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Some of us start a new script with a story. Some of us start with a character. Or characters. I'm partial to story. But what I'm equally hungry for is interesting characters. Not necessarily for the lead, but for those quirky small parts that we need to have for dramatic purposes. Bad scripts waste characters. Good scripts make use of every person in the script with a line.
What's difficult is creating a life for a small but crucial part. Sometimes just looking in your own back yard (even if you live in an apartment building) you might find gold.
Case in point: I once lived in an apartment building where there was a porter whose job was basically to remove the trash, sweep, clean and do minor painting. This guy was in his 50s, uneducated, not especially bright, not particularly likeable and he smelled bad. One day there was an announcement from the building management that this guy was retiring after 30 years or so.
That's when the big news spread around the building. Turns out that this guy--who was viewed by most people as kind of pathetic because he had the lowiest job on the building's totem pole--turns out that he's a millionaire.
And he became a millionaire by taking all the returnable bottles that most tenants tossed out to the supermarkets and cashing them in. So he'd save and save and live cheaply and never take vacations and I'm sure somewhere along the way got some safe investment advice and by the time he quit the porter business he'd amassed this fortune.
So the building threw a going away party for him and most people didn't attend because he wasn't that well liked, but a friend in the building did and this guy isn't all that well off himself, but he gave the porter $50. Then I casually told him that the porter was worth more than he.
I still remember the expression on his face.
Now, is the porter a protagonist for some future story? I don't know. Not unless I changed his personality. Or is he a nice little character in something? Perhaps.
I look for these types of situations constantly. It's these peripheral characters that can add some nice seasoning to your scripts. |
