45 Master Characters (45 page)

As mentioned earlier Dorothy lives a simple life in a black-and-white world.

As mentioned earlier, Rose lives a very sheltered and controlled life.

Edna is a martyr who's depressed with her lot in life. The story opens with her at a summer beach house visiting with her high society friends and trying to have fun despite her husband's mean disposition. She is close with Robert, a Woman's Man, who is the exact opposite of her husband. She has all the free time and money she could ever want as well as a husband and children. She is supposed to be happy, content and grateful, but a hint of despair lurks around her.

In the beginning of the film we see family pictures that tell us this is the perfect family. We see the family sitting together at perfect family meals, but we soon realize things are far from perfect. As Lester says, “I wish I could tell my daughter that all her anger, insecurity and confusion will pass but I don't want to lie to her.”

Lester has lived his entire life pushing forty-plus hours in a job he hates. He turns around one day and realizes his entire life is a sham. Career accomplishments mean nothing if they're achieved according to someone else's view of what it means to be successful. He just took a job to have a job and climb a corporate ladder he wasn't sure he wanted to climb.

Come up with at least five different settings to show the “perfect world.” If the office is where her perfect world is, think of all the different places she goes during her workday and pick the one that's the most creative.

• She may be found smoking a cigarette in the back alley of the office everyday at 9:03
  A.M.
  to prepare herself to deal with a difficult boss. She may be the only doctor who visits with the janitors in the cafeteria to eat grape Jell-O every afternoon, and they may turn out to be her helpers later on.
  

Remember, you're introducing your hero to your reader in this stage and setting up the theme of the story.

Sometimes it helps to think about what happened to the character just before the opening scene to add some color to it or reveal more about the character. Did she have a hard time getting the children ready for school? Did her car break down? Did she win a raffle? Did she meet a great guy?

Stage 2: The Betrayal or Realization

As Sarah watches the sky from within her glass bubble, a huge cloud forms in front of her, blocking the bright sunlight.

Afraid of the dark, she backs away from the window. Lightning moves closer and closer. With one thunderous crash her bubble smashes wide open. Shards of glass fly everywhere around her.

The glass bubble smashes wide open, and all of life's juices spill on the floor. Everything important to the hero is taken away, and she is pushed to a fork in the road where she must make a choice between going out into the world to actively face her fears or staying where she is and becoming a passive victim. She is betrayed — by society, by herself or by a villain. This stage is also known as the inciting incident.

For character-driven stories that are pushed by the plot, like mysteries, use the elements of the mystery as a metaphor for her internal conflict. The mystery can bring her through all the stages as she tries to solve the case. Most likely her betrayal is more like a realization that she wants something more out of life, even if it is to just do the right thing for a change and solve the crime. This journey will still make her face her demons.

The betrayal has come so close to home the hero can't ignore it. It is staring her in the face, and she must deal with it. She realizes her life is different from what she thought it was, and there's no knight in shining armor to come to the rescue.

This stage sets the stakes and provides the hero with motivation to change her world. The system she has tried to work within doesn't reward her efforts like she expected. She's played the game by all the rules and has lost anyway; her world falls apart.

The hero asks herself, “What's the point? Why am I here? What's all this for?” She may have a nervous breakdown or succumb to addictions during this stage as she tries to reorganize her life. This stage gives the character motivation that carries the whole story to completion. It must be strong. She can't just undo or easily forget what has happened to her here.

This is where the coping strategy the character has chosen falls apart. It no longer works for her, and her whole life and everything she believes in has changed. A role may be over for her (motherhood, for example), and she can't go back in time to change it.

The Naive Strategy:
This woman is hurt or abused. A close friend or family member who took care of her dies. A major crisis turns her world upside down. She loses her job or house or money.

In
The Wizard of Oz
, Dorothy feels betrayed by her uncle when he doesn't protect Toto from the nasty neighbor who wants to put him to sleep. She feels all alone. In fact, her parents aren't there at all; they have betrayed her by dying and leaving her alone.

The Cinderella Strategy:
This woman is left without male protection or support. The man may have died.

In
Gone With the Wind
, Scarlett is betrayed by the men who leave her to fight in the war and to nurse the sick. She is also betrayed by her beloved Ashley, who marries another woman.

The Exceptional Strategy:
This woman is passed over for a promotion or otherwise betrayed by her male peers proving she isn't as good as a man or one of the boys. She can't get into the men's club. She loses a big contract. She loses her marriage because she can't juggle career and marriage. If she's involved with the church, she may lose faith in God as she learns she isn't allowed to become a priest, leading her to question her whole religion.

In
Working Girl
, Tess McGill is betrayed by her boyfriend when she comes home to find him in bed with another woman. She's also betrayed by Katherine Parker when she puts her name on Tess's report, taking the credit for her work.

The Pleasing Type:
This woman finds herself trampled on; people take advantage of her. Some may even put her down as being “only” a mother, secretary, assistant, etc. She feels totally devalued. She may even be penalized for taking time off to have a child.

In
Thelma & Louise
, Thelma is betrayed first by a husband who is mean and nasty to her, then later by a man who tries to rape her. She was just being nice and polite and never saw the danger she was getting into.

The Disappointed Type:
This woman is pushed too far, usually by another person in a position of power. She may feel backed up against a wall, unable to move in any direction to avoid the attack or humiliation that's coming.