THURSDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:

CAST OF THOUSANDS?

Most of the time a screenplay and a movie will be about a Person With A Problem - a Protagonist and an Antagonist (or force of antagonism) and the handful of people who are part of that circle. In Stephen King’s MISERY we have our protagonist writer Paul Sheldon and our antagonist his number one fan Annie Wilkes. There are supporting characters like his editor, the local sheriff, and a couple of other characters. In PET SEMETERY we have the Creed family: Husband, Wife, Son and Daughter. Plus their weird old neighbor Jud, a student named Victor, our protagonist’s father in law, and the family cat. Even CARRIE is mostly Carrie and her Mother and Sue Snell a small group of students who bully Carrie and a couple of Teachers who try to help her... but there are also all of those other students on the periphery of the story. Some of those are just “extras” - characters in your film that fill out the other seats in the class room... but others are active in the story. What do you do if you have a story with a large cast? One Hundred Characters?

In my recent article for Script Magazine, A HUNDRED HENCHMEN, I look at the film KILL! which has 40 Thieves violently robbing the passengers on a speeding train... and a couple of soldiers who try to stop them... and how to turn those 40 Thieves into individual characters through things like weapons and fighting styes plus clothing and attitude and other elements that can take 40 burley guys from Central Casting who play usually henchmen and turn them into *individuals*. But what if we don’t have characters with different weapons and fighting styles... and they are all 18 year old men? And there are literally one hundred of them? How do we make turn those other students in that locker room scene from CARRIE into distinctive individuals?

A HUNDRED INDIVIDUALS

THE LONG WALK (2025)
Screenplay by J.T. Mollner based on a novel by Stephen King.

I think this was King's first novel, a Viet Nam War allegory, where in the near future a hundred young men, between 16-18 years old, are selected to represent their state/area on an epic, televised, endurance walk. The winner gets extra goods and supplies for his state... plus a huge cash prize and a wish. You can't stop walking for any reason. You must maintain 3mph. No sleep breaks or bathroom breaks or food breaks - everything must be done walking. If you stop for any reason, you have the count of 3 to get moving again. Or you will be shot dead. There is no finish line, you walk until the other 99 contestants are dead.

So we have a hundred 16-18 year old males... Plus a few other characters. How do we make each different?

Though I have written action flicks and thrillers and horror films, my home genre is mysteries - and those three genres are part of that genre. At least in bookstores. Before Steven King, Horror was a small section of the Mystery aisle in a book store. King’s popularity created an explosion in Horror fiction and now it has its own aisle filled with all kinds of books - often categorized by subgenre. All of the different kinds of Horror. Then there are even subgenres within the subgenres.

But Mysteries often have 10 or 12 people on an island who have a lot in common and one is secretly killing the others one by one. So we have a dozen suspects and they all have something in common that put them on this island. So 12 *similar* people...

And the writer's job is to make each different characters with different personalities and different motives and different goals and different everything else - distinctive and interesting characters who are have something in common. I had fun doing this in my “Fine Upstanding Citizen” novella with a dozen organized crime “department heads” - and one has been ratting them out to the FBI. Finding a way to make a dozen mobsters individuals was fun!

Stephen King had 100 young men all doing the same Walk Or Die competition to benefit their state/area, the film trims it down to 50 - one from each state. That’s still a lot of characters... now add The Major (who oversees the competition) and all of the soldiers who will shoot you dead, a few family members of the contestants plus a handful of spectators who become part of the story. Now, maybe 10 to 15 of those characters are main characters (and survive most of the story) but the rest are still part of the story... And we need to know who they are... Before they get shot dead for slowing down or stopping. If their deaths are supposed to mean something to us, the reader and the viewer, we need to know them as individuals. They might be less fleshed out than those 10 to 15 main characters, but they need to be flesh and blood. So that when we see that blood? We will care.

The physical goal for all of those characters is to be the last one standing (survive) and win the extra rations (etc) for their community.

But each one has a different additional goal, and a different motivation, and a different survival plan, and a different personality and outlook on life, and a different twitch/talisman (physical object that has a special meaning to them that you can tell the audience about or not - up to you), a different general outlook on life that tells us something about their past, one different physical way to tell them apart visually, a different article of clothing that is an extension of their personality, a different vocabulary and thought process, a different way to get what they want and a different way to deal with failure, and part of that earlier vocabulary - each has a different way to say Yes, No, Hello, Goodbye, and any other common words that everyone will say at some point in the story. You need to match a character’s common words and vocabulary to their character, so that something as simple as saying "If you say so" instead of "yes" tells us something about them.

OUR CHARACTERS

In this story, everyone also has a different plan to be the last man standing - which is an important part of the story. Also each has a different level of preparedness which tells us something about the characters. Have they trained? Did they prepare for leg cramps and exhaustion? Because this is a little like the TV show SURVIVOR (or vice versa) they each are allowed some personal items (where those talismans come into play) but also some food. The Game provides them with bottles of bad tasting nutrients to keep them alive... But some have foods and special treats - and those things come with a story that tells us something about the character... Their favorite food or snack that their mother made for them. Why they like it. What it reminds them of. If I were to ask you what the best meal you have ever had in your life was, chances are that the food isn’t as important as the event where you ate it. Our memories are often triggered by senses like taste - so there’s a story behind that food or snack they brought with them. Everything is telling us something about the character.

Our protagonist, Ray Garraty, is from the state where the walk takes place, so he knows the territory. He has prepared for the walk - and been planning to be part of the walk for years... because of his additional goal and motivation. The Major, who oversees the competition, murdered Ray’s father - and Ray wants to win so that he can kill the Major.

Pete McVries is our sidekick to Ray - they are the two main characters in this story, and they have several deep philosophical conversations along the way. His additional goal? He’s been burned by life and is secretly suicidal, plans on just sitting down and being shot dead by the soldiers.

Hank Olson is a motor mouth jokester, the comic relief character. If he wins he’s going to ask for ten naked girls instead of the prize money... but that’s a joke, because we find out that he’s married.

Art Baker is the dreamer of the film’s Four Musketeers (Ray, Pete, Hank, and Art) who wants to go to the Moon if he wins. He’s a religious kid. What the others don’t know is that he’s a dying man, and this is his chance to die a hero... even if he loses and is shot dead.

Rich Harkness aspires to be a writer, and his additional goal is writing his diary of the walk which will be published and make him millions after he wins the competition. He’s a thin kid, and doesn’t seem to have prepared for the walk.

Stebbens is the character that all of the others think will win. He’s in great shape, has planned ahead to the point of having a second pair of shoes if the first set wears out. He has *studied* the walk and the winners. His additional goal is to have tea with his father... The Major who will order him shot dead.

Gary Barkovich is an angry young man who thinks that making everyone else’s life on earth hell will somehow make his life better. He has plans that don’t make much sense - like using the 3 warnings before they shoot you as a rest period... and starting to walk again before times up and they shoot. His “personal item” is a switch blade.

.Those are the characters who are the main focus of the story, along with The Major (the Antagonist) but each of the other characters has a moment in the story. They all have distinctive characters, even if we don’t remember their names.

CREATING LOTS OF CHARACTERS

I have a method of breaking my stories (figuring everything out) that I call the Thematic - I figure out my theme based on the story idea and what it means to me... And that gives me a "lens" to see the story through. Which helps me select character types and everything else that can illustrate different aspects of that theme. Different ways to tackle the problem. I'm usually secretly making a point through the story itself, and giving each character a different way of looking at that point (or ignoring it in different ways) so that I can come up with characters whose *existence* is helping me explore the theme.

Stephen King’s novel was an allegory about the Viet Nam War, and the futility of sending boys to a foreign land where many returned in body bags. So the idea of the reward from the Long Walk Competition being survival and prestige for your family and rewards for your homeland mirrors those boys going off to war... and the various reasons those young soldiers had for enlisting... or coping mechanisms for being drafted. Finding that “lens” of theme to see your story through can help you create characters that illustrate different aspects of the story and scenes and everything else.

That might or might not help you figure out your characters, but it's a tool that I use... and it also adds Unity (that Aristotle thing) to the story so that it isn't just a grab bag of unrelated characters on this journey. Each has a different way to tackle the problem, and that's exploring the theme through actions.

So whatever your story is - begin by coming up with a bunch of different secondary goals for your characters. If you have a bunch of high school students or astronauts or wait staff at a restaurant or prisoners doing time or people trapped in a grocery store or whatever - what is their goal in addition to graduating or walking on the moon or finishing this shift with great tips? If you just brainstorm a bunch of different reasons without thinking about the rest of the character stuff? You will get a more interesting list. You aren’t self censoring. I like coming up with a bunch of things and then pick the most interesting ones... the ones that I might not have thought of if I was only thinking about the specifics of the story.

Then the other elements from above - from wardrobe to how they say Yes and No and all of the other common words and phrases - grow from those character seeds. So a character like Gary Barkovich (who barks and growls like a rabid dog at everyone else) in THE LONG WALK gives us the clues to everything from how he dresses to his dialogue to his additional goal if he wins.

Do this for everything you need for your characters, then create those supporting characters. Chances are, you already know all of these things about your protagonist - but the other 10-15 important characters on the Long Walk also need to be different than each other but with the same goal of being the last man standing.

I brainstorm things like this by numbering a page 1 to 10 and coming up with 10 ideas for each element. Then numbering from 11-20, and coming up with ten more ideas, and I keep going in tens until I have a lot of possibilities and I have been forced to stretch my imagination and come up with things that aren't the obvious ones like the first 10. You are panning for gold, here, and you need to get through all of the dirt and silt before you find the nuggets. If you need 10-15 big valuable gold nuggets, you might need to keep digging for a while, but the rest? The good but not great ones? Well, you have all of those others on the Walk (or working at the restaurant or in Mission Control at NASA, etc) and they can get the “just good” ideas.

One of the things about LONG WALK is that King also had to figure out 99 deaths... And those deaths are all character related. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. The 10-15 main characters are important - those will be important deaths, so you need to come up with different ways to die and even different goals in those deaths. If you know your characters, how they think, what they think, how they process information? You can figure out how they will die and how they will live. Irony is a great tool, here.

So if you have a big cast? All on the same journey with the same goal? Figure out all of the different details that makes their walk unlike the other characters and *demonstrates* the theme and character in different ways. What is this character's plan for survival and why do they want to survive...

The Moon landing?
This shift at the restaurant?
The other prisoners in the exercise yard?
The mist outside the grocery store?
Whatever your story is about..

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The First Ten Pages Of Your Screenplay Are Critical,
But What About The Last 10 Pages?

Creating the perfect ending to your story! This 100,000 word book shows you how to end your story with a bang, rather than a whimper. Everything from Resolution Order to Act Three Tools to Happy or Sad Endings? to How The Beginning Of Your Story Has Clues To The Ending (in case you were having trouble figuring out how the story should end) to Falling Action to How To Avoid Bad Endings to Writing The Perfect Twist Ending to Setting Up Sequels & Series to Emotional Resolutions to How To Write Post Credit Sequences to Avoiding Deus Ex Machinas, to 20 Different Types Of Ends (and how to write them) and much more! Everything about endings for your screenplay or novel!

Only: $4.99

NO KINDLE REQUIRED! Get the *free* app (any device, except your Mr. Coffee) on the order page on Amazon!

All About LOGLINES, TREATMENTS, and PITCHING!

LOGLINES, TREATMENTS, and PITCHING! Blue Book!

Distilling Your Screenplay!

Loglines, Treatments, Pitching, Look Books, Pitch Decks, One Pagers, Rip-O-Matics?

You have written a brilliant 110 page screenplay, but how do you get anyone to read it? You need to distill it down into some form of verbal moonshine or story rocket fuel that will ignite that bored development executive or manager or agent and get them to request your screenplay. But how do you shrink those 110 pages into a 25 word logline or a 2 minute elevator pitch or a one page synopsis or a short paragraph? This 100,000 word book shows you how! Everything you need to know! From common logline mistakes (and how to solve them) to how your pitch can reveal story problems to the 4 types of pitches!

272 Pages - ONLY $4.99!

READY TO BREAK IN?

THE BUISINESS SIDE

*** BREAKING IN BLUE BOOK *** - For Kindle!

Should really be called the BUSINESS BLUE BOOK because it covers almost everything you will need to know for your screenwriting career: from thinking like a producer and learning to speak their language, to query letters and finding a manager or agent, to making connections (at home and in Hollywood) and networking, to the different kinds of meetings you are will have at Studios, to the difference between a producer and a studio, to landing an assignment at that meeting and what is required of you when you are working under contract, to contracts and options and lawyers and... when to run from a deal! Information you can use *now* to move your career forward! It's all here in the Biggest Blue Book yet!

Print version was 48 pages, Kindle version is over 400 pages!

$4.99 - and no postage!

FINAL DRAFT SOFTWARE

Use your creative energy to focus on the content; let Final Draft take care of the style. Final Draft is the number-one selling application specifically designed for writing movie scripts, television episodics and stage plays. Its ease-of-use and time-saving features have attracted writers for almost two decades positioning Final Draft as the Professional Screenwriters Choice. Final Draft power users include Academy, Emmy and BAFTA award winning writers like Oliver Stone, Tom Hanks, Alan Ball, J.J. Abrams, James Cameron and more. * * * Buy It!

copyright 2022 by William C. Martell