You Gotta Have Great Characters

MY SCREENPLAY: Writing the Beast, Part 4

Characters. It’s a story about a guy who…

You need people to tell a story. And you need to be comfortable with your characters. This is tough for me. I like people. I like nice people. It’s hard for me to write about bad people because it gets my blood boiling. But every good story needs a equally worthy opponent.

As my story evolved, the bad guy (I don’t like him and there’s a woman I don’t like either) got even badder. And that’s good for a story.

I wanted my hero to be a likeable guy, not necessarily a great guy, but someone I’d want to root for. I want a hero to eventually “win” or “get the girl” or “save the planet” but I want him to suffer for it. Isn’t that a character worth following for two hours?

I like quirky characters too. These are people who aren’t necessarily in my personal circle of friends but they’re interesting to watch from afar. The kind of people my friends have as friends. Colorful characters, someone with a tic or a flaw that is interesting.

In-your-face characters fascinate me. The kind you can’t ignore. Like a car accident, you don’t want to look but you can’t help it. I want to know what they will do next. I’m curious how the minds of weird characters work. This is a stretch since I consider myself reasonably boring in nature.

Most writers I know construct characters out of thin air. Truthfully, characters are often a composite of multiple people. One of my characters was based on someone I saw on a train years ago. There was something about the way he walked on and off the train that caught my eye. I wrote a quick sketch and stuffed it in my folder.

Character study is a fascinating education for a writer. Some characters are serious sorts, some funny (some without trying), some negative or whiny, some domineering, some complacent – much like regular people.

My friends always ask if I am writing about them.

I tell them honestly, no I am not. But they remain guarded whenever I pull out a notebook. A friend said if she ever read about someone who fingers a mole above her ear when she gets nervous she’s expecting some recompense.

My characters tend be be drawn from “locals”, guys and girls who hail from surrounding Boston neighborhoods. There is a richness and authenticity to them only because I know them so well.

And then there’s the character who stays with you long after the story ends. The one you talk about with your friends years have the movie has left the theater. I can only aspire to create characters like Charlie (Tom Cruise) and Raymond Babbit (Dustin Hoffman) from Rainman, as an example.