Category Archives: Pet the Dog

What Writers Can Learn From The Fugitive

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The Fugitive (1993) is one of my all-time favorite thrillers, both to watch and to teach. So many great lessons can be drawn from it. I’ll share a few with you today.

Based on the hit TV show from the 1960s, it’s the story of respected surgeon Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford), who comes home one night to find his wife dying at the hands (or rather, hand) of a one-armed man. Kimble fights with him, but the man gets away. Kimble tries to save his wife, to no avail. He is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. He escapes. A crack team led by Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) sets out to track him down.

The story question: Can Kimble keep ahead of the law long enough to prove his innocence by finding the one-armed man?

Structure

At a little over two hours, the movie is a terrific study in the power of structure. The film would not be nearly as engaging if it did not hit the right signposts at the right time.

Thus, we get the opening disturbance in the very first shot: a TV reporter stands outside the Kimble home, where the police are investigating the death of Kimble’s wife. Kimble is taken to the police station and questioned by two detectives. He thinks it’s as a grieving husband, but soon it dawns on him that they consider him the chief suspect.

Yeah, I’d be disturbed, too.

Lesson: Start your story by striking a match, not by laying out the wood. (h/t John le Carré.) You have plenty of time for backstory later. Readers will happily wait for fill-in material if they’re caught up in immediate trouble.

On we go through Act 1: Kimble is convicted, sentenced, put on a prison bus. A couple of convicts stage an uprising, the driver is shot, a guard is stabbed, the bus tumbles off the road and onto railroad tracks…just as a train comes right for it!

This is one great action sequence. The convicts and one guard get the heck out of the bus. But Kimble stays behind to help the wounded guard, gets him out a window, and jumps one second before the train hits the bus. That would be enough for most writers, but not for screenwriters Jeb Stuart and David Twohy. Half the derailed train breaks off and comes right at the fleeing Kimble! He barely avoids being crushed.

Lesson: When you have a great action sequence, or suspenseful scene, stretch the tension as far as you can. Ask: What else could go wrong? What could make things worse?

At the crash site, while local law enforcement is botching things, Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard arrives with his crack team. He figures out what’s going on, orders roadblocks, and announces, “Your fugitive’s name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him.”

Boom! We are ¼ of the way into the film, and the Doorway of No Return has just slammed shut. Kimble cannot go back to his ordinary life. He must face the “dark forest” (almost literally) at the heart of myth. Survive or be killed.

Lesson: In a novel, my view is that the Doorway should happen no later than the 1/5 mark. Otherwise, things start to drag.

Solid structure is a beautiful thing. Far from being a hindrance, it is the most powerful way to share the story in your head and heart with an audience. See: “Story and Structure in Love.”

The Mirror Moment

Act 2, of course, is a series of rising action, mostly of Kimble barely keeping escaping his pursuers. At the exact halfway point, where we would expect to find it, is the Mirror Moment.

(If this term is unfamiliar to you, I’ve written a book about it. But lest you think I’m only interested in money (I am interested in it, just not only interested in it) you can check out a couple of TKZ posts here and here.)

As I explain in my book, there are two types of mirror moments: 1. The character looks at himself and asks questions like, “Who am I? What have I become? Am I going to stay this way?” It’s an internal gaze. 2. The character looks at his situation and thinks, “I’m probably going to die. There’s no way I can survive this.” This is an external look.

The second kind is what we have in The Fugitive. In the middle of the film Kimble has rented a basement room from a Polish woman. He’s using it as a base of operations to sneak into Cook County hospital. He wants to access the records of the prosthetics wing to get a list of patients with artificial arms.

In the mirror scene, Kimble is awaked from slumber by the sound of police swarming the house. Kimble looks for a way to escape, but there is none. He’s done for!

Only it turns out the cops are there to nab the Polish woman’s drug-dealing son.

As the police lead him away, Kimble has a small breakdown. He’s thinking, “I can’t possibly win against these odds. I’m as good as dead.”

Lesson: No matter how you write, via outline, winging it, or something in between, take some time early in the process to brainstorm possible mirror moments, of both varieties. Push yourself past the familiar. Inevitably, one of them will feel just right. It will become your guiding light for the entire novel.

To get us into Act 3, we need a Second Doorway. This is either a setback or crisis, or major clue/discovery. It should happen by the ¾ mark, and in The Fugitive it does. I won’t give the spoiler here, but suffice to say it’s the major clue implicating the villain. Now the Final Battle becomes inevitable.

Pet the Dog

This is such a great way to increase the audience bond with the hero. It’s a scene or sequence in Act 2 where the hero takes time to help someone more vulnerable than he, even at the cost of making his situation worse. The Fugitive has one of the best examples you’ll ever see.

Kimble is disguised as a hospital custodian. He’s accessed the prosthetics records he needed. As he’s leaving he walks along the trauma floor. All sorts of triage patients being tended to. He notices a little boy groaning on a gurney. A doctor orders a nurse to check on the boy. The nurse gives him a cursory look. Kimble is aghast. He knows there’s something wrong here.

The doctor reappears and asks Kimble to help out by taking the boy to an observation room. Kimble wheels him away, checking out the X-ray as he goes. He asks the lad a few questions about where it hurts, then changes the orders and gets the boy to an operating room for immediate attention.

That’s a success, but in a thriller any success should be followed by some worse trouble.

Turns out the doctor saw Kimble look at the film, and confronts him as he’s walking out. She rips off his fake ID and calls for security. More trouble! (This sequence has a favorite little moment. As Kimble is rushing down the stairs to get away, he brushes past someone coming up. He looks back and says, “Excuse me.” Kimble is so fundamentally decent he apologizes even as he’s running for his life!)

Lesson: Create a character the hero can help, even in the midst of all his troubles (e.g., Rue in The Hunger Games). The deepening bond this creates with the reader is so worth it.

Character

The Fugitive features a protagonist and antagonist who are both sympathetic. Kimble, of course, is a devoted husband wrongly convicted of murder. Sam Gerard is a great lawman who doggedly pursues justice.

Lesson: You don’t need a traditional villain to carry your thriller. In The Fugitive, it’s two good men with agendas in direct conflict. The true villain reveal is at the end.

Dialogue

Many of the great lines in the movie were actually improvised. The most famous is from the spillway scene. Kimble has a gun on Gerard. Kimble says, “I didn’t kill my wife!” And Gerard says, “I don’t care!” Tommy Lee Jones came up with that.

Another perfect line not in the script is just after the train derailment. Another prisoner, Copeland, a stone-cold killer, helps Kimble to his feet. He says to Kimble, “Now you listen. I don’t give a damn which way you go. Just don’t follow me. You got that?”

As he’s pulling away Kimble says, “Hey Copeland.” Copeland turns around. Kimble says, “Be good.” Another mark of his decency, like when he said, “Excuse me.”

Love it! You can get a bestselling book on the subject, but the gist is simple:

Lesson: Great dialogue is the fastest way to improve any manuscript.

Over to you for discussion. And as a bonus for reading all the way to the end of this lengthy post, let me mention that Romeo’s Way, the novel that won the International Thriller Writers Award, is FREE, today only. Grab it here.

Writing Lovely Moments

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field (1963)

I believe writers are here to “bring the light.” It’s a dark world out there and most readers, I venture to say, don’t want more of the same in their leisure hours.

By that I don’t mean we avoid the harsher edges in our fiction. Indeed, that’s what the best thrillers take us through in order to deliver us at the end.

I do mean, though, that light (e.g., hope, justice) is a powerful—even necessary—element for today’s market.

Which brings me to the subject of lovely moments.

The other night Mrs. B and I re-watched one of our favorite movies, Lilies of the Field. This 1963 gem was a low-budget production that ended up nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay. Sidney Poitier took home the Best Actor prize for his performance. Lilia Skala, the Austrian actress, was nominated for her supporting role (and should have won, in my humble opinion).

It’s the story of an itinerant worker, Homer Smith (Poitier), who is driving his old station wagon across the Arizona desert. His car needs water, so he pulls into the only homestead within miles. It turns out this is the humble dwelling of five nuns who are scraping out their subsistence by growing vegetables, raising chickens, and milking one cow. The nuns do not speak much English. We learn later they escaped over the Berlin Wall and came 8,000 miles to this desolate place.

The iron-willed Mother Superior (Skala) is convinced that God has sent “Schmidt” to them for a very special purpose—to build a chapel for the poor, mostly Mexican locals to attend mass.

Mass for this community is administered outside a local hash house by a priest who works out of a motor home. In a conversation with Homer, the priest admits that when he was ordained he prayed to be called to a majestic cathedral in some wealthy diocese. Now, he notes ruefully, he has to pray that his tires don’t blow out.

Near the end, with the chapel finished, the priest is brought in to see where he will now be saying the mass. He is so moved he can hardly speak. Finally, he says to the Mother Superior, “Many years ago, I made a very vain and selfish prayer. Now He has answered my prayer through you, through many people. I pray now I become worthy of His trust. And yours.”

A lovely moment. It’s with a minor character, but it deepens the emotional impact of the entire film.

So I’ve been thinking about how to add such moments to our fiction. Here are two prompts:

  1. Where can your Lead show mercy?

One of the best examples of this type of moment is from, not surprisingly, Casablanca. A desperate young wife asks Rick to answer the most important question in her life. She and her husband, refugees from Bulgaria, are desperate to get out of Casablanca, but need exit visas signed by the French police captain, Louis Renault. These visas cost serious money. The husband is trying to raise it in the gambling room, but is losing. The wife, however, has been approached by Louis (offscreen) with his standard offer—if she will sleep with him, he will grant the couple their visas.

Casablanca (1942, Warner Bros.)

The young wife wants to know if Renault is a man of his word. Rick knows immediately why she’s asking. He tells her, with cynical disdain, that yes, he’s a man of his word.

Then the wife wants to know something else:

“Monsieur, you are a man. If someone loved you very much, so that your happiness was the only thing that she wanted in the world, and she did a bad thing to make certain of it…could you forgive her?”

Bitterly, Rick says, “Nobody ever loved me that much.”

She goes on: “And he never knew, and the girl kept this bad thing locked in her heart, that would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

“You want my advice?”

“Yes, please.”

“Go back to Bulgaria.”

But a few minutes later Rick goes to the roulette table and suggests the husband bet everything on 22. The croupier picks up the cue, and 22 wins. Rick says, “Leave it there.” And 22 wins again.

Rick tells the husband, “Now cash it in and don’t come back.”

A lovely moment. So lovely that when the Russian bartender hears what Rick has done, he rushes over to give Rick a kiss on the cheek!

This is also what I call a “Pet the Dog” beat, which is where the Lead forgets for a moment his own troubles in order to help someone who is weak or vulnerable. He doesn’t have to do so. Indeed, his action puts him in jeopardy (Louis begins to suspect Rick is not as neutral as he claims to be). But the action bonds us deeply to the Lead, compelling us to read on.

  1. Where can your Lead be shown mercy?

Les Misérables (1935, 20th Century Pictures)

Who can forget the mercy shown to Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables? When the ex-convict is fed by a kind priest, Valjean repays him by stealing a basket of silverware. He doesn’t get very far before the gendarmes nab him and drag him back to the priest’s abode. They have caught him red-handed with stolen silver! Now all the priest has to do is make a complaint and Valjean will be back in prison forever. They are not prepared for what the priest does next:

“Ah! here you are!” he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. “I am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?”

Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop with an expression which no human tongue can render any account of.

“Monseigneur,” said the brigadier of gendarmes, “so what this man said is true, then? We came across him. He was walking like a man who is running away. We stopped him to look into the matter. He had this silver—”

“And he told you,” interposed the Bishop with a smile, “that it had been given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest with whom he had passed the night? I see how the matter stands. And you have brought him back here? It is a mistake.”

“In that case,” replied the brigadier, “we can let him go?”

“Certainly,” replied the Bishop.

The priest then gets the silver candlesticks and hands them to a bewildered Jean Valjean.

“Now,” said the Bishop, “go in peace. By the way, when you return, my friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden. You can always enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with anything but a latch, either by day or by night.”

Then, turning to the gendarmes—

“You may retire, gentlemen.”

This is, of course, the great turning point in Valjean’s life. And an unforgettable moment in a classic novel.

What lovely moments in books or films are memorable to you?

 

The Decency Factor

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

It’s not all bad news out there. The hate-stream does not slosh over every social interaction, though sometimes it seems that way. In the midst of our current crisis there are abundant stories of bravery and heroism on the front lines, and decency and kindness all around.

One such story went viral. A FedEx delivery man brings a package to a doorstep. He sees a note that someone in the house has an auto-immune disorder, so please leave packages outside.

The fellow then goes to his vehicle for some wipes, sanitizes the package, and leaves a little note of his own, ending with “Stay safe” and a smiley face.

My wife and I couldn’t help getting misty as we watched the video. That is the power of a kind act, especially when times are troubled.

In fiction, decency is often shown by way of the “pet the dog” scene. This is where the hero, in the midst of his own vexations, pauses to help someone weaker than himself. It’s an act of basic kindness and thus bonds us even more strongly with the Lead.

I’ll give you two examples. The first is from The Fugitive (1993). You know the story. Dr. Richard Kimble is on the run after escaping a prison bus on the way to Death Row. Kimble was wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. It was a one-armed man who did it, and Kimble is now in a race against time to find him.

At one point Kimble poses as a hospital janitor so he can access the prosthetics records. As he’s slipping out of the hospital he finds himself waylaid by traffic on the trauma floor.

As he waits for a chance to move he notices a little boy on a gurney, groaning. From the look on Kimble’s face we know he wants to help that boy. He’s a doctor! That’s what he does! But he can’t without giving himself away. A nurse gives a cursory look at the chest x-ray, calling out that the kid is okay.

The supervising doctor comes over, sees Kimble just standing there, and asks him to wheel the kid down to an observation room. So off Kimble goes with the gurney.

As he does, he asks the boy where it hurts. He slips the x-ray from its envelope and holds it up to the light.

He determines that the boy needs immediate surgery. So on the elevator he changes the boy’s orders and takes him to the operating room, turning him over to a surgeon who gets the boy in for the help he needs.

Kimble saved a boy’s life at the risk of being found out. The filmmakers use it for just that purpose. The doctor on the trauma floor saw Kimble looking at the film. She catches up to him and confronts him. Not satisfied with his evasions, she grabs his ID badge and calls for Security.

Thus, Kimble’s “pet the dog” moment has gotten him into worse trouble. That’s using it to the max.

My second example is from Casablanca (where so many great moments come from!) As you know, the movie is about a bitter American named Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) who is allowed to run a café/saloon in this Morocco burg because he’s seen as neutral and uninterested in the war that rages around the world. Rick keeps telling people, “I stick my neck out for nobody.”

Rick’s Café is packed nightly with refugees making surreptitious deals to get out of Casablanca. Louis, the French police captain who has local control (with Nazi permission), uses the Café to get gambling kickbacks and women. He identifies desperate young couples who need exit visas but don’t have the money to pay for them. Louis then approaches the wife and offers her the papers gratis…in return for sleeping with him.

So in the middle of the swirling plot a young wife asks for Rick’s advice. Her husband is at the roulette table, trying to win the money they need for the visas. But he’s losing. Louis has made his pitch to the wife and she now wants to know if he’ll keep his word. Rick, with a disgusted look, says, “He always has.” She presses Rick, asking him, as a man, if someone loved him very much and did a “bad thing” to ensure his happiness, could he forgive her for that bad thing? Rick, remembering how Ilsa left him in Paris, says, “Nobody ever loved me that much.” He gets up and leaves, telling the wife that things “may work out.”

But then he goes to the gambling room and spots the husband, who is down to his last chips. Rick tells him to place them on 22. The croupier sees what’s going on and sets the wheel so the ball lands on 22. Rick tells the husband to let it ride, and the ball comes up on 22 again. Rick tells the husband to “Cash it in and don’t come back.”

This pet-the-dog moment is observed by Rick’s headwaiter, but also by Louis, who objects to Rick interfering with his “little romances.” This is potential trouble for Rick, because he has just “stuck his neck” out for some refugees, making Louis suspicious of his true intentions.

We don’t need to do any psychological deep dive to understand why the pet-the-dog beat is so powerful. We are naturally moved by acts of decency. It’s the parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s what Lincoln described as “the better angels of our nature.” It is part, I would argue, of the true American character in times of crisis.

We can show that in our fiction by way of a pet-the-dog beat. Even more important, we can show it in our lives by acting decently, the way a FedEx delivery man did a few days ago.

What act of kindness have you observed or heard about lately? In the past, what gesture of decency made an impact on you?

The Power of Decency in Fiction

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

If you’ve been in my workshops or read a few of my writing books, you know about the “pet the dog” beat. The name is not original with me, but comes from the old Hollywood screenwriters. Blake Snyder changed it to “save the cat.” So pet lover-writers can choose their preferred metaphor.

I have refined the concept to make it something more specific than merely doing something nice for someone. In my view, the best pet-the-dog moments are those where the protagonist helps someone weaker or more vulnerable than himself, and by doing so places himself in further jeopardy. Thus, it falls naturally into Act 2, usually on either side of the midpoint.

I think of Katniss Everdeen helping little Rue in The Hunger Games. Or Richard Kimble in the movie The Fugitive, saving a little boy’s life in the hospital emergency ward (and having his cover blown as a result).

David Janssen as The Fugitive

And speaking of The Fugitive, I’ve been watching the old TV series starring David Janssen. The show was a big hit in the 60s, and after watching a few I came to see that a big part of the reason is the pet-the-dog motif in almost every episode. There usually comes a time when someone is in need of medical attention. Kimble, therefore, has a dilemma. He can help and give away his medical skills (leading to suspicions about his background). Or he can quietly walk away.

What do you think this decent guy does?

An episode called “Fatso” will serve as an example. It’s a particularly good entry, directed by one of the best of that rare breed, the female Hollywood director—Ida Lupino.

Kimble (now using the name Bill Carter) has hitched a ride with a traveling salesman who is fighting off sleep. For safety’s sake, Kimble takes the wheel into the next town. Unfortunately, an errant driver forces Kimble to swerve and rear end a parked car.

Knowing the local cops will soon be on the scene, Kimble tries to sneak away, but is nabbed by the sheriff and arrested for fleeing the scene of an accident. They take his prints. Kimble, sitting in the clink, knows it’s just a matter of time before they identify who he is.

Jack Weston as David in “Fatso”

He shares his cell with a sad sack, an overweight drunk named David (played by that reliable character actor of the time, Jack Weston). When the sheriff comes to release David, Kimble socks the lawman and knocks him out. He heads for the door. David begs Kimble to take him along. They hop a train, heading for David’s boyhood home.

Meanwhile, Lt. Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), who is always one step behind Kimble, gets the report based on Kimble’s prints. He flies to Kentucky where all this is taking place.

Kimble learns that David, who everyone calls “slow,” wants to see his estranged father, who is dying on the horse ranch where he grew up. David is full of fear because of his father’s disapproval. Something happened in the past that caused his father to throw him out.

Kimble and David arrive at the ranch and are met by David’s younger brother, Frank. This guy is a real jerk. He calls David “Fatso” and needles him about that terrible thing that happened.

Frank is also suspicious of Kimble. Why would a guy like this befriend a loser like David?

As the episode goes on, with Gerard getting closer and Frank feeding the local sheriff his suspicions, Kimble tries to help David. Knowing that the only way David can become whole again is to confront the past, not run from it. To gain David’s trust, Kimble admits he’s a doctor. He then walks David through the night that the barn burned down and killed several horses. David was drunk and alone on the farm, and everyone, including David, is convinced he set the fire.

But Kimble does some digging and finds out that Frank was AWOL that night from the local army base. He presents this evidence to David’s father and mother. They confront Frank. He confesses. He set David up to get him disowned and out of the will.

David’s father asks for David’s forgiveness.

It’s all very redemptive, but there’s one problem: Gerard has just pulled up to the house with the sheriff!

The mother, played with gusto by that wonderful character actress Glenda Farrell, sends Kimble out the back door and proceeds to delay the investigators.

In each show’s epilogue, as we see Kimble disappear into the night, we hear the dulcet tones of one of the great voice-over actors, William Conrad, giving an ominous send-off. In “Fatso,” he says: “A Fugitive has to watch his step. Every step he takes, every hour, every minute, every second, any move he makes might lead to Death Row. There’s no way of knowing in advance. There’s never any way of knowing.”

Thus, virtually every episode is built around Kimble, on the run, arriving in some locale where he manages to pick up a menial job, but then gets involved with another character who is having some life-and-death problem, too … and Kimble is in a position to help.

I say this pet-the-dog motif is the secret of the show’s popularity. David Janssen was perfect for the part. He does a lot of acting with his face—trying to appear innocent as the questions get more pointed; attempting to ignore someone’s troubles even as his core goodness makes that impossible.

The movie works in the same way, with a similar stellar acting job by Harrison Ford. There’s one moment that makes me smile every time. After Kimble saves the little boy’s life in the hospital, he’s confronted by a doctor (Julianne Moore) who had seen him checking out the boy’s X-ray. She calls security. Kimble races to the stairs and starts down, almost bumping into someone.

“Excuse me,” he says.

I love it! Even as he’s running for his life, he can’t give up his fundamental decency.

Why do we respond so strongly to this motif? It’s not hard to understand. In this life, which Hobbes described as “nasty, brutish, and short,” we long for decency, thirst for kindness, are grateful for compassion. Seeing it manifested in a lead character draws us to him, creates the bond that is one of the big secrets of successful fiction.

What are some of your favorite pet-the-dog moments in movies or books? Don’t you find yourself really drawn to characters who show compassion for the vulnerable?

Creating Characters We Care About

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James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell


Today’s post is brought to you by:


I mention the book today because it’s the story of the bond between two brothers. Chuck Samson, an ex-Navy chaplain who served with a Marine unit in Afghanistan; and his adult, autistic brother, Stan, who has a heart as big as the Pacific. And what happens when killers come after them both.
This bond is something I call the Care Package, a story element that greatly enhances reader connection to the Lead.
The Care Package is a relationship the Lead has with someone else, in which he shows his concern, through word or deed, for that character’s well being.
This humanizes the Lead and engenders sympathy in the reader, even if the Lead happens to be a louse.
Let me give you a few examples.
In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is not just some lone rogue. She is the protector of and provider for her mother and sister, Prim. What she does in taking Prim’s place in the Games is the ultimate sacrifice of love. When she makes it, we are so much on her side that we will follow her anywhere, rooting for her all the way.
In Star Wars, the only reason Luke will not leave with Obi-Wan Kenobe is that his aunt and uncle need him on the farm. Here’s a boy who dreams of becoming a knight, but he can’t just leave his family. We like that in him. It shows nobility. Shortly thereafter, of course, his aunt and uncle are murdered…and Luke is off to fight the evil Empire.
Dorothy Gale cares about Toto in The Wizard of Oz. She’ll do anything to protect her innocent dog from the clutches of Miss Gulch.
Having a Care Package relationship keeps a character from being completely selfish. We don’t like such folk. We hope that we are not that way.
Scarlett O’Hara, for all her dithering selfishness, cares about her mother and father.
Mike Hammer, not the softest of PIs, cares about Velma.
Even the bitter and bigoted Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) in Gran Torino cares…about his dead wife. It is only because of her final wishes that he even tolerates the young priest who keeps showing up to check on him.
The Care Package is one of the reasons we watched Breaking Bad. Walter White engages in a truly despicable act — cooking super crystal meth for sale on the street. Yet he holds some degree of sympathy. He gets into the trade

because he’s dying of cancer and wants to provide for his wife and handicapped son.

But as the story progresses, Walt becomes more ruthless and drags his former student, Jesse, into this dark world.
And yet…and yet…whenever Jesse gets in real trouble, Walt tries to get him out of it. He cares about Jesse in spite of all that happens. And Jesse cares about Mr. White. They forget about this caring at various times when they want to kill each other, but it always comes back when the chips are down.
Now that is good writing, and a great lesson. You can have a criminal as your Lead, and if you give him a Care Package, you’ll still hook the reader. 
In short, the Care Package shows that even the worst characters have some shred of humanity in them which gives the readers hope they might, if circumstances are just so, be redeemed.
In my workshops on structure I stress the difference between the Care Package and a later beat called Pet the Dog. The latter is something that happens in Act 2, when the Lead takes a moment out of her own troubles to help someone weaker than herself. In The Hunger Games, for instance, Katniss helps the weakest of the players in the Games, little Rue.
The Care Package, by contrast, is a relationship the Lead has before the story begins. Thus, sometime early in Act 1, we are given a glimpse of this bond.
A word to you plotters/outliners. Consider using a Care Package as the emotional starting point for your developing story. That’s what I did with Don’t Leave Me. I got the initial idea of writing about a former military chaplain. I started to think about his backstory, and almost immediately came up with the idea of his having an autistic brother he has protected all of their lives, and now must do again when killers arrive on the scene.
It was such a strong emotional tie for me that it incentivized my wanting to write the entire novel, just to vindicate this relationship.
And now you pantsers, as you are writing along, maybe 10,000 words into that wonderful mess you love, why not pause for a moment and consider the lead character who is starting to come to life? You don’t have to worry about structure here, just ask yourself what kind of relationship can this Lead have with someone else that shows a caring spirit?
Heck, you’re a panster! Go ahead and write a scene like that. The benefit to you is the greater emotional connection you’ll have with your Lead. And that’s going to make for a better book.
And just to complete today’s commercial, please note that Don’t Leave Me is currently on sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

So what character in recent fiction have you been drawn to, and why?