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How To Introduce A Character In A Screenplay - Naomi Beaty
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ส.ค. 2024
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In this Film Courage video interview, Writer, Screenwriting Teacher and Consultant Naomi Beaty on How To Introduce A Character In A Screenplay. To watch the video referenced in this interview, please see this link: • How To Write A Better ...
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#writing #screenwriting #screenplay
I think a great example of a movie that perfectly encapsulates this kind of character introduction is Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.
A lot of thought I think needs to go into introductions of characters. Every story has to open with a major shift in the character's life. Whether they're in danger, or they have to make a decision that will immediately affect their condition. For instance, let's say the main character awakens expecting to find his mate next to him in bed. Instead they see that they're alone and the front door is wide open. How they react to that moment will say a lot about the character. Will they freak out and start whimpering out of fear? Or will they pick up their phone and immediately try to reach their mate? We can learn a lot about a character in those first few minutes of a film.
His mate? Are you human
I'm a novelist, here to learn the essence of storytelling and not the details of screenwriting. So my comments are (mostly) based on that.
I agree with what Naomi said about giving the essence of a character (rather than a physical description) for a screenplay. For example in _Romancing the Stone_ Joan Wilder's description might be "mousey, hesitant, introverted, and avoids adventure."
I used to use minimal description for the characters in my stories, unless there was some detail necessary to the plot. Shaelin (ShaelinWrites & Reedsy) once said that when reading, she requires at least some description or she cannot picture the character, and they might as well be a talking bear. So I went through my WIP (work-in-progress) and added descriptions for everyone.
I've always had a description for both hero and heroine of my WIP. At the very end of the opening scene (hero's POV) I introduce the heroine's best friend, who had no description before I listened to Shaelin. At the scene break we switch to the heroine's POV before the hero really gets a good look at the friend. But the heroine is not going to do a good job of describing someone she's seen a hundred times. If the friend has a cute new haircut or a new pair of shoes, then the heroine will comment on that. So I held back the POV shift until the hero sees her and comments in his narration. "Little Red Feather" is the name of the heroine, and in the 3rd paragraph of the opening scene the hero guesses that she "couldn’t have been more than seventeen."
*Horse and rider came into view and I relaxed. It was a girl. She appeared younger than Little Red Feather, with bobbed hair framing a round face, and fleshy arms poking out the sleeves of an oversized Blackfeet Nation tee-shirt.*
*“That’s Crystal Spotted-Calf,” my beautiful Indian girl said.*
Minimal description for Crystal, but so far it's worked for my critique partners. I gave her "bobbed hair" to bust the cliche that all Indians have braided hair. The only thing critical to the plot is her age, which is hinted at here. Toward the end of scene 2 the heroine reveals that Crystal is 15.
Descriptions for anything is more challenging in a first-person narrative--things only get described if the character cares to describe them. My hero really needs to be written in first-person, but when I wrote my villain in first, readers became confused. After a bit of experimentation I decided to try a hybrid approach: hero and heroine get first-person in their POV scenes, other characters get third-person when they have POV. We'll see what the agents say.
Chapter 2 introduces my villain:
*Dustin Holt sat in the sandwich shop, wrapped in his man-shape. Fourteen months ago he had been a man. He was twenty-eight then, an Iraqi war veteran, husband, and father. Today he was something else. He still looked like his old self-tall, muddy blond hair, neatly-trimmed beard, and brown eyes.*
The only plot-critical bit here is eye color. He's a demon-possessed shape-shifter, but the readers will figure that out soon enough.
Chapter 5 introduces the heroine's mother:
*Work day over, Marilee Gordon stood before her locker in the casino’s changing room. She was Blackfeet and in her early thirties, but her skin and figure suggested younger. She still wore her wedding band, twisting it round and round her finger when nervous.*
Her age is important, as is the fact that she looks young. I got to thinking about what an attractive young female casino employee would go through, and added that bit about her wedding ring (she's widowed). Wearing it is her defense mechanism. I used her habit of twisting the ring in a couple of later chapters. I fiddled with adding hair style, but decided that slowed the paragraph. Besides, she changes her hair style. Also casino employees wear uniforms and I was too lazy to call the casino and ask, "What are you wearing?"
In chapter 7 the villain meets a woman. Desperate for human companionship (being demon possessed makes normal relationships impossible) he decides to talk with her. He's 29, but ignores the age difference. The bartender has just set the quarter-full whiskey bottle on the bar in front of the villain (I wonder if that's even legal in Montana). Description is spread out over several paragraphs:
*A skirt rustled and someone slid onto the barstool next to his, followed by a top-note of jasmine and coconut. “Hey, you a hunter?” a feminine voice asked.*
*He turned. A thirty-something-her red hair permed, perfumed, and poofed just so-eyed his bottle.*
*“What’d ya hunt?” She licked her lower lip.*
*. . .*
*He glanced down at her hand, then up at her face. She had a rancher’s enthusiasm for killing predators. He studied his companion-the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the way her dark roots didn’t match the rest of her hair, and her ring finger, naked and evenly tanned. She’d look mighty fine, if the Thing Within didn’t neutralize the whisky as fast as he could drink it down. “What do you ranch?” He smiled.*
Not much to say about the woman except both she and the villain are lonely. "Top note" is a way to describe perfume, as in the first thing you notice about the bouquet. The villain later describes it as "dime-store perfume."
Many more examples, but that's enough for now.
Instant relatable: Introduce a character in a to most people, easy relatable situation, where they are in a minor exposed state i.e. being cheated by a vending machine.
great interview with good lessons..thanks to FC and teacher
Glad you enjoyed it!
Specificity....a word I've had drilled into me by a professor.
Bring the character in, but it can come later with more exploration in the second scene, that's what I did, but very gently, then enhanced the dialog.
Very helpful. Interesting examples and give me some ideas to use tomorrow
It's going to depend on the Character in question and the purpose served... Not every introduction is a specific protagonist or antagonist in the plot... AND some Characters have roles significant enough to require an introduction, regardless of the role as obstacle, foil, comic relief, or ally to one or the other "side" in a story of obvious conflict...
Remember, as much as the Director OWNS the camera and governs what the audience is allowed to see and know, the Writer CONTROLS the information flow at its base. Some Characters will have an integral role in the "grand reveal" for the plot twist... Other times, there's no twist to speak of... maybe a turning point, but nothing so dramatic as a twist.
AND we're already forearmed with Tropes... Tropes short-cut the excess of information dumped on the reader(s) and audience by striking a first impression based on assumptions. The "archetypal soldier" is GOING to be tough as balls and have a cold-blooded level of nerve... A veteran has been there and done that... SO whether you intro' the Character in fatigues, perhaps leaving some ceremony in dress uniform, or you simply have him wearing a ball-cap with scrambled eggs over the brim and a Duty Station and years printed on it... The audience makes assumptions about the substance of that Character without a lot of words clogging up the time spent...
USE THOSE TROPES to the advantage of the story. Cut out the time you might otherwise have wasted with drunken ramblings, trying to recreate the "Shark Attack story" in Jaws because NOBODY is going to re-do that one like it was... It was a great scene but the actor was nearly black-out drunk at the time and completely off the script... You don't need a bunch of "intro"... if you use the tropes appropriately...
AND to be clear... CLICHES are the tropes that have been "done to death". They're still potential gold, but you've got to be careful not to turn-off more people than you hook with them, and they should be avoided most of the time, occasionally employed PURELY to undermine almost immediately, and can even serve to distract viewers from some other detail so that going back to watch again, they're confronted with "Oh... yeah... it really was like that from the very start, and I DID NOT NOTICE!!!"... This serves up a grand reveal that's actually satisfying, and it can be difficult to find ways to out-think or out-scramble your audience... NOT that you should be working toward those ends as a mainstay... BUT there's more than one way to serve up a satisfying story.
Villains, ESPECIALLY need care taken in their introduction. The truly despicable son of a bitch is an art form in and of itself. Everything has to be calculated so that the intro' of a proper villain is as subtle as it needs to be, to instill the sense of a properly ruthless, violent, or coldly calculated force to reckon with comes through the story to sink DEEPLY AND VISCERALLY into your audience. Otherwise, you might as well just clone Snidely Whiplash and call it a day.
...and roll some good weed in that script, because you'll smoke every page before it sells. ;o)
Serious question:
The screenplays I've been reading seem largely devoid of evocative descriptions. I'm super confused by this.
Consider this photo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture#/media/File:Habitat_67,_southwest_view.jpg
Suppose there is no photo; I'm just trying to describe what's in my imagination. Do I say, "Bill's apartment building is Brutalist"?
Or, "Bill's apartment building is a high-water mark of Brutalist architecture mixed with the bold futurism of the mid twentieth century"?
Or, "Bill's apartment building looks to be where dreams collided with Draconian doctrine; the bare concrete, harsh lines, and precise corners of Brutalism stacked in a disjoint pile of personal habitats where architecture was not the expression of mundane realities of living, but merely one more vehicle used to proselytize ideology"?
Or, "Bill's apartment building looks like building blocks on acid"?
I'm no expert so I'm not trying to tell you anything really. But it sounds like the first couple examples would be in a book but in script it'll just be Bills apartment. And if you are writer and director writing it doesn't really do anything except remind you and maybe have a set photographer could find somewhere and vfx could handle an other problems digitally.
Those all suck. Simplify it as much as possible. I wouldn't want to read your script if I saw that.
@@lmnop7098 That's not an answer. Brutalism is a school, not a blue print. How do I simplify more than stating "Bill's apartment building is Brutalist"? And how do I evoke that dreamlike quality of the image provided instead of something like this: d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net/?resize_to=width&src=https%3A%2F%2Fartsy-media-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2FMQvaqlJCdRpmWxkvuGOiZQ%252FCorbusierhaus_Berlin_B.jpg&width=1200&quality=80 ?
There's a hiking trail not far from me that cuts through a pine forest. On one side, the pines are healthy and Disney-like, on the other they're a half-dead nightmarish sight. "Bill walks through the pine forest" evokes a stock photo image. How would you describe those to evoke the proper mood?
@@tubeyouber97 Yeah, that seems to be the order of the day, which is why I'm confused by the video. LOL. Thanks for the reply ^_^
@@frenstcht Simplify by prioritizing your information. You want a balance between simplicity and specificity. "Bill's apartment is Brutalist" is the framework you got, what you want to say, and you've got to stick to it. The topic of the description is Bill's apartment, not Brutalism. Based on this, I would cross out the third description because it is like a tangent. It muddles the focus with dense description. Hence, I would ignore Brutalism and only focus on the appearance of Brutalist architecture.
Here's my edit: "Bill's apartment building had the bare concrete, harsh lines, and precise corners of Brutalism, stacked in a disjoint pile of flats."
> Or, "Bill's apartment building is a high-water mark of Brutalist architecture mixed with the bold futurism of the mid twentieth century"?
This reads as a textbook, too abstract to be imagined. There's no sensory detail.
> Or, "Bill's apartment building looks like building blocks on acid"?
Too humorous. Not very specific. There's no balance that could make it work. "On acid" is also cliche. I know the description was a joke, but this stuff is still relevant.
How much thought do you put into character introductions?
I'm decent when it comes to introducing the "main" character but still need some work on the "side" characters
I introduce my protagonists with where they are, and mention how their wardrobe is important to the production design.
Enough to get a sense of who they are. A banker will wear a navy-blue, pin-stripe suit with a sharp tie, whereas a ragamuffin will wear coarse, woolen hand-me-downs. Their physical appearance should match their inner sense of self-importance. And that's where you can start to break the rules.
I think the trick is introducing the character in such a way that it touches on the core wound or the characteristics that will become important later in the story when they reach the crisis. Otherwise who cares? Physical descriptions should be used only of they are somehow important to the story, like Naomi says. I try super hard to avoid putting in anything about how good-looking they are, unless their beauty is used as a weapon or factors in to something else. You're writing for a movie. It will feature movie stars. Who are professionally good-looking anyway.
Thanks!
Great.
Great!
I want to know how to describe characters and settings that don’t exist in real world.
Maybe you can use references we all know from the real world. Ex. A magic forest, you may go "the Amazonia but sparkly and mysterious"... Idk if this helps, but that's the way I would do it!
@@MirandaDrago nah that doesnt make sense for the people inside the world..
I sometimes use references to other movies honestly...after all, most screenplays are built around similar stuff because they're inspired by it.
And that is the problem with the new Star Wars trilogy--the main antagonist (Palpatine) wasn't there until the end. Where is the BADDIE? We get confused: Kylo Ren? Snoke? The general of the First Order? Who is the villain that will impact greatly upon the heroine's character's arc by his (the antagonist's) decisions and actions? It must be the main Bad Guy! Through the 3 movies then it was just a series of adventures (and misadventures) for Rey with/against supporting baddies. Look at John Wick: Do we care when he kills a thousand of the assassin-minions? No! The protagonist must play off directly with the antagonist on screen; it may not necessarily be in the physical space but the heroine Rey must know she is dealing with her prime nemesis. Name me a stunning betrayal in these 3 new movies. Compare Luke and his father over 3 movies--we just know the big play is there. "No, I am your FATHER!" was the ultimate betrayal. (For all the goodness and noble ideals that Luke thought he was, he felt betrayed when he knew he came from such evil stock.) And this was only the second movie.
She is super beautiful
That's so useful information.
@@lesalabs she is beautiful. Nothing wrong with noticing that.
I agree in attitude but not belief. I say it all depends on the storyline. And if you are a good Writer you are going to set the storyline up in the first 10 pages, therefore the main character should be immediately introduced after the first 10th page. If in the example given the storyline would dictate who he is. If he is an FBI Agent then he is going to grab his firearm (closeby) and cover his wife's head, saying keep your head down baby. If he is bi-sexual, and the wife don't know it, she might say, honey, go check the door. And he might say, you go! I am not dressed.
The problem with Hollywood is that most Writers in the Guild don't really have an active imagination. They can barely think of one thing to write not knowing it is the hindrance psychologically speaking. Good scriptwriting requires the working of a photogenic individual. I am photographic and photostatic that I use when I write as an eidetic memory without the use of any pneumonic device like the mind mimics taught in the psychology field which I did major in at a private University. Just to let you know that I do have some merits in the terms I use that add to my credits as the most prolific Writer ever to come through Hollywood.
This is why it takes them so long to write a script. They are still using the 'typewriter time standard' back in the day for turning in a script based upon 'Studio housekeeping deals'. But I was taught at Paramount Studios to write a script in 10 days. And that is bc, unlike most, I see all my storylines from start to finish and all I really have to do is the dialogue. I will write a minimum of 10 pages per day.
Day 1 is the storyline i.e. synopsis (1 page) and treatment (1-5 pp.). Day 2 I start (early) writing the script from the treatment. By day 6 I have 140-170 pages. Day 7 I read it. Day 8 I rewrite it down to page standard of 120. Day 9 I read it again. Day 10 I polish it leaving backdoors for another Writer to enhance it without tampering with the storyline.
Using the example given, any decision made re character is simply the choice of the Writer. So there are 10 different things to if 10 Seasoned Writers with imagination made choices. But 10 unimaginative Writers will think of the same things to do separately. You know when a Writer does this to a screenplay bc you predict the next move or even line when it is viewed.