6 Tips To Create A Key Relationship For Your Protagonist

Every protagonist needs a meaningful relationship the audience can relate to, one in which he affects another and is affected. Movie-goers live vicariously through the characters on screen – finding elements in the character’s life that resonate.

The hero’s pursuit of his goal must have an affect on another character, or it has no purpose and won’t affect the audience. Relationships add depth to the story, create stakes, conflict and consequences, and help us care about the hero. The power of a story is felt through the emotional reactions and connections of the characters.

Connections can take various forms:
- Ripley and Newt in Aliens
- Harry and Sally in When Harry Met Sally
- Ratzo Rizzo and Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy
- Andy and Red in The Shawshank Redemption
- Riggs and Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon

An essential element to keep the reader engaged and rooting for the characters is to demonstrate that the relationship is meaningful to the hero. To achieve this, the central conflict should affect the relationship. The obstacles the protagonist faces must challenge and test the relationship.

If you are struggling with creating and developing a key relationship for the main character, follow these steps:
1. Review your script and make a list of the characters your protagonist has contact with
2. Determine how much each character affects the plot
3. Determine what each character has to offer the protagonist that adds value to the story
4. Now select one character that has the possibility of creating the highest stakes through his/her connection with the protagonist.
5. Define the relationship between that character and the hero
6. Expand that character’s story, intertwining it with the main character’s, and ensure the conflict from the dramatic premise eventually tests or endangers the relationship.

YOUR TURN: Do you have suggestions for crafting the key relationship of a script?

Posted: October 14th, 2009
at 6:00am by Laura

 Tagged with character relationships, creating characters, screenplay writing, writing a film, writing a screenplay, writing a script
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Categories: Character

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