Why Character Isn't Everything
Unlearning the Hollywood Formula, confronting the Inner Critic, and learning if the lifelong, instinctual rebellion against authority is self-sabotage or a defense of autonomy.
“Which do you think is more important, plot or character?”
(Well, plot, I think to myself.)
But I don’t answer right away. It’s a loaded question that can define many things; how the two of us will get along in the future—will we agree or disagree on this fundamental issue? I feel like I might already know what Niitty is going to say, since we’ve managed to talk about this during our first few weeks of school. She lets me think, while she is eager to share her view.
“For me, it’s definitely character. I mean, the character is the one who decides and creates all the action. If you just create a good character, the rest follows.”
We’re driving down Mäkelänkatu in Niitty’s boyfriend’s car. Niitty is my classmate from the Screenwriting Program of Aalto University. I don’t remember why we’re there or where we’re going. We’ve only just started our studies; our opinions are firmer than they will ever be because, in reality, we know next to nothing. We have visions and hopes, but we haven’t actually written our way out of very many problems yet.
This question isn’t my question, but I still find myself pondering the answer to it all the time. I wouldn’t want to belong to any particular school of thought, to choose a side—especially not the least popular one. If I say I’m more interested in plot, I’m choosing to be against character-driven storytelling. I just can’t be bothered, if only because I think I’m in the minority—most people know that the character makes the story, and yet I’m the one who keeps insisting otherwise.
Characters change, but the story remains. And I mean, story is supposedly a different thing than plot, I understand that much, but in the end, both story and plot continue, while people stay behind, burn out, and are replaced. People observe signs, patterns, events, the flow. I suppose, in the end, what matters more to me is the circle we dance around.
This Substack is an exploration of how screenwriting education has shaped me both as a creative writer and person. In the series I establish what it means, in writing lingo, to hate “the Hollywood formula”.
This article begins a series of posts, where I translate the essays of my bachelor thesis and add current insight. I originally published the first part with the title Unlearning the Hollywood Formula — How to Learn Screenwriting I.
The instinctual fear of authority
In the everyday, I hate it when people make generalizations. I know small talk creates safety and repeating familiar sayings aids the creation of a common ground… I guess I’m just under stimulated. Writing any thesis requires you must make generalizations, assumptions, all these terrible choices, that create paths of thinking and being, while excluding other possibilities.
Even more than that, I hate it when people give advice. Apparently, I’ve been this way since I was a child. According to my mother, my first words were “mun auta”—my toddler-babble for “do not help me.” I would then proceed to spoon my porridge all over my chest instead of the hanger where it’s supposed to land, perfectly satisfied with myself.
This is likely the root of every single problem I’ve ever had, or might ever have, with practicing the profession of screenwriting. I feel it’s important to emphasize that the act of writing itself isn’t hard—if you want to do it, you’ve practiced enough, and you possess some level of skill. The true looming adversary for writing hides within: The Inner Critic.
The Inner Critic is a term used in Focusing. I’ve referenced the practice of Dr. Gendlin’s Focusing several times in my Substack, and one day soon, I’ll share more notes on this practice particularly. I believe the Inner Critic is what we in some instances refer to as our Soul’s Adversary. The Adversary says they mean well and have your best interest at heart. They actually sabotage your life and spiritual evolution.
In school, you are an opening flower on God’s palm. You spend most of your time learning from established film makers. You exist in a bubble, where you only care about receiving and organizing new information and creating your own expression.
The trouble begins when school is over, and none of your enthusiastic colleagues or supportive advisors are in the position to help you get work. You are simply a nobody, and as far as anyone’s concerned, your studies do not qualify as professional experience, no matter how much practical learning the degree entailed.
Now, the Inner Critic is fulfilled. Anytime you get a rejection letter or discerning feedback, the Critic is assured; see, I told you so. You can’t do shit!
There is an equally instinctual habit of creating and working as the Inner Critic, meaning, letting the Inner Critic make your life’s decisions. Or this is what I sometimes fear. Being strict in something we learn, if we are raised strict. Thinking strict is one of the first prisons of life.
But we are not alone, thinking strict. A huge part of a screenwriter’s job is convincing people - producers, commissioning editors and film and TV distributors - that you’ve actually mastered storytelling, dramaturgy, and—yes—that you are aware of the numerous “rules” of screenwriting - the Inner Critic feeds on rules - and that when you break the known, common form of screenwriting, you don’t do it because you are a contrarian idiot, but because you actually made a knowing choice.
“This work can feel like a constant battle, and I would argue it’s one of the biggest reasons so many screenwriters leave the industry, alongside the usual burnout.”
That’s what I wrote in my bachelor thesis. I just find it interesting that I was able to write something like this in 2015, three years into film studies, having not really worked in the field at all.
More interesting that is, that despite being aware of this battle so well before hand, it didn’t give me any sort of upper hand. I have not been able to get a script to be produced. I’ve been hired a few times, sure, I’ve worked, but have not moved to production. I graduated 6 years ago, and this is a somewhat normal timeline - this is what I’ve been told, this is what I tell myself.
Getting a film produced is an incredible privilege, one that is afforded to very few people, and I dare to be amazed that is hasn’t happened to me yet? Another suffering created by myself.
But I still find myself building my case. I have to proof to myself, if to no one else, that I know what I’m doing, that it’s all based on deep learning, and if there is something lacking in the scripts, it means I indeed should be paid to better them according to this education.
What is revealed when we take these screenwriting clichés, the writing manuals advice and also the urban legends, and even taboos of working as a writer, and finally ask why they were said and done in the first place—instead of just blindly following them because we’re told we have to?
Why tracking these thoughts is so important
Dr. Marja-Riitta Koivumäki, my Senior Lecturer in Film and TV Screenwriting at Aalto University, actually downplayed the idea that there is some mandatory, fixed “rulebook” for screenwriting. In her dissertation, Dramaturgical Approach in Cinema (2016), she highlights conflict and plot points as dramaturgical tools—instruments the story editor uses to shape dramatic material into a performance.
Why this could be seen to be Aristotelian, is that Aristotle emphasized the meaning of plot, whether that meant the use the antagonist goal or a deeper systems thinking as the building base for drama. This classical tradition is faced my the modern focus on the personality or will of the character as a defining element in the story, as modern drama is tied around the observations of and on human psyche.
The Aristotelian main character reacts to the world crushing on them. They might look, talk and seem a certain way, but in action, they reveal their true character. A good character is resourceful, and if not them, then the supporting characters around them.
While Dr. Koivumäki focused on Stanislavski’s 'tasks'—using concrete action as a dramaturgical element—this approach is inextricably linked to Aristotle’s telos. The actor's tasks function as the driving force that pushes the story toward its telos, the ultimate function and structural endpoint of the drama.
My colleague Katri Myllyniemi cited in their master thesis Näkökulmia henkilön tahdon suunnan konkretiaan (2019) how Koivumäki admits that it is possible that focusing on the use of protagonist’s goal as tool too early in the process could limit the story material. At this time, the story lives still on an abstract level, and forcing concrete action too soon might kill the work. When made to choose, Myllyniemi, like Koivumäki, leans on the character’s inner world as the leading tool while designing the script. Their argument is elegant, and I don’t want to position myself against that either.
Other than surviving solely on screenwriting books, screenwriting is taught in a mentoring relationship between teacher and student. Koivumäki describes the challenges of teaching the craft and the phenomenon of “Chinese Whisper”:
“...if the skills and the knowledge are passed on mainly orally from generation to generation in a master-student relationship, it might result in a ‘Chinese whisper’ effect, where the knowledge may gradually change such that we are unaware of why and how the changes have occurred.”
And there it is, my framework. The academic equivalent to the newbie screenwriter’s stubborn urge to ask who actually said this originally and why?
There is a vast amount of literature available on screenwriting, much of which consists of commercial manuals aimed at mainstream success - meaning, writers writing about writing, offering insight to writers, who want not to only create quality drama, but perhaps interested in mainstream success - how to reach as a large audience as possible?
Well, what’s the problem? Don’t I want to be a mainstream success? Every time I am told, that my stuff is smart, art-house or niche, I am genuinely surprised. I’ve literally been told by a producer to think more of the “regular person shopping at a super market” and how they might receive my work. But I am also just a regular person shopping in a super market. This is the kind of advice that leaves me completely baffled by what to do next.
All this theory is the nuclear essence my professionalism is built around, but still, most of screenwriters core issues concern the uphold of a steady structure, that feels natural and true, and not crafted at all.
And we still need to talk about the structure of the so-called “Hollywood formula”, as film students and laymen often call it. Talking about this structure can make one feel highly vulnerable, when the writing true mechanisms are revealed, the magician’s gimmick exposed. This is the kind of stuff that makes executives think they can create scripts with AI.
Forcing a structure on a story can feel like being a helpless baby in a high chair, someone trying to spoon-feed you porridge you didn’t ask for. It’s no wonder so many of us push the spoon away. But what if the ‘formula’ isn’t a product of an Adversary? What if the problem is that we’ve been taught to swallow it as a ‘forced pill’—as Peter von Bagh put it—without ever understanding what it’s actually made of?
In the next part of the series, we’ll look at how certain ideas—attributed to Aristotle but often far removed from his actual work—have become a haunting presence in the industry, dictating what is deemed 'commercially viable.' We’ll explore how a ‘Chinese Whisper’ from Moscow to Hollywood shaped the dogmas I’ve spent my career trying to break open and master as tools rather than handcuffs.
