Your Character is Showing

A few weeks back, I’d reached a critical moment in the script, on a scene that I had been planning to write for months. It’s a turning point in the character’s psyche, but a difficult one to capture and wasn’t at all sure how to tackle it. I punched out the scene, tweaked it a few times and believed that I’d executed it well enough to pass it on to the artist for feedback.

The artist felt the character was contradicting himself. Unsure what his motivation behind this sudden random act in the scenario, left her feeling unsettled.

I’d considered this myself in the past and had at one point intended on coming back to this moment in a scene later in the story and allow the character to explain himself, but after more thought, I felt it unnecessary.

I was ready to compromise, however, and had set aside some time to tackle the dialogue in that later scene to discuss the ‘random act’ situation.

Reading through my book one evening, I came across a rather insightful passage that I shared with the artist a week later. It read -

Generally, the more the writer nails motivation to specific causes, the more he diminishes the character in the audience’s mind. Rather, think through to a solid understanding of motive, but at the same time leave some mystery around the whys, a touch of the irrational perhaps, room for the audience to use its own life experience to enhance your character in its imagination.

# Robert McKee

So it seems I was on the right track after all. I was filled with a new found confidence that I do actually know what I’m doing. However, I was still in the wrong as well.

I had failed to explain my character’s motivations to the artist. Of course it all makes sense to me, I know all the intricate details of my character’s every thought. Failure to communicate that to the artist is an amateur mistake.

I usually convey these things verbally, rather than put them in the script. Obviously, it all might have made more sense if she had the full story from beginning to end, but as it is a work in progress, you should always bare the details. It falls under the same principle as a Director explaining the character’s motivation to an Actor.

The conflicts we put our characters through often rely on some form of life-experience. As the artist said to me, “that was a case where I didn’t have any real life experience of my own which I could superimpose on the situation, so it just didn’t make sense.”

I don’t like spoon-feeding the audience, but at the same time, I don’t want to be far too obscure. There lies the problem.

I believe the answer is to understand your audience. But that’s a discussion for another day.