Lessons From the Movies

I recently watched Hudson Hawk, a (deservedly) lesser-known Bruce Willis movie. It was released three years after his smash hit, Die Hard.

Bruce gave his all to the wise-cracking and charming title character. But the movie just didn’t spark the same laughs or tension or empathy as I’d felt for his Die Hard character, John McClane. Why?

I spent some time analyzing why Die Hard worked and Hudson Hawk didn’t and realized this was a lesson I needed to remember for my own writing.

• Die Hard devotes the opening minutes giving us reasons why we should like John.
  • He’s a New York Police Department detective who arrives in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve.
  • He and his wife are separated, and he wants to try and reconcile. We like him because he’s humbled himself to make this trip and he cares about his family.
• Hudson Hawk opens with Eddie Hawkins (Hudson Hawk) being released from prison. He’s a cat burglar and he just wants a nice cappuccino. But he’s immediately blackmailed by various people to do more jobs, stealing artworks.
  • We don’t know why Hawk was imprisoned. If he was justly accused, tried, and incarcerated, then why would I care about him? If he was unjustly imprisoned, or took the fall for someone else, I might be more sympathetic towards him, but that’s not hinted at.

Take away: Set up my character as someone the reader will care about.

Take away: Give my character a noble goal, something of value. Then put obstacles in her way.

• The antagonist is clear and formidable.
  • McClane’s antagonists, Hans and his band of pseudo-terrorists, are serious about their own goal: breaking into the building’s vault and stealing multi-millions of dollars’ worth of bearer bonds. They are professional and cold and believe the ends justifies the means. They murder randomly and are after McClane to stop him interfering with their plans.
  • Hudson Hawk’s bad guys are played so over the top and are so comical, it’s impossible to believe they could achieve their goal of building an alchemy device. Hawk’s buddy and co-burglar walks away from an accident in which the vehicle he was in went over a cliff and burst into flames.

Take away: characters need to be believable, rooted in reality. A little over-the-top goes a long way

Carrie Padgett lives in Central California, close to Yosemite, but far from Hollywood, the beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She believes in faith, families, fun, and happily ever afters. She writes contemporary fiction with romance. She recently signed a contract with Sunrise Publishing to co-write a romance novel with New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hauck that will be published in 2022. Carrie and her husband live in the country with their high-maintenance cat and laid-back dog, within driving distance of their six grandchildren.