Blogger: Rachel Kent
I saw the new “Beauty and the Beast” movie over the weekend and enjoyed it! There were parts that could have been left out, but overall I thought it was very well done. I even saw it in 3D–something I rarely do because I don’t like wearing the glasses for the entire film. The Beast’s library was breathtaking in 3D!
I will try not to spoil any of it for you (there might be some tiny spoilers), but I wanted to reflect on one major difference I noticed in the live-action movie when I compared it to the cartoon. The characters have stronger motivations and are much deeper in this new one. Belle was always a pretty strong-willed girl, but Emma Watson takes her to a new level. More strikingly, her bumbling-oaf-of-a-father has been transformed into a dad a girl could be proud of. I loved him in this new movie! He isn’t a wimp. Even Gaston’s sidekick LeFou is portrayed as less of a caricature. There is more backstory and that made it easier to show more strength of character. I also loved that Beast can read and discusses books with Belle!
They changed up the lyrics a bit too, and I did miss my favorite line in the Gaston song, “And every last inch of me’s covered in hair!” (At least they still had the part about eating all the eggs!) But even the changes they made to the songs helped deepen the story.
I believe authors can learn something from this movie comparison. You can have a good story without digging too deep into motivations and emotions of the characters, but if you allow those characters to speak and “bleed” on the page you are going to have a stronger book. The same thing goes for writing nonfiction. You can tell your audience what you’d like them to know, but if you open up and become vulnerable the takeaway will be much deeper.
How do you make sure your characters go deeper and speak to the audience?
Interesting serendipity, for recently a neighbour, driving past and seeing Barbara and I together, called out, “Hey, Beauty and the Beast!”
* I was furious, for how DARE he call my wife a Beast?
* You make a good point about providing depth to characters. It can be done in very small way; in one of my favourite films, “Fury”, Brad Pitt’s character (Don Collier, commander of an American tank) takes his tank into laager in the second scene, and after giving his crew their assignments (which include properly removing the body of the decapitated co-driver), walks off and takes a moment to hide and have the shakes. In the first scene he’s all steel; in the second you see the rust.
* We’re all a mix of strengths and vulnerabilities, and we generally, I think, prefer to play to (and to display) our strengths. I mean, look at Facebook! Seeing a character that shows a side of ourselves to which, in reaction, we can say, “Well, at least I’m not like THAT…at least not so you’ld notice, I hope…” serves as a nice safety valve for the psyche.
* Once my characters are formed, I go back and give them some introspection, and some dialogue ‘tics’ which I hope deepen them:
– A rough and seemingly uneducated chap will speak in an oddly formal manner, using occasional ten-dollar words that bespeak a desire to be something beyond his current milieu, and display a potential for surprising courtesy.
– A refined lady show unexpected harshness when facing down a miscreant, and in musing over it afterward is surprised at her own will.
– A villain will offer unexpected grace to a stranger, or, (with more care, since it’s easy for this not to ring true) to his victim.
* One thing I try to avoid are archetypes, such as the villain-you-love-to-hate. While they may be fun to create (and then dispose of), they really don’t broaden the story; their interaction may be satisfying, but however inventive it is, the presence of an archetype almost always leads to stereotyped scenes.
* A method I’d suggest is to give your characters personality tests, answering the questions as they would. You can gain a lot of insight; and many testing sites offer both real-world and fictional examples of those ‘public figures’ who fit a specific type.
Another example of adding depth to a character is found in the 2007 remake of “The :10 To Yuma”.
* The original 1957 film is strong, with the character of the outlaw Ben Wade having a certain geniality (well-played by Glenn Ford) which makes you want to see him through to a positive ending. He’s more rogue than evil.
* In the remake, Russel Crowe takes the character deeper, including both touching refinement and cold brutality. The line into caricature or sentimentality is never crossed, and you get the picture, in the end , of a ‘bad man’ who still has that spark of Divinity with which we have all been graced.
Andrew, I particularly like your last point, about the personality tests. I think the Myers-Briggs personality types offer an excellent foundation for actually building individual characters in a story.
I took my very grown up daughter to BATB last week. We both squealed like toddlers when the music began. I didn’t take one of my other children, who watched the cartoon version every day for 6 months, when he was between 4 and 5 years old. He’s 19 now, and I don’t think he remembers that period in his life. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
I loved that Belle’s father, beautifully played by Kevin Kline, still mourned his wife, and that he knew the town was “simple” , in both good ways and bad. AND? The very kind town priest had a library, and was one of the few obviously not so enthralled with Gaston, and encouraged Belle to keep learning.
Ahem, I could go on and on…but the Beast’s library!?!?!
So, how do I make my characters go deeper and speak to my readers? One word that Native Americans despise is “savage”. So, in Book 2, I let the heroine read the hero’s diary, (she thinks he’s dead, by the way) and the hero, a Navajo man, had written in all caps how much he hated that word.
I made my point, and hopefully taught my readers something about words being weapons.I also have them discussing how to identify the various types of Siamese silk by describing the texture of the weave and the brocade patterns. Dupioni has more flaws, but is considered beautiful because of those flaws, whereas a brocade is a tightly woven pattern that has beauty even on its wrong side. The conversation takes place under a full moon, so I added the sensation of everything having a silvery hue.
By using the sense of touch, I can take the reader right to the fingertips of the characters, and by adding the magic of moonlight?
HA! Those characters are doomed!!
A good doom though, not like “Oh, we’re out of ranch dressing, here’s some ketchup for your fries” kind of doomed.
And I’m so glad you mentioned the tiny library, too … it was beautiful and sweet, too, in its own way. Made my heart melt. It’s a reminder how precious the written word is to some …
Rachel, I think one key to having deep main characters is to allow the secondary characters to be more than cardboard cut-outs. That means thinking at some depth about the backstory and current existence of each secondary so he/she is a real person and not just background scenery for the main character. Fleshing out the secondaries lets their words and actions fuel a deeper reality in the scenes they share with a main character. For me, it would be too easy for a secondary to turn into a caricature without this step, and how can we expect the main character to be deep when they are playing off something distorted and shallow?
*An added advantage is how the 3-D nature of my secondaries makes it easy for them to turn into a primary in a later novel.
I loved Beauty and the Beast. We had reservations at a dine-in theatre for my daughter’s 17th birthday. No crowd, reserved seats … awesome. Making my own characters go deeper filters in to me slowly. After a scene is written, I often meditate on it, trying to put myself in their shoes, grasp their feelings. And often months after I’ve written it, an idea will come to me to add … maybe through something spoken at church or through a friend, etc. Just a little something to go a little deeper.
I love writing and reading retellings of fairytales, and one thing I look for is all the ways setting can influence character. Beauty and the Beast in 1980s NYC had different challenges than in medieval France, for example. A character is always immediately more interesting to me when they have dreams and desires for their future, as well as gifts and burdens to use and bear. I feel as though a character isn’t really real unless they believe in their life beyond the book.
I haven’t yet seen the new movie – a shocker since B&tB is my favorite fairytale – but I’ve seen my Beauty & Beast Rose art get a sudden boost in sales on Zazzle. (Glad I can prove I created it in 2010).
One of the reasons I love fairytales is because they have all this potential for deepening the characters and their motivations in the retelling, and I’m glad to hear that the live action movie takes this even further than the animated film did.
A fascinating comparison between the two movies. Thanks Rachel. The struggle, how to make those characters have depth without feeling sappy. Sounds like the movie accomplished that beautifully.