The Woman in the Story Read online

  As a screenwriter, I had the same recurring dilemmas every time I began a story with a female main character. Certain questions would float around my mind, along these lines:

  Why do I think a heroine might make my story work better?

  Why am I writing her like this?

  These scenes don’t need Conflict. Something else is going on.

  Is she a stereotype? Is this clichéd?

  She isn’t returning to her old life. She’s moving on forever!

  Why does she have to be younger?

  Too unlikeable? I’ve seen plenty of dark male heroes be or do that!

  I know a female audience would get her, but how can I convince any one else?

  It isn’t just me. I have met many writers who ask similar questions and have similar thoughts about feminine identity; the reality of growing up as a female; female biology; whether any of these “eternal” truths of drama actually change when a female character leads the story; and our fears of unwittingly recreating a stereotype or softening a character to make her “more sympathetic.” So I sat down and worked out some of the answers for myself.

  The Woman in the Story is the result of many years of literally “thinking heroine,” to work out why some female characters are truly unforgettable and others just fade away with time. This book is the conclusion of a long, eventful, and often emotional journey inward to my own creative consciousness and outward to the real-world demands of the film industry. I have read, thought, discussed, and debated the subject of heroines with friends, family, filmmakers, producers, directors, agents, screenwriting gurus, and countless numbers of filmmaking students. I have watched hundreds of films from all over the world.

  I will share with you a set of principles that have made the most sense to me when it comes to creating great females character. Even if your heroine was first created in a novel by somebody else or was a true-life person and the subject of biographies, and even if it will be an actress who eventually gives your character flesh and blood, it is your job, the screenwriter, to make sure she has the best chance of survival by making her as memorable as possible. The Woman in the Story aims to help you do this.

  The Woman in the Story asks you to take risks and think flexibly. The principles will introduce you to new ideas, stimulate your thinking, and might even validate what you intuitively know to be true as a writer. You won’t find the words universal or eternal here, because when it comes to female characterization, so much has been, and will remain, in flux. There’s no right or wrong way. I am sure that as stories with heroines evolve, so will these principles.

  I sincerely wish The Woman in the Story helps you create a memorable heroine.

  Helen Jacey

  THE POWER

  OF THE HEROINE

  Chapter 1

  WHY CHOOSE A HEROINE?

  Before we get started, sit back and take a long hard think about why you want to choose a heroine as the main character in the first place. Hopefully at the most basic level you want to further the cause of womanhood with your story and obviously you want a woman’s point of view Some of your reasons might echo any of these motivations:

  To show a real woman’s life (biopic). That includes my own!

  To show a woman getting over betrayal/trauma and finding a new life.

  It’s about a love affair.

  It’s about relationships.

  It’s about a woman finding out what she really wants out of love and life.

  It’s a rite of passage, as a girl becomes a woman.

  To show a mother/daughter or a mother/son relationship.

  To show the Conflicts between motherhood and career.

  It’s about a group of nuns in a convent in eighteenth-century Spain.

  To show the struggles of the female artist.

  My heroine’s a survivor, and I want to show her struggle to empower herself

  I want her to be strong, without giving up her femininity.

  It’s a chick flick about finding love and lots of shopping!

  It’s about a group of female friends who…

  To show a lesbian relationship.

  It’s about an older woman who…

  She’s a female android who….

  It’s sci-fi about a matriarchal society.

  None of these. My main character just happens to be a woman. It makes no difference what sex my character is.

  Do any of these feel familiar? If so, it is no surprise because most of them are motivated by one underlying creative urge — to explore a woman coping with a situation and how that situation is affected because she is a woman.

  Both women and men are given femininity and masculinity as roles at birth. Our gender is like an invisible gift from our parents and our culture, regardless of what we choose to do with it later as adults, like transsexual Bree in Transamerica. The same goes for your heroine. Whoever she is, and wherever she is from, your heroine will reflect what you want to say about femininity, whether you are saying this consciously or unconsciously. You will define her character, choices, and journey according to these decisions.

  Whether you think men and women are born different or made different by culture, your story will reveal your own personal “take” on masculinity and femininity. To borrow from one of the late Blake Snyder’s principles, your take on gender is an “immutable law of screenplay physics.”

  For those of you who believe we are all equal now, or that men and women have the power to live anyway they choose, or that even in certain areas women are overtaking men, there’s no getting away from the fact that thousands of years of one sex’s domination over another has lingering side effects that don’t wash easily away in a matter of decades. You might put the differences between men and women’s lives down to evolution or culture, but the truth is, even if the gap is getting closer, women’s real power is recent. The heroine you write, and her story, will inevitably reflect what you truly believe about the difference between men and women. Even if you think no difference exists. Your conscious and unconscious attitudes about women and femininity, once your film is made (and assuming your heroine hasn’t been fundamentally changed during the filmmaking process) will be out there for all to see. Film is a very powerful medium. It influences, challenges, distorts, and reflects aspects of human life. So it is a good idea to be fully conscious about the heroine you are creating and what she represents. So write exactly what you want to represent in your heroine. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples, Aliens and Chloe, to see what they could be saying about femininity.

  The Talented Ms. Ripley in Aliens

  Aliens could work equally well with a male protagonist, and as a sci-fi, it’s not about “women’s lives.” The heroine Ripley is single, has no (surviving) children, and is devoted to her career. She doesn’t look overtly feminine in her image, and she is as assertive as the best of the guys. Well, as strong a woman as Ripley is, her impulse to care and protect the little girl Newt is not equaled by any of the others on board. As the film progresses, we are gripped by watching Ripley deal with the maternal role in so “alien” an environment. Having lost her own child, she’s getting another chance at motherhood by caring for Newt. Isn’t Aliens really saying that all women, even strong types like Ripley, are endowed with the maternal instinct no matter how many guns they wield? Isn’t it showing the battle of all battles between over-protective mothers? Could the film be seen as suggesting that women are the natural carers of children because of biology?

  Certainly Ripley was a herald to a new era in terms of representation of strong women. The theme of maternal instinct in an action/ thriller/sci-fi was exciting. But take a peek beneath the surface, and you find a “take” on femininity because it is an immutable law of screenplay physics. Now let’s look at the more contemporary Chloe to see how the writer shows femininity.

  Return of the Vamp in Chloe

  Chloe follows Catherine, a middle-aged gynecologist, whose paranoid fantasies about her husband’s lack of
fidelity lead her to unravel. She ends up having steamy lesbian sex with a sociopath prostitute. By the end of the story, things are so out of hand that Catherine has to save her family from a destructive hell of her own making. Some women relate to the themes that Chloe explores, such as the fear of being unattractive to your husband, who is maturing while you are “aging” and the fantasy of making love to another woman. Catherine’s dilemma also reflects a certain truth in that many men and women do not want to destroy the family unit because of a reckless and impulsive sexual desire. Chloe gives the female audience a fantasy and a morality tale in one.

  But no woman could call Chloe a “progressive” film. It’s offensive to lesbians by incarnating the centuries’ old psychotic and insatiable female predator stereotype into a young female prostitute. The story hints loudly that prostitution in women is dysfunctional whereas it’s okay for men if they keep it quiet. The male characters are innocent and trusting; their happiness is in jeopardy because their insecure wife and mother isn’t coming to terms with aging very well. Catherine’s husband doesn’t even mind she’s had sex with a woman when she finally confesses. There isn’t much in the story that asks the audience to think about sexual double standards. If anything, Chloe is telling the female audience that no one said life is fair!

  MASCULINITY AND MALE HEROES

  Male heroes also give the audience a perspective on masculinity. The writer might be doing it consciously or unconsciously, because he or she thinks they are just telling a story. Men’s lives, conquests, journeys, achievements, interests and concerns, fears and desires, are rarely labelled as “masculine” but that’s exactly what they are. Battles for territory, from Wild West epics to mafia supremacy sagas, to even more personal stories of a man’s personal struggle or need to find love show the filmmakers’ take on masculinity as much as any film with a woman in the lead reveals a take on femininity More often than not, the women characters in the hero’s story will be products of the writer’s take on women and femininity.

  It’s time to pin yourself down. What is your motivation and personal take on things? What is your story with a heroine going to say about women and their feminine roles? Whatever your own slant, it will affect your characterization, story, and themes. If you aren’t sure, let me help you think more about it by introducing you to something I call the Feminine Superthemes.

  THE FEMININE SUPERTHEMES

  I like to think of the Superthemes as the deepest, most underlying core beliefs behind our desire to choose a heroine. Having written and watched many heroine-led films, I’ve come up with what I believe are the four main Feminine Superthemes in movies with female leads. Now every time I write or watch a movie, I can’t help but categorize it according to these Superthemes. I also call them the four Fs.

  Familiar Femininity

  Feel Good Femininity

  Fighting Femininity

  Future Femininity

  A Feminine Supertheme reflects your conscious

  and unconscious attitudes about women and gender

  and shapes all your narrative choices.

  If you’re like me, and you write with a great deal of female main characters, you will soon see certain ideas re-emerging with each project. Sometimes it feels that you are covering old ground, even if you’ve chosen a distinctly different heroine, setting, plot, theme, and even the genre. It’s as if a certain sensibility or an ideological slant infuses your work. If you haven’t been writing for long, then you might get a familiar reaction to movies with heroines. Some films might profoundly move you, as if they resonate deeply. Other films might totally get your back up and leave you feeling angry and dissatisfied with the moral or thematic implications of the film, even if there’s nothing you can really put your finger on.

  Think of a Feminine Supertheme as if you are wearing tinted shades when you write your heroine’s story. You see her and her world through a colored tint or tone, which reflects your own conscious and unconscious attitudes toward women. These instinctive responses boil down to the human need to see a true reflection of our core beliefs, which have been created by our personal experience and understanding of life. By getting to know the Superthemes you can see which influence you and your writing most. Remember, like all the principles in this book, they aren’t rigidly defined categories. These are aids to help you reflect on the wider context of your story. In this respect, several Superthemes might function in your story. It’s just that often one tends to dominate. That’s because our stories will always reflect our personal attitudes and beliefs.

  A Supertheme is not the same as the genre of your screenplay. Nor is it a “controlling idea” or theme of your narrative. It is not the same as the topic, central idea, or underlying message of truth you are exploring. For example, North Country is a drama about a woman fighting for her rights to be a miner without denigrating sexual harassment. North Country’s theme is the pursuit of justice. The film’s “issue” is women working in male-dominated industries. None of these are North Country’s Supertheme, which co-incidentally is Fighting Femininity, as you’ll soon see why! So now let’s find out more about the Superthemes, and see which ones you relate to most.

  SUPERTHEME 1: FAMILIAR FEMININITY

  If you’re a Familiar Femininity writer, you have a strong motivation to create a heroine who isn’t out to change the world. To you, feminism has righted some wrongs and given women equal status, but it isn’t really necessary any more. You might think that feminism wants everyone to be the same, and deep down, you don’t think that’s right. Your heroine isn’t going to question her identity as a woman, and neither does her story. She could be a wife or a mother, or well on her way to being one, as she’s a family maker at heart. When you write with Familiar Femininity as your slant, it’s a bit like you are telling yourself, “I’m not out to change the world, just saying it how it is.” You like functional relationships, happy families, and stories with a heart of gold. Most of all, you want to tell a good story, with empathetic leading characters.

  You might want to celebrate everyday women in their ordinary lives. You will be a writer who has a strong affection for relatively uncomplicated women. Not too complex, ball breaking, or dark. Rocking the boat is not your style. You’re not out to change the world with your heroine, you don’t want her to suffer too much — and if she does, you make sure she survives, usually with the help and loving support of a good man, her family, or her good friends. Familiar Femininity films show women trying to find a husband, getting married, being wives, being good mothers, or being innocent victims who end up being saved by others. The family unit is important to your heroine and is even central to her identity. She is a functional human being, whose solid values might be rocked from time to time but remain intact. If these women suffer, often it’s because they’ve been betrayed. They aren’t having trouble dating, getting divorced, or having midlife crises. They might be in trouble and need help. The heroine in Slumdog Millionaire is a product of Familiar Femininity Supertheme. She is beautiful, nice, loving, and loyal, and only stops being a victim because the hero proves he is a worthy and stable mate. Army Wives and Brothers and Sisters are both shows with the Familiar Femininity Supertheme behind it too.

  These heroines aren’t women who actively question expectations upon them as women. They would prefer not to fight the system because they want to believe in it. Rooting out corruption and lack of morality can often be a feature of their stories. The Good Wife is basically Familiar Femininity, but it has a dollop of Fighting Femininity, in that the heroine is definitely questioning her values after her husband’s betrayal. Even if life is hard for your heroine at times, she ends up with her value system firmly intact, if a little shaken. Chloe is a great example of Familiar Femininity as we have just seen, in which the family stays together, and the destructive seductress dies (after a remarkable lack of characterization). A truly memorable heroine of the Familiar Femininity Supertheme is Nanny McPhee in Nanny McPhee. Highly unattractive by c
onventional standards, which might be the reason for her single status, she facilitates happiness and well-being in families.

  When you look at some Familiar Femininity box-office hits, you can see the appeal to the wide audience. With Familiar Femininity your audience is mainstream. In Marley and Me, Jennifer gives up her career to become a mother, support her husband, and be there for the children. The marriage relationship almost crumbles under a ton of stress by the reality of bringing up young children, giving up dreams, and losing a great deal of sleep. But you never once feel that she is going to turn around and leave. She is stressed out, but she isn’t wrestling with her choices on a deep level. If anything, it is husband John who has the life-choice dilemma when he compares himself to his achieving, freedom-loving bachelor friend.

  Familiar Femininity is the Supertheme behind many period romances. It’s alive and kicking behind most Jane Austen adaptations, for instance. The heroine might be clever and quirky, she might be embarrassed by the overt femininity of superficial female relatives, but at the end of the day, happy marriage, after being bailed out by a man, saves the day. How many versions of Pride and Prejudice do we need to get the point that Elizabeth Bennett ultimately needs Darcy to sort her life out? The answer: a lot! The mainstream audience never gets tired of this happy ending. Likewise, in The Young Victoria Queen Victoria wants to serve her people well but her own inexperience, isolation, and need to prove herself create hell of her own making in the form of political and marital crises. She has turned her back on Albert, her husband. Order is restored by Victoria coming to her senses and realizing she will be a happier and wiser monarch if she shares her power with Albert. Another British monarch, Elizabeth II, in The Queen is more attune to the trauma suffered by her own family, when her daughter-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales, dies, than the needs of the British people. It takes the patient dedication of Tony Blair to help Elizabeth remember her duty in a time of crisis.