I am adapting the 18th century satirical drama The Beggar's Opera into a contemporary Hindi film. Everything was going on smoothly. I have the new plot, based on the old plot. I have changed the characters to fit the new cultural context. On the imaginary plain, the conflicts and the drama looks rich. When it comes down to writing the actual dialogue the characters want to do their own thing and do not want to have to do anything with one another. I live by the live and let live philosophy. But that sort of approach will not do in drama. The psychological motivations are not sufficient. I do not know how to incorporate them into the drama. Help.
Do you mean in the original dialogue or in what you are trying to write? Characters don't do their own thing. They do what you write them to do. Without knowing the characters, it's hard to give guidance here, but you need to have a good understanding of the characters involved in the original drama, and how you have changed them.
Without knowing anything about the original story and its characters, I can only guess that your rework of one or both is faulty. The characters you created don't fit the story you came up with and the story doesn't fit these characters. I'd say give it a rest for a while, then look at the whole thing with fresh and objective eyes.
This is a tough one! I think sometimes it takes multiple drafts to understand what your characters would do in any given situation. Maybe this is a romanticized take, but I always think that once the bare bones of your character are created, they sort of take on a life of their own. When I was writing, I would get a sense as to whether or not certain actions were something they would do, considering their past actions and the way I wanted their stories to go. What I found really helpful was a series of writing exercises: what does your character do in X situation, Y situation, what do they want, etc. It also might help to make a list of characters from the original drama, and your characters, and write down the differences! Good luck!
What well-behaved characters you must create. Mine tend to to be less compliant, but we usually managed to scrape by.
I've never found a character that doesn't do what I put down on the page. They may not like it, but they have to do it... "But I don't want to go down that creepy dark alley in the middle of a zombie plague." Me: "What could possibly go wrong?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beggar%27s_Opera#Synopsis You might be missing stakes, or not have them fully realized. They're at the root of character motivation. I only read the summary but it seems thin on stakes. I would add more to lose, more to gain. Wealth, health, happiness, love, some goddamn peace and quiet even.
Unfortunately, this question by itself is way too vague. I would ask, and this is just me, that you please clarify your problem by being a little more literal. By that, I mean not saying, "My characters won't obey me!" Okay, that's impossible since they're fiction. If they did become sentient, I wonder why you're trying to be an author and not drawing a multibillion-dollar contract with Tesla, Apple, Google, IBM, or Microsoft for inventing the first sentient artificial being. All jokes aside here's what I think with what little I know of the problem. But here are some theories. 1. You are distracted. There's something distracting you so you can't focus on your writing. This could be something in your personal life, sure, but it could also be that you don't find your story engaging enough, so you can't find a way to fit your characters. Is this bad? No. It just means you need to scrap your plot and build one that's more engaging. 2. You're bragging. You're hitting what a lot of authors feel is some kind of writing nirvana that they have invented a character they relate to so well, they form some kind of bond with that character and it becomes an extension of themselves. In which case I'll just say, "Good for you". Have fun with that, I guess. 3. Your plot is broken. A lot of people want to chalk up issues with getting characters to move the plot along as a "character problem." It's not a character problem. It's a plot problem. Usually, it's a problem where you may not have a plot. So you get your characters stuck in this sort of extended exposition and the only way to make it interesting is just have the characters argue among themselves, because what else are they going to do? Nothing else is happening. Or what is happening isn't all that interesting. The solution here is to tighten up your plot. Figure out what the conflict is and work in your rising action and exposition. 4. Your characters are missing basic components that will weave them into the plot. The three pillars of character development are goals, motives, and conflicts. And these three things have to interconnect into the plot somehow. The characters will either view what is happening as something that will advance their goals or hinder their goals and so they fight for or against whatever is happening accordingly. 5. You're a perfectionist. The problem with being a perfectionist is that it often leads you to hyperfocus on one element of things but then overlook the rest. In this case, you've become hyperfocused on your characters and forgot... well, that the rest of the story exists. If you're working to readapt a work from one culture to another, it becomes entirely possible that you've focused too much on what makes the two cultures different and forgotten where the common ground is.
The protagonist is a social worker, Ragini Gupta, fighting for the rights of poor farmers - fighting for proper compensation for their land. Antagonist is the local Member of the Legislative Assembly, Joshi. Ragini Gupta has a friend, a journalist, Shivani Chandel, who seeks to blackmail Joshi for money. In the end she would betray the leverage that Ragini Gupta has against Joshi. On a sub-plot - contractor Mahesh Verma has got the contract to develop the acquired land. Joshi helped him get the contract by manipulation of requirements for the contract that only Verma's company fulfilled. Verma has an ongoing love affair with Joshi's daughter. He also has an on-going affair with the Police Captain's daughter, Lavina Paswan, a past relationship with Ragini Gupta and an on and off fling with Shivani Chandel. The Police captain Paswan wants to sabotage Joshi in his goal to become a minister in the state government. These are all the plots. I have the scenes delineated, as well. When the characters come together they have their own concerns. The first scene is fine where Ragini Gupta meets Joshi with her request. A house party revealing more of Ragini's purposeful character is also done. Ragini and Shivani share an office space. I have been have a lot of trouble moving forward here. Shivani has an upbeat but superficial temperament. She jumps from event to event in recollection, from idea to idea that she wants to see accomplished. She loves to talk. Ragini finds her entertaining. Shivani is deep down cynical about the state of the society while Ragini is fighting for a hope. Shivani has a flat arc, while Ragini has a negative arc. She will be defeated by the system at the end. I think this scene is key for me to develop empathy for these two characters in the story. A proper structure to the scene is not coming to the mind here. The scene does two things - reveals Shivani's fickle frivolous character and hint that Ragini has some information about Joshi that can sabotage him. I hope all that makes sense. I would love to clarify anything that might have sounded confusing or wrong above. Thanks for the response.
The development of story does follow that pattern. I don't know what to do in the intermittent period. Do you have any suggestion? How long do you rest before approaching the story again?
That's very valuable advise. When I listen to the characters, they say they don't want to be where they are. All of them are very uneasy about their life situation. It reflects m viewpoint that I see the culture around me very uneasy with itself. But this lack of ease is not translating into characterization. The characterization is coming out rather flat. One character goes on with their concerns. The other is hardly bothered. The first person is not bothered that the second person is not bothered. Maybe they want the same thing and that same thing will be the secret that Ragini knows about Joshi. I haven't quite figured out what that secret is. Maybe that is what is missing here.
In this scene that I am writing one is well-behaved and the other is not so well-behaved. In my current understanding the well-behaved one has too much power, while the not so well behaved one has none. This unbalance of power is killing my excitement about the scene. The well-behaved one is an introvert and the other one is extroverted. The introvert can easily ignore all that shenanigans that the extrovert does. There seems no drama to me in that. I am missing something. I would love my characters to be spectacularly misbehaved. I need to learn to behave properly in life for that, I suppose.
Reading your summary I see two possible sources of your problem. Mahesh Verma is the character who has a direct connection to all but one of the named characters and the remaining one, the Police captain, is the father of one of the girls Verma has an affair with. He is also a fairly close analog to the main character of the original story, however you don't name him as your protagonist. It seems an odd choice to have a key character who is not also the main character. As for your chosen protagonist, Ragini Gupta, her being a social worker doesn't seem to be a good background for someone who is supposed to fight for fair compensation for poor farmers forced out of their land. I assume she became aware of the problem through her work, but she wouldn't have the skills or influence to actually do anything about it. She would need a background in law or accounting, or political connections for that, either on her own or through people she is connected with. You say Ragini and Shivani Chandel share an office, which would imply they also work for the same employer, yet one is supposed to be a social worker and the other a journalist. It's hard to see how these two would end up sharing an office. This, by itself, could be the source of your problem with writing the dialogue between them. In the original story the main character is a successful criminal and womanizer whose crimes and indiscretions have caught up with him. Your main character is seeking justice for others, while she doesn't seem to be having much at stake personally. If I wanted to be reasonably faithful to the original story, Verma would need to be my main character and he would be brought to fall in the end, but would probably escape the full consequences of his actions somehow. If, however, this is now to be a story about fighting for justice and losing, Ragini needs to have a far more direct stake in the main conflict, the one of the farmers being forced off their land without proper compensation, so that her being defeated by the system will truly mean something. Also, Verma's numerous affairs would need to somehow be relevant to Ragini and her struggle, or else scrapped. For that, you would need to be willing to deviate quite far from the original story, but there is nothing wrong with that. As for how long to let it rest, that depends entirely on the individual. Long enough that when you get back to it, you are able to see what you have written so far critically and be ready to radically cut anything that doesn't work. Typically, spending some time on an unrelated project or activity should do well enough for that.
Verma (Macheath in the play) is the main character in the play. Verma's character arc is flat, and Ragini's is negative. I don't understand narratives with a flat character protagonist. The story becomes very weak if the protagonist is in a flat character arc. He does not have a very strong need or want. I don't find him a very interesting character. His predicament is interesting that he gets trapped in multiple ways. It's a good point that Ragini does not have the skill set to negotiate with the politician. What does she need to be for that? Do you have any idea? Shivani is a freelance journalist, and she rents the space with Ragini. Ragini not having any stakes keeps her character weak still. I suppose putting Ragini down as a side character and bringing Verma up again should do the trick for me. It is hard for me to see Verma as a very interesting character. How interesting can a character without moral dilemmas be? I want to stay faithful to the original feel of the satire. I am willing to add details but not stray too far from the original plot.
The flat arc for a character means they are not learning from their mistakes, and not being changed by those mistakes. Look at some of the action movies for flat arc characters.
I know what they are. I meant I don't understand what can make a writer write a flat character as a protagonist. The adventures in action films or adventure films are driven by an agenda. James Bond has the agenda of upholding the British government. What is Macheath holding up in The Beggar's Opera?
For the record I am strongly in the camp of "character can't do what they want, they do what you write." Having said that, what if you're a director of a play, and you write an action and the actor says they WON'T do it? That's pretty much the same situation, so what would you do? I see 2 simple answers and they work for writing - Option 1 - Replace the Actor - Actor won't do what you want, get a new actor. This works best if you are early in the writing process, write a new character who is better suited for the role and WOULD do the actions needed. Maybe take the old character and use them for something different (they can even comment on how they would never have done what the new character did). Option 2 - Let the Actor improv - Let the Actor take control, let them go where they want to go with the scene. Maybe where they go is better than where you think things should go. If you're deep in the story, I would say it's at least worth writing a draft this way just to see what it looks like. The process is a bit more complicated than this, but pretty much any answer will be some version of the above... or option 3 "Do it anyway."
Hmm, methinks a few folks are taking this topic a little too literally. Obviously it is fanciful to claim characters do what they want, but for heaven's sake, if one isn't at least a little fanciful, one would be employed in technical writing full time instead of fiction. I could stubbornly stick with a preconceived storyline, but prefer the interesting results I get when I follow the sidetracks my subconscious provides. A very minor character in a novel unexpectedly turned into one of my all-time favorite secondary characters because he "insisted" on a different role and kept appearing when I didn't expect him. I don't have all that many control issues, so I let him do his thing, and the story is much better for it.
I take people literally because I have met writers who mean it literally, and get very VERY defensive when you suggest their characters are not real independent people (even if you're just saying it for the purpose of writing advice). I have had more than one extremely heated arguments related to this subject.
Wow! That would be defined as delusional—an inability to tell the difference between reality and imagination. I suppose writing appeals to people who fit that description (I've never actually met any of them), and maybe to dictatorial types who relish having absolute control. Writers are often accused of having a god complex. But we tend to use metaphor a lot, and talk about our worlds and characters as if they're real. If you lack the imaginative capacity to experience them that way then your writing will come off very flat. Also people have a tendency to square off in an argument and move toward extremes rather than subtlety and nuance. If you start saying "Dude! Characters are just figments of your imagination! They do whatever you tell them to!" that would tend to make them lean the other way. I've seen people get locked into arguments where both started saying things they don't actually believe. Emotions get heated.
"Writers with a god complex, never. " While squishing back ground character #3 under his heel. If our characters don't come to life for us, how can they come to life for our readers? If someone has to go to extremes, then I let a character do that for me. Having two characters go to opposite extremes can be a great dramatic device. Though admittedly it usually ends badly for those characters.
We definitely can't control characters in our dreams. Even our self-character most of the time. Your mind creates those dreams while the conscious part of it is asleep. The imagination extends well beyond the region you have full control over. But of course you can assert absolute control over a character by ignoring the urgings of the unconscious. I think that turns them into controlled puppets with no inner life of their own, who act against their nature. Think Weekend at Bernie's. But that said, it also doesn't mean they're fully independent. Just like dreams and life itself, it's a mix of letting the unconscious take over and pushing back against it or using a more aikido-style approach of using their momentum but re-directing it toward your purposes. It's just like dealing with other people in life—they have their own will and purpose, and you have yours, but it's far better to seek something between full submission to them and absolute tyrannical control. Finding that balance point is the artistry of writing.
