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Scott, thanks so much for this series, this post in particular is very timely for me. I'm working on a character who starts out as a wonderful person and over the course of the film becomes more and more despicable. I'm wrestling with her motivations but it's good to know that I don't need to make her likeable as long as we understand her, despite disagreeing with her actions.

Scott, I know this isn't apart of your lessons, but how do you feel about ellipses? I use them a lot! Maybe not as much as Eric Roth, but I do use them a ton, as well as double dashes. Just wondering your take on this.

Again no rules and every writer has to figure out their own style. Plus that can vary script to script depending upon the emergence of the story's Narrative Voice. That said, my general approach to ellipses and double dashes in dialogue is this: I use (...) at the end of a line where a character drifts into silence.

JACK
That means if you have his key, you and he are...

I also use (...) inside a side of dialogue to indicate a pause on the part of the speaker or a shift in their line of thinking.

JILL
Yeah, we're goddammed lovers, okay, and...
By the way, did you remember to get milk
on your way home?

I use (--) at the end of lines to indicate when someone or something interrupts or cuts off the speaker.

JACK
But not Barney. An affair with a minister--

JILL
He's not a minister. He's a... guru.

I've seen writers who don't appear to have any specific approach, throwing in an ellipsis here, double dash there. That's fine. In my mind, I'm trying to make things as clear as possible to a reader, and you can 'train' them if you are consistent. For example, if they see you using a double dash to indicate an interrupted side of dialogue in a consistent manner, then it becomes clear after awhile that's what you're doing. But that's just me. One thing to remember: You may HEAR each side of dialogue with a specific cadence, with certain breaks and what not. It's wise to be judicious in the use of ellipses and double dashes because if you do it a LOT, it can interrupt the flow a read for a reader. Generally less is more... unless you're David Mamet who has a habit of indicating EVERY pause and disclination ("er... um... uh"), the again he is DAVID MAMET, a master at dialogue, so he can do whatever the hell he likes. Again another reason to READ SCRIPTS! A wide variety of them. Then play around with your writing style on all fronts and with all aspects, including small items like ellipses and double dashes. That's all part of finding your writing voice.

Scott, I've been thinking about empathy recently, reading through Pixar's 22 Rules of Story, and the important things do seem to be character and conflict. You can have any kind of character and create empathy with them by forcing them into conflict that the audience understands, or has suffered the same. They can then suffer vicariously through the characters on screen and feel some kind of kinship with them, whether they are bad or good. This way you get empathy. George Bailey from It's A Wonderful Life is a great example of this. His struggle to get away from Bedford Falls and follow his dreams is thwarted at every turn. Whether we have ever had the same misfortune matters not....what does matter is we can all understand what he is going through and this generates the empathy that we need to realise we are watching an interesting and compelling character. The question is, do you think, that by creating empathy this way, we don't have to worry about sympathy as they audience will do that automatically for characters they care about once they begin to empathise?

Whatever their specific definitions, I choose to look at them this way with regard to writing: Empathy: Where you can relate to and understand a character's mindset, actions, philosophy. Sympathy: Where you FEEL a connection, an emotional resonance with a character. Take The Silence of the Lambs. As much as a monster Buffalo Bill is, I can empathize with him. He believes that the solution to his fragile psyche state is to have a sex change operation. Unfortunately none of the three centers that specialize in that agree with him. So according to his own logic, he determines to create a female body suit to allow him to experience the 'transformation' of being a woman (this underscores the importance of that weird dance scene BB does in front of his video camera, ending with him tucking his penis in between his thighs... THAT is what he envisions himself to be.) Crazy, but I can understand his demented logic and I can empathize with his desire to feel whole psychologically. OTOH I can sympathize with Clarice who was orphaned... witnessed a gruesome slaughter of the lambs... sent off to an orphanage... and has been living with the shadow of her father's death since the age of 11. Sympathy is an emotional bond. Empathy is one or more steps removed from that bond, more of a rational exercise. Studio execs know that much of the success of a movie is the emotional connection it makes with potential viewers, hence another reason for them emphasizing sympathetic Protagonists. And more directly per your question, if you sympathize with a character, the empathy will almost invariably go along with it. BTW your mentioning George Bailey is a timely one. Who among us hasn't experienced being left 'holding the bag'? Fate intervening and keeping us from this opportunity or that? Stuck in the drudgery of day to day life while others have all the fun? That is the basis of our sympathy with his character. Interestingly it puts George into the position of being a passive protagonist, that is, he goes through more than half the movie with no discernable goal, just moving form one crisis and event to the next. Indeed, some have critiqued IAWL as being a movie that does not work BECAUSE of that fact. But of course, it DOES work... and wonderfully which proves once again, there are no screenwriting 'rules'.

Frank(Kevin Spacey) in House of Cards is a great example of a character we readily root for, despite the fact that he is one brutally calculating and ruthless SOB. He has a great intro. A dog has been hit outside his house and is dying. The dog's owners will arrive any second and see their suffering pet. Frank comforts the animal, showing his compassion. Then kills it with his bare hands, almost seeming to enjoy it...and displaying that he is prepared to do whatever it takes. In this case, the dog was going to die, so he ended its suffering. As the series progresses, we see just how ruthless Frank is. He will lie to enemies and friends alike, use underhanded means to apply pressure, and has no remorse when his actions harm thousands of people(closing a shipyard). So why do we care what happens to him? Some possible reasons: -- the show uses a VO technique where Frank periodically directly addresses the audience. This has the effect of really bringing us into his life in away that's very personal. -- Franks gets screwed by the President in the first episode, which builds an audience desire for vindication. -- Frank plays by the brutal rules of his world, which makes his actions more acceptable to us. -- Frank is GOOD at what he does. We like watching people that are bloody good at what they do. -- though ruthless in pursuit of a goal, Franks is human...he has a heart and is occasionally even vulnerable. -- great power, like what is exercised in Washington, is a compelling goal. So we root for "our guy", the main character. It can't be helped. A perfect example of the effectiveness of these things is in episode 5. Frank has screwed a teachers union guy, lied to him to get what he wanted. And the guy had been a longtime friend. Frank feels no remorse, and the union guy is presented as an honest player. He has our sympathy. So when he conspires to strike back at Frank by ruining his wife's fundraiser, we should root for the more sympathetic guy, right? But we don't. We root for the protagonist as he cleverly succeeds in once again turning the tables on his old friend. Why do we root for the "wrong" character here? Because we're invested in him. He's our guy. We've spent time with him and his wife. We may not agree with his goals, but we are fascinated by the means he uses in pursuing them, and that's enough for us to want him to triumph. My amateur opinion, anyway. Thanks for the thread! Great job.

The most ridiculous feedback I ever received on a script was to make the protagonist an alcoholic, druggie, washed up womanizer with suicidal tendencies etc. to get that precious sympathy. Problem is the script was a lighthearted parody. It was like asking Austin Powers to star in Trainspotting.

Thanks for the reply Scott. Does this tool also count for action as well? I use (...) mostly in action more than dialogue. I try really hard to be sparse but...

Sure. I used to do that quite a bit in scene description, but over time I pretty much stopped. Not sure why, just didn't look right to my eye. But to each his/her own. As long as it looks right to YOU and is an expression of your voice, go for it!

Kevin, we can trace the role of the movie anti-hero back all the way to the 1927 movie Underworld featuring a gangster 'Bull' Weed as the central character, written by Ben Hecht, arguably the greatest screenwriter of all time. If you can pull it off -- Protagonist as bad guy -- it's great because it really puts the viewer in a compromised position psychologically and emotionally, and can make for a more complex narrative experience.

Sounds like horrible advice on all fronts because some of those attributes wouldn't necessarily garner sympathy. Your comment also speaks to the importance of consistency in tone. The characters have to mesh with the genre and feel of your story. Austin Powers / Trainspotting hits that nail on the head. Not sure I'd listen to the source of that "ridiculous feedback" again as his/her instincts seem off-track.

Thanks Scott, I agree. I did not follow that advice. But it did get me going analyzing films with unsympathetic protagonists. I learned that you can get away with a lot as long as the protagonist is hurting other bad people (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels). But most importantly, people will watch if the character is INTERESTING so I amped up how cool my lead was, how exciting the situations he got into were. I figured he wouldn't want your pity so don't make him pathetic.

Definitely a good read on a topic I'm always interested in; even beyond the more overt antiheroes, I've always been much more drawn to characters that aren't easily and overtly likable. However, one thing I do notice in discussions about unsympathetic protagonists, including this one: the examples are always male characters. The go-to example for women seems to be Mavis Gary, Charlize Theron's character in Diablo Cody's "Young Adult," or Lena Dunham's character in "Girls." Both of these characters are incredibly polarizing (Dunham's in particular is the subject of obsessive scrutiny and criticism), even though their unlikability doesn't being to compare to the destructive and dangerous behavior of, say, Walter White or Alex from A Clockwork Orange. Scott, I'm curious if you think it's harder to get away with unsympathetic female protagonists, or even if there's a harsher gaze for what's considered "unlikable". True anti-heroine's are a rarity, in television and film, even amid the "male antihero" trend of late.

Thanks for the reply Scott, great food for thought!

[…] 3 Lines Max 9. CUT TO (Transitions) 10. Parentheticals 11. Flashbacks 12. Voice-Over Narration 13. Sympathetic Protagonist 14. Protagonist and Shifting Goals 15. Certain Events By Certain […]