Although I was delaying the introduction of my main antagonist, there was still plenty going on to move the script forward. As I mentioned in my last post, there were two secondary characters that I was introducing instead, as well as a new important setting, which was vital to the main conflict.
As I was establishing the characters and location, this was where I felt the outlining I had done using the 6 essential questions was really paying off. Because I not only thoroughly knew their backstories and the motivations that had resulted from their situations in life, I could shape the actions in the character’s introductions so that in their scenes they were always working toward their own personal goal.
For instance, one of the new characters I was establishing in this new setting was a woman working in a brothel. Mapping out her backstory with the six essential questions, I knew how she had arrived there – when she was younger, she and her lover at the time had ventured out West for rich prospects, but had run out of money before they reached the coast. Stranded, they tried to earn enough to make their final destination, but her lover had died. In her financial situation, she desperately took the job at the brothel, and has been stuck there ever since.
With this backstory in mind, her motivation was to get out of this life. In the scenes at the new location, a hotel/casino/brothel, her interactions with others all have one central goal in mind, to find among the many people passing through on their way out West someone rich enough to get her out of this line of work. In the scenes, she’s borderline dismissing some potential clients because they’re hard up for cash, while focusing her attention and charm on a character that exudes wealth.
This added a layer to the scenes as this was just what her character was working toward, all while the other new character and the main character were also working through their own storylines. I felt this was giving a lot of variety to the different subplots that were going on at the same time, and would make the audience feel that it was more than just a movie they were watching, that these characters would feel alive and that the audience was watching a slice of their lives play out.
My only concern was how long this was playing out. I was attempting to fit in a lot with what was going on with these characters, but I also found toward the end of this sequence I was trying to shorten it to just making my point about what was happening so that I could get to the next story beat. It was fun writing these characters and plotting out the scene, but it was the first I was starting to get concerned about the pacing of the story.
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