An essential step in the script writing process

I often wonder why so many playwrights and screenwriters--both beginners and experienced--don't consider pre-writing exploratory work more essential in their creative process.  I know that I harp on this a lot on this blog and certainly to my students in my MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen.  But I am continually amazed by the number of writers I consistently come in contact with who don't have a tried and true method of initial exploration of their characters and other aspects of their story before tackling their first draft.

Is it simply impatience trumping common sense?  Is it a belief that the writer has such innate talent and genius that he or she can just make up a brilliant script as that draft is written?  Or that the backstory is so closely based on the writer's own life experience that there's no need to spend any time upfront exploring it?  Or that these kind of "discoveries"--including what the story is ultimately communicating to the audience--are best left to be surprises that pop out of the writing of that draft?  Or that if thorough pre-writing work is undertaken the sense of adventure of actually writing pages of script somehow vanishes or is reduced to drudgery?

What I do know is that when writers are introduced to a method of thoroughly exploring a story's backstory before plunging into draft, a whole new world opens up for them in terms of their own creative process.  Suddenly characters become more alive and begin to breathe.  Subtext takes on a power the writer hasn't experienced before.  The story being developed opens up and the characters themselves begin to dictate action and behavior to a much greater degree, and as a result true and genuine surprises present themselves.  The writing of the draft becomes much more an experience of writing from the inside out instead of from the outside in.

Because stage and screen stories are about people taking journeys from one place to another and the changes that those people undergo in the process and the discoveries they make about themselves and their world, it only stands to reason that the writers of these stories need to know who their characters are in the most thorough possible way as they walk up to the starting line of the tale they are about to enter.  It's the only sure way that the writer can hope to produce a script that has power and any real legs.

There are a number of useful exercises out there that lead the writer into this pre-writing discovery phase.  Several are laid out in my book The Playwright's Process, where the emphasis is on character exploration, both in terms of straight forward and detailed biography and deeper, emotionally rich backstory events in a character's life that have shaped who they are up to the start of the story the script is going to embrace.  I suggest you try some of these explorations or others with the same focus if you haven't already.  I have little doubt that your writing process will be greatly enriched, taking on a new sense of adventure, and that your work takes on a new power and depth.

                                    *                    *                   *                   *

I'm the Program Director of the low-residency MFA in Writing for Stage and Screen being offered by the New Hampshire Institute of Art.  We are currently accepting applications for entering the program at our June 2014 summer residency.  I'm also a playwright and screenwriter, producing partner in my production company Either/Or Films (The Sensation of Sight and Only Daughter), and a professional script consultant.    

When a script doesn't do its job

The other night some friends and I watched writer/director Rahmin Bahrani's 2012 film At Any Price, an official selection at the Toronto, Venice, and Telluride film festivals and starring Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron.  The story centers on a farmer in the Midwest who is involved in somewhat shady dealings wtth GMO seed sales and the big companies supplying them.  It's also a father/son story with the boy not wanting to follow in his father's footsteps as a farmer and instead become a race car driver.  As stories go, there are many twists and turns, but the movie ultimately doesn't work.

So why is this worth writing about?  Because it is an excellent example of what not to do with a screenplay.  And as Edward Albee, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, once told me, sometimes you can learn a lot by studying why a project doesn't lift off.

Developing great characters, Part 9: personality and sense of self

     Continuing my ongoing series on initial character exploration, here are a couple more aspects to consider when looking at what I’m calling your character’s internal world.

    

personality

     Starting with the obvious, it's useful upfront to determine a general indication of personality type.  Is your character an extrovert, outgoing, and naturally friendly?  Or just the opposite?  If he or she is somewhere in between, where in between? 

Think about the character's basic attitude toward life.  Is it upbeat, generally positive and optimistic or is there a tendency to wallow in gloominess, negativity, and depression?  Does he see the bright side of things and look at problems as opportunities or just the reverse?  Does your character tend to see only the good side of people and give others the benefit of the doubt or, rather, to be judgmental and critical?  Does he get angry easily or generally keep his cool?  Is she fun to have around or, more often than not, a pain to spend time with? 

     Of course most people fall somewhere in between these extremes.  However, successful characters often push the limits in at least some areas, and this is generally always true for central characters.  That's what makes them interesting and alive. It's what helps to propel them through the story and create the dramatic sparks that ignite scenes.  So in this initial pinning-down process, I suggest you make a conscious effort to give your characters personalities that make a definite statement one way or another.

     sense of self

     Another significant early choice is to determine the degree to which your characters generally like themselves.  There are a number of important self-esteem related questions you need to ask, such as:  are your characters comfortable with who they are?  Are they at peace with themselves?  Do they enjoy being alone?  How self-confident are they?  Where do they fall on the self-esteem curve?  Do they feel superior or inferior to others?  Are they riddled with self-doubts or do they have an inflated opinion of themselves?  Are they burdened with feelings of guilt?  Do they like how they look in the mirror?    

     All interesting characters are struggling in some way with their own sense of self.  In fact, most great scripts are, in some way, dealing with this struggle. Let’s look at three of the greatest American plays for example, all of which later became successful films.  In Death of a Salesman Willy Loman pushes himself to despair as he progressively loses his self-confidence and self-respect.  We watch a man who increasingly is unable to live with himself.  In The Crucible John Proctor is ultimately driven to accepting death in order to restore his self-respect. And in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Martha finally admits she's afraid and needs to embrace herself honestly for the first time in her adult life.  You don't stand a chance of writing a play or screenplay that will be truly alive if at least your main central character isn't at war with himself or herself in some way.

     Next:  A look at sexuality and spiritual life 

Developing great characters, Part 8: The internal world

     Another critical part of early exploration work is making an initial probe into your characters' psychological and spiritual makeup.  In other words, to begin to view them from the inside out, pondering what's going on inside their heads and hearts. When it comes to writing good, truthful dialogue for these people, you’ll need to merge with each of them, to feel comfortable living inside them.  You’ll need to be able, ultimately, to formulate and verbalize their every thought, presenting in words and actions their unique intellectual and emotional worlds.

     My next few posts will hit on various aspects of a character’s internal world that are worth considering early on.

Developing great characters, Part 7: Leisure time

     Ah yes… leisure time.  Or extra time.  Blogging time.  Something I haven’t been able to find for many weeks now.  Hence my absence from this blog as I’ve been working on getting my film company’s three active projects up and running.  Still at it, but I also want to keep this blog from going into a deep freeze.

 

So here’s my next musing on character development:

     Another important angle from which to view a character's relationship to his or her external world (see my previous posts in this series) is to look at how and with whom the character spends his or her leisure time.  Although occupation will often influence leisure time activity, this is the one area where a person, at least to some extent, has the freedom to choose what he or she wants to do.  As a result, you have the opportunity here to make choices that will truly individualize your characters.

Developing great characters, Part 6: Place in community

  

Continuing with my series of posts on character exploration and development, let's take a look at how the external world outside of a character's immediate family circumstances--namely their place in the larger community they find themselves in--is worth pondering early on.

I realize that a lot of this is pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many writers I work with have never taken the time to think about or invent these key character “facts”—info that can often loom large as your writing process unfolds.

Developing great characters, Part 5 – Your characters’ external world

Continuing my series of posts on character exploration and development: 

Placing your characters into their own unique social contexts--the external life circumstances your people have lived through and are currently involved in—is essential.   By doing so, you'll start seriously to dig into their lives and begin asking some critical questions about the forces that have shaped them and that continue to influence how they think and act.  Every person has a definite set of social circumstances that has helped define who he or she is.  I suggest you need to have a pretty good idea of what these are for each of your people.

For starters, make some choices about each character's own blood family circumstances.  There are a whole set of crucial questions you need to think about:

Developing great characters, Part 4 – Putting them in front of you

     Continuing my series on character exploration: 

     I find that the more complete a visual picture I can create of my characters, the more they come to life for me.  Although I don't usually write for specific actors, I do try to see real people in my mind's eye, most often totally fictional, but nevertheless real--as people often appear in my dreams. I'm talking here about actual physical appearance--height, weight, hair and eye color, skin tone, posture, grooming, attractiveness, sex appeal, degree of ruggedness or refinement, clothes choices, and so on. 

     Here’s a simple exercise that might help open the floodgates.

Developing great characters, Part 3 – physical characteristics

            Continuing with this series of posts on character development and exploration, I’m going to walk you through the various aspects of what I call the short-form biography, beginning with your characters’ physical characteristics. I acknowledge a debt here to Lajos Egri who first presented this basic approach in his all-time best-selling book The Art of Dramatic Writing, first published way back in 1941 (and still in print).  The short-form biography is adapted from and an expansion of the three-part character breakdown Egri calls "the bone structure" of character.

     I should also mention upfront that as we take a closer look at the various elements making up the short-form bio, keep in mind this early character work is just that:  a starting point.  As you explore your people more fully and get to know them intimately, these initial sketches will most likely have to be adjusted to fit the fuller personalities you uncover.  And as your idea is developed and refined, your people may very well have to change to fit into what your script is becoming.  For now, however, the important thing is to get the exploration started.

Developing great characters, Part 2 – the short-form biography

     Here’s the second installment in a series of posts I’m doing on character development/exploration:

Once you’ve formulated a workable idea for a script—a framework for your story, a point of reference, a strategy for the tale’s telling—it’s time to expand it into a bigger and richer dramatic field, to dig deeper into the possibilities you've sketched out and discover what you really have to work with.

Developing great characters: the heart of scriptwriting, Part I

     One of the most critical phases in the writing of a first-class script is the upfront character exploration work that is done before a draft is tackled. Different writers approach this in different ways.  Some do extensive work and others very little if any at all.  In my next several blog posts I’m going to lay out an approach I’ve developed in my own writing and that I’ve “field tested” and refined with hundreds of scriptwriting students and clients over the years.

     So, starting at the beginning:

     What’s in a name?