-Aaron Sorkin - How To Develop Characters.

Rather than kind of tell the audience who a character is, I like to show the audience what a character wants. And it all boils down to intention and obstacle. Somebody wants something, something standing in their way of getting it. They want the girl, they want the money, they want to get to Philadelphia. It doesn't matter, but they have to want it bad. If they can need it, that's even better. We need it to say hello. And the tactics that that character uses to overcome the obstacle is going to define who the character is. When you think of Aaron Sorkin, a few things probably come to mind. First, his fast-paced, witty, and confrontational dialogue. I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have a right to give it a try. But there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. And next, his walk and talk scenes. And I feel like the majority of the discussion surrounding Sorkin focuses on the former, and for good reason too. He's carved his name into the Hollywood history books as one of the greatest screenwriters of all time, in large part due to his very unique and effective dialogue. But I feel like just focusing on his dialogue takes the conversation away from all of the other elements that help make his films so great, specifically his character development. You know, you're famous for dialogue. At what point does the dialogue come in? Well, it's the last thing. With Sorkin's films in particular, there's a larger-than-average emphasis on the protagonist. Almost every scene, and almost every conversation for that matter, features the protagonist, and the rare conversation without them is usually about the protagonist. And there was a shift to this. His career began in the early 90s with A Few Good Men, an ensemble, and over the next three years, he released two more films, before making a shift to television as the creator of Sports Night, The West Wing, and Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip. These are series that focus on dozens of characters, each getting their own screen time and character development. And his focus on television lasted a little over a decade, but my personal favorite era of Sorkin's career is the modern one. Since 2007, he has written five films, created a television show, won an Oscar, and has been nominated for two more. It's these five films that I want to focus on because I feel like they show where his character development is the strongest. Together, they follow a very similar pattern. The changes within each film comes from the individual themes and ideas that each film explores, but through examining this overarching pattern, I think it becomes clear how he develops his characters. He likes to begin his films with the protagonist experiencing failure. The characters that I write are going to be kind of quixotic. They're going to fail a lot and fall a lot, but there's a romance in trying for honorable things. Molly's Olympic career comes to an immediate halt. The Apple presentation has technical difficulties. It's not going to crash. It just did. The A's lose to the Yankees in the ALDS. Mark gets rejected by Erica. And Gust is rejected from Helsinki. The Helsinki job was mine. The Helsinki job was not yours. If it was yours, you'd be in Helsinki. All these characters start in a rough position. We're not seeing them on an average day. We're seeing them on their worst day. It's okay, Joe. You leave it on. Leave it on. This achieves a few things. First, it creates sympathy for them. We as the audience are naturally going to feel sympathy for those down on their luck. And this sympathy is needed because his protagonists in his films are far from good people. It helps us connect with them for at least long enough to get the story rolling. Something that all of his characters have in common is their ambition. I want to win. That's my bar. My bar is here. They're driven to succeed in large part because of their previous failures. Despite his stories being full of conflict, when his characters are finding their ambition and figuring out what they want to do, there's very little resistance. Mark works with Eduardo. Molly's given help by Tobin McGuire. I'm sorry, by Player X. Steve is able to work with those around him. Billy and Peter work together and have some support from the organization. And Charlie is able to convince the right people to work with him. Which one of the guys do you think is a strategic weapons expert with the CIA? That was a trick question, Charlie. It's a nerdy looking kid in a white shirt. The way in which the characters pursue their ambitions is always less than conventional. They try to do things the normal way, but as aforementioned, that failed. I'm gonna stop paying you. So their new ambition is different. Not many people choose to run an underground gambling empire or reinvent baseball, but our protagonists do. And that is what makes them unique. The real conflict begins when the characters start working towards their goal in this unconventional way. This takes up the bulk of the film's runtime, usually the entire mental act. Things that used to go well started to fall apart. The support that the protagonist was once given has been pulled, and the opposition starts to build. Success for the protagonist oftentimes means harm for someone else. So that other person does everything in their power to stop the protagonist while the protagonist tries to push on. Most of these confrontations come from the dialogue. Very rarely does anything physical happen. So there's a very clear relationship of power. Think about Billy and Art Howe. As manager, head coach of the A's, Art has total control over who plays on the field. So Billy uses all of his power, which is control of who is on the team, to influence who gets to play on the field. I'm just saying you can't start paying me first. Well, I am starting with first. I don't think so. He plays for Detroit now. This relationship summarizes the conflict in much of Sorkin's work. Conventional versus unconventional. When his protagonists find success, they do it in a few ways. First, they find the success that they think they wanted at the beginning of the story. Molly was offered a plea that will keep her safe. Steve had yet another successful launch. Billy had a season that defied all odds, and Boston offered him the biggest general manager position in sports history. Mark was given control over Facebook, and Charlie was able to keep the people of Afghanistan safe. But in all these cases, your success also comes with a cost. Be it friends lost along the way, needing to drag your own name through the mud, losing contact with your daughter to prove a point, or losing contact with your daughter when you move to Boston. A bit more on that later. Although all these characters were given success or the opportunity of success, what they really were given was a better understanding of both themselves and humanity as a whole. They realize what is really important. Human relationships, friendships, and time well spent with the people who you care for. They were able to achieve unconventional success through unconventional means, but it turns out the things that brings people the most happiness and purpose in life are simple. Strong relationships and time spent with people for whom you really care. In many ways, Sorkin's writing is semi-autobiographical. His characters aren't finding purpose from their work, they're finding it in their relationships with others. Something that he very publicly struggled with for much of his early career. Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Sorkin struggled with cocaine addiction, and it wasn't until a very public arrest in 2001 was he able to get clean. After this point, his stories changed. They focused on humans and human relationships, and I think that he can talk about it a little bit better than I can. I lost a decade of my life to cocaine addiction. You know how I got addicted to cocaine? I tried it. Try cocaine and you'll become addicted to it. Become addicted to cocaine and you will either be dead or you will wish you were dead, but it will only be one or the other. My big fear was that I wasn't going to be able to write without it. Last month, I celebrated my 11-year anniversary of not using coke. That 11 years, in that 11 years, I've written three television series, three movies, a Broadway play, won the Academy Award, and taught my daughter all the lyrics to Pirates of Penzance. Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed. I really feel like the modern era of Sorkin is him writing about himself to an extent, especially with Moneyball, Steve Jobs, and Molly's Game, where there's such a big focus on the father-daughter relationship. His writing is amazing, you don't need me to tell you that, but hopefully I was able to shed some light on what makes it so amazing. I'd also like to mention that this video is made possible because of Patreon. If you're interested in supporting the channel, that is the best way to do so. There's a lot of great rewards over there, including early access, a bonus audio commentary, and you can even get a say in what videos come next. So if you're interested, there's going to be a link on screen. There's also a link to my last video in which I looked at Reservoir Dogs and what it can teach us about storytelling. So if you're interested in that, check it out, and thanks for watching.