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A director friend of mine likes to refer to poorly written characters in scripts as being unrecognizable human beings. It's a good way to describe those weak, uninteresting parts that appear in so many screenplays.
I like to say that characters need shadings and contours. But usually you can't nail these things down until you've spent some time with your characters. You know, like sixty or seventy pages.
Some characters you capture from their first introduction. You just get them right. Other aren't so easy.
If you're having trouble maybe you need to apply the 3 Cs of characterization:
Cardboard...Cliche...Caricature.
You know what these words mean. You've seen movies filled with characters that are one, two or all of these things. When you saw these characters you winced. Screenwriters wince harder and take films more seriously than regular moviegoers. Why? Because we're writing scripts that we'd like to sell and see get made and we spend lots of time trying to create flesh and blood characters with depth, shadings and contours. So when we see some paper thin, trite character it bothers us.
It bothers me. Does it bother you? It should. Just as it should concern you if you're writing weak characters like the ones you hate.
If you need help, consider those 3 Cs. |
