The Bad Guy

So much has been said about The Hero, but as William Akers has said in Your Screenplay Sucks!, it's the bad guy that makes the hero change. No bad guy, no change in The Hero. Here's a checklist from Mr. Akers:

• If it's the hero against the system, put a face on it. Make him a human.
  
• Make him GREAT! All powerful. Stronger than hero.
  
• Always taking action. Plotting. Planning. Killing. Wounding.
  
• Give him some good points.
  
• Put him with hero as much as possible.
• Bad guy has buttons that push the hero.
• The Opponent makes the HERO change.
  
• Bad guy has REASONS for what he's doing. We have sympathy for motives, just the means to get it are BAD.
• Need Bad Guy SPEECH. Explain why he's doing what he's doing. Makes more fascinating.

Primal Emotions

Here's a little tool based on Robert Plutchik's, The Nature of Emotions, to help you define the emotional state your character goes through when faced with an event. Plutchik said that, "stimulus events, either external or internal (as in dreams), act as primary triggers that start the emotion process going," and the "function of emotion is to restore the individual to a state of equilibrium when unexpected or unusual events create disequalibrium."

And as Blake Snyder always reminds us, make it PRIMAL. The chart shows PRIMAL stimulus events that even a caveman would identify with.

VIEW TOOL

Transformation Machine

We've all heard the advice, the hero needs to TRANSFORM. It's about change. BIG Change. Life affirming change. Here's a device to help define your hero's transformation.

VIEW TRANSFORMATION MACHINE

Billy Wilder's Screenwriting Rules

1. The audience is fickle.

2. Grab 'em by the throat and never let 'em go.

3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.

4. Know where you’re going.

5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They'll love you forever.

8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’'e seeing.

9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.

10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then -- that's it. Don’t hang around.