![]() Tools like the “Enneagram” can be helpful in getting to the heart of who they are and why they are that way. What you really want to understand is their psychology. But it can’t hurt to go pretty deep into imagining their childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and key relationships and experiences that have shaped them. What makes them unique as individuals? What drives them? What do they need? How are they flawed?Īgain we’re not looking for random details like their favorite color, and you don’t necessarily need to write bios that track every event of their lives. This includes back story but goes deeper into their personalities, wants and feelings. But what you’re telling them (ideally showing, not telling) has to be complete enough that they get it and have an easy time buying in. You as the author probably need to know ten times as much as what you’re telling them, about this and everything else. What happened that caused all of this? That needs to seem clear and believable. This especially matters if you’ve created a world with fantastical or futuristic elements, where the audience needs to get up to speed quickly on how and why this world is the way it is, and how it’s different from our own. You don’t need irrelevant minor details, but you do need to know why the key players are the way they are and what happened that caused the various conflicts and issues you’ll be centering on. My answer is this: those events and dynamics that have shaped the characters and situations into whatever you’re going to be focusing on as central story problem. The question is how much do you need to know. Most writers understand that they need to have some sense of what happened before what’s on the page. So let’s talk about what that should include… They haven’t thought beyond that, because they didn’t realize they needed to.īut here’s the thing: the best scripts ring with authenticity and confidence because the writer knows far more than what’s explicit on the page, and somehow that informs what is on the page. And they’ll answer by referring to a particular scene or moment in the script that addresses that in some way.Īnd I’ll say, “I’m not asking about what’s currently on the page, or what you’d tell the audience, but the deeper reality beyond that.” And often, they won’t have an answer, because the extent of what they know about their story world is basically all in the script. I’ll ask some question about the people and events in their material - the underlying situations and motivations beyond what’s on the page. And it’s something that comes up all the time in the work I do with writers. I think I first got this from Robert McKee in his book Story. What’s in your script should just be the very tip of the iceberg of what you know about your characters and situations.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |