Intention and Obstacle
Anonymous said to thewebcomicsreview:
How do you approach your writing? Do you come up with interesting characters first? Do you create broad concepts and scenarios? Do you just write down random ideas and see what sticks? Help an anon who has no idea what they’re doing.
Lately, I’ve been “approaching” my writing by the time-honored method of not approaching it at all and preferring to huddle up in a corner terrified of life.
This is the most common method.
But there’s a lot of stuff I’ve learned over the year or so I’ve written LotH. The biggest one is what Aaron Sorkin calls “Intention and Obstacle”. A character wants [X], but [Y]. This is the core of all dramatic stories. It’s the engine that powers everything. Once you’ve got that, you can almost autopilot.
Peggy Farrow is the LOTH character that gets the best reaction from readers, and she’s far and away the easiest and most fun to write. She has a clear intention (She wants to be seen as high class), and a clear obstacle (she’s not really classy). This is never explicitly stated to the audience, but it makes it easy to figure out how Peggy will act in any given situation. The intention and obstacle are often the source of most of the character’s traits, not some bullet-point list with a five-page backstory.
Jill kind of doesn’t have this, especially early on. She’s the hardest and least fun character to write, which is a problem because she’s the protagonist. If Jill’s in a room, what does she do? I don’t know. Sit around and slouch? Not very interesting.
Later, she gains the intention to save Riley, and then things start moving more smoothly. If Jill’s in a room, what does she do? She looks for Riley, unless there’s something more pressing, in which case she does that. Having her intentions clear is what powers her as a character. That’s why the first or second song in a musical is the protagonist saying what they want, sometimes known as the “I want” song.
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Frozen, which I’m told was a moderate success, has four “I Want” songs. “Do you want to build a snowman” establishes the Anna’s main Intention (getting closer to her sister) and obstacle (Elsa’s shutting her out). Then the “For the first time in forever” for Anna’s secondary intention (to get laid) and obstacle (she doesn’t know anyone), and “Let it go” for Elsa’s intention to just kind of fuck off and enjoy these mountains (note that, before her intention is established, Elsa literally doesn’t do anything of her own volition, just sits in a room all day then runs away in a panic).
(The fourth one’s “In Summer”, for comic relief snowman guy)
It’s not the fun snappy dialouge or the shocking twist of the backstory or the world. Intention/Obstacle is the clothesline you hang the story from. In Saffron, Saffron wants to rescue Prince Faunus. The obstacle is villains. This is the core of the story. It’s what makes the characters go, and it’s hard to write characters that don’t have a reason to go places. Trust me, I’ve tried.
When reading this, I was reminded of one of the “Every Frame a Painting” video you posted (the Evolution of the Artist). On it, it’s mentionned that a character should be defined by his desires and the way the character moves to fulfil them.
I think it’s a bit closer to your Peggy comparison : “Character wants [X] and due to his personality does [Y]”. In Peggy’s case it would be “Peggy wants to be seen as a high class lady, and since she is superficial and not a classy lady tends to overdo it”. The obstacle you mention should be more like the people who don’t respect her as a lady (like the Rat champion who only sees her as a subordinate) and those who keep humilating her (like Jill). Maybe one should mix the three : the wants to get the character to move, the obstacles to give him concrete objectives, and the traits to define how he removes the obstacles.
About Jill, isn’t that a common problem with protagonists ? Since they tend to be the ones reacting the the plot, you don’t get many opportunities to define their wants. I think it would have been good if Jill had some kind of goal outside of the plot (Introducing Riley sooner could have helped, I suppose).
And now that I think about it, this is probably why I can’t seem to think of a coherent plot for my stories myself : since my protagoonists almost never have a goal by themselves, it’s hard to get the plot going…
I think it’s interesting that Jill doesn’t really know what she wants. You could get a lot of mileage out of her exploring that. Best if it’s not too heavy handed and she never nails it down entirely. Stories that you can wrap and tie up with a bow are not necessarily the best stories.
How many people do you know, that don’t drive you nuts, think they have their own wants all figured out? Out of that group, how many really have figured it out?