MODULE THREE SCRIPTWRITING - SA Writers College...© THE WRITERS’ COLLEGE Scriptwriting: Module Three © Karen Jeynes, All Rights Reserved 3 And not only that. Click click! SUMO/PUERTO

© THE WRITERS’ COLLEGE Scriptwriting: Module Three

© Karen Jeynes, All Rights Reserved

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Module Three

Characters


If we go back to my original analogy of recipes, the characters are the

ingredients. Your structure might tell you you’re making a pie, but chicken pie

and apple pie are very different meals!

Characters are, for me, the most essential part of any script. If you have a

fantastic plot and an excellent concept, but your characters, quite frankly, suck,

your play will suck too.

Characters can be anything – especially in radio – from real people, to satirical

stereotypes, to monkeys, to robots, to, in this scene by Francesca Sanders,

crabs:

SCENE:

Crabs roam the earth with large buckets. They speak in click language so we

can’t understand. But we assume they’re speaking about war, or perhaps the

latest iced latte because it’s hot outside. They keep a wary eye on the

reddening tide of time and on McDonald’s… in case there’s a sale announced

on chicken nuggets. They love chicken nuggets.



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CRAB ONE

Click click click click click click click click click

PUERTO RICAN CRAB

Click, click, click baby

CRAB ONE

Hey, don’t click, click, like that, click click.

PUERTO RICAN CRAB or perhaps it’s a SUMO WRESTLER CRAB and I had it

wrong from the beginning.

Click, click, click, click click… bonzai.

SUMO WRESTLER CRAB or PUERTO RICAN CRAB begins to beat CRAB

ONE and then stuff him in a washing machine. CRAB ONE tries to click (speak)

from the giant washing machine but we can only read his lips as he goes

around and around.

SUMO/PUERTO RICAN CRAB (as perhaps I had it wrong and they are one person.)

Click click click click. Mc Donald’s click click dollar menu.

LISTLESS CRAB NEARBY

McDonald’s. (He points across the way.) McDonald’s click click click very bad.

SUMO/ PUERTO RICAN/ COLUMBIAN DRUG LORD

(That’s right… perhaps I had it wrong again)

Click Click Click my McDonald’s. Don’t you ever click click click click click again.

LISTLESS CRAB

Click Click. Tell it to the Marines.

SUMO/PUERTO RICAN/COLUMBIAN DRUG LORD

What? Oh no you didn’t.

LISTLESS CRAB

Uh-huh!



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And not only that.

Click click!

SUMO/PUERTO RICAN/COLUMBIAN DRUG LORD/ HEMOPHILIAC

(Sorry… I’m trying to get it right)

That’s it for click! Click, click, click, click, click, click, click!

LISTLESS CRAB and… you know that other guy… roll around fighting. Behind

them FRANCISCO PIZARRO appears with several men. Sadly, he sees that he

has no Incas to rob, and goes on his merry way. In the meantime, the crabs are

fighting to the death. LISTLESS CRAB finally reaches for a sword that Pizarro

conveniently dropped, and stabs… you know… the other guy, to death.

LISTLESS CRAB

I may look old… but click click click, baby.

Mc Donalds… click, click, click, click

ENDS



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3.1. So How Do We Create

Characters?

It’s simple really. All of us have CVs, résumés or bios that we use for work. Start

writing one for your character. You should get to know your characters as well

as you know your best friends so that if someone says: “What’s their shoe

size?” or “Where do they go shoe shopping?” you’ll know immediately.

At first, you should write down as much as possible about each character, but

once you get to know them and have written about them for a while, the

answers will come naturally.

You may wonder why you have to go to so much effort, and into so much detail

for each character, when surely all that counts is how they behave as the plot

unfolds during the film/play/radio play?

Sam North, who runs the MA programme in Screenwriting at Portsmouth

University, says: “A lot of students complain when I make them write back

stories for every character, and I do mean every character. But I truly believe

that the back-story is the key to writing saleable scripts. Every story you see …

begins at a certain point in the lives of these characters, but what happened up

until that point? How you will you know, as a writer, why characters are

motivated to do certain things if you don't know their past?”



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3.2. Creating Characters: Four

Things to Think About

1. How do they talk?

We’ll deal with this in more detail in the next module, but think about certain

catch phrases your character might have, or accents or ways of talking. Some

people, generally fairly pompous people, say “With respect” at the beginning of

almost every sentence. Other people might often sigh and say, “Oh well”. Some

people talk a whole lot and others hardly say anything.

2. How do they react?

We all have different ways of dealing with things. Some people bottle things up

inside, some shout and scream. Some people give up easily, others fight until

the bitter end. As we’ve established in plot/structure, theatre is only interesting if

things happen, so having all your characters as people pleasers won’t achieve

much drama. Having them all too antagonistic though will just lead to lots of

arguing, and no action.



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3. Where do they live?

We need to be realistic about where characters live and the circles they move

in. If different characters coincide, it must be in realistic settings and contexts.

4. How do they relate to each other?

How does each of the characters in the play feel about each other? Do they

behave differently with different characters? We often tend to present different

selves to friends, family, and strangers.

3.3. Reading the Bible

In many cases, the character descriptions included in a script are called

“Character Bibles”. This is important because they are treated with as much

respect as the bible, in that everything else is subservient to them. You must

always be true to your characters. If the plot dictates something that is contrary

to the character – a response or action, which really doesn’t seem true – then

the plot has to change. This is often tricky, as we really want a certain plot to

take place. But if you make characters act against their true nature, things will

seem unrealistic, and fall apart.

Let’s look at a character description from a TV Series, “Excess Baggage”,

written by Nkuli Sibeko.

General Operations Manager: Precious Letswale:-

Born and raised on a little farm in rural KZN. Lived only with her dad till she left

during the political upraising and became a secretary in the ANC.



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At home she is the divorced mother of 2 girls who even though they both have

great careers, Joy in politics and Hope in law, both insist on living at home with

her, so she won’t be lonely, which is all she really wants to be.

And now to make matters worse her ex-husband has moved into the cottage in

her back yard. She just can’t seem to get rid of anyone!

Worse yet, after years of rewarding paper-pushing through the ranks at the

airline, she’s been promoted from operations director - a lovely dream job where

she just sat in her office all day, everyday dealing with request forms and

paperwork – to this where she must now deal with the people who write the

forms. It’s a nightmare - she often wishes for old job back.

49 pretending to be 41, she loves her job title far more than the actual work it

involves. She’s not at all a people person, but finds herself having to deal with

and manage too many personalities for her liking. She is often abrasive and

rude in her efforts to cut down communication with others. She hates explaining

things to people, as that requires spending time with them.

Her favourite thing is sitting in the plane and making sure the cabin is pretty and

ship-shape before the annoying staff and even more annoying passengers

arrive.

She especially dislikes the passengers with their talking in your face and not

understanding ‘person space’.

She loves pretty things, present boxes, glitter, scarves, and pink. She always

dresses impeccably and insists that the others do too. She hates how scruffy

Musa always looks, keeps asking Phumeza and Mindy to lengthen their skirts

and do up their shirt buttons.

She treats people who are prettier with the respect that all pretty things deserve,

which is a lot more than the less pretty things deserve.

She has recently been sent on a people skills seminar, which requires her to

spend time with her dreaded staff, talking to them, learning about them and

even (and this is the worst part) giving hugs were they are required.



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Her biggest fear is that she’ll one day have to stuck on an 18-hour flight with the

staff and the passengers, and that they’ll want her to hug them.

Her favourite thing to do to is watch crime-solving dramas like CSI alone or read

murder mysteries. She’s always thought of herself as the Jessica Tandy of SA.

Now if only people would leave her to it.

ENDS

We know quite a lot about her now! And it wouldn’t be realistic to put a

character like this as, say, a volunteer for a charity who works really hard on

administrative work. Possibly the person who likes to be seen to organise glitzy

dinners?

3.4. The Character’s Journey

Unless you purposefully choose shallow/ stereotypical/ two-dimensional

characters in order to make a statement of some kind, it is important for your

character to go on a journey. A similar exercise to the one in the previous

module is to say, “This is a story about a character who wants X but NEEDS Y”.

What we want is hardly ever what we need. They are often very close, though,

like the character who wants to get married but NEEDS to find love first.



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In every script, every character has a goal, which they strive towards at all

times. This might be: “I want to keep things as they are” or “I want to be a pop

star” or “I want world peace”. At the end of the script, they might achieve their

goal, reconsider it, or realise they had what they needed all along. Most scripts

avoid being too “neat” – it is most likely that the wannabe pop star will reach the

finals of Idols, not win, but instead be offered a part in a major musical.

Each character has a goal in every scene as well. Again, it is best for dramatic

tension if these goals conflict. For example, if a girl is trying to go out to work

and her boyfriend just wants to stay in bed and continue “the loving”. There may

be all sorts of underlying issues, but this basic conflict of intent will drive the

scene.

TAKE NOTE:

It is generally advisable to steer clear of children and animals as characters,

unless absolutely essential and intrinsic to the script.

3.5. Which Comes First: The

Chicken or the Egg?

Some people start with a plot, and then add characters; others start with

characters and then throw them into situations. Sometimes people are sparked

by a line, a scene, a picture. There are no set rules.

The great man of words, Harold Pinter, summed characters up perfectly in his

Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

“It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that

moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even

hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The

author's position is an odd one. In a sense the characters do not welcome him.

The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, and they are



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impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you

play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and

seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands,

people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of

component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.”

See the full speech at http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-

lecture-e.html

It’s worth it!

3.6. Exercise

Go back to the plot you devised in the previous module, and choose three

characters to develop. Flesh each of them out in as much detail as possible.

Some questions to answer could be:

1. What’s their favourite song?

2. Where did they go to school?

3. What is their relationship like with their mother/father?

4. What’s their favourite colour?

5. What’s their comfort food?

6. What did they have for breakfast today?

7. Do they have any pets?

8. Where do they buy their clothes?

9. What’s the last movie they saw?

If your characters are semi-realistic (like “Peace” or “Sumo Crab”) then your

character descriptions will be more complicated. Good for you.

Recommended word count: 900 words

This exercise is marked out of 40. Please submit it to me, Karen.



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Photo credits: Jondissed and KellyB

3.7. Additional Reading

These articles are re-used with kind permission from the authors.

THE CRAFT OF SCREENWRITING:

Characterisation - Screenwriting 101

by Sam North

Creating believable people is a whole lot more important that creating a

watertight plot. Some people might disagree, but the thing about a plot is, that

you can always work on it to shape it and quantify, but if you don't have

credible, engaging, interesting characters with a great back-story, then,

ultimately who cares?

Daniel Autiel and Vanessa Paradis

To quote the Director of Squeeze Play and The Toxic Avenger 1,2 and 'When

watching a Troma movie, you must not only suspend your disbelief, you must

lock it up in a small iron crate and torture it.' I think that is the key for all

filmmakers. Everyone is allowed to make a lousy film, write a terrible book, or

screenplay, but as long as you love it, love the people in it and what they do,



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people will forgive you. Never disown what you do, one day someone will write

or make something far worse than you did and you will feel a lot better for it.

THE BACKSTORY

A lot of students complain when I make them write back stories for every

character, and I do mean every character. But I truly believe that the back-story

is the key to writing saleable scripts. Every story you see on screen begins at a

certain point in the lives of these characters, but what happened up until that

point? How you will you know, as a writer, why characters are motivated to do

certain things if you don't know their past?

In Hal Hartley's work (Simple Men, Amateur) , it is as important for him to write

a life story for the incidental character as it is for the lead. Plotting Imagine this.

We are looking for ways to create a screenplay. Do we create characters first or

plot?

Let’s look at a plot.

You are late for a meeting with a woman who is giving you a lot of strife. A

bridge. A narrow bridge. A car is stopped on it, the driver's door open. It is too

narrow to drive past. It is late at night. A woman is poised on the railings, you

think she is going to jump. What do you do? What is happening? Is this the

beginning of a love-story or the end of one, or a remake of 'It's a wonderful life?'

Or 'Girl on a Bridge.' If you shout, will she lose her step and fall? If you do

nothing, will you be able to move her car after she has jumped, or have to dive

into the icy water below to find her keys? How inconvenient will all this be?

This woman on the bridge informs you that she is a photographer taking

pictures of badgers at night. She is at the bridge because the badgers are

crossing the narrow stream below. You are on the bridge because you are late

for a meeting you don't want to have. You cannot save her life. She is not in

need of rescue. She says, 'Move the car yourself. I'm busy'. You move her car.

Inside the car is a man, drunk, passed out on the back seat. You walk back



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across the narrow bridge to discover your car and the woman are gone.

Simultaneously, the car behind you with the drunk in it suddenly drives off.

You are now alone on a bridge, ten miles from your destination with the woman

you didn't want have to tell that you no longer love. You have no car. You look

over the railings to see if there really are any badgers. The railing gives way,

you fall.

You are dying.

From the shallow water and the rocks below you look up to see the woman you

were going to meet looking back at you from the bridge. Standing with her is the

female photographer. They are embracing, you now know they are lovers. You

are dead. Your dying thought is, if only I had known the backstory.

The story with the bridge is true - only none of it happened in that order. There

was a meeting, there was a photographer, there was an accidental death, there

was a lesbian relationship. But the accidental death happened last year, the

lesbian lovers twenty years ago, the badgers are probably gassed, and the

location is real.

What story is worth developing? Which one can you mine for the richest

characters? Only you can decide. You must build characters worth caring

about. The stranger who stopped to help a woman he thought was in distress.

Only by creating the backstory can you assess which of these stories has

market potential. If either of them does.



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It is only with rich characters in a natural setting that you can make low budget

film work and find an audience. That is the appeal of Indie movies. Does Hal

Hartley think of markets? They are movies about ideas, not fast- paced, gun-

toting, people-slaying, body-splatter fodder. Every frame, every gesture must

count and yet, without the backstory, without the rich interchange of people

swapping ideas, making mistakes, feeling genuine pain and remorse, you could

spend $100 million dollars and end up with 'The Postman'. In the end, the

feudal play-acting of that story couldn't disguise the fact that Kevin Costner had

given no one a past worth caring about, and because of that, no one bothered

about their future.

In screenwriting, you have the right to alter the facts to suit the story. You have

the right to embellish or strip away, you have the right to take strands from a

story and attach it to another. But all the time, remember, where do these

characters come from, why do they wear these clothes, what qualifications do

they have, or do they lack? To what degree are they relying on chance in life, to

what degree is what they do planned. What mistakes and surprises can you

throw in to deflect them from achieving their purpose, what secrets can you

reveal that will destroy their chances of happiness. None of it without the

backstory.

Question: Do characters who plan life make more interesting characters than

those who don't. What happens when you put them together? Is it enough just

to have characters - what about plot? Characters drive plot. If you do not have

a story, just invent characters you like and give them history. It's likely some

common elements will turn up.

For example: Two men with a liking for toffee ice-cream and chat-lines on the

Internet. Two women with a passion for craft fairs and husbands they hate. A

child who believes he can fly and walks on crutches. A dog that is afraid of cats.

You don't need a bank robbery, you don't need a man to come through the door

with a gun in his hand. In this scenario all you would need is a man coming



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through a door with the wrong flavored ice-cream that sets off the two men on

some crazed revenge spree and reveals their real destructive characters.

PREJUDICES

Why is it someone asks that the guy blocking the film section in the bookshop is

always some overweight, overgrown, Russell Grant look-alike with Big Mac

stains on his anorak? Why is that person in the wheelchair always angry?

Maybe because life in a wheelchair is bloody difficult once you leave the safety

of your home. It is sometimes better to use anger or obesity or anorexia than

write about 'normal ' people because these people, people with problems, are a

lot more interesting. Think 'Punch Drunk Love' or 'Stuck On Me'.

Never be PC. Never forget that your characters live and die by what they

believe, stupid as those thoughts might be. Never forget that you might develop

characters who believe in things you don't and act accordingly. That is why

American Beauty won 5 Oscars. It didn't shy away from confrontation, the fact

that we laughed at what we found uncomfortable is more perhaps down to the

brilliant acting of Keven Spacey and others. It was not a gentle film, but

nevertheless people talk about it as a comedy. The characters were real

because we know them, and young or old, they are us and as confused as us.

Don't be scared of goblins either or cancer. My Life Without Me is a perfect little

film about a girl (and young mother) dying of cancer, but it is also an uplifting

film. The Triplets of Belleville is an extraordinary character-led animation film.

Girl With A Pearl Earring is another intense period film about a man who wants

a girl and a girl who can't have him because of class, his marriage and yet this

intensity is the very core of the film and why people respond to it. All of them

about humans with emotions, needs and above all, frustrations. Lost in

Translation, (another with Scarlett Johansson) is a great film simply because a

relationship isn't consumated. The alienation the two characters experience in

Japan draws unlikely people together. Good stories are often about what you

can't get or achieve. See also Code 46, a love story with a genetic taboo twist.

PLOT IS FOR WIMPS



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Amelie: real characters in unreal situations

Character Movies:

Amelie, Lord of the Rings 1,2,3, In the Bedroom, Iris, Bridget Jones, A Beautiful

Mind, Something's Gotta Give, Swing (French Movie), Identity, High Fidelity,

Grosse Point Blank, Spirited Away, Garden State - We Don’t Live Here

Anymore, The Delicate Art of Parking - all these films are entirely character-

driven.

Take a look at a small budget Indie movie, 'Pieces of April' ,2003 starring Katie

Holmes. Patricia Clarkson got an Oscar nomination for her performance as the

42-year-old woman dying of cancer, very reluctantly going to her black sheep

daughter’s 'Thanksgiving' dinner in New York. This is an astonishingly

accomplished film given that it was shot on digital format in sixteen days. It is

also very funny and true to a character movie, hardly needs much of a plot at

all. Just Thanksgiving, the reluctance of a family to enjoy it, some very low

expectations, throw in a terminal disease and let it play.

Character is why we go to the movies. Minor things cause major disruptions. It

is the way we all live. You chose to come to England, in London you meet

someone who changes your life, or you read a book that changes your

opinions, or nothing happens at all and you spend the rest of your life in regret.

No one else is available to do the right thing, you have to send for the people

you least like to do the job. Armageddon and Space Cowboys. These are the

foundations of great plots, but only if you have interesting characters. (Time

Regained an exception) Your fight will be to create something that people want

to see filmed from reading your script, then defending every last word and

scene to the last. Which is' Fight to the Death 101' later.

© Sam North 1999-2004

editor at hackwriters.com



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Girl on a bridge

© Hackwriters 2000-2004 All rights reserved

]

Creating Character and Characterization in Screenplays

by Elizabeth English

Interesting flaws humanize a character who is challenged to overcome inner

doubts, errors in thinking, guilt or trauma from the past, or fear of and hopes for

the future. Weaknesses, imperfections, quirks, and vices make a character

more real and appealing. The audience can identify with the character.

Flaws and imperfections give a character somewhere to go - the character arc -

in which a character develops and grows, overcoming obstacles and gaining

knowledge and wisdom and is recreated and restored to wholeness. A real

character is not just a single obvious trait, but a unique combination of many

qualities and drives, some of them conflicting.

Character Development

Character development is essential to a good story. Characters should enter the

story as dimensional, non-stereotypical characters, and become more

dimensional as the story and other characters act upon them. They should be

big as life; capable of developing and being transformed. We should see

different sides of them, understand how they think and act, learn about their

philosophies and attitudes. We should be aware of their emotional make-up

through their responses to their surroundings, to others with whom they interact,

and to events which occur.



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If your characters don't come alive in the script, they won't come alive on the

screen. Answer these questions, as you characterize the protagonist and other

characters within your storyline: what is this character's goal or motivation, why

does he or she want to achieve this goal, who or what is trying to stop this

character from reaching this goal and why, what strengths or weaknesses of

this character will help or hinder in the pursuit of this goal?

Characters have emotional lives which define the character just as their

attitudes define them. Their emotional responses expand this definition. It's the

emotional response to events and to other people in the story that makes the

character understandable and believable. How she/he feels creates sympathy

in the audience, and creates identification with the character, wherein we

experience vicariously the character's journey through the emotions and the

story.

These dimensions create a dimensional sequence, which helps define the

character on each level, and through the transformational arc of that character.

A character's philosophy creates certain attitudes toward life. These attitudes

create decisions that create actions. These actions come out of the character's

emotional life, which predisposes the character to do certain things or to react in

a certain way, and as a result of the actions of other characters, who each have

their own dimensions, the character responds emotionally in a certain

characteristic way.

Examples: A cynical attitude might result in despair, or depression, or in a

withdrawal from life, causing the character to be morose, bitter or angry. A

positive attitude might result in a character who smiles or laughs a lot, or is

always optimistic, accessible, and reaches out. Or a character might be cool as

a result of inaccessible emotions, or hard-hearted, or hostile and vengeful.

Each character feels the influence of the other, and responds through new

actions and new emotions. The story influences the character and the character

influences the story. Creating dimensional characters demands close



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observance of real life: noticing the small details and character traits and

listening for character rhythms, and utilizing a broad range of thoughts, actions

and emotions. The character of the individual should be expressed in a

screenplay through actions rather than merely through dialog/talk. Action details

will help expand and reveal characters, while still focusing on the necessary

actions to advance the story; the film becomes more dimensional because of

the dimensional character(s).

Creating a Character

In order to create a character, the writer must have a character to express. The

process of identifying the character inevitably requires an identification with and

an awareness of that character. You must discover the personal boundaries

and singular identity which separate the character from his or her fellow man.

Clarify your perceptions, eliminate the ambiguity, vagueness, misconceptions

and illusions.

Do not construct a mannequin or dummy with an assortment of attributes

attached to him or her like stick-on labels. In characterization, present not a

puppet, an automaton, a generalized abstraction, a flat, one-dimensional figure,

a cardboard cut-out, but a rounded, individualized, three-dimensional figure.

The character must come alive for you as well as for the audience.

Realize your character with all six of your senses, react to him or her with your

emotions, be able to follow the character with your mind. Fully breathe life into

characters by covering their ancestry, past life, environmental influences,

occupations, future aims, physical appearance, emotional drives, and basic

unique traits. Get inside his or her skin; become the character.

Know what the person's face is really like, as well as hair, eyes, facial

expressions, how hands and feet are used, gestures, how does the person walk

and talk, what are the mannerisms, urges, aversions, body language. Realize

the character's inner feelings. Observe physical details, inclinations, tastes,

interests, habits, ambitions. How does your character treat and react to others?



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Create an empathy within the audience for your character -- that special kind of

imagination which allows the audience to put themselves in another person's

shoes, a suspension of reality in which the audience identifies with the

character. The memorable character who truly lives for the audience is one who

walks off the screen and into their minds and their hearts.

Good screenwriting is really about character, as well as story and structure.

Show the characters, don't tell about them. Create memorable characters, such

as Scarlett O'Hara, Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca, the James Dean character in

Rebel Without a Cause, the characters played by Hepburn and Bogart in

African Queen, Zorba in Zorba the Greek, and Butch Cassidy and the

Sundance Kid. The writers and the screenwriters who created these characters,

as well as the film directors and the actors' interpretations of them gave birth to

and fleshed out these memorable figures, magically bringing them to life in the

mind of the audience.

Often, characterization can be further enhanced by the use of a metaphor,

which can give visible shape to a character. A woman feels unloved, ugly and

unhappy, she goes to a mirror, looks at herself, bangs her head on the glass,

shattering it. We see her distorted image as the camera lingers on the mirror,

and we, and she, realize that it is she herself who has made herself ugly,

outside and in. Another, perhaps more subtle method of defining character to

the audience, is by the use of symbolic objects in proximity to the character, or

by the manner in which the character is placed in the frame. The figure may be

placed alone in the frame, or at a distance, to convey his or her feelings of

abandonment or loneliness. A character may be ascending a staircase, passing

dark portraits of his or her ancestors, glowering down in a seemingly judgmental

manner; he or she pauses at a brightly-sunlit window and looks out at a winding

road, perhaps to freedom.

Film is a visual medium that is particularly capable of revealing insights that

cannot be verbally expressed, and can be especially meaningful when

associative, unconscious innuendoes are utilized. Words and incessant verbal



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dialog, by its very nature, often arrest and paralyze thought instead of permitting

it and fostering its development. The frequent absence of dialog heightens the

hypnotic power of the visuals.

You should not write the dialog; let the characters write it for you. Don't block

them. Look for your characters to lead the way. Allow each character to speak

in his or her characteristic, individual manner. Consciously focus on character,

while making sure that character and story/plot intertwine. In the more vertical

character stories, the protagonists affect the events of the story; humans control

their own destiny. In the more horizontal plot stories, destiny more significantly

controls the characters.

Story structure and character are interlocked. The event structure of a

screenplay is created out of the choices that characters make, and the actions

and reactions they manifest on the screen. Deep character and the relative

complexity of character must often be adjusted to genre. Action/Adventure and

farce usually demand simplicity of character because complexity would distract

from the actions of the character. Dramatic stories of personal and inner conflict

require complexity of character because simplicity would rob the audience of

the insight into human nature requisite to that genre.

Characterization is the sum of all observable qualities of a human being,

everything that is knowable through careful scrutiny. The totality of these traits

makes each person unique. This singular assemblage of traits is

characterization, but it is not character. True character is revealed in the

choices that a human being makes. The screenwriter must strip away the mask

of characterization, and peer into the true, inner natures of their characters.

The revelation of true character, in contrast to characterization, is fundamental

to creating real and memorable characters who not only are driven by the story,

but who themselves drive the story.



22

References

From The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary 1996: Characterize: describe

the character of, describe as, be characteristic of, impart character to

Character: the collective qualities or characteristics, especially mental or moral,

thatdistinguish a person or thing, written description of a person's qualities,

consistent with a person's characterÊ

From Roget's Super Thesaurus 1995 Character: personality, nature, makeup,

individuality, temperament, appearance, type, sort, kind, qualities Characteristic:

attribute, trait, feature, peculiarity, aspect, distinction, individuality, idiosyncrasy

Characterize: portray, describe, represent, depict

SUGGESTED READING:

The Artist's Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron. G.P.

Putnam, NY 1992

Creating Unforgettable Characters</B< a>, by Linda Seger

The Figure in Film, by N. Roy Clifton. Associated University Presses, Inc., East

Brunswick, NJ 1983

Film as a Subversive Art, by Amos Vogel. Random House, NY 1974

From Script to Screen, by Linda Seger & E. J. Whetmore

Making a Good Script Great, by Linda Seger. Samuel French Trade, Hollywood,

CA 1987

Screenwriting 434, by Lew Hunter. Perigee Books, Putnam Publishing, NY,

1993

Story, Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, by

Robert McKee, Regan Books. Harper Collins Publishers, NY 1997

Storycrafting, by Paul Boles

Successful Scriptwriting, by Jurgen Wolf & Kerry Cox. Writer's Digest Books,

Cincinnati, Ohio 1991

TV Scriptwriter's Handbook, by Alfred Brenner



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Writer's Digest Books Handbook of Short Story Writing (Vol. I), by Frank

Dickson & Sandra Smythe (eds.)

The Writer's Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing (Vol. II) Writers Digest

Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1981

The Writer's Journey, Mythic Structure for Writers, by Christopher Vogler.

Michael Wiese Productions, Studio City, CA 1998

Writing Screenplays That Sell, by Michael Hauge

Copyright © 2002 Elizabeth English.

Elizabeth English lives in Boulder, Colorado, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She is the

founder of the Moondance International Film Festival and competition. She is also executive

producer and development executive for her company, Mermaid7seas Productions

(http://www.mermaid7seas.com). Elizabeth has written sections of four published books on

creative careers for McGraw Hill and has written screenwriting articles for MovieBytes.com,

EuroScreenwriter.com, and ScreenTalk Magazine. Elizabeth's screenplay, April Fool's Day was a

finalist at the 2001 AFI Women Director's Workshops. Her stageplay The Mythical Journey was a

2001 finalist in the Alexander Onassis competition.

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