don’t plan to write a film about a miser in which miserliness appears only in a couple of scenes and the rest of the film is about something completely different.

I notice that you mention that you started writing your film from theme and character.  You don’t mention story.   This is something that nobody has raised and it might be affecting you.  Often, the initial idea for a film is a theme or a character, not a story.    In other words, you might think: 'I want to write a film about  bullying’  but you don’t have a story or characters yet.  Or, your idea might be ‘I want to write about a dysfunctional family in which the son is a bully'.There, you have the characters and theme  but not a plotline.  In that situation it is very easy  just to write characters behaving characteristically. The bully acts as a bully in one way, then he acts as a bully in another way, then he acts as bully in a third way, and so on. If you’re a good writer, it’s easy to keep writing for quite a long while, but then you will stop because what you have written is repetitive. You are right to stop – or your audience will say: ‘Okay, okay, I get it that this guy is a bully– and? What now?’

To create a film rather than a character study, you need a story. You need to put the family and a bully in a situation that will permit them not only to interact, but to be different at the end  (not necessarily happy -  they could end up killing each other, the point is there must be a story).  

Can you check whether you yet have a story that properly illustrates your theme?  And whether you have characters in action rather than characters repeating their own characteristics in different ways.  This sounds insulting but it happens very easily.   Watch Mr Saturday Night – in that you have a self-destructive bullying comedian being a self-destructive bullying comedian in a million different ways. No story. Billy Crystal gives a wonderful performance but the film is boring because so much of it is just the character doing the same routine. 

The easiest way to understand this problem is to realise that films always have firstly what I call an action line (and others call 'the main plot, for example, inThelma and Louise, the action line is the drive across country, with all its events).  Secondly, they will always have what I call ‘a relationship line’ (what others call a subplot, which is to do with characters and character interaction, and is often the love story).  In Thelma and Louise, the relationship line is about how events force two respectable women to become bandits and to kill themselves.   There is a plot for each of these storylines, and if you split them up you’ll be able to pinpoint problems and handle them much more easily.  The point here, so well illustrated in Thelma and Louise, is that in a film the action line forces the relationship line to happen.  Use that as a motto.

As I said, you need to plan.  So, you now need to go back and work out, step by step what your story is, and whether it transmits the theme by forcing the relationship line to happen, then, when you have that structure, you can write in the scenes.   Internal scene construction is hard enough to do without having to plan the movie as you go.    You ask for help. In my book The 21st Century Screenplay I have created a step by step question and answer system planning system called Script Development Strategies that help you create a linear  one hero three act structure (later in the book I also explain how to structure nonlinear and multiple storyline/protagonist scripts too , but that gets more complicated).  A lot of film schools and pros use the Script Development strategies.  Good luck!  You will get there.

I'm trying to insert a little video clip that Chris Jones of the London Screenwriters' Festival created of me talking at the Festival, but I'm having trouble.  Hmm.  Don't you love technology.  Watch this space.  If you really want to see the video, just check it out here.  Meanwhile, to the left is a pic of me chatting to writers after one of my sessions at LSF.   Back soon.

Hello everyone.  I hope you've all recovered from this year's fantastic London Screenwriters Festival.  And I hope you  like my new streamlined website and blog!

I've just been running some videolectures from London to students at the Netherlands Film and TV Academy in Amsterdam on how to structure ensemble films, and thinking as I planned my lectures just how very complex the planning and plotting issues are in these films.  So it was an interesting coincidence when a very pertinent question and lots of answers appeared on the Linked In Screenwriting forum about how many characters you can use in these sorts of films.  If you follow this blog, you'll know that I responded.  The most recent question asked about TV, so I replied to that too.  I've put my response in here, below this post, and you can see the other responses on Linked in. 

What is all boils down to really is that  you can't approach ensemble films as if they are rather unruly 'one hero on a single journey' films.  They are structured in a completely different fashion, as a series of separate stories, with all kinds of particular problems, particuarly with backstory and interweaving (you must interweave in such a way as not to be repetitive, and you have so many story strands, often about unfinished emotional business that your head sometimes spins)  So the apparently odd question of 'how many characters...etc' is not odd at all.  It's absolutely pertinent.  What's scary about the flim industry at the moment is that so many people across all fields believe that you absolutely MUST have only one protagonist. Which wrecks lots of ensemblefilms (in which all of the characters' have stories).

Anyhow, I'm delighted that we're all talking about this stuff now, difficult as it is.

Here's what I wrote in Linked in  when someone asked how many characters in TV series

Usually TV series use about six, because there is only sufficient time to handle that number of characters taking the limelinght in your max 50 minute time slot, and people devising TV series agonise about how many and who.  For more info on TV writing see my ebook TV Writing The Ground Rules of Series, Serials and Sitcom http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Television_Writing.html?id=8j1AYBJKWvQC   Regarding Ensemble films, they use different structural plans from one-hero films because they are running multiple stories. It's a different set of rules and a different mind set.

The question about 'how many characters are too many'  goes to the heart of ensemble screenwriting in both film and TV because of the time restrictions on you as you try to tell but control all those stories/story strands. You don't have time for unlimited character numbers unless you use special forms and some of those forms permit more characters than others.

Why the time problem? Well, for example if the characters in your film know each other you can have huge amounts of backstory to sneak in about their past interactions and unfinished emotional business as you also try to tell the main group 'adventure'. You can have 17-20 story strands to run. Yes, there are ensemble forms in which you can use more characters (40 I think in Magnolia - although this is a film that has problems with its meaning and closure) but you have to quarantine them in stories or you'll get characters in search of a plot.This is a fascinating but huge topic!   Anyhow, if you're interested there's a little video interview I did in Sweden on this sort of stuff on the home page of my site www.lindaaronson.com

Rushing, as usual, in a recent post on this blog I forgot to add a crucial  link to a discussion about TV series and Serial Writing that I was having on a Linked In Discussion Group.  We were discussing Cold Feet and the issue of TV Series and Serial Writing . So here is the discussion I mentioned.  Sorry!

Here's what I said.

For me a lot of the success behind Cold Feet was the choice and blend of characters which permitted excellent comedy writing and of course the writer's brilliant wit. Comedy was the big seller in that, I'd say.
The issue you're discussing here is the well night impossible question to answer of 'what makes a good series?' . While we can't really answer that, what we can do is be very tough about staying on task during development, trying to isolate and hang on to what we think is the big seller. One thing I created when I was working on devising TV drama series was something I called 'The Series Template', and a lot of people have found it useful. It's an extra bit to go in the bible, but it precedes the bible. It's essentially, 'what you have to get in each episode', and it covers specific character interaction, type of structure, style etc - all in one sentence grabs. The great thing about the Series Template is that you can create it very early on in the development process so it help in development (when it's really easy for discussion to go off the point), but also for ongoing use. I've written about the Series Template in a book on TV I wrote called 'TV Writing: The Ground Rules of Series, Serials and Sitcom'  It's now available as an ebook.
 (Television Writing: The Ground Rules of Series, Serials and Sitcom)

It's a bit out of date but constantly pirated so someone must be finding it useful.

One of the biggest problems we have as writers is staying on task - we'rewriters, we're inventive - we can easily get distracted away from writing Little Red Riding Hood by getting really interested in Little Red Riding Hood's wacky Auntie. Great, but that ain't the job description. So a constant reminder of 'what am I supposed to be doing here' is immensely useful.
There is also a general need for new series arc each season to stop atrophy. So, how? In practical, technical terms? Now that TV is delighting viewers by breaking new ground in things structural (you can barely watch an evening's TV drama these days without seeing flashbacks, time jumps etc) one way that I suggest is the use of a range of nonlinear series arcs. Technically difficult, but I've recently given talks to TV writers in Poland and at the BBC TV Drama Writers' Festival on exactly that, and there's a lot of interest because, as you rightly point out, there's always a need to punch up drama series before they get tired (and as quickly as possible when they do).