Character: Why Alice had a good adventure

By Darrell J. Banks

Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved

By now you are wondering why I have used an analogy tCarrol'sCarrol's book "Alice in Wonderland". The book is a metaphor for life. Way back Carrol5 Carrol created a story that has survived in print and movies for close to two centuries. You know the story Alice follows the rabbit into the hole and gets the surprise of a lifetiWachowskiachowski brothers used the white rabbit trick in the "Matrix". But back to our subject at hand: character. In the book "Alice" and the movie "The Matrix" each writer moved their characters into and out of peril. In this article we will cover how and why of character development.

When you write a movie you paint a portrait. The actors provide the color and the director shoots the right angles. You need to ensure they want to. Always remember this, a screenplay is a blue print. The actors fill the void of words you sketch on the page. But, unlike a painting, your character must guide the reader and provide insight. Your creation, a human being artificial, but yet alive is a character.Character is the foundation of your screenplay. Upon character you build scenes.

The how of character.

Everyday you interact with human beings you merge in and out of a vast sea of humanity. You get up, use the bathroom, take a shower, dress, drop your kids Neo, and like Neo get stuck in traffic. You arrive late for work, but how did you do that? If you have written the ten negative and positive trends for your protagonist and antagonist then you know what your character will do within a certain environment. How they interact with other characters is based on the formation of personality. Each character has a personality. That personality, the persona you have created, is formed by writing the quirks, the positive and negative traits of your character. This determines and is affects why each character changes.

The why of character development.

You have heard the phrase out of character. Would the "Flash" fly?

Your character, especially the protagonist, should be established in the first fourteen pages of your script. Remember your market. You want to sell to small, medium and large production companies. Remember why movies were designed for the illiterate. They were transformed into a form of entertainment in the thirties. Today's audience is specialized. The major studios target 16- 24-year-old white males. Art houses have set demographic markets. Just like toilet paper, your scripts should be geared tDon't demoI'mphics. Don't cry I'm an artist. Character development is art. The art is in formulating your characters. The how and the why.

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