Powerful Characters

Here’s the funny thing about stories: they need characters and they need emotion. Period.

Ricardo Lopez of the Miami Herald says that, “The power of character is something really, really simple,” but also incredibly important. Even with the most interesting angles, the greatest lighting imaginable, and flawless editing, if you don’t have emotion in a video you just don’t have anything at all.

Have you ever seen those artsy movies? The kind where everything is really pretty but in the end you just don’t know what’s going on. Or the poetry that is beautifully written, but says absolutely nothing. It is kind of like staring at a flower for a really long time, don’t get me wrong I’m very pro nature, love flowers…but I mean I appreciate them for what they are – something nice to look at and then kind of walk away from. You don’t become a better person, a more educated person, a more understanding person from staring at a flower. You just don’t.

Emotion comes from the character, not from the creator. Especially in journalism portraying the person as they are is so much more powerful than trying to glitz them up or make them into something they are not. The idea is to find a character that is so interesting that the emotion follows and all the journalist has to do is make sure that the audience receives an articulate image of the character and their story.

Things get messy and distorted and chaotic when a journalist detracts from the story with a lot of fancy nonsense. Like bizarre cuts, and editing decisions that completely dilute the story. Please pardon the reference back to my ever present internal struggle between journalist and creative writer, but I’ve always said the difference between the two is that creative writing is all about the words, how you piece them together and all that. Journalism is about the subject and putting as few words between the audience and the subject as possible. Both professions have their place, but when it comes to putting together a journalistic media package on a certain character it is best to be only as creative as you need to be.

The funny thing about being a journalist is you work your ass off and in the end, the best way to tell if you’re good at what you do is if no one remembers you at all. Bizarre I guess.