…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.

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.

I don’t consider myself a great wordsmith. I’m just OK. I get my point across.

Great post, thanks!

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.

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.”

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.

Happy New Year, Unk!

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.