Most writers obsess over plot and forget people.
You can have the slickest concept in the room, but if your characters are thin, the script dies on page ten.
Characters are the engine. Plot is the road. If the engine’s weak, nothing moves.
Three things make a character breathe:
1. The fear that haunts them. Not a surface worry — a wound that rewires their decisions.
2. The want that blinds them. The thing they will risk everything to get.
3. The lie they tell themselves. That false belief the story will pry loose.
Look at Walter White: fear of failure → desire to provide → lie = “I do this for my family.” The story exposes the real drug: power.
Katniss believes survival is safety; the arc reveals that safety sometimes costs your soul.
Fleabag believes love is punishment; the truth is liberation.
If you define fear, want, and lie before you outline a single beat, your scenes stop being exercises and become pressure tests.
You’ll know exactly how to break them, and more importantly, how to make them fight back.
Next step: write a one-sentence “fear vs want” for your protagonist. If it makes you wince, you’re on the right track.
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Great point. I especially miss good character work in modern film. I hate how all the screenwriting teachers and systems focus so heavily on plot structure when character is so much more important and intricate. I think fear might be a bit limited though, when I work on a character flaw, I try to think of the three core evils: fear, greed, and confusion - having a flaw with one is good, having a flaw that blends two or all three tends to really add complexity
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Those three things are great for developing a character, Khari Telesford! I give a character a personality, strengths, flaws, fears, a secret, story goals, life goal(s), etc. when I develop them. I like your method! I'll try it. Thanks.