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You don’t know your characters well enough…

I get a LOT of email and I do try to answer it all… A question that keeps popping up is Writer’s Block and how in the HELL do you deal with it?

Well I can tell you how I deal with it and this is a fucking hard lesson for most people trying to become a screenwriter because it involves WORK.

So you’re going along and you don’t know what your character does next… To me, that doesn’t sound like Writer’s Block… That sounds like a structural problem. So before I get started on Writer’s Block and how I deal with it, let me once again recommend that you decide on some kind of STRUCTURE for your screenplay before you sit down to write it.

Once you have your structure ironed out, THEN if you get writer’s block, you need to kick the shit out of your character(s).

That’s right… Kick the shit out them. Beat ‘em up. Put them through a divorce. Make them cheat on their spouse. Make them rob a liquor store on the way home from work.

In other words… KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS.

You’d be surprised at how many screenwriters trying to write and sell a SPEC just don’t know their characters well enough.

I think I’ve said this before but let me STRESS this again…

You absolutely must know your characters as well as you know ANYONE. By anyone, I’m talking about your bestest of friends… Brothers. Sisters. Moms. Dads. Girlfriends. Boyfriends.

If I were to ask YOU what your Dad would do or say if you came home one night and told him you’ve been selling sex on the street… Could you tell me? Could you predict it? Would you be correct?

Well guess what? It doesn’t matter if you’re correct. The prediction is all that you need. In other words, if you at least THINK you know what your Dad will do or say, cool. That’s a start.

Again, let’s say you have your structure totally laid out. Now you’re writing like the crazy and BAM! You hit the wall and don’t know what to write next.

Go back to your characters…

Now here’s where the hard work comes in. Open up that word processor or get out that old typewriter and start writing about your character. By now, your biography on your characters should be complete… I’m not talking about that stuff…

I’m talking about making something up. You’re a writer are you not? Good. Make something up about your character that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with your current screenplay.

Let’s call your Protagonist, Joe. Joe just isn’t doing what you want him to do right now. Fuck Joe. Create a new file in your word processor and kick Joe’s ass. Hmmm. Let’s say Joe decides to follow somebody home from a grocery store one night. He follows them all the way to their house… Let’s say he even pulls into the driveway…

Write about it… Write it from Joe’s POV. Explain how Joe made that decision to follow the nice looking lady driving the Jag all the way to her house. Explain how Joe felt as he followed her. Did he watch her peering through her rearview mirror? Did she try to get away from him? Did she have a cellphone and call the police? Maybe the police were at her house waiting for him…

Write it out. Make it at least a couple of pages but the important thing is to write it through to completion. Give it a beginning, middle and END.

Now here’s the hard part…

This stuff DOES NOT GO INTO YOUR SCREENPLAY!

Sure it’s cool but it sole purpose is to simply expose more of your character to you. The more you do this with your characters, the easier it will be when you’re writing them in a scene.

Everybody has a skeleton in the closet, right?

So should your characters… Write a little two to three page story about those skeletons… Secrets. Same thing. Everybody has secrets. Give your character some dirty little secrets.

Joe’s a great guy TODAY but back in the day, he used to screw his Mom’s best friend. Zing! Pow! Bam!

The purpose of the exercise is to get to know your characters so well that their actions and dialogue literally shoot from your fingertips onto the page…

Okay… What IF you can’t come up with an event or incident to put your character through? First of all, you should be ASHAMED of yourself for even asking this question! You’re writer for Christ sakes… Or is it Christ’s sake? I keep forgetting.

If that does happen to you, spring for a newspaper… Or, if you hate paying for the newspaper, there are thousands of online newspapers… Go through the headlines looking for those weird crazy stories and find something in that story to put your character through.

Don’t ever get rid of this stuff either… It may actually be good enough to use in a future screenplay OR, if it’s REALLY GOOD STUFF, you might want to actually flesh it in but remember, the purpose of the exercise is so that you get to know your characters as well as you know ANYONE.

Unk



Saturday: 15 July 2006|0357|Under Characters

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2 Responses to “You don’t know your characters well enough…”

  1. Poke on Sunday: 16 July 2006|2343

    More great advice.

    I did this last year (at a friend’s insistence), and you know what? It worked. I found out a bit more about my character and it helped me to get him going in the story.

    Now if I could just figure out why the rest of that script didn’t work, I should be on my way.

    Poke

  2. Jonny Atlas Writes. » Blog Archive » Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards Script, and the “Semblance of Truth” on Thursday: 17 July 2008|1414

    [...] Have writer’s block? Blame your characters. Or, really, blame yourself for not developing your characters thoroughly. [...]

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