So it came to my attention from a reader of the blog that what you really want to know about is stuff about the industry and the craft.

Also, it seems that whenever I’m on a panel or seminar, I’m inevitably asked a question about characters.  How do you come up with characters?  And how do you make your characters interesting?

While there are countless books, panels and seminars about this topic, I can’t think of anything else to blog about, so here goes my two cents worth on this topic:

1)  Characters must be active, not passive.

I can’t tell you how many ideas/treatments I’ve said “no” to because the characters were passive or were just victims.  Please don’t write a screenplay just based on “Look at this really bad thing that happened to someone.”  It’s not that the subject matter may not be worthy of writing about, but oftentimes it’s not very cinematic and is better left as a documentary or book.

To be “cinematic” there must be an active and dynamic character.  For instance, I have often been approached with internment camp stories or Hiroshima stories in which the characters were just passive victims.  For those of you considering these types of topics, I suggest you take a look at one of the most successful movies about the holocaust–“Schnidler’s List.” The protagonist of this story was undoubtedly a proactive character and not a victim.

2)  Characters should be multidimensional.

The best characters are neither completely good nor completely evil.  Get into the minds of your antagonists and give them more dimension.  When I was researching “Letters from Iwo Jima,” I tried to get inside the heads of even my most militant characters and tried to give them some kind of background or motivation.  Here’s an exercise: take the antagonist of the story and see if you can write the story from his/her point of view.  Hmmm, now that I think about it, the whole movie  ”Letters from Iwo Jima” could be considered an antagonist exercise to “Flags of Our Fathers”.

“There Will Be Blood” is a good example of a movie with characters that aren’t black and white and certainly more interesting for their shades of grey.

3)  Characters should have an arc.

This is a screenwriting 101 basic tenet.  The hero goes on a journey, and in the end, he/she is changed because of it.  He/she will learn something and become a better (or worse) person because of it.

4)  Characters should have external and internal motivations.

Oftentimes, beginning screenwriters have a clearly worked out external motivation, but are lacking an internal motivation for their character, and as a result, the character comes out as flat.  An example of an external motivation is something obvious, such as they must stop the bad guy to save the world.  The internal goal is usually harder to work out – to win the heart of their lady love, to overcome a past failure, to find their place in the world, etc.  Good antagonist characters also have internal and external goals.  This goes back to the point about giving your characters dimension.

5)  If your story doesn’t have much action, then your characters need to jump off the page.

I was talking to one of my mentorees about a story which was short on action and involved a lot of heavy, legalese.  In these types of stories, you will have to rely on characters that are larger than life.  The movie “Erin Brokovich” would be a good example.  The movie would have been pretty dull without this dynamic, fireball character.

6)  Surprise me.

Nobody likes predictable characters.  Some of the best characters are those who you think you know everything about and then they do something that surprises you. For instance, when Darth Vader said “Luke, I am your father,” that  was a “woah” moment that suddenly turned him from cliché bad guy to an interesting antagonist.  Same with Rutger Hauer’s character, Roy Batty, in “Blade Runner,” when he puts out his hand to save Rick Deckard.

7)  Freaks with Hearts

Finally, this is not a rule or a guideline, but just an example of interesting characters.  You can write an entire movie based on a concept of what I call “freaks with hearts” (which I just made up now to incorporate this week’s “flavah”).  The protagonist or a central character is a freak (either physically or socially), but in the end, we discover they have the same feelings and emotions just like us.  Some examples include “Edward Scissorhands,” “The Elephant Man,” “E.T.,” “Forrest Gump,” “King Kong,” and even “The Godfather”.   I love these stories/characters.

Addendum:  I forgot to mention another really great tip I learned from an instructor.

8 ) Dialogue

One test of well-written characters is the dialogue test.  You take a line of dialogue and only one of your characters could be speaking it.  For instance, here’s a line from “The Breakfast Club”:  ”Do you know how popular I am? I am so popular. Everybody loves me so much at this school.”  This is an obvious “Claire” line and no other character would say this.

Hope this gives you something to think about when you’re coming up with characters.  Happy writing!