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'm delighted to say that for the first time, in response to many requests and in conjunction with Chris Jones of the London Screenwriters' Festival, the full two-hour  film of my lecture at the London Screenwriters' Festival in 2011 is now available to purchase. And if you subscribe to my new Craft Skills Newsletter (which can do in the right hand column on this page) for a limited time you will be able to get a 20% discount.  Below is the cover blurb. 
In 2010, leading screenwriting guru Linda Aronson gave a talk at the London Screenwriters’ Festival that caused a sensation because it exploded the conventional Hollywood approach to screenwriting. The audience of scriptwriters was so anxious to hear more that they kept Linda talking for almost five hours after the lecture was finished.

What galvanized the writers were Linda Aronson’s step by step guidelines for planning and writing screenplays like 'Pulp Fiction' or 'The Usual Suspects' that use components like flashbacks, time jumps, multiple protagonists and nonlinear storylines – all elements frowned upon or actively banned by other screenwriting gurus.

In 2011 Linda Aronson came back to the London Screenwriters’ Festival and gave an expanded form of the lecture to hundreds of writers, explaining how to construct eighteen storytelling structures apart from the conventional linear, chronological one-hero model.

That historical, game-changing lecture was filmed by the London Screenwriters' Festival. For the first time it is now made publicly available by Linda Aronson in conjunction with the London Screenwriters' Festival in a special licence permitting you to view and keep on to download and own on three different digital devices.  Watch a trailer.

I’m fascinated by that comment you often hear when people discuss non-linearity, to wit:  ‘every film has a beginning middle and end – but not necessarily in that order’. And it’s always said dismissively, as if it ends the debate.

I find it interesting for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it’s totally inaccurate.  Nonlinearity in all of the nonlinear structures is (as far as I can see) always arranged so that the end always occurs at the very end of the film, or else, if there are multiple stories, that the film ends on the end of one very powerful story, thereby getting its strong ending from that story’s ending, piggybacking,  if you like, on that story’s pull to closure ( as happens in Pulp Fiction for example). 

There is always a striking or thought-provoking resolution, indeed, nonlinear forms very often clearly show what I call a ‘Rosebud’ twist ( a term referencing Citizen Kane), where only in the final moments is the crucial answer given and this answer turns what seemed to be the message and point of the film on its head.  In fact, it’s this pleasing tying-up of threads in an unexpected way that gives nonlinear films much of their pleasure.

But let’s move on. What practical help is this little dictum offering?  Well, none. To the contrary, not only has it pointed you towards disaster by suggesting that you don’t have to have the end of the story at the end but it begs a dozen questions. Let’s look at it.  ‘Every film has a beginning, middle and end but not in that order’. Surely one has to say: ‘ That sounds really useful, but can you please elaborate?  Your comment implies that you have come to this conclusion after studying these forms in some detail (otherwise how could you make such a sweeping and apparently authoritative statement?), hence, can you please list these different orders, with examples? Please also explain by what rules, if any, one should choose to use any individual order?  Is there any particular form of story content to which each is best suited?  And please may I have some technical details here.  How precisely am I to jump between the three components?  Your argument is premised on there being three distinct parts to the story that one reorders. How do you define those parts? I need to know so that I know precisely where to start the reordering. How do we define the end of the beginning and the start of the middle and the end of the middle and the start of the end?

I’m not being smart here. These questions are the ones you really have to ask about the practical mechanics of non-linear.  Where you jump stories is vital.  Films crash and burn if you jump at the wrong places.  Personally, I’ve spent years studying how and when and why nonlinear stories jump at the points that they do, and what effect each sort of jump creates for the audience and what sort of material suits what sort of structure.  I had no choice about this because the jumps to and fro between stories make or break the nonlinear film and you need to choose the right structure to tell your story or it won't work. I’d say, for example, that many nonlinear forms open on the second act turning point of one of their stories then jump to its disturbance.

My only request is for precision and seriousness. Bottom line. Let’s have a proper debate about nonlinear.

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.

I finally saw The Help last  night.  Structurally, it's  using three kinds of parallel narrative technique.  The most important of these is that it's created using a double journey structure. 

By that I mean the story follows two protagonists, Skeeter and Aibileen on their parallel journeys.  However , it's  also using preview flashback, opening on the  the first act turning point (Skeeter's first interview with Aibileen when Aibileen has agreed to help with the book).  We then  flashback to the start of the story. 

There are also brief flashbacks of the simple kind that I call  'flashback as illustration' - brief memories depicted on screen, for example, Skeeter remembering the maid, Constantine, who brought her up and was her mother figure. 

What's particularly interesting is that the opening - which is actually  the first act turning point, and after it we'll flashback to the start of the story - actually works very well.  A common problem with using the first act turning point as your opening scene is that when the film returns to it (to the first act turning point) there is a kind of 'okay, so what?' sensation, and  we feel as if we're starting a new film. 

I'm not entirely sure why some films work and some don't when they open on the first act turning point .  The Help certainly does.  I think the answer is that opening on  first act turning point and flashing back to the start will work if there are three elements in place. 

The first is that the first act turning point scene that we witness is immediately very striking and unusual (in The Help, a wealthy white 1960s era girl from Jackson is interviewing her maid in the maid's home, which is instantly intriguing)  The second vital element is that this scene is really the start of the film's main plot (what I call the 'action line') so when we return to it the film really surges forward.

The third - and probably the most important - is that the first act itself is actually useful plotwise.  If you really don't need to know all of the information in the first act - for example, if you have a meandering normality or if your first act isn't really on the point of your story - then your best course of action is probably to ditch the first act as you have it and open the story just before the scene you you currently have as the first act turning point.

I'm absolutely delighted to say that for the second year running my session at The London Screenwriters' Festival was voted in the exit surveys the most popular session. I'm thilled that so many people found it useful.