Chapter 30

Levels of Character Evolution

It’s one thing to have a story come full circle, but you don’t want your protagonist to come back to where he began as a character. It is essential that he/she grows, changes, or learns something in the course of the story. In screenwriting this is called the “Character Arc.” To have a character learn nothing leaves the audience with a “so what?” feeling. Why have we bothered going on this journey if nothing was learned from it?

Teaching Screenwriting at UCLA Film School a few years ago, I developed a structure for understanding character evolution, breaking it down into five levels. (I have also written about these levels of character evolution in my book on screenwriting.)

Once we lay out these stages of emotional development, we’ll go into examples of how characters grow and move through the stages. These levels can be thought of as the character’s perspective, beginning with the lowest level of focusing only on himself, moving upward and outward, finally being able to see all the way to the far horizon and include all of humanity in their worldview.

Once we have our chart, we’ll see how it impacts romantic connections.

Character Evolution

Level One: Self

A Level One character is still at survival level, completely self-centered. This character’s value system is simple: I, me, mine. He is the proverbial Lone Wolf, looking out for Number One. Selfish, self-serving, and often self-obsessed. Not very sympathetic, but Level One protagonists almost always move up to a higher level before the end.

Level Two: Bonding

Two people. Usually lovers, but they could also be partners, siblings, or parent and child. The two of us are all that matters. “I got my girl, who could ask for anything more?” Think police partners. Butch and Sundance. Bonnie and Clyde. Romeo and Juliet. A mother bear with a cub. Level Two pairs are self-contained and exclusive. If they are lovers, it is the kind of relationship where they could lock themselves in a motel room for a week and, short of nuclear war, not give a damn about anything in the outside world.

Level Three: Family

Clan. Godfather mentality. A person enmeshed in and loyal to a group of any size that excludes others. Me and mine. Screw the rest of the world. My family is all that matters. The “family” could be any small, closed group. An army platoon, a football team, a group of prisoners, a street gang, or a family that is threatened will build this wall around itself.

A Level Three character is anyone completely immersed within that group’s structure, whether it’s the platoon sergeant in any war movie you name, or Michael Corleone. Their point of view does not extend beyond those familial ties.

Level Four: Community

As the character raises her focus, she begins to see the whole community and to think in terms of the larger group. My community. My country. Her horizon widens to include a broader arena. War heroes showered with medals and the highest honors, even though they may have slaughtered innocents of the “enemy nation,” are the epitome of Level Four thinking. He may have risked life and limb for the greater good, but not the good of all. That would be:

Level Five: Humanity

This level is the level at which people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Theresa lived. A Level Five character lives in a more spiritually enlightened reality, recognizing the value of every human being. Level Five often involves the character’s relationship to God or an awareness of moral responsibility to the planet. Think selfless. Spiritual epiphany. Filled with love and joy.

How it Works

Now for the fun part. How do these levels actually work and why is it important in writing love stories?

Any time you move a character from one level up to another, you create a surge of energy, inspiration, or aliveness in your audience. People love to participate in these shifts in character evolution. Even if the character only moves up one level.

In Rainman (1988, Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow adapting Morrow’s story), Charlie’s character (Tom Cruise) is a typical Level One guy. Completely self-involved. A jerk to his girlfriend. Ruthless in business. No family, no friends, alone in the world. His only interest is looking out for Number One. When he finds out he has an autistic brother, Raymond (played by Dustin Hoffman), his only thought is how to exploit him to meet his own selfish, monetary needs. Then gradually, in spite of all his resistance, they bond. By the end he has made his brother’s well-being his priority and has come to love him. And it gets us. He has only shifted from Level One to Level Two, and we’re moved.

Midnight Cowboy (1969, Waldo Salt adapting James Leo Herlihy’s novel) is a Level One to Level Two leap for Joe Buck (Jon Voight), who goes from a completely selfish guy to one who bonds with a grimy, squirrely street bum named Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman, again). It is as moving as most stories that move to higher levels.

It’s not by chance that Funny Girl starts with “I’m the Greatest Star” and ends with “Oh my man I love him so … ” Or that How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying opens with the title song and builds to “The Brotherhood of Man.” Fanny Brice and J. Pierpont Finch were both Level Ones who moved up.

Character Levels and Relationships

How can the levels of Character Evolution help you understand writing love relationships? If two people are at developmental levels that are too far apart, it’s unlikely that any real connection can take place and unbelievable they could have a good, healthy relationship.

In Casablanca, Rick (Bogart) is a classic Level One. He had been at Level Two in the past, falling in love, but it didn’t work out, so he reverted to Level One. When his old love walks into his nightclub, he is able to rise back up to Level Two and let himself love her again.

The problem: Ilsa is a Level Four character, who has already given up her Level Two love (Rick) for the Level Four cause of the allies winning World War II. When she finds Rick again and they fall in love, she realizes that they are at different places. But she does a courageous and dangerous thing. She says to Rick, “You’ll have to do the thinking for both of us now.” She surrenders not just her heart and her body to him, but her soul as well. She trusts the man she loves to prove himself worthy of that sacrifice and he rises to the challenge. Inspired by her character, he moves from a Level One, past Level Two, and straight up to Level Four, sacrificing their personal relationship for the greater good. His declaration of this leap and his sacrifice has become one of cinema’s memorable lines. “The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

As a true Level Four character, it would have been tragic for Ilsa if Rick had whisked them off to a love nest somewhere to wait out the war alone together. In order to keep from dragging her down to his level, Rick has to come up to hers and become a Level Four.

Trying to make a relationship work between characters at different levels on the scale is, again, like trying to forge a relationship between a fish and a bird. They might love each other, but where will they live? Ilsa can love her man, but she can’t live in his world. Not while being true to herself and her ideals. So he has to move up or lose her.

If Rick hadn’t made this sacrifice and put her on that plane, none of us would have heard of a little 1940s film called Casablanca. But his Level One to Four evolution makes this a beloved classic. The power is in a character moving up to a new level. The more levels he/she believably moves, the more powerful the impact on your reader/audience.

Complete Transformation: Level One to Level Five

They are rare, but I have found two examples of complete Level One to Five evolution and both are so popular as to be reread/rerun yearly for decades.

Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (all versions) has the most definitive Level One character in the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. Guided by three ghosts, he climbs up all five levels in perfect evolutionary order.

The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge two visions of Bonding (Level Two): his childhood bond with his sister, and in young adulthood, his first love, poignantly reminding him of his own ability to love and be loved by one other person.

The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the Cratchits’ home, showing him that his clerk has a family and the love and intimacy between them in spite of poverty. Then they travel to the home of Scrooge’s nephew’s family Christmas dinner, which is his own family, one that Scrooge has shunned and abandoned. Both of these scenes show old Ebenezer clear examples of the joys of Family (Level Three).

The Ghost of Christmas Future shows Scrooge his Community celebrating his death because he failed them so thoroughly in life (Level Four).

And finally, he sees a vision of his own eternal damnation for having so completely failed to make a contribution to Humanity while alive (Level Five).

When he awakes at the end and finds it is still Christmas morning, he leaps out into the world in a state of ecstasy, bursting with love and joy for everyone on earth. This is a complete transformation. Level One to Level Five. Scrooge is a new man. Giving money to the poor and making an abundant Christmas for the Cratchit family, even finally going to his nephew’s home and sharing Christmas dinner with his own family. And we are thrilled to leap out into that snowy street with him, in touch once again with the true spirit of Christmas.

We make a new movie version of A Christmas Carol every decade and rerun them on television yearly. Live theaters all over the world perform the play every December. That is the power of full character evolution: Transformation.

Another five-level evolution is one of America’s favorite films: Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) starts out with a dream, wanting to get out of his small town and explore the world. He wants adventure. To be an explorer. He already bought the suitcase. Now, we don’t really believe that George is a true Level One because, well … because he’s Jimmy Stewart. But this is a story we want to be told, so we go with it.

George’s plans for adventure are abandoned when he falls in love with Mary (Donna Reed), pulling him up to Level Two. Bonding. They have “a bunch of kids,” Level Three. Family. George helps his community (via the Building and Loan Co.), risking his family’s security to help his town stay afloat during the Depression. Level Four. Community. Finally, in a crisis, he has to confront his own existence, look death in the face, and discover his purpose in life. Through that near-death experience George Bailey emerges transformed into a Level Five man. Humanity.

When George Bailey gets his life back, like Ebenezer, he is in a transformed state, filled with great joy and love for all people, even his bitterest enemy, Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore). We can’t get enough of it. We watch it over and over and cry every time he finds Zuzu’s petals in his pocket.

Devolution of Character Equals Tragedy

Conversely, if you take a character down through any number of levels, this is tragedy. Degeneration of character. In The Godfather trilogy, Michael Corleone (Pacino) starts out as a good Level Four guy, still in uniform from serving his country. From there he is pulled back into the Family (Level Three) and he continues to devolve, losing his family, one by one, until finally, by the end of Part 3, he dies completely alone (Level One). This is a tragedy: His life is destroyed by the choices he has made.

King Lear starts out focused on his kingdom (4), then begins degenerating by dividing the kingdom among his family (3), then his world shrinks until it is just himself and his daughter Cordelia (2), and then he too is finally alone (1), bereft, destroyed, a decrepit madman wandering the moor, howling into the wind. Once a character starts on the path of degeneration, gravity kicks in and it is usually a devastating and rapid downhill slide all the way to the bottom.

Level Zero: Animal Mentality

This is not a moral judgment, but a level of mental processing. Human as animal.

Tarzan (all versions based on the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs), the baby raised by chimpanzees (or wolves) in the jungle after his missionary parents perish. When he learns that he is human and to relate to others of his species, this is a significant shift in the levels of consciousness.

Wild Child (1970, written by Francois Truffaut and Jean Gruault from the memoir by Jean Itard). A modern, realistic (and artistic) version of the story of a child raised in the wild, like Tarzan, without the vine-swinging and chest pounding.

Nell (1994, screenplay by William Nicholson and Mark Handley, based on Handley’s play). Jodie Foster plays the title role of a woman so isolated that she may have more in common with the creatures of nature than with other human beings.

Quest for Fire (1981, written by Gerard Brach from the novel by J.H. Rosny, Sr.) is a classic Level Zero story of the evolution of man from a primitive Neanderthal ape creature to a human man standing upright, able to create fire. Which he learned from a Cro-Magnon woman. Just saying.

Encino Man might be seen as a Level Zero protagonist in a comedy.

The shift from Level Zero (acting or thinking like a wild animal) moving up even a single step to a Level One can be deeply moving. For example, the pump scene at the end of The Miracle Worker (1962, William Gibson adapting his own play, from Helen Keller’s memoir). When 6 year old Helen, blind and deaf since she was 19 months, is able to communicate and understand for the first time it is one of the great transformation scenes in movies and theater. She goes from Level Zero to Level Three in a handful of minutes.

Sub-Zero Levels: Human Being as Inhuman Monster

This level of character is rarely the protagonist, because by definition, sociopaths are incapable of change. These are your psychopaths, sadists, Gestapo, and serial murderer types. Dexter is the only one of this category that comes to mind as a recent sub-zero level protagonist. Count Dracula was a member of this group. Not much to be said in terms of evolution here, but we need to include them as a category of character. I recommend against using anyone at this level as a protagonist.

Why is it Important to Have Characters Evolve?

I was speaking about this to a group recently, and one of them, a doctor, came up to me afterwards and told me that when an electron changes orbits, energy is released. Isn’t it marvelous when a law of physics reflects what we have discovered for ourselves in art? When a character believably shifts to a higher level of consciousness, energy is released. A surge of emotion is generated in the audience. This is the very magic we are after. The thing we are seeking. When this magic happens, when you create it and the audience gets it, they walk out of the theater, not just satisfied, but uplifted as well.

Applying the Theory of Character Evolution to Your Story

How do you apply this information to the main characters in your own story? Ask yourself these questions about your protagonists:

1. What level is she on at the beginning? What level is he?
2. What is important to each of them?
3. What do they each want? What are their goals?
4. What changes them?
5. What level are they each on at the end?
6. How do I show this transformation as an act or action as opposed to telling the audience/reader “I’m a better person”?

Rocky yells “Adrian!” Rick puts Ilsa on the plane. And old Ebenezer Scrooge becomes Father Christmas himself, lavishing gifts on one and all.

Screenwriters are gods who create worlds and populate them. Be conscious of the evolutionary process as you guide these mortals’ lives.