Characters What makes a good main character. Your favorites ✤ Lets take a look at some of your...
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Transcript of Characters What makes a good main character. Your favorites ✤ Lets take a look at some of your...
CharactersWhat makes a good main character
Your favorites
✤ Lets take a look at some of your characters and see what we can identify as similarities between them.
Characters
✤ Characters are the nervous system of the story. Everything that happens is an extension of what they do, and how they react.
✤ Why do you think those two phrases are in bold?
Characters
✤ A screenplay is like a noun
✤ It’s about a PERSON, in a PLACE, doing his/her THING.
✤ Character needs action
✤ Must know who you story is about, and what happens to them.
Knowing
✤ In order to be successful writers, you need to know what happens in all aspects of your story.
✤ Know your character.
✤ Know what happens to them and what they have to go through.
✤ Know the resolution of the story so you can get that character there.
✤ Know what the end has in store for them.
Knowing
✤ If you don’t know how your story ends, you will have no idea how to get them there.
✤ ACT II is filled with obstacles that pertain to your main characters actions.
✤ Events and actions in a story are specifically designed to bring out the truth of your character, so we can achieve a connection or bond.
✤ If you know your character you know what obstacles will have more impact
Behavior
✤ Film is behavior.
✤ Dialogue is secondary to action, with two purposes.
✤ Moves the story forward
✤ Reveals something about the main character
✤ A character is what he does, not what he says
✤ Determine whether the main character causes things to happen, or things happen to them.
Biography
✤ Separate character’s life into two basic categories:
✤ Interior Life: Everything that happened to your character from birth until the movie starts
✤ Exterior Life: Takes place from the start of the movie to the end
Interior (biography)
✤ The first 10 years: Birth, pre-school/elementary school, family, friends
✤ Second 10 years: Middle school/high school, sports, political agenda, clubs, activities, friendships, relationships, sexual experience, employment, major traumatic events, etc.
✤ Start by asking yourself “what”
Why “what” (interior)
✤ WHAT implies a direct, definable answer:
✤ What kind of childhood did he/she have? What was his/her relationship to their parents? What kind of child was he/she? What kind of trouble did they get into? What was home like? What kind of hobbies did he/she have? What clubs were they a part of? What was high school like for them? What college did they go to? What was their major?
✤ Trace your character until your story starts
Interior (biography)
✤ If you know your character inside and out, only then can you begin writing.
✤ REMEMBER: Your character is NOT you. They may be similar, but they should be a completely different person.
Exterior (biography)
✤ Sometimes it’s easier to separate into three categories
✤ Professional
✤ What is work like for them? What do they do? What do they love or hate about work? How do they get along with their co-workers, etc.
Exterior (biography)
✤ Personal Life:
✤ Are they married, single, widowed? How long have they been married? How did they meet? Do they fight a lot? Are they a social couple? Do they have children? How many? What are their ages? What is the family dynamic?
Exterior (biography)
✤ Private Life:
✤ What does your character do when they are alone?
✤ What do they watch on TV? Do they go to the gym? How many times a week? What are they working out for? Do they take a night class? What kind of class? What sort of hobbies do they do in their free time?
Importance
✤ The reason why we spend time on the biography, and internal information is so we have a character who lives and moves in a real, believable world.
✤ If you get stuck on what happens next, you can look to the “real” life of that character and put them in a place that is natural for them to be.
Action
✤ Your character is what he/she does
✤ They need to be active
✤ They need to do things, cause things to happen
✤ Things can’t always happen to them. It’s not all reaction.
4 Essential Qualities
✤ Have a strong dramatic need
✤ What your MC wants to win, gain, get, achieve over the course of your story
✤ Have an individual point of view
✤ The way they see the world
✤ Personify an attitude
✤ A manner or opinion based on an intellectual decision
✤ Go through some sort of change or transformation
Writing Exercise
✤ Free write:
✤ The goal of a free -write is try and write continuously for a set amount of time with absolutely NO stopping. There is no right or wrong, you just have to keep the pencil moving.
✤ Today’s Free Write:
✤ You will be given a random character description
✤ Start to fill out the character bio packet
✤ Packets will be due FRIDAY!