More Tips for Building Character

I am in the midst of designing a new class for Your Plot Thickens Writing Workshops that will touch on how to build stronger characters throughout your novel or screenplay. Some of the tips that I will be teaching in this class are:

1) What is your character’s voice? I advise you begin to speak as that character speaks. You can do this in your head or actually out-loud. I also want to know how she moves, walks, sits or eats dinner? What does she do when she first gets up in the morning? Then, what are her steps for getting ready for bed? A lot of screenplays that are heavily character-driven will even begin by showing what the main character does when they wake up first thing in the morning. Two movies that come to mind right now are Sideways and Stranger Than Fiction. Basically, what are your character's rules for living her life?

2) What is related to what your character's voice is, obviously, is what her dialogue is like? Does she speak the same way to everyone? I assume that she will have a different way of speaking to her parents, than she does with her children, than she does with her significant other. And how does she speak with people out in the world? Is she polite or impolite when she goes to order her morning coffee? Finally, does she have any special catch phrases? Does she use a lot of slang? These will be important issues when writing how your character actually converses.

3) Also, I would like to how your character might create her own obstacles. This is related to her flaw, of course. But does she leave her room really messy, and thus she can't find her car keys, which leads her to be late for work or school each day? Or is she the ultimate neat-freak, and thus she neglects her husband or children because all she ever does is spend the whole day cleaning the house?

What Does Your Character Want? This Is What Drives Story

What does your character want? It seems so simple and yet it is so indispensible to story. If you have not determined what your character wants throughout the course of the story – or in a particular scene, for that matter – then they are not going to come across with strong objectives – and therefore create drama. Even if your intention is to create a character who vacillates emotionally, perhaps this is only because what he really WANTS is to be loved and accepted, as this is often one of the ploys humans take to secure love – changing themselves to fit into someone else’s world instead of sticking to what they, as individuals, want.

An actor’s job, of course, is to interpret what a character’s objectives (wants) are. But it is the writer’s job, not the actor’s, to develop those wants in the story. If a writer has not done a good job of doing so, then the actor will not have much to go on.

But the real question is what the character actually NEEDS? The character may want something, which drives him, but at some point he will have to be pushed into figuring out what he needs. It is often good to heighten the stakes by creating a situation in which, if the character does not figure out and DO what he needs to do, instead of what he just wants, then bad things are going to happen (e.g., he is going to lose someone he loves or maybe even die). The act of the character figuring out what he needs to do is what lies on the other side of the arc from where his wants are. What we want to do and what we need to do are many times not the same, and are, in fact, often conflicting. But doing what we need to do is what gives resolution to a journey in which we have begun flawed – just surviving – instead of living it at its fullest.

More Tips for Dialogue in Screenplays

I met up with Neill D. Hicks, author of Screenwriting 101, again last night, as we are developing a seminar for him to teach through my workshops program at Your Plot Thickens. He gave me some excellent tips about how to write better dialogue for screenplays.

1) Attempt to write a scene (or scenes) without any the use of any questions. When you eliminate questions, and characters instead make statements, it drives them more quickly to conflict. And what is more conflict, after all, but more drama!

2) While you're at it, now write a scene without the use of any dialogue whatsoever. How do your characters interact with one another -- get across what they want to say -- without the use of words? My two cents worth is, to enhance this process, you might want to give your character a problem, or create a turning point in their relationship for them to deal with. How does each character thus get across their viewpoints and emotions through ACTION?

3) Dialogue isn't just about what is being said, it's about how you say it -- and good dialogue has rhythm. Another tip is to write a scene for which you select just a few words -- and then create "dialogue" with the use of just those words. Again, in this exercise, it's not about WHAT is being said, but about the cadence of the words. Do your characters speak in a clipped manner, or are they loquacious? This will definitely help the audience understand what kind of characters they are.

4) Lastly, write a scene in which characters are not allowed to use any conjunctions, the most popular of which are: and - but - or - yet. What I think Hicks means by this is that words such as "but" and "yet" especially work to temper statements by contradicting them, lessening their effect. A good example of this is: "I like you but..." Sure, such a statement voiced in a rom-com would definitely cause drama. But I think the idea is to have your characters making concise and direct statements without adding on too much information or qualifying their sentiments with contradictory information.

The Central Question of the Romantic Comedy

A romantic comedy is not only a comedy with romance in it. A romantic comedy follows a specific formula: girl and boy meet, girl and boy lose one another, and then girl and boy reunite.

Typical story structure begins with the hero having a problem. In act 2, the hero can’t solve this problem, and this problem is only resolved in act 3. According to Billy Mernit, author of Writing the Romantic Comedy, the central question of the rom-com is not then “will the hero obtain his goal?” Rather, it is “will these two individuals become a couple?” Will the boy get the girl in the end?

As the audience already knows what the outcome of a romantic comedy is going to be (the boy does indeed get the girl), then, according to Mernit, it is helpful to create drama by making one of the characters have a negative desire.  

This negative desire in romantic comedies usually manifests itself as commitment phobia in one of the characters. One of the characters just doesn’t want to be in a relationship, even if this is exactly what he needs, in a dramatic sense.

The best romantic comedies will thus have more and more obstacles being thrown at these two characters, which will get in the way of them coming together, and thus create the drama (and comedy!). One or both characters might already be in a relationship. They might live far from one another. Or there might be something big that each will lose if they follow their love.