Your “Pet the Dog” Scene

The late Blake Snyder called it “saving the cat.” Other screenwriting mavens just call it your “pet the dog” scene. But the fact of the matter is that, if you are going to ask your audience to come along with you on a one-hundred-and-ten-page journey, there had better be something dazzlingly likeable about your main character, who should be flawed, yes, but not irrevocably so.

Of course, in order to make their main characters likeable, many screenwriters do, in fact, do just that – make their main character pet a dog at the beginning of the film, which is perhaps why the Jack Nicolson character in As Good As It Gets was so notorious, as he actually threw a dog down the trash chute on page one.

Other ways to get us on board with a main character is to show them with some special power. Yes, your main character should do some things poorly (this is what will humanize her) – but is there something that she does really well, some incredible talent she also has, which will make her irresistible?

Besides functioning to create a main character who viewers will actually be interested in watching the whole film through, a special power can also work alongside a flaw to help your main character get out of trouble. This is often the case in action-adventure films. Say, the main character is great at martial arts, which helps him (or her) get out of trouble, even if this flaw might be what actually leads him into trouble in the first place.

Another way to play with a main character’s special power, is to actually make your main character’s flaw into their talent or gift. This is especially important to do at the end of the movie. Think of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. Here, you have this character who is so superficial and appearance-oriented. But it was her obsession with beauty that actually provided her the edge to crack the legal case in the end of the film.

I have heard script consultant and author of The Coffee Break Screenwriter, Pilar Alessandra, call this “synthesis.” What this means is that the main character begins the movie with a flaw, they overcome that flaw over the course of the second act, the final battle occurring at the end of act three – but it is actually the evolution of that flaw into something good, something the main character can use, that makes them fully formed, complete.

Finding Your Hook

I spent a lot of years as a magazine writer. In the same way that your article for a magazine needs a hook, so does your story. What is that interesting thing that makes your story different and therefore why should people read it? Are you looking at a subject in a new and different way? One example of this is the plethora of vampire stories out there. But as long as you are coming at the subject of vampires in a new way, you can still make a new and interesting story out of it. (Although if you want to write a screenplay or a TV series, I would advise you at this point not to write about vampires… Sure, the genre is popular, but even if you come up with a new take on it at this point, it’s kind of been done to death. Uh, no pun intended.)

Anyhow, back to you hook... Once you know what your hook is, I advise you to brainstorm scenes (even if this is a novel) that pay off the premise of your hook. For example, if your story is about a countrygirl who moves to the city for the first time (yes, this is an old, rote story, but bear with me), you would want to show scenes in which the ramifications of her moving would be shown and also how her country-ness is juxtaposed against the backdrop of the city and vice-versa. You get the picture. Just brainstorm as many combinations as you can think of that you can make into scenes and incorporate into your plot.

One of the ways that scenes for your screenplay or novel can be created is through your main character's fatal flaw. Once you decide what your character’s fatal flaw is, you can brainstorm a bunch of scenes in which we see her committing this “mistake”. Of course, if you abide by the tenets of story structure, we should be seeing some kind of a progression, meaning that, throughout the course of the story, your main character should be getting over her flaw, at least to some extent. Even if in the end you decide that she doesn’t finally conquer her “misbehavior,”  then we need to have seen her grow and change throughout the course of the story.