Character development in screenwriting
Okay, so previously I touched on antagonist and protagonist in my discussion on 3 Big Firsts Your Script Needs, so we may as well stay with character. I want to discuss 5 Elements of Writing Characters that I think are important for novice writers to consider.
Now, this is a personal conviction rather than a hard rule, but when a film isn’t engaging, I find it is more often than not down to a lack of character engagement and authenticity. Before the writing gurus out there lose their shit, I’m not saying it’s only about character.
I’ll admit plenty of films fail for other reasons too. Premise, structure and pace can each sink an otherwise good movie. Look at the theatrical release of Blade Runner (1982). There is a terrific character at the centre of it, yet the pacing and structure were off enough to leave audiences cold the first time round.
So character isn’t the only thing. But it is the thing I think is most often neglected. It takes a lot of hard work to create great characters, so new writers will tend to write sequences of spectacular or exciting events, thinking this will fill the gap. It too often does not.
As a writer, you will experience moments of synchronicity, when the stars, your writing and boundless creativity are all aligned, and a great character seems to evolve on the page. When it happens, it’s great, but these moments are few and far between.
In between those moments of divine inspiration, it’s about rolling up your sleeves and getting down to the graft of creating a character your audience can engage with.
Here are some things you might want to think about when developing your characters. You may have heard some of these terms already, but I think they are worth mentioning again because they really are great tools for building great characters.
Flaws
It is useful here to think about your character’s psychological flaw. Are they stubborn? Naïve? Arrogant? A psychopath?
A character’s psychological flaw will inform their behaviour. The way they treat other people will be rooted in their psychological flaw. This is also why their flaw can be an obstacle to them achieving their goal.
Think about how your character’s flaw works in your story. So, for example, if your character is arrogant or superior, it might serve them well in their job but will be a big problem in their interactions with other people and make them unpopular or even shunned. How much would they care when their focus is firmly on continuing their meteoric rise up the corporate ladder?
Yes, we all know that people are more complex than this, but let’s remember we are constructing a character here. So, start with one brick at a time. The key psychological flaw will be the dominant flaw, with a few other secondary flaws developing later.
Present them with a challenge, like their ordered existence being upended by the arrival of an unwanted, chaotic sibling or house guest who has been kicked out by their partner. What if the only way our protagonist can get rid of this unwanted guest is by helping them rebuild their relationship with their partner? Suddenly, our protagonist has to learn to communicate with people in a way that makes them more amenable to helping them achieve their new goal.
It is through the challenge this presents, and learning to interact with people, that the character might fix their flaws and finally achieve their goal or even revise their goal. If you make your character’s flaw the fact that they are a psychopath, then lumber them with the same flatmate and challenge, this is very likely comedy gold, if you write it well. You’re welcome!
Goal
What is the thing your character pursues relentlessly? Your characters should have goals, and you, as the writer, need to know what these are when you put words on the page. Goals are important because without knowing what a character wants, you are missing a key element in the engine of your story. The result can be your story sputtering along unevenly or even stalling. See what I did there with the whole engine analogy thing?
Giving your characters clear goals forces them to make choices that create challenges in pursuit of what they want. The pursuit of a goal is the motivation that propels your character forward, making them active rather than passive.
In short, every character should have goals, and you as the writer need to be clear as to what your protagonist’s overall goal is the moment they appear on the page, even if we, the audience, do not discover their goal until a little later.
Characters need goals because these will force them to make choices when they are presented with obstacles to their most immediate goal, which is a stepping stone to their larger, overall goal. And don’t forget that the choices your characters make will be largely influenced by their psychological flaw.
Moral World View
Think about what your character values above all other things. This should be something specific to your narrative rather than some tangential or vague notion. It should also tie in completely with the story you want to tell.
For example, if your narrative is about the embittered relationship between two brothers who find themselves on opposing sides, it might be useful to make one brother value ‘loyalty’ above all else, while the other may value ‘justice’ above all else. What each brother values will inform their moral worldview, inevitably creating conflict.
Now these are arguably both good things to value, right? But if you push any ‘good’ value to the extreme, it can become something else. For example, loyalty is a great thing to expect from people in your friendship group, but pushed to the extreme, loyalty becomes fealty, the need for everyone to obey you without question. The same with justice, which could easily become vengeance or tyranny. Placed in this narrative, you can probably already see the conflict that will arise when these two brothers meet.
Choose a moral worldview that works for your character arc, one that will help propel your narrative forward: Love, Loyalty, Wealth, Power, Health. It helps if you can sum it up in a single word. This exercise forces you to focus this element down to its purest essence.
Need
The need is the thing that will make your character a better person and will often improve their circumstances. Few characters are aware of their need at the beginning of the story. It is generally a moment near the end of the narrative when they realise, ‘Hey, when I’m not a douche, people actually like me. Maybe I should be less douche-like’.
The need is something they realise in their moment of self-revelation, a moment that tends to happen near the end of the story. Or sometimes, it is not so much a self-revelation but a reveal, where we, the audience, learn that a character knew their need all along but hid this knowledge from everyone else. Sneaky.
In achieving self-revelation, your character goes through a transformation, achieving a new sense of being or a new way of behaving or seeing the world. This is the result of the character arc, the emotional journey the character has taken to arrive at this moment, the end of the story.
Going forward, they will now incorporate what they have learned into how they interact with others and the world. And here is generally where we leave them.
The Circle of Being
I like using what the late Syd Field referred to as the ‘Circle of Being’. This is where you mine your character’s past, digging into their backstory for ‘the roots’ of what drives them forward.
The influence of traumatic pasts can conceivably affect the entire course of the story. After all, this event could be what forms your character’s experience, that which moulds and shapes the fabric of who they are and how they see the world.
Just like real people, characters behave differently in the different spheres of their life. In the public sphere, a character may put on the mask that everyone expects to see, a mask that hides who he or she really is. Drama arises when the mask begins to slip or is deliberately discarded or forcibly removed.
Insight comes when the audience observes the character in the private sphere, where they are not being watched and where the mask will slip, and they are likely to reveal their true selves.
It can help to think of it this way. The Public World is where the character’s ‘physical’ life takes place. The Private World is where their ’emotional’ life unfolds. The public world is the world in which your character projects how they wish to be seen rather than who they really are.
For most characters, the change in their fate, for good or ill, occurs when the private impacts on the public and threatens to ruin everything they have built or brings down the character who is exposed altogether.
All of this not only has to be in mind when developing your protagonist but also the antagonist. Not spending the time to develop a great antagonist will, in the end, undermine your protagonist.
If you simply have an antagonist who wants to take over the world for the sake of taking over the world, what you end up with is a two-dimensional character with all the engagement of a toadstool. You don’t want that. Nobody wants that, believe me.
The conflict between protagonist and antagonist is the essential heartbeat of your script. This conflict is the engine that powers your protagonist’s story arc and your narrative. So put the work in. Develop your characters properly, starting with the things mentioned above and building on them. Happy writing!