The #1 Most Important Element In Developing Character by John Truby Video Lecture | Screenwriting: From Beginner to a Pro - Career Development

so you've mentioned from prior
interviews that we should show weakness
and need and deficiency in our
characters I'm wondering why don't we
like to watch people that are sort of
stronger than ourselves well this is the
common notion particularly about action
heroes the notion was always in the past
that when you have an action hero or
especially a superhero that you want a
character who begins as a good person
upstanding moral Paragon and remains
that way throughout the entire story but
about 10 years ago
Hollywood discovered that that's not the
best way to tell a superhero story
that's one of those examples of
conventional wisdom that's not so what
we care about is to see a character
overcome a deep weakness now the
audience thinks that this story is all
about the hero achieving his goal right
because then we've got success and
that's important and in most stories the
hero will accomplish his goal by the end
of the story but that is not what the
audience is most interested in they
can't tell you this but we know from
lots of experience hundreds of years of
storytelling that the case that the real
fact is not does the hero accomplish the
goal but does the hero overcome the
great weakness because that's what makes
us care about that character we see them
in pain we see them in trouble right if
they're already successful if they're
already a good and in some cases a
perfect person where where do they go
right there's nothing for them to
overcome so that's why it's so important
that we show in the very opening pages
of our script the great internal
weakness of our character now we may
also want to give them qualities that
are likable qualities
that the audience can also hook on to
but those are not nearly as important as
establishing the weakness upfront in the
story
you