FRIDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:

CHARACTER SECRETS

A secret helps define a character. What we feel we have to hide from others tells us a lot about ourselves. Maintaining that secret will influence every choice we make. Every choice our characters make.

Let's say we have a businessman who inflates his resume in order to land a job. Now this businessman lives in fear that the lie on his resume will be exposed. He may lose his job. He also begins to see himself as a fraud. Do others in his firm wonder why he seems to have less experience than his resume boasts? Do they begin to think of him as second rate? Will our businessman compensate for this by being overly punctual and bureaucratic? Or will he work extra hours in hopes that if his secret is discovered, his job performance will outshine it? Or does he become a delegator: Giving tasks which may expose his weakness/ secret to others? He may become the office paranoid, living in constant fear that others are trying for his title.

A lot of characterization choices from one fudged resume. This secret shades what might have been a standard businessman, turning him into someone three dimensional and different. Someone with a secondary motivation in every scene.

In THE TUXEDO Jackie Chan plays the chauffeur for a James Bond-like spy named Clark Devlin. Devlin admits his secret to Jackie - 90% of what makes him the suave man of action is his (bionic, gadget-filled) tuxedo... the other 10% is what's most important - having a good heart. He says that Jackie has the most important 10% - he's a good man. When Devlin is injured in an explosion, he tells Jackie to wear his tuxedo - and take over the investigation while he's in the hospital. So Jackie pretends to be suave spy Clark Devlin... and must keep this masquerade a secret from the rest of the household staff, the CSA spy organization... and his new spy partner Jennifer Love Hewitt. The secret is the source of much of the film's humor - Chan is pretending to be a spy, pretending to be suave, pretending to be an action hero... but his nice guy personality keeps bursting through. The tuxedo fights the bad guys - Chan doesn't want to hurt anybody. Hewitt believes that Devlin/Chan is incompetent, his legendary exploits nothing more than hype. This builds sympathy for Chan's character, he's only a chauffeur! But if he tells Hewitt the truth he will be betraying his boss (and friend)'s trust, and it will get back to the CSA that Devlin is in the hospital. After the first run-in with the villain, Chan has an even better reason for keeping the secret - if they find out he's just a chauffeur, they will kill him for sure. Plus, Hewitt will be in danger and there will be no one trying to stop the bad guys from talking over the world. Chan MUST keep the secret. He MUST keep pretending to be super-spy Clark Devlin!

The film uses the secret for humor in many ways: Because the clothes makes the man, Chan is only a suave action hero when he's wearing the tuxedo - which means he's powerless at non-formal occasions. Hiding his true identity as a chauffeur and pretending to be Devlin creates numerous funny scenes where the secret may be uncovered. And they find a great deal of humor in the differences and similarities between Chan and Devlin - CSA spy and ex-lover Debbie Mazur mentions Devlin's "cute little accent" to Hewitt... meaning the real Devlin's sexy British accent rather than Chan's goofy Chinese accent. The more Chan tries to hide his secret, the harder the secret tries to get out. His pretty partner, the evil megalomaniac trying to take over the world, the villains bombshell girlfriend, the massive henchmen, the mad scientist... everyone believes he's Clark Devlin super-spy! If the truth gets out that he's only a nice guy chauffeur? It's the end of the world as we know it!

BREAKFAST IN ALABAMA?

SWEET HOME ALABAMA is also fueled by the protagonist's secret - she is secretly still married to her home town sweetheart. Though the audience is in on that secret in SWEET HOME ALABAMA, in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S Audrey Hepburn played another cute young country girl who moved to New York and re-invented herself and has the exact same secret - and it effects every single thing she does in the film - but the audience doesn't learn the secret until the very end of the film (when her husband... Buddy Ebsen... shows up in New York). When you see BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S for the second time, you realize that everything Audrey Hepburn's character IS is in response to her secret. You don't need to reveal the character's secret to the audience - you can use it to create a dimension and subtext to the character... like our executive with his fudged resume.

A character's secret can be used for comedy, for drama, for suspense... or just to make the character more three dimensional and interesting.

Give your character a secret. Have them hide the secret. Make sure no one discovers it. This creates a subtext for all of your character's actions which makes them more dimensional. Everyone has a secret! What is your protagonist trying to hide? What is his or her big secret?

If you liked this tip, check out: CREATING STRONG PROTAGONISTS - over 200 pages!

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