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Screenwriting 102 (Character)

For a truly effective screenplay, you must know your characters backwards and forward. In screenwriting, the moment you begin to imagine character relationships - how your character deals with his parents, his siblings, his coworkers, and all that - you start to explore the world of your story, and suddenly scenes begin to emerge. As you research your character (context, culture, occupation), creating details (attitudes, values, emotions), developing backstory (physiology, sociology, psychology), and establishing personality and behavior, you start putting the character in different situations in your mind, and you begin to imagine him or her in the most mundane and most exciting moments of his life. The courage to deal with the trivial and banalities is something you should develop. Because often the best stories in screenwriting, are made from the most commonplace material, and if you don’t know how your character cooks dinner, does laundry, brushes his teeth, or what his little vexations are, his petty likes and dislikes, a dynamic, a full story will never happen. Frank Daniel, the former chair of the Film Division at Columbia University and past dean of the School of Cinema-Television at USC, echos the point in five simple words: “A story starts with character.” So if character is the key, and stories are only as good as the characters within them, you better create some damn, fine, outstanding characters. The screenwriter should never decide where a character will go next or how a character would react or what a character would say in a given situation. And if you’ve done your homework, really enveloped yourself within the character iceberg, and you know your characters intimately, the rest is easy. The character tells you. All you have to do is listen. In this section, not only will you learn how to create memorable characters through research, development, and psychological methodologies, but you will also begin to understand the character hierarchy, the application of major character roles in film, the importance of the most common archetypes that are used, and you learn how to write much better dialogue: show don’t tell.

Screenwriting 101

Introduction to Screenwriting Just like every car has four wheels and two axles, each screenplay has the same basic structural parts - the nuts and bolts - to make it work. However, there is a huge difference between a two passenger Smart Car and a ‘64 Cobra 289. Both will get you to your final destination, but the ride will be a completely different experience. Screenwriting is like car building. It’s a trade. It uses a very specific format, follows a universal structure, and must meet audience expectations. To do otherwise, is suicide. Imagine the automobile industry installing wheels on the roof of cars. Nobody wants to drive upside down. Screenwriting works the same way. There is a blueprint - structured through acts, sequences, and plot points - that almost every movie follows. This is the science of the screenplay, the dramaturgy, but science is only a part of cinematic story telling. Of course every great screenplay must have a solid structural foundation, but it is also essential to write with an original voice and have a powerful, and hopefully topical, concept with incredibly interesting, flawed, and empathetic characters - and all of this must be in proper screenplay form. To think of The Formula as a recipe to write your great Hollywood script using structure alone would be shortsighted. Structure without character, character without story, story without voice, and voice without form... it simply doesn’t work. The Formula is only as strong as it’s weakest link, so in order for you to be a successful screenwriter, you must achieve all five parts: CHARACTER, STORY, STRUCTURE, VOICE, and FORM. The Formula: Introduction to Screenwriting provides the essential pieces you need to construct a sellable script, regardless of genre. But it is essential to understand that The Formula is never about being formulaic. There is nothing conventional about creating interesting, believable, and unique characters, nor is there any paint-by-number directions to germinate and develop an original story, and even though three act structure has rules to guide you, it’s all very flexible. Nothing is set in stone. So whether this is your first screenplay or you’ve been writing for years, you’ve come the right place. This online version of The Formula: Introduction to Screenwriting, was built as completely searchable resource to guide you through journey of building a screenplay from the beginning, or answer specific questions that might pop up during the development process.