Lesson 2 05/03/13

Character

Characters are the most important things in a story, and are vital to any successful screenplay. Often, characters in a story become more memorable than the actual plot. For example  virtually any character from Star Wars is more likely to be known than the plot of any of the movies.

Without characters in a story, the reader is left in the dark. There is no-one for them to identify with, no conflict, no emotion and non dialogue. Simply put, without characters there is no story.

When introducing a character in a script, you would usually say 3 words about them. This gives a good overview of the character but a much better way of giving a character life is to encapsulate their persona in a sentence.For example:

JIM, tall, muscular, square jaw.

Or a better way:

JIM, looks like he punches walls for fun.

The second sentence gives a good description of the character but doesn't give much about them away, this leaves room for development of that character. 

Characters often develop throughout a screen play, often through things that happen to them and some experiences they may encounter. Development often happens through the characters body language  interaction with other characters, and how other characters may react to them. These things happen during the script and develop the character over time.