Screenwriting : Today's Wish and Creative Tip by Laurie Ashbourne

Fatally Wounded You’ve been told your main character needs to be flawed. Imperfect characters in story gives us someone (or thing) to relate to. Nobody’s perfect, right. Some argue that these flaws need to be fatal – whether or not that’s the case, the stakes if your character fails should be extremely high – (fatal in their eyes). I talk a lot about theme – the WHY and WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME of your story and here’s an aha bit of synergy. The (fatal) flaw represents the opposite value of the theme. For example, if your character is suicidal, or even just extremely reckless, their flaw is that they don’t value life. To some degree, every story is about life or death, our characters are going through something that will either move them to live better or they are facing death. Even stasis is death. Life depends on the ability to shed that which not longer serves us in order to grow into something new (whether it be skin, home, job, relations) – when we stop doing so, the only thing that follows is death. (BTW, manipulation of change, leads to moral decay So for our suicidal character, his thematic goal is to value life, the thematic POV of your story could be, choose life. Neither of these have to be your driving plot. One could say that Riggs in LETHAL WEAPON didn’t value his life, but the plot of that film was to stop a drug cartel. If we stick to LW for this example, we see just how wonderfully a story can work when the theme is weaved throughout. If it weren’t in this case, we’d have just another forgettable police drama. Riggs had to fill the empty void and welcome people into his life again before he could value it. And as a result, we all got so much more out of this film then watching mis-matched cops catch the bad guys. That's how important it is to get your theme clear in your head -- so that your story isn't what ends up being flawed! Nobody is perfect, but a day can be – let’s make it happen today.