that character that drive the story forward

[HKB]

Has that little part that drives the main character through sections of the movie. The main character has to explain his position and what not, this allows the audience to understand where the plot is heading. What is he officially called? Anyone know?

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Main character narrations would seem to be the term.

You mean like Dexter where his thoughts were the narrations in the series?

 

[HKB]

Main character narrations would seem to be the term.

You mean like Dexter where his thoughts were the narrations in the series?

No, I mean like an actual character that is presented within the story and interacts with a main character so that the main character has someone to express himself with rather than talking to himself or directly to the camera. This interaction gives the audience an understanding of what the main characters thoughts and feelings are.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

The supporting characters?

They can help to flush out the story and main lead.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

In the original version of Clash Of The Titans, Burgess Meredith played the teacher of Perseus. He narrated through the story and gave us the background of Perseus.

 

[HKB]

The supporting characters?

They can help to flush out the story and main lead.

I thought there might be a technical term rather than supporting character.

 

[VivaChiba]

I'd say you seem to have a bigger problem: if your characters require blatant exposition for your story to work, something's amiss.

 

[Kosh]

I'd say you seem to have a bigger problem: if your characters require blatant exposition for your story to work, something's amiss.

Agreed. Whatever you want to call them - supporting character, mentor, whatever - you must be able to move your story forward without some talking head explaining everything that is going on. It's your characters actions (in actions) and decisions made in face of challenging and exciting obstacles that feeds the drama that moves your story forward.

But the person that can help show the things that you really don't want to blatantly spell out on the page can be a mentor, a sidekick, a love interest, a friend, a relative. How they interact and more importantly what they don't say or do makes for better writing and more fulfilling story telling. Ooh, and and about using a narrator - that is tricky to pull off successfully as you are now bringing the reader/viewer directly into the story. This can be done but doing it without distracting from their connection to the story takes a lot of planning and all of the material has to be crafted to pull this off well.

I hope this helped.

 

[HKB]

Thanks to all!