Don’t Let Your Secondary Characters

Take Over
By Lucy V Hay

I’ve written on this blog before about

back story and how it shouldn’t take over from “present events”: too often a spec
script puts too much thought into back story, so the story we’re *supposed* to be
watching lacks “forward thrust” (oooer).

Bang2writers often believe they must put MORE back story in, at the expense of
“present day” plotting, especially when it comes to secondary characters in feature-
length scripts – and let’s face it, we’ve all done it and probably will again. But it’s
important we realise this means we will be set off at wild tangents as we struggle to
justify our secondary characters’ own motivations and/or fall back on cliche in order
to do it. This can’t be a good thing in terms of “good” characterisation or indeed
plotting.

The lovely Andrew Tibbs has contacted me via my Twitter, asking the following
question:

“The main character has a perfect life until his father dies and he ends up with his
estranged mother. At first I wanted to portray her as someone who has had a hard
past herself (ie. drugs or abuse) but then, all women end up portrayed like that… But
because of the overall story, I don’t really want her to become a bigger part in terms
of the main storyline.”

Character motivation is a toughie because give secondaries too much and they have a
tendency to take over. Bad script readers never seem to realise this and always say,
“give the secondary more back story” — um, no. The story is generally about the
protagonist; if secondaries were *more* important, this would either take away from
their journey or you’d have to restructure and make it an ensemble cast (and even
then, that wouldn’t necessarily work; end of the day, there is a limit to how many “in-
depth” characters an audience can “take” in 90-120 minutes).
If we look at all the great secondary characters, they actually have quite “light” back
stories – usually one or two *things* about them. For instance, Nick’s wife in Lantana
(a drama and an ensemble funnily enough, if you haven’t seen it – do) was a great
secondary character because of her neverending belief in his innocence, based on her
trust and love for him. We know this because when the police ask her why she thinks
Nick is innocent, her reply is totally to the point: “Because Nick told me.” Because of
the way she was played before this moment, we know her belief is true and honest and
not that she is a doormat/idiot either. We know very little about her otherwise, but she
pulls her weight brilliantly and does not threaten to overtake the story in any way.

My advice for Andrew’s story would be this, then: have one or two elements about the
mother that tell us what we need to know. Just because someone is a mother, doesn’t
mean she ever wanted to be or hasn’t become resentful of children over the years.
*Some* women, like *some* men, are absentee parents through their own choice,
because they simply cannot be bothered raising their kids. This seems quite shocking,
because we *traditionally* associate women with nurturing roles. (Note that when I
say “absentee”, this could mean either literally or figuratively; a parent can be
“absent” living in the same house as their child).

Yet I’m always surprised by how little I see the absentee mother in scripts. Instead too
often female characters who are BAD mothers are drug addicts and/or have been
abused themselves, somehow automatically “accounting” for their bad behaviour
towards their children. But what if they simply don’t like or are disinterested in,
children or their welfare? I’ve had friends and acquaintances who’ve had this
unfortunate experience, yet say they hardly ever see this experience reflected in
movies and TV shows.

Any more thoughts for Andrew? Over to you…