8 ways to make your characters come vividly to life

House – NBC

Fully live characters leap off the page and out of the screen at us. We become fascinated by them, want to spend time with them, care about their hopes and fears.

Think of Bonnie and Clyde, Romeo and Juliet, Mr Darcy, Sarah Lund, Gregory House… and also anti-heroes, villains and bit parts in a thousand movies and TV programmes, from Hannibal Lecter to Private Godfrey.

To create living, interesting characters, you need to draw on your experience of life, and add to it. Or to put it another way, bring us your unique take on people.

1. Draw on people you know

Some of the best characters come from the people around you. But, strangely, that rarely means direct copy. You don’t have to portray your friends and relations, in fact it’s often best if you don’t (if only to avoid loss of said friends and libel actions).

I usually take a combination of character traits from a number of people I know and combine them for best effect, and no-one has so far ever recognised themselves.

One of my favourite characters, an aged, homicidal Portuguese farmer, was based in part on my maternal grandmother. She was neither Portuguese nor homicidal, but she gave me just the right flavour of salty sharpness and odd-ball humour the character needed. And she never knew.

2. Surprise us

Does your lawyer need to be white, male and middle class? Does your drug dealer need to be young and black? These are obvious clichés, but also watch out for the less obvious assumptions we all make. Surprise us.

Boogie Nights is full of surprising twists on character. One of the most memorable is the almost invisible part of a night-club doorman – invisible that is until it was decided that he should be enormously camp. That one twist made what was virtually a walk-on part stand out.

3. give them contradictions

Strong characters show strong contradictions. The boxer who loves ballet. The good detective who can’t stop shoplifting. Contradictions bring characters to life.

Othello can fight anyone, except his own jealousy, which brings him down. Jed Bartlet is a liberal history buff and an economist, who – in more than one episode of The West Wing – has to be restrained from overusing American armed force. How many of your characters could gain from being less consistent?

4. give them goals

All the characters in a well-written script have goals, even the smallest. The taxi-driver whose only role is to find the briefcase, what might her goal be?

Without a goal, she becomes a mere plot device. But give her a goal, say, to get home quickly, or to mend the car stereo, and the character (and the scene) come to life.

5. give them flaws

People are not perfect, not even heroes. Flaws draw in an audience. We care about House all the more because of his almost autistic inability to empathise, his drug abuse, his bolshie attitude towards his colleagues.

Without those, he’d be a clever-dick who wouldn’t last a scene, let alone eight series.

6. give them strengths

At the same time, characters need to be good at something, whoever they are, even if they are evil incarnate! Hannibal Lecter has charm, intelligence and considerable talents, even if they aren’t necessarily put to good use. Even Hitler is given strengths in Downfall.

At the other end of the scale, Norah Ephron took care to ensure that both Harry and Sally had strong positive elements to their characters – this indeed is what attracted them to each other. Harry has the practicality and groundedness that Sally needs to counterbalance her. While Sally brings a positive attitude to Harry’s dark broodiness.

Your characters’ strengths show us why we should care what happens to them.

7. find their picture

Can you see your characters in your mind? In how much detail? I always want to have a clear picture of each character before I write them. (This does not mean that I will write that picture in the script – it’s far better to leave that to the reader’s, and casting director’s, imagination).

One very useful trick is to “cast” your characters from photographs, for example in magazines or on the Internet. Here’s an exercise: search through Google images for pictures that fit the characters in your current script. This is particularly valuable for any character who is refusing to come to life, or insisting on remaining a cliché.

8. hear their voices

Harold Pinter started The Homecoming with two lines of dialogue. That line would suggest two voices, and from those two voices grew one of his greatest plays.

Listen for your characters’ voices. You may find them in your head, or on TV or sitting next to you in the tube. Then, when you have their voices, listen to what they tell you. You may find your characters tell you more about themselves, and even more about how the story should go, than you ever could yourself.

If this is useful to you, you might also like:

Fun writing exercise – using the moment
Four steps to starting a compelling script
Give your flashbacks the kiss of life
Why do we call them Screen – Plays?
Avoid the mistakes made by would-be thriller writers

And you may like to check out the courses I’m running in London and elsewhere. You can find details here

9 steps to writing dialogue with rich subtext

A writing friend asked the other day, how do you write dialogue with strong subtext. My first thought was to answer, “How don’t you?” For years, I’ve found writing subtext to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the process. But clearly he didn’t. He was having a problem.

He knew that subtext meant the thoughts that the character is not saying – the ideas that are being suggested, but not actually voiced directly, below (sub) the text. And he knew that it was essential that dialogue had subtext, but somehow he was struggling to write it. Could I help?

Be a subtext detective – Sherlock Holmes Sign of Four (Muse Distribution International)

That made me stop and consider what I actually do instinctively when I’m writing dialogue and what lies behind what I do.

The subtext to writing subtext!

And I discovered there were nine steps to writing good dialogue with subtext.

1. Subtext is a muscle, like any other writing skill. You develop it by working it. At first it may seem hard but after putting in the hours you’ll find you start to develop an instinct. You’ll know when a line is “on the nose” and needs to be made more subtle and oblique. Be patient, work hard and the muscle will grow stronger.

2. First write the “text”. Talking to other writers, I found we all did the same. Our first drafts are full of dialogue that is unsubtle and too direct.

She starts to walk away.

                                        MIKE
I don’t want you to go just yet.

                                        CLAIRE
I can stay a little longer.

                                        MIKE
Let’s talk.

Then when we redraft we take all those lines and find ways of hiding those thoughts by having our characters talk (overtly) of other things.

She starts to walk away.

                                        MIKE
Claire?

                                        CLAIRE
Hmm…

                                        MIKE
(holds up crossword)
You wouldn’t happen to know what language they speak in India, do you?

(From Someone to Watch Over Me)

3. Listen to how real people talk. There’s nothing like a good dose of reality. Listen to the dialogue that people create  naturally and ask yourself what they are really thinking. Then ask yourself how you know.

4. Read, read, read. Do some detective work. Spy on how the great novelists, short story writers, screenwriters and playwrights do it. Then steal as much as you can get away with.

5. Try this exercise. Create two random characters and give them something they mustn’t mention. Say, two prisoners are waiting to be hanged. They talk of anything but that – the weather, their last meal, a mouse in the cell. See how every word, every pause, can be filled with unspoken meaning. I have two similar but more advanced subtext exercises that I use in my ScreenPLAY Advanced Writing Bootcamp.

6. Know your characters inside-out. One reason that it’s difficult to write subtext on the first draft is that you don’t yet know the characters well enough. Ibsen used to say, about writing plays, that in the first draft your characters are strangers. In the second draft they are friends, and by the third they are close family.

7. Practise, practise, practise. Keep a notebook with you always and jot down ideas for lines that come to you, lines that reveal without saying. When you’re waiting for a train or walking along the street, play with dialogue in your head. Keep exercising that muscle.

8. Cut, cut, cut.

Mary toys with her food. She looks up at Frank.

                                          MARY
Do you love me?

                                          FRANK
I have to admit that I don’t really love you very much.

                                          MARY
That makes me feel very unhappy, but I’ll just have to get on with it, even though my heart is breaking.

It’s fascinating how much can be revealed by a question that is left hanging after you’ve cut the answer. Or an answer given to a question that’s not been asked. Find creative ways for your characters to change the subject, or the reverse: return to an old subject.

Mary toys with her food. She looks up at Frank.

                                          MARY
Do you love me?

Frank says nothing but stares at his plate.

                                         MARY
I’ll get the dessert, then. It’s trifle. Your favourite.

9. And finally, in writing as in real life, sometimes emotions are running so high that people do actually say what they are really thinking. They blurt out their love, their fear, their hope. But even then, there is almost always a subtext beneath their directness. Even as your character says, “I love you” there’s still something that’s not being said.

If you want to know more about this or other aspects of writing, you can post your question to me in the reply box below.

(I won’t be able to answer every question, or do it privately, but if you’re happy for me to post my answer online, go for it).

If you liked this blog post, come to my next three-day ScreenPLAY Advanced Writing Bootcamp.

Have fun.

What if your story is unconvincing?

Today I’m posting a link to a very nice blog post by the writer Randy Ingermanson. He writes:

What if you’re halfway through your novel and it just doesn’t feel convincing? Do you scrub the project? Keep wallowing on through the muck? How do you know what’s right?

Annick posted this question on Randy’s “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

If you want to read the rest click here

Simple song rises above the battlefield

Last night I learned a great deal that I wasn’t expecting to – both about war and about writing.

Last night I went to Ten at the Royal Court Theatre, a one-off made up of ten different performances each of ten minutes to celebrate (commemorate? commiserate?) the ten year anniversary of the start of war in Iraq for Stop The War. Everyone who’s everyone was there (almost – well, I was there). Even Harold Pinter, via a TV screen, back from the dead.

(c) Kennardphillipps

There were short plays, stand up routines and musical sets, and the whole was inspired and produced by playwright Jan Woolf.

Many of the pieces were good, including some brutal antiwar montages by Kennard Phillipps and a sharp little playlet written by Woolf herself, with Timothy West and Jane Lapotaire as retired Labour MPs undergoing purgatory in a futuristic old age home.

Many pieces were also thought-provoking, but the one that stood out for me was a simple English folk song sung by Sally Davies with updated lyrics by “a certain Robert Zimmerman”.

Pinter huffed and puffed about guns and bombs but Dylan’s lyrics said more in three minutes about war, greed and guilt than a hundred two hour plays. Unassuming and clear.

What did I learn? I learned that the great writers and artists like Dylan work hard to appear not to be trying hard. That simplicity and clarity is the goal. That you can speak about things that matter and speak from the heart. And that if you see injustice, you have a duty to speak out as best you can.

And that the fight goes on.

Fun writing exercise – using the moment

Planning the Mental Game for Writing Success workshop in London this weekend made me think how powerful some of the simplest writing exercises can be. Here’s one – do try this at home:

Ask yourself how you feel. Whatever you’re trying to write – give the feeling to one of the characters.

If you’re feeling negative, make one of the characters in your scene negative. Have her procrastinate, dwell on her problems, complain… If you’re feeling on top of the world, make her happy, creative, powerful…

Now look around you. Pick something you can see and put that in the script too. A diary, a teddy bear or a ten pound note. Use it. See how it brings life to the scene.

Have fun.

Fire Up Your Writing Career

One of the biggest challenges in dealing with career problems as a writer is focusing your writer’s  mind – dealing with issues such as procrastination and self-sabotage, and staying creative.

Here’s one psychological test that is as profound in its message as it is simple to do.

It reveals our hidden values – what we think important in life. Many people unwittingly run their lives according to values they’ve taken on without thinking – for example from parents, influential leaders, society or even adverts and other media.

To find out what’s driving you, try this:

1. Write down a bullet-point list of what’s important to you in life.

Single words, like “happiness”, “friends” or “food” – or at most two or three word phrases. Write down as many as you can think of. If you run out, keep searching, there will be more values hiding in your unconscious mind. Tease them out.

2. When you’ve covered everything that is important, you may have already learned a few things about yourself.

Now look deeper: at the number, range, variety, focus. Look also for conflicts between your values.

3. Not all these values are equally “valuable”.

Number the values – but not according to how you’d like things to be but how you act in real life.

In other words, you might like to think your primary value is “generosity” – but if you actually spend most of your time and effort on the value of “obeying my boss” then that’s where you put your 1.

Continue to number all your values according to how you normally use your time, money and energy, until you’ve finished the list.

4. Now look at what you’ve discovered.

Are you surprised – or has it revealed something you suspected deep down but never acknowledged?

Of course, nothing is final.

This information can help you change. You can focus on different values, make different decisions.

It’s not hocus pocus – it’s a very simple and direct tool that you can use to refocus your life and work.

Try it.

There are many simple, yet strong and practical, psychological tools that creative artists can use to deal with all kinds of problems. If you feel you need to focus your energies, deal with inner conflicts, use your talents more effectively, or simply gain insight into the characters in your scripts, then this is a taster of my two-day workshop – The Mental Game for Writing Success.

I’ve run it now for hundreds of writers, directors, actors and other creative artists, with dramatic effects. Many have emailed me later to say that they finally finished that script they’d been stuck on for years, sold that series that they couldn’t finish, made that career move they were putting off.

Click here for details.

Four simple steps for writing a gripping treatment

Do you find it difficult to structure a treatment so that it grips the reader as strongly as the full script? Join the club.

Borgen

I don’t think any writer enjoys distilling their exquisitely crafted scripts down to just a few paragraphs, but there are some techniques that can help you get the essential shape, flow, style, emotional intensity and personal voice that you need.

Today’s tip comes courtesy of the great Randy Ingermanson who uses it in his Snowflake Method for writing novels.

Three Disasters and an Ending

Disaster One – At the end of the first paragraph, a disaster hits the protagonist and forces her to make a crucial decision – to fight for her goal.

Disaster Two – End of para 2, another disaster forces her to rethink, regroup and learn.

Disaster Three – Three paragraphs in, things are getting seriously grim, the third disaster forces her to face the final denouement or else.

Ending – Kind of speaks for itself. She wins, she loses, she wins a bit and loses a bit… your choice.

There are variations.

For example one disaster could take place shortly after the start (or even flash back to before the start!) leaving room for more thoughtful middle.

Each paragraph could be two paragraphs, or three, or a page.

And of course, you need to make adjustments if you’re writing in 2 Acts, 7 Acts, or No Acts, TV drama series or sitcom!

But the basic shape will build you a strong structure, whether you are writing straight to DVD or arthouse drama, cinema or TV – Enter The Dragon or Amour, Django Unchained or Hamlet, Lincoln or All About My Mother, Juno, Shameless, Borgen or The New Normal..

You can read more in Randy’s excellent book Writing Fiction For Dummies.

Which leaves flow, style, intensity, unusual structures and personal voice – but those are for another day.

We go into all this and more in my own Exciting Treatment workshops – there’s one coming up very soon  in London on February 16th. If you’re interested, I’d love to see you, but you’ll need to be quick. Places are filling up fast.

Exciting Treatments – London – February 16th

Treatment writing tip: It’s not how much, it’s how little!

OK, let’s face it, it can be tough writing a good treatment, cramming all the important events in a 99-120 page screenplay into a fraction of that length.

But the point of a treatment is to get someone to read the script. That’s all.

So take this maxim to heart:

It’s not a matter of how much you need to write in order to get them to read the script but how little!

Focus your efforts on the minimum essential to hook your reader.

That means the high points, the main dramatic question, the emotional journey, a few stand-out moments.. and finish.

Like a good trailer, a successful treatment gives the essence of the film (or TV drama or series) in broad but evocative brush strokes.

Leave them wanting more.

More on writing powerful, effective treatments

3 Ways to Make Sure Your Script Stands Out

Despite what most writers think, most scripts fail to sell not because they are too different, but because they are not different enough.

Many writers, including advanced writers, believe that their cinema or TV script is not selling because it’s too different, doesn’t fit the norm. Some will criticise producers and agents for not appreciating their ideas and wanting stories that are just like all the rest.

In fact, producers and agents usually read far more scripts than the average writer and have a far more extensive knowledge of what’s being made, and what has been made in the past.

They know what different is – and most scripts aren’t it.

If you want to sell your script:

1. Read voraciously. Become expert in all the films and TV programmes in the same genre as yours. The greatest writers and film-makers aren’t average. Their knowledge of film and TV is encyclopaedic.

Seek out websites where you can read produced scripts and unproduced scripts. Read the trades and other industry websites with up-to-date industry news.

2. Amplify your differences. Make sure you know what’s different about your project and that the differences show clearly.

Go back over your script – how is it special, what’s different about the story, characters, story world or approach and how can you make more of these differences both in the script and (essentially) in your one-line pitch?

3. Add something special. Now look again. Can you find new ways to differentiate your story and make it even more special? Many great scripts are at heart familiar stories with a new twist – unusual lovers, unusual detectives, unusual settings.

Examine every aspect. Is the structure predictable? Are the characters exactly as you’d expect? Would a different location lift the story to a new level? Take nothing for granted.

Being different is just one of the five key tests that any script must pass before it can jump the very first hurdles.

Need some help selling your script? Click here…

New Year’s Resolution: Break a Rule

I’m a great believer in resolutions – New Year and otherwise. Even if they only last a few days as a rule, then at least that’s a few days that I’ve worked differently, gone to the gym, whatever… And there’s no rule to stop me remaking the resolution a week later.

And if you want your resolution to stick, two of the most powerful ways are to be specific and to share it – apparently researchers have shown that the likelihood of achieving any goal goes from 20% to 40% if you are clear and specific (especially if you give it a number – eg: rather than “I’m going to write more” make it “I’m going to write 4 pages a week.”)

If you share your resolution the likelihood of achieving it rises further from 40% to 85%.

So here’s my resolution: Every day I’m going to break one of my rules.

It may be a small rule or a big one. A rule I created for myself or one I’ve learned from someone else. So far, day 7, I’m well on target. Over seven rules broken. And looking forward to breaking many more.

So – what’s yours?