[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Do you believe that every main character has to change?
Glenn Gers, Author/Screenwriter/YouTuber: No, I do think that something has to change.
In other words, if you have an unchanging main character, then either that unchanging main character is going to have to deal with a world which needs to change and so they are unchangingly trying to change others.
You’re going to have a situation where you may fear that they’re going to change and then in fact they don’t.
That’s a good story.
A cool story could be somebody who you like and then things happen to them and you think,
Oh man, they’re going to lose their idealism.
Or they’re going to whatever it is.
And the story is actually about how they manage not to change.
So it is possible to not have the character change, but the world around that idealistic character changed and threatened their ability to remain idealistic.
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Or they are faced with this, you get some person who’s good and you don’t want them to change but then they move to a new place or their the place that they are in changes and they have to deal with things that it worked while they were one way but now, can they still be that way?
There’s a lot of good stories in which a person doesn’t change, but they change others.
Very often it’ll be a story about how someone learns from someone else.
Actually, The Shawshank Redemption is kind of a good version of that because Andy [Dufresne] doesn’t change. He stays the course and it’s the people around him who learn from him…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
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BIO:
Glenn Gers was a professional writer of movies and television for 25 years. His credits include theatrical features including FRACTURE (2007) and MAD MONEY (2008), no-budget indies like DISFIGURED (2008), TV staff work and episodes, original cable movies, and many more. He has won multiple festival prizes and an Emmy. He shares thoughts about creative writing on his Youtube channel and his Substack, both called “Writing For Screens.”
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