I stole this from a site online.
So just how important is character development? Let’s look at what a couple of veteran screenwriters say: Syd Field, in Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, states that, “Character is the essential foundation of your screenplay. It is the heart and soul and nervous system of your story. Before you put a word on paper, you must know your character.”
A strong character is the quintessential element to any screenplay. A screenplay won’t survive unless you, as the writer of the story, know the main character better than he knows himself. So how do you do this? Last time I suggested making a visual picture of your character by cutting images out of magazines. Cut and paste until you have the person you’ve pictured in your mind staring back at you on paper. A visual picture will help remind you whose story you’re telling. After I have a visual of my character in place, I then begin the process of writing out my character’s biography.
A character’s biography can be as short or as long as you want. The important part is feeling secure enough with your character and his past in order to get him through the most critical point in his life (i.e. – where your screenplay begins).
The first step in writing your character’s biography is developing your character’s name. Some author’s place a high emphasis on character naming because the name symbolizes who they are as a person. I begin the naming process by looking at my character’s picture and then asking myself questions like – “Where was this person born?” and “Who are his parents?” Is my character French, or Italian, or Asian? Was my character born on the East coast, the Midwest, or on the West coast? I definitely do not exhaust the naming process, but I do take these types of factors into consideration. This brainstorming process also works as an aid later when I actually begin writing. Bottom line, if you give your character a strange and exotic name, then you better have a damn good story behind it. I feel a great example of this is Gilbert Grape’s name in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” Gilbert’s name symbolizes his struggle in life. A grape has the potential to be either sour or sweet, a raisin or possibly wine. Throughout the movie, Gilbert struggles with becoming the hardened raisin (by ditching his family) or a sweet wine (by staying, helping, and defending his family).
Once you have your character’s name in place, you can begin writing. I always begin with my character’s day of birth. Where was he born? What time was he born? Was it an easy birth? Was he born later or earlier than expected? As there is no right or wrong way of going through the biography process, I then take the time to analyze my character’s parents. Were the parents expecting a child or was their pregnancy a surprise to them? Are the parents happy to be together? Are they married? Were both of them involved with the pregnancy?
I continue through my character’s childhood looking at factors such as family involvement – were the grandparents and other immediate relatives around them growing up or were the relatives estranged? Was it a happy childhood? What kind of grades did he make? Was he into sports? Does he have any strange traits or habits? Is he violent or passive? Did he go to prom? When was the first time he had sex? Has he ever had sex? Etcetera …
There is no limit to the amount of investigation you can put into writing out your character’s life. Make it as normal or as strange as you like. Remember, all of these varying factors are shaping how your character is going to react to the most critical point or moment in his or her life. This critical point in your character’s life is the key element to your screenplay.
Character is the most important part of any screenplay – don’t forget this. In the past two articles, we’ve taken the steps to get to know what your character looks like, what their name is, and what their history is. Remember, these are steps designed to help you while you’re writing your actual screenplay. It’s critical that you know your character better than anyone else. It’s you, as a writer, who has to take this character through an entire story filled with challenges, dramas, dilemmas and dangers. But the character development process cannot stop here. The next step in the development process is to establish the need of your character(s). Here’s where we finally get to work:
Screenwriter Christopher Keane, in “How to Write a Selling Screenplay”, suggests writing out the following statement to help establish your character’s need – “This is a story about (so and so) who wants (such-and-such) and will do anything to get it!” Keane suggests writing this statement out and taping it to your computer or typewriter. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of this exercise. Why? Because this statement clearly defines who your character is and what it is he needs. Both of these aspects are the essence of your entire screenplay.
Ask yourself “What is the need of my character?” You have to establish the need of your character because it sets a goal for the entire storyline. Your entire screenplay will involve your character’s drive to accomplishing this need. Here is where you incorporate your story idea into the writing process. All of us, before we begin to write, have a story idea locked safely in our heads. We, too, as writers, have needs. Our need is to tell this story from start to finish. Because I have a journalism background, I love challenging myself to tell an entire story in two or three sentences. It’s a process of elimination that allows me to look at only the foundation of my story. Here’s an example:
A woman is given a million dollar bribe to kill her boss’s husband. The woman, who is sleeping with her boss’s husband, takes the bribe because she’s upset that he never left his wife like he promised. Ultimately, the woman gets entangled in a love triangle that leads to her own death.
Now that I have the foundation of my story down on paper, I can then define my character’s need. “This is a story about Corrina McFall who wants to marry the man, John Slain, who she is having an affair with and will do anything to get it!” It would be too simple if the million dollars were Corrina’s need. No, it’s more complex if she actually wants to marry the man she’s agreed to kill. Corrina will do anything to get John to marry her – anything! Corrina is at a very critical point in her life. She’s thirty-two, single, desperate, at a dead end job, and having an affair with her boss’s husband. Agreeing to accept her boss’s bribe is the moment where she goes beyond the point of no return.
Every screenplay must start at this moment in your character’s life. Again, every screenwriting class I’ve taken, and every screenwriting book I’ve read, has said this very same thing. I suggest analyzing your character’s life at this very moment. What is your character’s job at this moment? Do they like their job? Do they like their boss? Are they in love? Married or single? Are they rich or poor? Do they drink too much? Are they on any drugs? Did they just kill someone? Don’t hold back.
All of the answers you come up with during this analyzing process will feed as conflict to your character achieving her need. Conflict is everything to a story. Conflict allows us to incorporate the many different challenges, dramas, dilemmas, and dangers that our characters must face to reach their goal. The more challenging the conflicts, the more interesting your story is. If you’ve ever taken an acting class, you know that every situation must have conflict or else the scene will fail to capture your audience’s attention. This is true for both dramas and comedies.
Take the time to work out your character’s need and try writing down your entire story in two to three sentences. Once you establish these two elements, you can then analyze your character’s life at the point of where your screenplay is about to begin. Think of everything involving your own life to help analyze your character’s life – there are many different things you’ll have to take into consideration.
So just how important is character development? Let’s look at what a couple of veteran screenwriters say: Syd Field, in Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, states that, “Character is the essential foundation of your screenplay. It is the heart and soul and nervous system of your story. Before you put a word on paper, you must know your character.”
A strong character is the quintessential element to any screenplay. A screenplay won’t survive unless you, as the writer of the story, know the main character better than he knows himself. So how do you do this? Last time I suggested making a visual picture of your character by cutting images out of magazines. Cut and paste until you have the person you’ve pictured in your mind staring back at you on paper. A visual picture will help remind you whose story you’re telling. After I have a visual of my character in place, I then begin the process of writing out my character’s biography.
A character’s biography can be as short or as long as you want. The important part is feeling secure enough with your character and his past in order to get him through the most critical point in his life (i.e. – where your screenplay begins).
The first step in writing your character’s biography is developing your character’s name. Some author’s place a high emphasis on character naming because the name symbolizes who they are as a person. I begin the naming process by looking at my character’s picture and then asking myself questions like – “Where was this person born?” and “Who are his parents?” Is my character French, or Italian, or Asian? Was my character born on the East coast, the Midwest, or on the West coast? I definitely do not exhaust the naming process, but I do take these types of factors into consideration. This brainstorming process also works as an aid later when I actually begin writing. Bottom line, if you give your character a strange and exotic name, then you better have a damn good story behind it. I feel a great example of this is Gilbert Grape’s name in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” Gilbert’s name symbolizes his struggle in life. A grape has the potential to be either sour or sweet, a raisin or possibly wine. Throughout the movie, Gilbert struggles with becoming the hardened raisin (by ditching his family) or a sweet wine (by staying, helping, and defending his family).
Once you have your character’s name in place, you can begin writing. I always begin with my character’s day of birth. Where was he born? What time was he born? Was it an easy birth? Was he born later or earlier than expected? As there is no right or wrong way of going through the biography process, I then take the time to analyze my character’s parents. Were the parents expecting a child or was their pregnancy a surprise to them? Are the parents happy to be together? Are they married? Were both of them involved with the pregnancy?
I continue through my character’s childhood looking at factors such as family involvement – were the grandparents and other immediate relatives around them growing up or were the relatives estranged? Was it a happy childhood? What kind of grades did he make? Was he into sports? Does he have any strange traits or habits? Is he violent or passive? Did he go to prom? When was the first time he had sex? Has he ever had sex? Etcetera …
There is no limit to the amount of investigation you can put into writing out your character’s life. Make it as normal or as strange as you like. Remember, all of these varying factors are shaping how your character is going to react to the most critical point or moment in his or her life. This critical point in your character’s life is the key element to your screenplay.
Character is the most important part of any screenplay – don’t forget this. In the past two articles, we’ve taken the steps to get to know what your character looks like, what their name is, and what their history is. Remember, these are steps designed to help you while you’re writing your actual screenplay. It’s critical that you know your character better than anyone else. It’s you, as a writer, who has to take this character through an entire story filled with challenges, dramas, dilemmas and dangers. But the character development process cannot stop here. The next step in the development process is to establish the need of your character(s). Here’s where we finally get to work:
Screenwriter Christopher Keane, in “How to Write a Selling Screenplay”, suggests writing out the following statement to help establish your character’s need – “This is a story about (so and so) who wants (such-and-such) and will do anything to get it!” Keane suggests writing this statement out and taping it to your computer or typewriter. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of this exercise. Why? Because this statement clearly defines who your character is and what it is he needs. Both of these aspects are the essence of your entire screenplay.
Ask yourself “What is the need of my character?” You have to establish the need of your character because it sets a goal for the entire storyline. Your entire screenplay will involve your character’s drive to accomplishing this need. Here is where you incorporate your story idea into the writing process. All of us, before we begin to write, have a story idea locked safely in our heads. We, too, as writers, have needs. Our need is to tell this story from start to finish. Because I have a journalism background, I love challenging myself to tell an entire story in two or three sentences. It’s a process of elimination that allows me to look at only the foundation of my story. Here’s an example:
A woman is given a million dollar bribe to kill her boss’s husband. The woman, who is sleeping with her boss’s husband, takes the bribe because she’s upset that he never left his wife like he promised. Ultimately, the woman gets entangled in a love triangle that leads to her own death.
Now that I have the foundation of my story down on paper, I can then define my character’s need. “This is a story about Corrina McFall who wants to marry the man, John Slain, who she is having an affair with and will do anything to get it!” It would be too simple if the million dollars were Corrina’s need. No, it’s more complex if she actually wants to marry the man she’s agreed to kill. Corrina will do anything to get John to marry her – anything! Corrina is at a very critical point in her life. She’s thirty-two, single, desperate, at a dead end job, and having an affair with her boss’s husband. Agreeing to accept her boss’s bribe is the moment where she goes beyond the point of no return.
Every screenplay must start at this moment in your character’s life. Again, every screenwriting class I’ve taken, and every screenwriting book I’ve read, has said this very same thing. I suggest analyzing your character’s life at this very moment. What is your character’s job at this moment? Do they like their job? Do they like their boss? Are they in love? Married or single? Are they rich or poor? Do they drink too much? Are they on any drugs? Did they just kill someone? Don’t hold back.
All of the answers you come up with during this analyzing process will feed as conflict to your character achieving her need. Conflict is everything to a story. Conflict allows us to incorporate the many different challenges, dramas, dilemmas, and dangers that our characters must face to reach their goal. The more challenging the conflicts, the more interesting your story is. If you’ve ever taken an acting class, you know that every situation must have conflict or else the scene will fail to capture your audience’s attention. This is true for both dramas and comedies.
Take the time to work out your character’s need and try writing down your entire story in two to three sentences. Once you establish these two elements, you can then analyze your character’s life at the point of where your screenplay is about to begin. Think of everything involving your own life to help analyze your character’s life – there are many different things you’ll have to take into consideration.
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