ABSTRACT
No story – whatever its format, market, setting, or medium – can properly function if its characters fail to engage, surprise, or appeal to the project’s audience. This chapter will explore how “engage” only happens when the story and its theme properly support the characters, “surprise” only works when the discovery is earned, and “appeal” doesn’t mean “like” so much as identify with. Through a detailed examination of the screenplays for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Catch Me if You Can, and American Graffiti, we will see how their writers properly motivated their characters by using humor to enrich them while also unmasking their character’s true nature in order to properly engage their respective audiences. In television, we will evaluate the challenge of creating people whose stories can maintain several seasons of a series. A detailed look at Peaky Blinders offers an insight into how complex, challenging and “difficult” characters (difficult in the sense that they are not necessarily likable or decent) is a hallmark of many of the projects being produced in today’s “Golden Age of Television.”
