Beau Willimon asks, What does your Protagonist

need?
by Scott Myers, gointothestory.blcklst.com May 6, 2015

This past weekend, I was in NYC as one of the mentors for a Black List
screenwriter mini-lab. Five talented writers who had posted scripts on
the Black List site had been selected to participate: Arla Bowers,
Hunter Burker, Joel Dorland, Ian McWethy, and Yvonne Paulin. The
other mentors: Jessica Bendinger (Bring It On), Leslye Headland
(Bachelorette), Michael Mitnick (The Giver), and Beau Willimon (House
of Cards).

The process: Along with some social events together including the
Black List Live! staged reading of the comedy screenplay Big Time
Adolescence, the writers met one-on-one with each of the four
mentors. Then from Noon-6PM on Sunday, I gathered the group of
writers together to go through their stories and process what notes
they had received.

It was a remarkable session. Five diverse writers with five distinctly

dierent scripts and swirling heads full of feedback from the mentors,
some observations common among the responses, many not. I
steered each writer into and through a critique and brainstorming
process, so that by the end, all of them had a narrative thread they
could take home to begin their next draft process.

I was intrigued to hear how the other mentors operated, each of them
providing valuable insights. For this post, Id like to zero in on Beau
Willimons approach. With each writer, hed start o the session by
saying, Come on, lets take a walk, then o theyd go, traipsing
around Greenwich Village. And here is what the focus of each of their
forays was about, answering this question: What does your
Protagonist need?

Frankly I was thrilled to hear this because I had planned to begin the
group workshop process with each of the writers Protagonist and a
big question early on in that process the very same one Beau asked:

What does your Protagonist need?

Why is this such a great tool to use in developing and shaping your
story? Several reasons:

* In most mainstream and even indie movies, the Protagonist is the

narratives central character.

* The Protagonist usually goes on some sort of physical / emotional

journey.

* That journey creates the spine of the plot.

* The Protagonists goal almost always dictates the plots end point.

* All the other major characters are linked to the Protagonist and
his/her journey.

* Of all the storys characters, the Protagonist generally undergoes the

most significant personal metamorphosis.

So it stands to reason when you prep a story, pound out a first draft, or
go through the rewrite process, you have to focus on the Protagonist.

What do you think Frank needs?

The beauty of the question What does your Protagonist need is that it
drives the writer beneath the External World, the screenplays realm of
events, into the Internal World, the realm of emotions and meaning.

If that outer world represents the storys physical journey, then the
inner world is about the storys psychological journey.

What a Protagonist wants will likely cause the narratives ultimate plot
point to emerge. What a Protagonist needs is a way to determine the
end point of the characters psychological transformation. Not only
that, it should indicate where the Protagonist begins their
metamorphosis process. And if you have those beginning and end
points, then you have the foundation for the characters transformation
arc.
Beyond that, the question What does your Protagonist need compels
you to engage possible connections between the Protagonists
metamorphosis and the events of the plot. They are not arbitrary
events. In a perfect [story] world, each obstacle, each challenge, each
test has a symbiotic relationship to the Protagonist and their
transformation process. If you know what your Protagonist needs, and
you have determined both the beginning and ending points of their
arc, then as you craft each scene, set of scenes, or sequences, you
can shape the events of the plot through the lens of the Protagonists
metamorphosis, each significant event, no matter how big or small in
scope, imbued with meaning through its linkage to the narratives
psychological journey.

But all of that depends on you being able to answer the question:
What does your Protagonist need?

Its seemingly a simple question. However as Beau Willimon used it

with each writer, he kept pressing them. Theyd give a response, hed
say, No, dig deeper Thats not quite it, is it Do you really think thats
it? One of the writers said he probably went through 20 thoughts as
to his Protagonists need until he landed on one that felt right.

This is a great object lesson. We can take this questionWhat does

my Protagonist need?and use it as a shovel, a pick axe, a sledge
hammer, or whatever type of tool we need to burrow down deep into
this critical characters psyche. We are talking need in a profound,
fundamental, even existential way.

What is at the core of this characters psychological makeup? What

energy or dynamic is roiling about way down deep in their psyche that
yearns to emerge from the darkness into the light of consciousness?
What needs to become an active part of the Protagonists emotional
and psychological life?

Ovid, who wrote Metamorphoses, said, The seeds of change lie

within. Think of those seeds as representing what the Protagonist
needs.

Seeds. Needs. Hm. Perhaps a pedagogical lesson there

In any event, I have some additional thoughts about Protagonist need

which I will go into in a post later this week. For now, you have an
excellent takeaway courtesy of a gifted storyteller Beau Willimon. If
youre a fan of House of Cards, now you know where the shows
creator and showrunner comes from when assessing a script. He
begins with a question:

What does your Protagonist need?

More to come on the subject in the next couple of days.