How To Make The Audience Care About Your Characters by John Truby Video Lecture | Screenwriting: From Beginner to a Pro - Career Development

how do we get a viewer to care about a
character you know we see so many films
with great production value but there's
a disconnect
we don't feel connected or even
interested in the characters so how is
this achieved one of the biggest
mistakes writers make is in how they
create character and they they've heard
this about you know we need to care
about the main character which is
absolutely true we do want to care about
that main character but how they go
about it is often wrong which is they
think that the way that you get an
audience to care about a character is
you make that character as detailed as
possible meaning we give them as many
character traits as we can this is not
the best way to go because those tend to
be very superficial elements of a person
and that's not what makes an audience
care about a character it's interesting
that what makes an audience care about a
character really comes down to only two
things the weakness the fundamental
weakness of that character and the
characters goal in the story this is why
in my my sword classes it's always the
first thing I talk about and they are by
the way the first two steps of the seven
major story structure steps that I was
talking about earlier weakness need of
the character in other words what is
that personal problem inside that is
hurting the hero in such a fundamental
way that it's ruining their life it's
very deep and the entire story is going
to play out the soiling of that problem
the way they're going to solve that
problem is by going after a particular
goal they don't know at the beginning
that by going after this goal they will
eventually deal with their great
internal weakness but if it's a good
story that's exactly how it will work
now I often talk about the what I
consider to be the most important
element of good writing the mark of a
really
storyteller which is that plot comes
from character now those are big words
and a lot of people hear that well what
it actually does that mean it means a
lot of things but the most important
thing it means is that you create a goal
for your hero which will eventually
force that person to deal with their
deep weakness if you do that the plot
comes from the deep source of the
character and you've told a great story
you