Why Writing Specific ‘Character Moments’ Matters

Like all first impressions, when you introduce an important character for the first time in a screenplay, what they say and do immediately sets up expectations about who they are and what’s troubling them. Which is why it's so important to be specific.

Lana later said:"The fact that she smoked
immediately told me she was a strange one." 

I’m currently working on a rewrite and part of the rewrite process involves writing a new synopsis. This forces me to check whether the way I present characters in the synopsis is actually how they appear on the page in the screenplay. Which is a humbling exercise, to say the least. One of the key ways to establish a character as quickly as possible in the mind of the reader, is to make sure that whatever the character does and says when they first appear, illustrates what makes them specific or intriguing and what might be troubling them. This first impression sets up expectations in the reader’s mind, and raises questions about how the story is going to proceed. It evokes curiosity. Put differently: If the introduction of a character doesn’t raise any questions or suggest any kind of drama, there might be something missing.

Unexceptional Action: The specific behaviour is descriptive

The action itself might be a generic action, such as putting on a shoe or sending an email, in which case the specific way the character performs the action is what illustrates who they are. Take for example the opening of Philomena (screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope), where Philomena (played by Judi Dench) sits in an almost empty church looking at the Madonna and Child. Not particularly exceptional or telling as an action, although the image is a symbolic foreshadowing of the story of Philomena the mother, and her lost child. However, when the priest approaches and addresses Philomena, we instantly know from his words that they know each other and that the priest is concerned about her. We also learn from her evasive answers to his questions that she has a secret. Now the moment has become specific to her. We intuit that this is going to be a story about Philomena’s secret, and it clearly has some connection to the Catholic church.

Exceptional Action: The activity itself is descriptive

Alternatively, the action might be something extraordinary, such as someone catching a fish with their feet or stitching up a gaping wound on an injured lioness. In that case, the action itself tells us something about the character. An example of this might be the character of Eric Lomax (played by Colin Firth) in The Railway Man (screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson), who is introduced during the opening credits as very ordinary looking man lying on his back on the floor of a study reciting a children’s rhyme to himself as a kind of mantra. Not something we all do every day, and suggesting that this ordinary man has something very extraordinary on his mind. When we next meet him he is hurriedly changing trains and telling us in a voice-over about minute details of a railway timetable. Another clue that we are about to embark on a journey with a man with a strange obsession.

Generic vs specific in the rewrite

...and then I realised 'holding a roller skate'
didn't describe what was troubling her.

I used to try as hard as possible to avoid rewriting. I just liked the feeling of finishing a first draft and then starting on my next masterpiece. Big mistake. In fact I’ve come to enjoy rewriting just as much as writing the first draft, because it’s in the rewrite that I really get to know the characters properly. The rewrite feels a lot more like craft, which I guess is an acquired taste (at least it was for me). In the rewrite I have more room to analyse and approach details from a more rational point of view. Whereas an initial draft is more of an intuitive attempt to express the general shape of a story. Once it’s out there on the page, though, I can begin to hone it.

Going back to page one and looking—with the benefit of hindsight—at how I initially introduced my characters might reveal that I’ve gotten to know a character better during the course of writing the screenplay, or that I got them right the first time round. Or that I actually still don’t know the character well enough. Maybe I thought I knew what the main dramatic conflict was for a particular character, but it turns out I need to articulate it more precisely.

So, simply asking myself whether I’ve opened with enough specific ‘character moments’ for a reader to get an adequate first impression of the character, reveals whether I know the character well enough myself.

Don’t Look Up, Don’t Look Down… WTF?!

Had my nose firmly planted in Your Screenplay Sucks which by now one is of my favourite books to dip into during attacks of FDSD (Final Draft Stress Disorder, as described in DSM-IV).

In tip 67 the Akers guy, as he likes to call himself, warns against rewriting while writing. Sure, he says, start your writing session by going over what you wrote the previous day, but whatever you do, don’t go back any further and start tinkering with earlier scenes or, God forbid, the beginning.

Going back will reveal hitherto unseen problems. Going back will jack up your angst. Because your script will be revealed to be inadequate, imperfect, and not Zaillian-esque, going back tends to be monumentally depressing. So depressing that you may just decide it’s better to — give up and start another script. Do not play into this sucker’s game.

Holy pitchforks… when I read this I felt myself blushing and trying to slide unobtrusively under my desk. I confess: I’ve done this. I have abandoned screenplays after twenty pages and started on new ones precisely because I went back and began to doubt the entire premise of the script. I know what this man is talking about. It’s horrible but true!

Then I realized it’s a bit like mountain climbing. (Hey, I’m a screenwriter, I have imagination, remember?) Like, there you are, halfway up Everest, and even though you know in the back of your head that you’ve come a long way and there’s still a long way to go, these are not helpful thoughts right there on the rock face. You look down, you’re going to feel dizzy. You look up… you might let go. So what you need to do is concentrate on what you’re doing right now. The next step, or in the case of a screenplay: the next beat, the next scene.

It’s a thing you hear big-shot screenwriter’s say a lot: Get the first draft finished without thinking too much. (Check out Andrew Stanton’s quote there in the left margin…) And yet, it often feels counter-intuitive, or risky perhaps. What if something I’m writing here isn’t consistent with something that happened ten pages back? What if this scene throws up an unforeseen new twist? And so on. But the simple fact is, that these are often issues you can only deal with once the first draft is there on your desk, in all its ragged and unproducable glory.

Perhaps this should be my New Year’s resolution for 2010: Don’t look up and don’t look down, just get the fuck on with the writing.