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The most expensive screenwriting book I have ever seen and the Transformational Character Arc Part 2

The Secrets of Action Screenwriting by William C. MartellYou heard me… How about a screenwriting book that STARTS at $189.95? Don’t believe me? Go ahead and see for yourself over at !

Whew! I’m just glad I got my copy a while back when it was cheaper! I even like the way Bill took some , covered up the name he autographed the copy to, and wrote over the old. Seems to me that would make it worth even more, RIGHT? LOL.

My DOG-EARED copy of has served me very well over the last several years and I just thought I would mention this fact to those of you looking for good screenwriting book to have at your side for QUICK REFERENCE. Bill’s book is ALWAYS in my backpack! As well as several of his at any given time and yeah, I got ‘em all.

What’s in YOURS?

That reminds me… I have another review of a book coming up by the end of the month that is simply OUT-FUCKING-STANDING. I’m not spilling the beans about it just yet but I will tell you that it is an advanced techniques book and WILL DEFINITELY MAKE YOUR SCREENWRITING BETTER.

Stay tuned for that. Where were we? Ah yes… The Transformational Character Arc Part 2. Very good stuff. Let’s do it.

Let’s start out by making a list of the twenty-three (23) personality types… No, you don’t have to agree with any of this and I really don’t give a shit if you do or not so PLEASE don’t email me about semantics… I’m too fuckin’ busy. Sorry… I’ve been up almost 3 days STRAIGHT and I can’t work on my rewrite because I’m too fucking wired from all the coffee. I can’t sleep because I’m too fucking wired from all the coffee.

So what’s an Unknown Screenwriter to do? Post to his fucking blog I guess… LOL.

I still can’t believe so MANY people come here to read this stuff… Who’da thunkit?

Since the came out this month, traffic has been kinda crazy and it was already crazy before… By the way… The article also mentions , Dave over at , and Craig over at .

If you’re not reading them, I only got one question for you… Why not?

The 23 Personality Types

  1. The Adventurer
  2. The Boss
  3. The Conformist
  4. The Conventional
  5. The Creator
  6. The Dependent
  7. The Eccentric
  8. The Extrovert
  9. The Fall Guy (or Girl)
  10. The Fearful
  11. The Flamboyant
  12. The Hyper
  13. The Loner
  14. The Man’s Man
  15. The Manipulator
  16. The Passive-Aggressive
  17. The Perfectionist
  18. The Personable
  19. The Problem Solver
  20. The Show-Off
  21. The Resilient
  22. The Ultra-Feminine
  23. The Victim

I know I know… You thought there were only … Or is it ? LOL. Again, don’t email me about semantics… Whether you prescribe to the 9, 16, or to the above 23… The exercise serves a purpose when it comes to creating and writing your characters ON THE PAGE and it really doesn’t fucking matter whether you believe in it or not. I had quite a few academic TYPES (hey, that’s not on the list! WTF???) email me about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and tell me HOW FULL OF SHIT I AM.

I read and I read and I read these emails that KEEP FUCKING TRICKLING in and tell me Maslow is outdated. Guess what?

I DON’T GIVE A SHIT.

I apply it to screenwriting and characters ON THE PAGE and it works for ME. Are we CLEAR? LOL. So please let’s not get into another slurry of emails about the above list… Make YOUR OWN FUCKING LIST if that makes you happy! Go get a in the shit…

Whatever.

Okay… Sorry, I’m wired. Of course we’re talking adult character types here… How can knowing about these 23 different personality types help you with your characters?

Glad you asked. Oh you didn’t? Too bad… Vote with your mouse.

Knowing the personality type of your characters will go a long way toward knowing how they react to the obstacles you throw at them throughout the story. That doesn’t mean it’s time to make a cliched character and then like a puppeteer, make him do what we all expect him to do.

Uh… No.

Knowing this information simply helps make your characters more believable to your audience. Knowing what traits these personality types possess will certainly help you figure out how they will react, develop, grow, and change by the end of your story.

Have you ever seen a character in a movie do something SO OUT OF CHARACTER that you’re just pissed off for the rest of the film? Sure you have. We all have. Don’t get me wrong… It’s perfectly OKAY (hear me, ?) to have your characters do something out of the ordinary… That’s what good films are all about but you have to balance that line carefully because it is EXACTLY that fucking line that you can lose your audience.

Many if not all of the above personality types share lots of traits so it’s really not that difficult to get it right and it’s really not that difficult to GET IT WRONG. LOL. You just have to be careful… Many times I have come to a point in my screenplay where I just have to make my character do SOMETHING so different and out of character that I end up taking a step back and CONSIDER whether or not I really knew his or her personality type from the get-go.

That’s right… It can change.

As your characters come alive to you… As they react, develop, grow, and change right on the page in front of you, you SOMETIMES have to wonder if you got it right UP FRONT. It’s okay if you didn’t because let’s face it… Do we really know people? Do we know what THEY want us to know or do we really know them?

As your character(s) develop within YOU, you might very well find out that they are NOT who you thought they were — so knowing what personality type they are can be a big help even if that personality type changes at some point in your story.

Are we clear? Cool… Or as my Actor niece always types… KEWEL.

So yeah… YOU GUESSED IT. Now we must DELVE into these personality types and all the traits they share with each other… Don’t worry… I don’t have the STRENGTH to post any of that information right now… For now, just absorb the fact that we’re trying to make realistic or as I prefer to say, HYPER-REALISTIC CHARACTERS in our stories…

Before I make yet ANOTHER pot of coffee, yes I am working on SCREENWRITING RULES and yes, it will be available for download right here and then you can make it available for download at your site… If you have no way of uploading a file to your blog or site — NO PROBLEM… Just link to the file once it’s sitting on my server and people will still think they’re downloading it from your site. Together we can probably get THOUSANDS of these files circulating all over the net and since there will be hyperlinks inside the document leading to all the contributor’s sites, this means that there’s a lot of future traffic that’s gonna happen. It’s not too late to contribute!

Trust me. I know what I’m doing.

Unk

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Friday: 16 March 2007|1944|Under Books, Characters

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14 Responses to “The most expensive screenwriting book I have ever seen and the Transformational Character Arc Part 2”

  1. Man Bytes Hollywood » I’m in What? on Friday: 16 March 2007|2206

    [...] sink the article. I don’t know what the story says, but I hope I sound interesting. I read on Unk’s site that I’m in good company, [...]

  2. Joshua James on Saturday: 17 March 2007|0038

    Unk is cool. Fonzi don’t got nothing on our Unk. Why?

    Exhibit A: “I DON’T GIVE A SHIT.”

    But he obviously does, or he would share with us all this wisdom . .

    This is why I love you. But strictly in a Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan kind of spiritual love, you know. Not prison love, or Saved By the Bell Love, but wholesome Mister Miyagi / Daniel-San love.

    For the record, though, I certainly do agree that someone can have a character in their do something so outrageously ridiculous that it alienates the audience from the story . . . my pet peeve is the idea that every movies lead character has to have a saved-by-Jesus transformation by the end . . .

    But I take your points . . . and I am ready for when the screenwriting revolution begins to rock and roll!

    But do I really gotta wait until the end of the Goddamn month to find out about this outstanding book?!!

    (at that, Unk chuckles and posts a comment right after this . . . uh, Josh, see Exhibit A - LOL!)

  3. Moviequill on Saturday: 17 March 2007|0832

    I love Bill’s book, just recently re-read it myself before diving into my action flic. My copy is autographed to Lisa from Bill… my wife’s name was on the PayPal account heh

  4. Poke on Saturday: 17 March 2007|1404

    Would you advise having a character moving from one personality type to another by the end of the script — thus creating the arc?

    Poke

  5. Unk on Saturday: 17 March 2007|1500

    Josh,

    Don’t you mean, THE FONZ?

    MovieQuill,

    Mine says THAT I HAVE THE WRITE STUFF. You CANNOT go wrong reading ALL Bill’s material.

    Poke,

    That’s definitely ONE way… Most likely however, it would be that hidden personality that’s been laying dormant in your character until JUST THE RIGHT STORY ELEMENTS bring out the REAL PERSONALITY.

    Okay… It’s Saturday and it’s nice out so it’s time for quick bike ride to cool off.

    Happy Saturday!

    Unk

  6. taZ on Saturday: 17 March 2007|1515

    Doing a book-review myself… Weird coincidence or pure luck? Find out next.

    Great post and I begin to think we think in the same thinking way, almost.

    Happy Saturday!

    (I sent you two emails but got two replies there was an error. Let me know if you got them, if you find some time. But hopefully you get some sleep before. :))

  7. Joshua James on Saturday: 17 March 2007|1547

    THE FONZ, according to the live action doll my brother and I had growing up (he had moveable thumbs) . . . but it’s been awhile, so I could be mistaken . . .

    About my comment, I wrote that bad boy at about four in the morning and maybe mental from my acute insomnia, and you can tell from the missing words . . .

    aak!

    But THE BLOOD OF HEROES came on HBO at five-thirty and woke me up, that movie fuckin’ rocks.

  8. MaryAn on Sunday: 18 March 2007|1913

    Unk, my book says that I, too, have the “write” stuff. Peas in a pod, love. Bill says so.

  9. Moviequill on Monday: 19 March 2007|0832

    Unk, my email contact for you is bouncing back? Did you change it or is it just a glitch in the wonderful web? I wanted to ask if you had a certain script… Quest For Fire… I want to have a look at action writing with little to no dialogue

  10. Joshua James on Monday: 19 March 2007|1058

    My email’s been bounced too, just a few days ago . . .

  11. Unk on Monday: 19 March 2007|1448

    Yow! Sorry about the emails… I checked my email today and had literally HUNDREDS of bogus CONTACT FORM emails but no emails from anyone else.

    I went into my server — deleted the email address and password — then recreated it and sent a few test emails — everything seems to be good to go.

    The only thing I like to CHANGE are my characters… LOL.

    MaryAn,

    If Bill says so, it MUST BE TRUE.

    Unk

  12. TCinLA on Friday: 23 March 2007|2320

    I don’t want to sound like I dislike your work, because I do, but after going through this and the first part, I have to say you are over-thinking things. If a writer puts this much effort into background like this, and keeps all this somewhere in the little grey cells of the RAM where they can be accessed, they’re never going to get a page written!

    Overthinking a project is a serious risk for writers, because we live in our heads most of the time anyway, and doing all this is a great way to completely disguise the biggest problem writers face: procrastination.

    Not to sound like a fuddy-duddy, but everything you have here is fine for someone who has never met a human being before in their life and needs a roadmap to people. We all know these types - we’ve grown up dealing with them!

    Trust me, from having written ten movies that got made, here’s what you need to know:

    Act one: get your character up a tree.
    Act Two: throw rocks at him.
    Act Three: bring him out of the tree.

    Really, just sit down and put an hour a day into DOING IT.

    Not that I don’t like your stuff, you’re very provocative, but I bet you could have written three scripts over this.

  13. Unk on Saturday: 24 March 2007|0728

    TCinLA,

    Maybe you missed what I said about all this simply being INFORMATION. I will be the very first one to say NOT to memorize this stuff… Not to print it out and have it sitting right next to you while you write.

    I will say however, that learning a little about personality types is something that a lot of us NEVER do. I like knowing the general character traits of certain personality types… It definitely helps ME… If it helps one other person to help create a believable character then it’s worth it to ME.

    No need for you to preface your statement if you don’t see the usefulness of this stuff… LOL. But unfortunately, you’re wrong… I couldn’t have written three scripts over this.

    Not even one and I don’t spend as much time on this as you might think.

    My point is to simply jog a prospective screenwriter’s thinking as they THINK about their characters. Knowing what a personality type is capable of might just be the element to make a character complete.

    Or not. Maybe it’s just a nice starting place.

    And no offense… If it was as simple as:

    Act one: get your character up a tree.
    Act Two: throw rocks at him.
    Act Three: bring him out of the tree.

    Then nobody would ever come here and everyone would be pumping out blockbusters.

    But they ain’t.

    I appreciate the comment… And I don’t think you’re a fuddy-duddy at all.

    The most IMPORTANT thing a prospective screenwriter can do is sit down and put an hour a day into doing it.

    That, we agree on.

    Unk

  14. Unk on Saturday: 24 March 2007|0731

    I also forgot to add that the more screenplays you write and the more characters you develop, the less you’ll ever have to remember about ANY of this stuff.

    Why?

    Because by then, it’s already a part of you.

    Unk

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