#active protagonist

[novella-november]

What is a Passive Protagonist, and why do readers love *Active Protagonists*?

An Active Protagonist, as the name implies, is an *Active Participant* in the plot; they make conscious decisions to move the plot forward, as opposed to:

Passive Protagonists, who don't participate in the plot hardly ever or at all, and exist simply to be dragged along by everyone around them and the plot itself.

Some examples of passive versus active:

Character sees a group of rebels moving through town, and impulsively sneaks off in the middle of the night to join them VS Character sees a group of rebels moving through town, and their parent, employer, friend etc drags them into joining them

another example:

Character gains some supernatural powers, and decides to make their small town a better place, one helped neighbor at a time, slowly building a group of seven super-friends as they work together to rebuild their town by seeing needs and addressing them VS Character gains some supernatural powers, and get forced into a super hero boarding school and are assigned a team as the seventh member, and the protagonist make *zero* attempt to do anything different, and just decides to go along with everything everyone else says.

" You can't have a passive protagonist for very long, without it being an encouragement to your reader to put the book down" "Yeah, If your character if you are expecting people to be attached to your character enough that they want to read or watch your entire story they have to want something for your character they have to want something your your audience has to be invested in what that character is trying to achieve with their life... if they're just bumbling along around and other people are active.... but, you can have a passive protagonist, but everybody else around them is interesting, because they're all doing things that your character has to react, to I'm like "well why aren't I piggybacking on *that* character?"

If you have multiple pages and pages *and pages* of your characters sitting around *discussing* the plot instead of moving it forward *in any way*, your protagonist is probably too passive, and you have a lot of editing to do to remove these sections.

[authorajalexander]

5 Ways to Keep Your Protagonist Proactive – Written By Janice Hardy

5 Ways to Keep Your Protagonist Proactive – Written By Janice Hardy

on Writers in the Storm blog: Get your protagonist up off the couch and into the story. When I was six, I wrote a series called Dog City that followed the adventures of a team of dog archaeologists as they searched for a lost city of, you guessed it, dogs. It was all of four books, bound in aged cardboard from the backs of legal pads, and custom illustrated. Laugh all you want, but that series…

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[activeprotagonist]

Loooooooooonnnnnnnng time

Hey. So it's been a really long time. Haha. I'm still at DreamWorks working up thought the mail room and still trying to learn as much as I can. Life has been very busy and I've been trying to figure out a lot of things because honestly- the mail room is not as fun or romantic as it sounds. But more on that later.... Great thing though- Francis Glebas is speaking to us tomorrow!!!! So excited. :)

[activeprotagonist]

Here is my reel of all of the production design work that I did this summer!! Take a look!!

[activeprotagonist]

Happy Christmas to all of my followers!!! Also it's the Active Protagonist's one year anniversary today! Last year, Christmas day, I read my new copy of the "The Art and Making of Beauty and the Beast" from cover to cover. I then made a promise to learn everything I could through reading and blogging. Happy Anniversary and Happy Christmas!!!!!

[activeprotagonist]

Creating the Scene with Linda Seger

So I'm about to write my first Act (1st 30 pages) of my feature screenplay for my screenwriting class with Claudia Johnson. 

I finished the Scene-by-Scene about a month ago (I did my work way too early) and so I'm just now getting to her chapter six- "Creating the Scene" which is all about how to craft an effective scene. 

A great scene will do three things: advance the story,reveal character, explore an idea, and build a visual context. A good scene will do at least two of these. 

So of course a scene has to advance the story- that one is pretty well known. Its combining this with the other things that becomes tricky. Especially for begining writers who have sort of one track minds- this scene where she's running through the grass shows that she wants to be free-

The next scene where she talks with mom in the kitchen advances the story. etc. etc. 

Now Linda remarks: "Sometimes a scene might seem to be only about revealing character, yet it might also introduce some useful ability of the protagonist, as she approaches her goal." So now this scene with mom in the kitchen isn't only about forwarding the plot but now we can see that our protagonist is very good at cooking- and this is going to help her solve her problem.

These character revelations should reveal character traits that will pay off in the future of the script. 

When writing a scene about a theme, the theme should be expressed by character's decisions and reactions- try not to use on the nose dialogue. Your audience will not thank you. Believe me, I did this in one of my film school short films and that is probably the scene I hate the most because its just hitting the theme on the head- to death, I might add. 

^Prime Example and its done with Voice Over. 

Building images- Its not so much visual design that you should think of here. But character traits. She uses this example: "to build an image of greed, the writer might show a person willing to do anything to make money." For example scrooge, skimps on the coal, refuses to indulge in christmas, doesn't give to the poor. etc. 

For thinking about scenes in the wider context of the script:

-Make sure the beats of the "A" story are clear, you don't need to show every beat, just make sure that they're clear.

-Make sure the beats of your subplots are clear. 

-Make static scenes interesting by adding action

-Use scenes to establish a local- or a time and place

[activeprotagonist]

I found this article on my friend's facebook wall. It's a very interesting idea that the only Production design that actually gets noticed are the period/fantasy pieces. I completely understand why- but both contemporary, fantasy, and period films all have their own challenges. Any thoughts?

[activeprotagonist]

Screenwriting I Part 2

Continuing through my notebook. The day is now September 3rd 2010. Lets see what Vicky had in store for us today.

Dramatic Irony:

- Starting with Hitchcock's "Bomb Under the table" (Aside: apparently this is from Hitchcock by Truffaut- a book for my Film Theory class, I'll have to look for it.)

-The Audience knows something the character does not- do this by extending the scene for example long repetitive shots, tight shots

-Suspense gives us somethign we're not expecting. Utilize juxtaposition of images here. For example in the Birds: One bird, cut back, two birds, cut back, three birds, cut back, 50 birds.

- "Bomb"-if the audience knows about the bomb then there will be suspense where as if they don't know they'll jump, but there's no suspense.

-Used in romance classics: a character needs to do something and happens to fall in love. For example: "Some Like it Hot".

                *Also look at "Some Lit it Hot" for an example of contrast to dramatic irony with Osgood in the end of the film.

- with dramatic irony you MUST have a moment of character realization.

We go to movies for the "Hard choice" that the character is going to face. 

-What choice is the character making and to what affect.

The "Always" according to Vicky (or to my transcribed notes of her lecture)

-ALWAYS leave a significant scene out in a cut. EX. In "Go" the decision to come over and the traveling is left out in the cut

-ALWAYS give character an action that reveals how they feel after the dramatic irony is revealed.