Paint your characters on the page…
Posted on December 30, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized
Not really that hard to do. You’re writing a spec script, not a novel but remember, your spec has got to have LASTING POWER. One of the very best ways to do that is with your characters. I’m gonna spend quite a bit of time on characters because I think a screenplay is your characters.
I’m going to have to go against quite a few of the gurus and books that shall remain nameless when it comes to writing a spec and attempting to sell it. You will of course have to enter the market once your spec is completed but do YOU really want to become a salesman?
Sure, a lot of you possess this knack for selling and trust me, that’s icing on the cake. May God bless you. I also feel that I’m pretty good in a room too but even having said that, your spec is your BUSINESS CARD. Your spec makes the REAL FIRST IMPRESSION.
So it ONLY MAKES SENSE to pay special attention to those areas of your script that the reader and everyone else that follows are going to pay special attention to as well.
This is why it’s so important to KNOW your characters. The more you know about them, the easier it’s going to be to paint them on the page.
Descriptions…
This is where I start to part company with a lot of books and gurus. They will straight out fucking tell you NOT to labor too long on your character descriptions because hell, all that’s going to change anyway.
BULLSHIT.
If you paint your character on the page, you’re giving us JUST A LITTLE MORE insight to that character that we might not be able to pick up from their actions and dialogue. Of course you want the action and dialogue to help paint the picture but give me a fucking visual FIRST so I’ve got something to work with!
Let’s go back to Red Right Hand’s ONE PAGE blog event back in September. This is very interesting because I haven’t seen this particular ONE PAGE since September and yet, I still remember it. It came from Pooks over at Planet Pooks:
Here’s the description:
BOONE COULTER – a tortured man tired of living but too skilled a fighter to die – jerks up from his bedroll, shaking, sweating.
Notice how our first meeting of BOONE is ACTION? Does this paint a picture for you? Of course it does. Notice how short the description is? Nothing long-winded about it yet we have enough to get behind this character and cheer him on.
Here’s some more of my favorites…
From Cameron Crowe’s ELIZABETHTOWN:
DREW BAYLOR is 27. He sits rigidly upright, a man facing his destiny, even though he’s seated backwards. He’s the only passenger in this company helicopter whistling over the tops of tall Oregon trees. In the distance, the magnificent Mount Hood. Drew looks at the large open side-window to the helicopter. It beckons, a tempting way out.
Notice how the above description also gives us a clue that he’s responsible for something that’s happened and he wants to run away?
More from ELIZABETHTOWN:
Drew arrives at the desk of ELLEN KISHMORE, 24. She’s a high level assistant with great style, poise, memorable green eyes and a few too many magazine photos of Jude Law on her cubicle wall. She greets Drew with a not-quite-disguised look of horrified concern. Frankly, she’s shocked he’s still on two feet.
And of course, Claire:
The Airport. She walks the thoroughfare. It’s mostly empty, just a crying baby and a group of stray late-night passengers. She dutifully shows an armed guard her Airline security badge. There is a little romance left in what was once a glamour profession. She took the job for freedom and travel. Lately she feels like a cop. She is CLAIRE COLBURN, built for travel, tired by nature, and she pauses to adjust her shoe.
A great minor character description:
Drew faces the gimlet-eyed reporter, HERBIE GONSALVES, 46, a poker-faced professional.
How about the Dude in THE BIG LEBOWSKI:
It is late. The supermarket all but deserted. We are tracking in on a fortyish man in Bermuda shorts and sunglasses at the dairy case. He is the Dude. His rumpled look and his relaxed manner suggest a man in whom casualness runs deep.
You gotta love The Dude… LOL.
Todd Bowden from APT PUPIL:
A boy is seated near the back of a moving bus. This is TODD BOWDEN, 15, as All-American as they come.
Simple but says it all…
BULL DURHAM:
ANNIE SAVOY, mid 30’s, touches up her face. Very pretty, knowing, outwardly confident. Words flow from her Southern lips with ease, but her view of the world crosses Southern, National and International borders. She’s cosmic.
AS MAX PATKIN CONTINUES HIS ROUTINE, PLAYERS WARM UP, AND THE MANAGER, JOE RIGGINS, 45, known merely as SKIP, short for “Skipper”, a chaw of tobacco in his cheek, stands with his pitching coach, LARRY HOCKETT late 30’s, an ex-big leaguer whose body has seen too many cocktail lounges.
LARRY ROLLS SOME RED MAN CHEWING TOBACCO into a slab of pink bubble gum, carefully folding the corners, tucking it neatly together. Larry examines it as they talk-And shoves the giant chaw into his mouth.
And of course Crash:
THE DOOR OPENS — A PLAYER ENTERS, in street clothes, carrying his suitcases. CRASH DAVIS, 30, older than the other players. And different. More than just opinions, he actually has a point of view. A career minor leaguer, hanging on wherever he can get a job. Unlike Ebby–Crash knows a lot about the world without baseball. Also unlike Ebby–he loves baseball desperately.
From FIGHT CLUB:
TYLER has the barrel of a HANDGUN lodged in JACK’S MOUTH. They struggle intensely.
They are both around 30; Tyler is blond, handsome, eyes burning with frightening intensity; and JACK, brunette, is appealing in a dry sort of way. They are both sweating and disheveled; Jack seems to be losing his will to fight.
MARLA SINGER enters. She has short matte black hair and big, dark eyes like a character from Japanese animation.
From THE LOST BOYS:
GREG, the head Surf Nazi, sits in one of the carousel’s benches with his arm around his girl, SHELLY. He thinks he’s King of the Boardwalk.. And doesn’t like it one bit when Shelly casts an appreciative glance toward David.
LUCY ANDERSON drives — late thirties, sexy, warm, comfortable with herself — a bit of a free spirit. SAM, 11, a victim of too many afternoons in shopping malls watching Bratpack movies, sits next to her in his trendy duds, suffering the foreign coastline with his large Malamute dog NANOOK.
GRANDPA, a rugged individualist wearing old denims, Indian moccasins, long grey braid down his back, is a lifeless form on the front porch.
REAR WINDOW:
He is L.B. JEFFRIES. A tall, lean, energetic thirtyfive, his face long and serious-looking at rest, is in other circumstances capable of humor, passion, naïve wonder and the kind of intensity that bespeaks inner convictions of moral strength and basic honesty.
THE SEARCHERS:
The CAMERA FRAMES and MOVES with the lone horseman. He is ETHAN EDWARDS, a man as hard as the country he is crossing.
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION:
ANDY DUFRESNE, mid-20’s, wire rim glasses, three-piece suit. Under normal circumstances a respectable, solid citizen; hardly dangerous, perhaps even meek. But these circumstances are far from normal. He is disheveled, unshaven, and very drunk. A cigarette smolders in his mouth. His eyes, flinty and hard, are riveted to the bungalow up the path.
Are we getting the picture here?
Your character’s description doesn’t just have to introduce your character… In fact, that’s almost always the boring way to go. Make that character description pull double or triple duty by giving us clues to what the character looks like, his or her personality, and their current state of mind as well as the current situation they are involved in.
Do this in no more than four action sentences and do it right and your characters are going to immediately pull us into your story. Remember, we the readers and hopefully, your eventual audience know people like your characters and whether we or YOU like it or not, we will immediately compare these characters to ourselves or people we know. The MORE you give us, the faster we can get on board and root for your characters.
Unk
EDIT: It just occurred to me that if you are so inclined, why not share some of YOUR favorite character descriptions in the comments section… Either your own or from your favorite screenplays…
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15 Responses to “Paint your characters on the page…”
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How’s this?
DR. BRYANT CLARK, (50), silver haired, just a good-ol’ boy that’d steal your pie then paint your fence, holds court with a bunch of stuffed shirts, THE INVESTORS.
Poke
Poke,
Works for me… You’ve painted the picture of an anti-Doctor type instead of the usual cliché… Obviously doing some kind of research because you also mention THE INVESTORS but WATCH HIM.
I like.
Unk
I’m staggered and honored.
Also, you left the word “tired” out of my bit.
Pooks,
Damn! All fixed now. LOL. By the way, I forgot to include your other outstanding description:
The man, SHERIFF CLAYTON DOUGHERTY, bolts upright. He’s a large, handsome man beginning to deteriorate from liquor and hard living.
I loved that one too! Very western. Very visual. Hope you don’t mind me using them as examples to show that we mere mortals (you are mortal, correct?) can do it as well as the superstars…
Unk
Mind?!?
Pshaw!
In the next cubicle LIAM (45), who looks the way Woody Allen would if his neurosis had hooked into compulsive eating — balding, flabby rather than fat, highly strung — he wipes the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his sweat shirt.
I love the minor character descriptions in Pileggi’s Good Fellas:
Hood #1: We see a large diamond pinky ring on a sausage thick finger.
Hood #2: We see a broken-nosed hood’s tie hanging loosely across his monogrammed shirt like a silk bandolier.
From Deja Vu - Her eyes are lifeless, skin pallid, lips bluer than ice. Under the circumstances she can’t possibly be beautiful — but she once was. The kind of beauty that grows on you.
BONNIE - forty-ish, waitress, hasn’t seen a whole lot of the world, but what she has seen, she’s seen too much of.
Happy New Year, Unk!
oh, wow, great collection. I’m going to cut and paste this right into my own growing list of character intros.
Here’s Diane Keaton’s character intro in Something’s Gotta Give:
ERICA is in her mid-fifties and is a poster girl for growing old. It’s actually hard to imagine 55 looking any better. And not because she looks 35, but because she makes 55 look graceful and right. Erica is the “girl most likely” who went beyond expectations but didn’t realize until recently that being sure of herself was a handicap. She doesn’t try to be intimidating, she just is.
I agree with this post wholeheartedly. I want to “see” characters on the page. We can all benefit by making our character introductions memorable.
One of my own favorite character intros includes “…a girl who could have been homecoming queen if she didn’t hang out with the pot-heads and deviants.”
I’m so anal about the visual thing, plus I can’t seem to forget that I don’t know the actors who will be playing the roles. So I normally give the age and try to illuminate the character through dialogue.
But the actor does need something on which to hang a hat, so I try to remember to create visual clues to the personality: a way of dressing, a scar, or even how they decorate where they live.
In my current one, I have a little girl who never brushes her hair, a woman who dresses in sharp power suits, a teenager with lime-green hair, and a man with a keloid scar.
I think the best way is to combine the visual with the non-visual. A character has broken veins across his face from years of seeking solace at the bottom of a bottle. A woman wears too much make-up because she can’t stand herself. It gives you something to look at and something to think about.
I struggle w/ this part… the words, language, description, style. It’s the weakest part of my writing. i always stress over making the descriptions of the char’s lively & interesting.
I don’t consider myself a great wordsmith. I’m just OK. I get my point across.
Great post, thanks!
Unk, you’re my screenwriting sugar daddy. Thanks for the great post and the free software links. I’ve been using the hell out of that QuickPlot program for the last few months and it transformed my writing speeds. You rock.
And, of course, one of my favorites:
JAKE LAMOTTA, wearing a tux, is shadow-boxing.
We are unsure of where he is — he moves in and out of the shadows. At 42, he’s overweight and out of shape, but the balls of his feet still pop up and down like they were on canvas and his tiny fists still jerk forward with short bursts of light. He is rehearsing a nightclub monologue.
Just found this site a few weeks ago. The graphic a few posts back, really turned me off…
…but this brought me back.
Excellent. There’s too many screenwriting books out there on what not to do and the “only” way things work. It’s great to see a post like this where solid information is not only given out, it is sited with examples. Many, many examples.
Time to rummage around through the archives for similar gold nuggets.