6. Overcoming a Fear
Fear is a powerful emotion. It also happens to be the driving force behind concepts and characterization.
You can find some of the greatest movie or television series concepts by exploring the fears that we as humans suffer from—fear of the water (Jaws), fear of spiders (Arachnobia), fear of clowns (It), fear of enclosed spaces (Buried), fear of the dark (The Descent), the fear of sleep or nightmares (A Nightmare on Elm Street), the fear of public speaking (The King’s Speech).
When a character is facing his or her greatest fears, there’s an instant empathetic connection—even if the audience doesn’t suffer from that very fear. And if the concept itself isn’t centered around the fear the character is facing, how the fear relates to the concept of the story only enhances the story itself.
In one of the stories in Twilight Zone: The Movie, a character is facing his fear of flying. That fear is paired with the concept of a man seeing a creature on the wing of the passenger jet he’s within. His fear of flying and the concept of him being the only one that sees a creature on the wing of a passenger jet enhances the concept itself, and the characterization of his character. There’s a duality between them. Is his fear of flying causing him to see things? The crew clearly believes so.
And it’s not always about a particular phobia.
In Aliens, Ripley is dealing with her fear of her past experience with the xenophobe alien. This is the driving force of her characterization in the sequel. She has to overcome this fear and face the Alien Queen in the end.
When we understand a character’s crippling fear of something, we empathize with them even more.
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