Know your characters inside and out.

Nobody is gonna know your characters better than you. You, after all, created them! Only you can know what they are meant to do and how they are meant to make an audience feel. There is no point asking the script developer or whoever is reading it for you  - only you can answer the questions that are at the heart of you characters and if you can’t….. then you’ve got problems.

 Its hard, believe me I know!! But if you can’t answer the questions as to what makes your main characters tick - why they make the choices they do, why they feel the way they do, then it will show up on screen and your audience will know that you have created two dimensional characters and will refuse to believe in them. That is the key, the holy grail of screenwriting to make your audience believe – and they will – if your characters are good enough, real enough, human enough. They have got to live and breathe to you and then they will live and breathe for the audience too.

So it is no good asking me what I think should happen at the end of a script – only you, the writer can answer that. JK Rowling apparently has notebooks filled with alternate endings,  details, life and all the stuff in between for her famous Harry Potter characters. Some things you need to know about your main characters –

What is their favourite food?

Who is their best friend  - Why?

What do they do in their spare time?

Why did they marry their wife or husband?

What is their favourite film?

What is their biggest fear?

This stuff will not necessarily make it into your script but if you know it, you will know them and that will come across in your writing. You need to know what it is like to walk in the shoes of your character. What is their ultimate need, does it clash against what they want? And how are they going to get it?

 It’s the simple questions in life that are sometimes the hardest– so ask your character what it is they really want from his/ her life and how are they going to get and what are the obstacles standing in their way? And don’t ask the script consultant – only you can answer these ones!!

 

Good luck!

 

		Script Smart	info@scriptsmart.co.uk
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