Creating Unforgettable Characters (7 page)

In
Dead Poets Society,
we learn about the value of
carpe diem
—"seize the day"—and about sucking the marrow of life.

Besides these life themes, there are other driving forces that control characters. The search for forgiveness, the desire for reconciliation, the yearning for love or home can be found in many films ranging from
Shane
to
A Fish Called Wanda
to
E. T.

Incorporating values into particular characters does not mean that your characters need to
discuss
what they believe. Instead, you communicate values through what the character does, through conflict, and through character attitudes.

DETAILING THE CHARACTER

If you infuse your characters with an emotional life, with specific attitudes and values, they will be multidimensional. But there is another step that can make the character original and unique. That is adding the details.

Behavior—the way people do things—marks the difference between two people who might be similar in physical appearance or outlook. People have distinguishing characteristics, small details that make them singular and special.

If I were to make a list of some details I've noticed about my friends and acquaintances, it would include:

■ A person who says "you know" and "for sure" in every sentence

■ A thirty-year-old woman who carries two stuffed animals in her handbag, and makes origami cranes as gifts for people she meets

■ A thirty-five-year-old man who never wears suits because of his anti-establishment bias

■ A forty-year-old man who always has jazz music playing in the background

■ A professional woman who is known for her unusual earrings (worn only among friends) of bananas, flamingos, cockatoos, and boomerangs

Some of the most memorable characters are remembered because of such details: Murphy Brown breaks number-2 pencils when she's under stress; Indiana Jones hates snakes, and always wears his favorite hat; Archie Bunker's pet name for his son-in-law is "Meathead."

Details can be actions, behaviors, use of language, gestures, the clothes one wears, the way a person laughs, the unusual approaches the person takes to a situation.

These details often come from the person's imperfections. In
The Power of Myth,
Joseph Campbell says, "The writer must be true to truth. And that's a killer, because the only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections. The perfect human being is uninteresting. ... It is the imperfections of life that are lovable. . . . Perfection is a bore, it's inhuman. The umbilical point, the humanity, the thing that makes you human and not supernatural and immortal . . . the imperfection, striving, living . . . that's what's lovable. "
⁷

We can see these human imperfections in such critically acclaimed films as A
Fish Called Wanda
(Ken stutters),
sex, lies and videotape
(the lead character is consumed by thoughts of garbage), and
When Harry Met Sally.
In this last film, written by Nora Ephron, Harry talks about the unique details that make up Sally's personality.

INT. NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTY—NIGHT

HARRY

I've been doing a lot of thinking. And the thing is, I love you ... I love how you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle right there when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you're the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

EXERCISE: Think about your friends and acquaintances. What small details distinguish them and make them memorable? Which of these details are endearing? Which are annoying? How might you incorporate them into a character?

A CASE STUDY: "MIDNIGHT CALLER"

"Midnight Caller" premiered in the fall of 1988. The creator of the series, Richard DiLello, discusses the creation of the complex character of Jack Killian:

"I always start with a character's name. I'll spend a couple of days writing lists of names. I figured Jack Killian was a man in his thirties. In his backstory, I wanted to have some major event occur in his life that would bring him from being a cop to this other place where he wound up—as the Nighthawk. I thought that killing his own partner would be the most extreme. I was afraid that this might be too big a leap for the audience to take, but then I realized that you needed that one moment in the dark when you couldn't turn back the clock.

"In the pilot, there are two terse scenes which show him losing himself in a conventional way, going into the bottom of the bottle and cutting himself off from the rest of the world. The character of Devon King comes in and redeems him. She's the one who gives him a chance to come down from the crucifix where he has nailed himself.

"In some ways, Jack is a typical cop. He's blue-collar. He doesn't have a formal education. Face it, you don't get out of Harvard Business School and become a police officer. He likes sports and rock and roll.

"His own eclectic reading makes him different and sensitive to the world. He reads contemporary fiction—I had always imagined he'd be a great fan of Jack Kerouac and Raymond Carver. Killian is trying to form his own philosophy in life. He is not a conscious intellectual; he's more of a street intellectual. He operates from his gut. He shoots from the hip and makes a lot of mistakes. But he's totally different because most cops become totally cynical. They walk in the blackness of their own work and basically leave humanity. But he's always remained sympathetic and caring of other people's problems. Maybe he can't deal with a lot of his own problems so he finds it easier to help others. He can't organize his own life very well. He can't find a stable relationship with someone else but he can certainly help you find one and tell you what to do.

"I think he realizes that there was more in life he could have gone for and opportunities to socialize were missed. He's more emotionally expressive than most cops—not stoic or repressed—and he doesn't like it about himself; he'd prefer to be a little cooler. But he's responsive, he gets angry at the pomposity in other people, at their hypocrisy, at injustice and the things that aren't fair. He gets frustrated with having to deal with the bureaucracy. What he likes are the simple things—a good meal, listening to Elvis Presley records, seeing the Chicago Cubs do well.

"He's definitely a loner, but he'd prefer not being a loner. The great love of his life has AIDS, and he's angry at the

man who knowingly gave it to her. His emotional life is still growing.

"Killian works out of his own moral imperative, his own set of values. His humanity is the most important thing about this show. His attitude is always humanistic, but sometimes masked by a touch of black humor. Jack definitely is filling the function of helping the audience understand their world. At the end of every show when Jack signs off he makes a statement about what he's learned in that hour. It was always my intention that he was, in fact, heroic—but a different kind of hero. His summing up at the end shows him to be a man of thought as well as of action."

APPLICATION

Since much of character creation comes from observation, a writer is continually "in training." As an exercise, study a character at the airport, at the grocery store, or in your work environment. Ask yourself the following questions:

■ If I were to describe this character in a strong, broad stroke, what would that description be?

■ What might I expect to be true of this person, given his or her context? Can you imagine paradoxes that might make an interesting character?

Then, as you look at the main characters in your story, ask yourself:

■ Do my characters "make sense"? Have I shown a number of qualities that my characters might have?

■ What makes my characters interesting? Compelling? Fascinating? Different? Unpredictable? Do my characters do the unexpected at times? Do these paradoxes contradict any of the consistent qualities I've created, or are they used to expand my characters?

■ What are my characters concerned about? Are these values understandable? Are they conveyed through action and attitudes, rather than through long monologues?

■ Is it clear how my characters feel? Does each individual character have a broad range of emotions, rather than repeating the same ones?

■ Have I used my characters' attitudes to help define character?

The process of creating character is ongoing. Even when not writing, writers need to store up details, looking to reality for inspiration and ideas. As advertising director Joe Sedel-maier says, "It always starts in reality. If I'm gonna copy, I'm gonna copy reality. "

SUMMARY

Barry Morrow says creating a character is similar to the work of an artist: "It's like shaping a lump of clay, or like whittling a stick. You can't get to the fine stuff until you get the bark off of it." Shaping the clay of your character is a six-step process:

1. Through observation and experience, you begin to form an idea of a character.

2. The first broad strokes begin to define the character.

3. You define the character's consistency, so the character makes sense.

4. Adding quirks, the illogical, the paradoxical, makes the character fascinating and compelling.

5. The qualities of emotions, values, and attitudes deepen the character.

6. Adding details makes the character unique and special.

When you first meet someone in real life, are you often curious about the person s background? Have you ever asked these kinds of questions:

■ Where was he from? Why did he move to your city?

■ Why did she decide to take this particular job? What jobs has she had in the past?

■ How long have they been married? Where did they meet?

We're curious about the past, because we know there are interesting stories behind every decision. Some might involve intrigue ("She was forced to leave town"), or romance ("They met at the top of the Eiffel Tower when they were both students in France"), or corruption ("The politician used government money to pay for his Bel Air home"). The current situation is a result of decisions and events from the past. And the choices that have been made will determine other choices in the future.

Every novel and screenplay focuses on a specific story, one we might call the
front story.
That's the real story the writer wants to tell. But the characters in the front story do what they do and are what they are because of their past. This past might include traumas and crises, important people who came into their lives, the negative and positive feedback they've received, childhood dreams and goals, and of course influences from society and culture.

The
backstory
provides two different types of information. One is the past events and influences that directly affect the construction of the story. Films and books such as
Sibyl, The Three Faces of Eve, Hamlet, Ordinary People,
and
Citizen Kane
all have crucial backstory events that created the front story. Both audience/reader and writer must be aware of these events to understand the story.

Some backstory information is part of the character biography. This information may never be conveyed to the audience, but the writer needs to know it to help create the character.

Characters are born in a writer's mind and are given a specific set of attitudes and experiences. The backstory helps the writer discover which of these attitudes and experiences are essential in order to fully create the character.

WHAT BACKSTORY INFORMATION DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?

Many actors do considerable work upon the backstory of their characters before playing a role. The famous actor, director, and teacher Constantin Stanislavski recommended that actors write out specific biographies about their characters. Lajos Egri, in his book
The Art of Dramatic Writing,
recommends that writers do the same. A character biography might include the following information: