This week I'm looking at some storytelling takeaways from the 2021 Oscar Nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay.
"What does your character want?" You hear that all the time. What's the thing that drives them? It's the engine of the story, so you want to get it right.
Except, in some of the best stories end up the protagonist has a goal that doesn't seem to make sense at all. NEBRASKA's Woody Grant insisting on traveling from Montana to Nebraska because he misunderstands a Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes package to mean he has won a million dollars; CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND's Rebecca Bunch moving across the country on the off-chance she can convince the boy she loved one summer in middle school to go out with her; even Hamlet basically deciding in light of the reveal that his uncle murdered his dad to spend three hours just, I don't know, thinking about it?--these are absurd missions. And you assume the story is going to pretty quickly become something else, because how could it sustain itself on this?
But it turns out a fool committing scene in, scene out on their errand ends up not only working, it makes them and their mission more compelling. It's almost like the foolishness of what they're chasing itself creates its own ever-strengthening gravity, until we are all in on their mission. Hell, we invest all the time in characters going around murdering people or dressing like spandex animals; why not a story about someone who is GOING TO HAVE JOSH NO MATTER WHAT BUT YES, THANK YOU FOR YOUR FEEDBACK BYEEEEE.
In NOMADLAND, adapted by Chloe Zhao from Jessica Bruder's non-fiction work Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century, protagonist Fern (Frances McDormand) has one driving desire: to be left alone to live the way she wants. And once again, on the surface that doesn't seem like it'll be enough, or like that's really her goal. Maybe that's what she thinks she wants, but come on, you and I both know what she really wants is to work through the trauma of having lost her husband, her job and her home and start over.
Except Zhao refuses that narrative entirely. In choice after choice Fern opts to live alone, in her van, no matter not only who questions it and what they're offering but maybe even her happiness. It's what she wants, and also what she needs. (So often the friction that pulls the story forward particularly in the latter half lies in the difference between what a character wants and needs. But not here.)
There's a great line near the end of the film. Fern has gone to see Bob Wells, sort of the nomad wise man, who she met early on. "You are not required to get over the traumas of your life," he tells her, in what amounts to an enormous fuck you to most of Hollywood storytelling about both trauma victims and women. "It's okay if you can't or you don't."
That's Fern's desire in a nutshell--to not get over it, to not get past it, but just to live in the way that she wants, even if she could have more some other way. It makes no sense from the outside, and yet that's exactly why it makes such a compelling movie.
Takeaway Question: What is the most interesting version of what my character wants?
