Depth-charging your characters…
Been an interesting week… Only one comment (and not real one at that) but a lot of email… Oops. Just got another one. LOL.
I’ve answered questions ranging from what color are my eyes (blue)… All the way to will you shop my spec screenplay around?
Nope… Sorry.
I will admit… Occasionally, I get an email where you can just tell that the person who sent it really has their shit together… I like emails like that and when people like that occasionally catch me in a good mood, you never know what can happen…
Screenwriting Scoop! still going strong… Again, I appreciate the interest…
Anyway back to characters…
This is going to be a free-for-all post… i.e., I’ll just throw the rest of the spaghetti up against the wall and hope some of it sticks. I do have a list of questions that I use to create character bios that I will go ahead and slam up here as the next post…
I want to end this discussion on Character by pointing out that most spec screenplays I read suffer from boring characters. They don’t move forward. They’re too passive. They simply react all the time without ever making a decision. They avoid conflict or the screenwriter avoids throwing conflict at them.
This is interesting because from my own observation of people in general, I would have to say that the average person goes out of their way to avoid conflict… And, when I think about it, the average spec screenwriter I meet also goes out of their way to avoid conflict and not surprisingly, it ends up showing in their screenplays more often than not… Again – that’s just MY EXPERIENCE. LOL.
Conversely, those screenwriters that look right into your eye and tell you everything they can about their story seem to have a little better handle on creating and increasing conflict against their characters…
Of course this is no scientific experiment on my part… LOL. Just an observation but wow… Think about it… Those screenwriters that I’ve met that would never walk away from a fight, always seem to have the best characters.
A correlation? You never know.
Just remember that your characters… At least your main character i.e., your Protagonist (not necessarily a hero), always needs to be moving forward… Forward movement is the result of dialogue, decision making, overcoming conflict, and even if you’ve written a passive character, let him or her be passive in such a way that it’s OBVIOUS to us that he or she goes way out of their way to do so…
Remember those old alphabet magnets we used to spell words on the fridge with? Okay, so I didn’t really spell a lot of words with the ones in our house… I always took the little cylindrical magnets out and played with them… My favorite part of playing with those magnets was turning them AGAINST each other.
Remember how you could turn two of them a certain way and the magnetic force would repel them away from each other? I remember pushing them together and holding them for an hour sometimes WONDERING if they would just fucking give up and stop pushing away…
Nope.
Well that’s kind of how your characters should be… Maybe not all at once but occasionally (when needed), they should reveal shades of this kind of behavior.
I’m not merely saying that your Protagonist should automatically repel from everyone but what I am saying is to simply keep that visual image in mind while you’re writing. What I liked best about playing with those old magnets was how you could set up several of them in a line just right, then take YOUR main character magnet and push it right down the center toward the other magnets and the main character magnet would push them right out of the way…
In other words, your main character carves their own path out of the life you give them… Sure, the life you give them is one you made up… Cool. But get to know your character so well that as you’re writing them on the page, they do occasionally surprise you… I have a few writer friends that I’ve tried to discuss this with and there’s at least two of them that just don’t get it… They absolutely REFUSE to give their characters any freedom to surprise them. Now of course, even the surprises come from your own conscience or subconscience… Of course it all comes from the writer but what I’m saying is that some writers refuse to go that deep and while I would never propose to say that this is wrong, what I can say is that from my experience, the best writing I’ve read and done always seems to come from those depths… It’s that extra 15% to 25% of depth that comes from really TRULY knowing your characters that allows them to make the kinds of decisions WE would never make in real life but are absolutely consistent with the character in question.
DEPTH-CHARGING
It’s when you hit these depths that your characters usually STOP becoming one dimensional and start exposing those layers of depth that only multi-dimensional characters possess… I’m not a television writer by ANY stretch of the imagination and one of the reasons I’m NOT is because I grew up watching those one dimensional type characters…
Remember Archie Bunker? If you watched the show for any length of time, you certainly could predict almost exactly what Archie would do with any given situation, right? Hell, that was even true of Meathead… LOL. He was simply the exact opposite of Archie and no, I’m not saying anything bad about that writing… It was ground-breaking at the time but what I am saying is that we might not always want to write characters like this for spec feature screenplays. For those of you NOT familiar with ALL IN THE FAMILY, I’d be willing to bet there are still situation comedies that write their characters this way… So take your pick.
Those kinds of characters are exactly that… CHARACTERS. They are a TYPE of CHARACTER and in a movie, usually fucking boring as hell and that’s okay for a certain part of the movie to show us where that character is starting from but they gotta keep going and showing us even MORE so that we can get on board with them for the rest of the film.
I have an actor friend… You might have heard of him… Tom Noonan. If not, he’s been in a hell of a lot of movies and is one hell of an actor… Check his resume out on IMDB. Anyway, one of the things I’ve learned from Tom is in how he approaches playing a character. Often, he doesn’t really want to know anything about the character and would rather go about playing the character exactly the opposite from the way he’s written on the page. He calls it Reversal and it’s absolutely amazing to watch. He might take a scene that the writer wrote for the character to be played out quietly and turn right around and play it exactly the opposite to see what develops.
From that experience, I very often approach writing my characters in much the same way… What are the OBVIOUS PREDICTABLE DECISIONS this character would make right now? Figure those out and write exactly the opposite! It doesn’t always work but more often than not, I end up with some amazing decisions that I can use to brainstorm other decisions that help peel back the layers of dimensionality. And yeah, those decisions immediately make their way into my Character Decision List in the post below.
This goes back to previous posts about knowing your characters at least as well as you know your family, friends, and assholes… I mean, associates… Notice I said, AT LEAST.
With DEPTH-CHARGING, you gotta go DEEPER. You gotta know your characters BETTER than you know your family, friends, and associates.
Better?
You betchya.
Deeper means putting them in situations and seeing how they handle those situations… Situations that may NEVER EVER make it into your screenplay in an obvious way but these depth-charging details do serve to add dimensionality to your characters.
This is in fact, another way to use the Character Decision List in the previous post… Once your list has grown large enough, you can use it to create additional backstory on your characters… Maybe your Protagonist played around with hookers for six months while he was going through a divorce… Maybe she WAS a hooker for six months… Maybe your Protagonist went to medical school for a year and dropped out. Maybe law school. Who knows? Just throw it at them and write a one to five page short story about it and see what you come up with…
What’s so funny about this advice is that it does in fact work but I meet a lot of “would-be†screenwriters that simply REBEL against such exercises yet they wonder why people have problems with their screenplays…
What IF the exercise works?
Don’t tell me you tried it once or twice and it didn’t work for you… Don’t tell me that you sit around and THINK about your characters all day and all night and you know them better than you know your family, friends, and associates. Unless you are taking enough time to kick back and THINK YOUR CHARACTERS into backstory situations and work out how they maneuver that backstory situation and absolutely commit it to memory, you aren’t depth-charging your characters.
If I were to sit down with you and ask you to tell me about your Protagonist but NOT tell me anything about his or her role in your screenplay, WHAT WOULD YOU TELL ME? Could you keep me captivated for an hour? Two?
If not, WHY NOT?
Unk
Tags: characters screenwriting depth-charging multi-dimensional characters backstory The Unknown Screenwriter
How do your characters handle conflict?
But before I go back to characters… LOL.
A big thanks to those of you posting links to articles at Screenwriting Scoop!
Almost 4,000 unique visitors so far and the tracker has some pretty impressive internet connections taking a look but I want to thank everyone for checking it out… I hope it doesn’t take ANYTHING away from your writing. By the way, if you can think of a category we might need, just let me know.
And to answer the 20 plus emails to those of you who keep wondering what my ulterior motive is for tossing up the site…
There isn’t any.
Geez. I don’t need money. I’m not selling anything. So suspicious! But that’s okay… I still thank you for the thought… LOL.
Kay. I’ve been up all night on this rewrite and I really don’t have time for a huge post but while I’ve been working, I keep wondering about the things my characters keep doing… Some surprise me… Some don’t. The ones that don’t are because these are the things I want my characters to do.
By the way… Let me get a little off track… Great stuff in the Scribosphere lately and a lot being blogged about on characters! Love seeing that!
Real quick before I head back to rewrite Hell…
I have a word processing document that I add to every so often when one of my characters handles conflict in a new way than any of my characters have handled it before…
Some of you might think it’s kinda stupid… If so, please feel free to stop reading. LOL.
On the other hand, I thought it might actually be of some help to those of you that just can’t get your characters out of BORING MODE.
The following list is by no means exhaustive… Please feel free to add your own to the comments section… I think we can all benefit from different perspectives.
One of the things that I’ve done with MY list is to develop it into OUTLINE style. This makes it real easy for me to add new bullets under specific headings or categories.
What I like about having a list at hand is that every once in a while, you get stuck, right? Okay, maybe not. I sure as hell do — and when I do, I like breaking out my list because it helps me brainstorm even more ideas…
So… Without further delay… Here’s the Character Decision List:
VIOLENCE
REVENGE
PUNISHMENT
ARGUING
RUNNING AWAY
SUICIDE
MURDER
NOTHING
AFFAIR
QUIT JOB
PROFESSIONAL HELP
RELIGION
GROUPS
DEPRESSION
DENIAL
PROBLEM SOLVING
MARRIAGE
DIVORCE
ALCOHOL
DRUGS
TRAVEL
SPY
COLLEGE
WRITE
ARSON
EMBEZZLEMENT
MOVE
NEW JOB
MATERIAL THINGS
EXERCISE
DISAPPEAR
ENTERTAINMENT
HOBBY
Okay, that should give you an idea… Notice the above categories or headings are in no particular order… That’s because there are NO RULES.
Now you can add to this list very easily simply by writing your screenplay, watching a movie, reading the paper, reading a book, talking to people, WHATEVER. Every time you see a character in a movie, a story, a television show, a newspaper article, etc. do SOMETHING that’s not already on your list, go ahead and jot it down.
Just keep adding to the list… FOREVER.
The next part of the list gets a little trickier because again, there are NO RULES. You do it the way it will work BEST for YOU. For example, under PROFESSIONAL HELP, my list looks something like this…
PROFESSIONAL HELP
- Character goes to a psychiatrist
- Character goes to a counselor
- Character goes to a hit man
- Character goes to a prostitute
- Character goes to a priest
See how it works?
Under REVENGE, a list could looking something like this:
REVENGE
- Character kills person that wronged him
- Character spreads false rumors about person that wronged him
- Character sets person’s (who wronged him) car on fire
- Character ruins (big plan) person who wronged him
- Character has affair with person’s (who wronged him) wife
Once you’ve developed your own list into several pages, just pull it out any time you’re having a problem with what a particular character should do next… You obviously do not want to just make your character go to a psychiatrist… LOL. The point of the list is this…
“If” your character were to go to a psychiatrist, what would he talk about? What would it cost? How long would he stay? Would he sit across from the shrink or lie down on a couch? Would they start talking about sex? Would they talk about your character’s mother? Father? Maybe your character doesn’t go through the usual cliché garbage we always see when a character goes to the psychiatrist… Maybe your character gets into a fight with the psychiatrist… Maybe they argue. Maybe he KILLS the psychiatrist… LOL. Get the idea? The list is to simply SPARK more ideas on how your particular character would handle the ensuing conflict he or she is going through AT THE MOMENT.
Another great way to use the list is to COMBINE elements… This works really well when your list has really grown like mine… Take two, three, or more headings and or elements below the headings and combine them in a way that your character handles the current conflict you’re throwing at him or her. Again, THERE ARE NO RULES. It’s just a tool to help keep your characters from being BORING.
Either pull your list out when you’re having trouble or keep it right next to you when you’re writing… I tend to have the Open Office document open as I write so I can click back to it any time I want. When I read, watch movies, etc., I always have a digital recorder with me and I record any new ways of dealing with conflict that I see or read about. Yeah, it’s OKAY TO STEAL!
See? Pretty simple stuff. My list goes on for PAGES. My best advice is to build YOUR VERY OWN LIST. That way, using your own words, getting the stuff on your own from different resources will mean a whole lot more to you than simply copying what I’ve come up with… Besides, I have some stuff on my list that I’m not ready to share with anyone… LOL.
If you can think of more headings or categories, share them in the comments section if you are so inclined.
Or not.
Unk
Tags: story characters conflict screenwriting The Unknown Screenwriter
Screenwriting Scoop!
Okay, so I thought everybody read screenwriting articles… Everything from screenwriter interviews to newbies breakin’ into the business.
I mean… I READ A LOT OF ARTICLES!
I don’t even post half the articles I read on the blog because it takes so long… So I’m sitting here with all these online articles about screenwriting, screenwriters, gurus, books, etc. and I’m wondering how I can make more of these available to you all.
Why would I want to do that?
Well it just happens to be one of the things I get the most email about… Some visitors ask me where I find ‘em or how I find ‘em.
So I’m takin’ a break from the rewrite… Gotta STOP doing that because every time I do, I come up with some other little project that ends up taking me several hours… LOL.
Anyway, here’s my gift to you:
It’s kind of a Digg.com clone but strictly for the world of screenwriting. I threw in a couple of other slightly related categories but the GIST is definitely screenwriting.
Here’s how it works…
You can simply go to the site, click on a headline that grabs you and that takes you to the actual article.
That’s it!
Of course for you hardcore procrastinators like me, you can sign up, become a member, find some interesting articles, and post the links to them for the rest of us to read.
Or not.
It’s just a little pet project of mine and you are all welcome and invited to participate if you are so inclined.
Bugs…
I’m having a little problem with users uploading their own avatars… It seems that my server needs something that it doesn’t have but I am working on it…
I will eventually, flesh it out and make it look a little prettier but GEEZ… I gotta finish this rewrite.
Check it out — have fun with it!
Unk