Bad Advice on Character Development!
Boy! Have I seen some bad screenwriting advice about character development on social media recently. Known screenwriting consultants failing to make important category distinctions and putting the cart before the horse. As usual, the names have been omitted to protect the guilty. Don't worry writers, I've got your back.
Do NOT interview your characters to figure out who they are.
Do NOT borrow characters from other films.
Do NOT write pages and pages of detailed biography - I did that when I started out, pointless.
You're right, I'm not that guy. Go ahead do all of the above if you enjoy doing this, but I want you to know something. This is tinkering on the periphery. This is not character development. When you watched Joker were you emotionally and intellectually drawn into the story because, 1. you wanted to witness what this alienated man said and did in response to being at the mercy of a toxic society or, 2. because of the painfully thin form of Arthur Fleck? There's no doubt that Joaquin Phoenix's dramatic body transformation created a potent impression that suggested his alienated and damaged inner world; a brilliant choice made by Todd Phillips, but if I was forced to prioritise the order of importance of 1 and 2 -and yes as a screenwriter/director I must think through this critically- it would be 1 first and 2 second. So how did I come up with this order of information? So here it is...the fundamental shizzle you need to know about character work...
... drum roll please...
Character is what someone says and does. Story is what a character says and does. So story is character and character is story. You with me? In other words you only know who the character is by what they say -and more importantly- what they do. You only know what the story and character is when you have character in a context saying and doing stuff. So, any exercise that encourages you to look at a character in separation and isolation from the story; like interviewing your character, writing a whole life biography or borrowing characters from other films neither serves the character nor story. This is working in a story vacuum. Make sense?Once you know your character -because of what they say and do in the world and dilemma's you've created- feel free to add another layer to re-enforce the characterisation. This secondary stuff is vital for supporting story meaning but it's not the vehicle for story meaning - that's character. I call these 'character traits' as distinct from 'character' e.g. the skinny rendering of Arthur Fleck, or clothes a character might wear, their outward affectations, behaviours that might allude to what they might say and do etc.Bonus point if you know why I wrote, you only know who the character is by what they say -and more importantly- what they do...
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