by Linda Seger
"The first time I saw the gorillas, I thought, They're not real. They're so gentle and so docile and just kind of minding their own business that you're not frightened at all. But I never had that feeling about the gorillas that I know Dian had—that feeling of awe and wonder. So I had to create that feeling. But it was helpful for me to see the gorillas.
"The actual period of the story was more difficult to research, because the civil war which had formed a strong subplot in the story had been over with for a number of years. I did, however, find some information from Dian Fossey s book, where she mentioned a tiny bit in one of the chapters about her run-in at the border. There were other books I read, other historical accounts of the conflict in the Congo.
"The local people were very in awe and very much in love with Dian Fossey and/or her project. Those that had never met her were very taken with her. She was called Niramachebelli, and that means 'the woman who lives alone in the forest without a man.' But the people that I met that knew her better didn't like her. I only found one person out of the forty that I interviewed that liked her and that was Ross Car [played by Julie Harris in the film]. She had so many enemies. You could point your finger anywhere and find a murderer."
APPLICATION
As you think through your research, ask the following questions about your characters:
■ What do I need to know about the context of my characters?
■ Do I understand their culture?
■ Do I understand the rhythms, the beliefs, the attitudes that are part of that culture?
■ Have I met, talked to, and spent time with people in that culture?
■ Do I understand ways that they are similar to, and different from the way I am?
■ Have I spent enough time with a number of different people, so that I won't create a stereotype based on one or two encounters?
■ Am I familiar with the occupation of my characters?
■ Do I have a feel for the occupation, some sense through observation of what the work entails, and how people feel about their work?
■ Do I know the vocabulary well enough that I can use it naturally and comfortably in dialogue?
■ Do I know where my characters live? Do I know the lay of the land, the experience of walking the streets?
■ Do I have a sense of the climate, of leisure-time activities, of the sounds and smells of this location?
■ Do I understand how this location is different from my own location, and what effect this has on my characters?
■ If my script is set in another period of time, do I know enough historical details about that period in terms of language, living conditions, clothing, relationships, attitudes, and influences?
■ Have I read diaries or other literature from that period so that I have a sense of how people spoke and the words they used?
■ In researching my characters, have I been willing to ask for help from resource people—whether librarians or people knowledgeable about a specific area?
SUMMARY
Almost every character demands some research. There is more than one reason why new writers are often told to write about what they know. The research can be both time-consuming and expensive. Many new writers can't afford to spend a month in Africa, or may not know how to find a safecracker, or may not be able to hold out the possibility of new business to the Amish buggymaker.
Understanding the importance of research and understanding what to research are important steps in the process of creating strong characters.
Once new writers get over their initial resistance to research, many find it can be one of the most exciting, creative, and exhilarating parts of the writing process. It paves the way for the imagination to give the character life.
Think of someone you really like—friend, spouse, teacher, relative. The first qualities of this person that you think about may be what's consistent about his or her personality. It may be that one friend is always compassionate and empathetic, while another always enjoys a good party; perhaps a teacher is known for her logic and analysis, and a relative seems driven by a determination to win in sports and in life.
But the next thoughts you have about this person might be details that are surprising, illogical, paradoxical. Your most logical friend loves to wear those silly hats. Your most sensation-oriented friend reads books about astronomy in his spare time. And your compassionate friend hates bugs, going on the attack with flyswatter and toxic sprays whenever she hears or sees them in her home.
The defining of character is a back-and-forth process. You ask questions. You observe. You think through your own experiences, and make others up. You test these against the consistency of your character. You think of details that are unique and unpredictable.
This process may seem haphazard and, to some extent, it is. Yet there are specific qualities that are found in all dimensional characters. When your characters refuse to come to life, understanding these qualities can help you expand, enrich, and deepen them.
HOW DO YOU BEGIN?
Whether you are modeling your character on someone you know intimately, on someone you observe, on yourself, or are building a composite from a number of details, creating a character usually begins with one strong stroke. There's the first vivid image that begins to give you a sense of who your character is.
You might see the character physically—what does he look like? How does he move? Maybe you want to explore a character who's suddenly caught in a crisis. How will she act or react? You might begin with a gut feeling about what matters to this person.
There are stages to creating character. Although not necessarily in this order, these stages include:
1. Getting the first idea from observation or experience
2. Creating the first broad strokes
3. Finding the core of the character in order to create character consistency
4. Finding the paradoxes within the character to create complexity
5. Adding emotions, attitudes, and values to further round out the character
6. Adding details to make the character specific and unique
OBSERVATION
Much of the material writers use to create characters will come from observing small details.
Carl Sautter talks about observing an unusual character in a restaurant. This real-life scene helped him illustrate to a class how observation and imagination work together.
"I was doing a seminar in Washington, D.C., and we were talking about character, and the students were coming up with all the characters you'd expect—the prostitute with the heart of gold, the happy fat person who is really miserable underneath, etc. And then I went to lunch and there was a guy in this coffee shop who had a bowl of soup and a knife. I was watching him, thinking, What the hell is he dunking in there? He had a plate with a roll on it, and a pat of butter—which was obviously very cold and very hard. He ceremoniously unwrapped this butter, took his knife and stuck it in the pat of butter, and then he put it in the soup to melt it, and then he spread it on his roll. Now, logically, this makes sense—a guy is using this hot soup to melt this butter for his bread. And it got me to thinking: What is that man's personality? What does that action tell you? When I returned to the class, I mentioned this to them, and we took that scenario, and asked questions about that guy. The characters they came up with—who this guy could be, and why, and how old—were ten times better than the ideas they came up with before they had started observing. "
In creating characters for advertising, observation is particularly important. Joe Sedelmaier, one of the best creators of advertising characters, observes details closely in the people he encounters. He generally casts actors based on certain idiosyncrasies he notices in their personalities, usually casting nonprofessionals because he finds them more interesting and more real. First he observes, then he converts what he has discovered from this observation into a character. When he
cast Clara Peller in the Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" ad, he drew upon detai
ls he had noticed about her: "I first met Clara because we needed a manicurist for a commercial we were shooting. We went across the street, and found Clara. She didn't have a speaking role, but when I finished shooting the scene, she turned to me with that deep voice and said, 'Hi, honey, how are you?' And I thought, This is terrific. So I started using her in a number of ads. When I was asked to do the Wendy's ad, I felt that the original idea was all wrong, since it used a young couple with a big bun who said, 'Where's all the beef?' So I thought it would be funnier with two old ladies. Then the idea of Clara came to me as sort of the bull in the china shop. I could hear her say, 'Well, where's all the beef?' We started shooting, but because Clara had emphysema she had trouble with 'Where's all the . . .' By the time she got to 'beef,' it was not there, so I told her to just say 'Where's the beef?'"
INTEGRATING EXPERIENCE
Wherever you begin in the creation of your character, ultimately you will have to draw upon your own experience. There is nowhere else to turn to know whether you've got the character right. No one else can tell you whether or not you've got a character that's credible, real, and consistent. You must rely on your own inner sense of what people are all about.
Writer after writer emphasizes this aspect of writing: "Whatever I know, I know from my own experience," says James Dearden. "In the end, the writer has to draw on himself. I have Alex inside me, and Dan inside me. And if you haven't got the experience, then you have to go out and get it. All the characters I write come from me. I draw from within. I always think, How would I react in that situation?"
Carl Sautter agrees. "I think you have to find the element in characters that is you. And it isn't that every character is auto-
biographical but often you ask, 'Who is the character you wish you were? What do you wish you could get away with?' When you start writing stories that only you can write, you raise yourself as a writer to a whole new level. So, whatever it is, even when it's a supporting character, I try to find a part of it that I can really identify with personally."
Barry Morrow, who wrote the original screenplay of Rain Man, says, "Movies have to be about the things you're interested in or it's no fun to write them. In Rain Man, Raymond likes the things I like. He likes baseball and pancakes. And Charlie likes what I like—money and cars and women."
Ron Bass, who did the rewrites for Rain Man, adds, "I carry Charlie and Raymond inside of me. I have all their faults and their good points in my personality. Certainly there's a part of me that is frightened of human contact and overcompensates for that, and certainly I have all those defenses that Charlie has. And there's a part of me that's very soft and wants to be loved. Writing is a very intimate process, and I know when I've got the guy, and I know when I don't have the guy."
In television, often there's one writer on the show who represents the character. This person becomes a kind of plumb line or measure of whether the character works.
Coleman Luck, co-executive producer of "The Equalizer" and writer of a number of shows in the series, identifies with McCall. He was with the show for four years—almost from the beginning—and became a guiding force for a number of character decisions.
"Some writer on the show has to become that character," he says. "There has to be an empathy between the writer and the character. I don't think there's any other way to do this. There's something inside of me that's like McCall. I'm not McCall, I've not been a CIA agent, but I've lived a few years. I was an army officer in Vietnam and I was in combat when I was twenty-two, and I've been through a lot. I can understand his concerns, his sense of guilt, his need for forgiveness, his need for absolution. So if you don't have the experience of self-examination, and knowing yourself to some degree, you're never going to know your character. Flat out you are not."
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Readers will form a visual impression of a character they meet in novels. Most novels give vivid character descriptions to give the reader an immediate sense of who this person is.
Occasionally a novel, such as Ordinary People, avoids physical descriptions, focusing instead on details about the character's inner life. But readers still make an imaginative leap, forming their own pictures from these psychological details.
Screenplays almost always give one or two lines of strong character details, in order to hook both the reader and potential actors.
What does a physical description do? First of all, it's evocative—it implies other aspects of the character. The reader begins to associate other qualities and imagine additional details from the few lines of description you've given.
Let your imagination play with the following description, from a script called Fire-Eyes by one of my clients, Roy Rosenblatt: "A sweet-faced guy who's probably done his job too long. "
What other qualities come to mind? You may start thinking about his weariness. Do you wonder if he's also cynical? You probably find him likable, because of his face, but do you wonder if he has some conflict with his job or his coworkers because he's been at it too long? Maybe he suffers from burnout; perhaps you feel sorry for him, or even empathize. Can you begin to think of the way he'd walk or talk?
In novels, the character descriptions have sometimes created details that make the character instantly recognizable. Consider the descriptions of four famous detectives: Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple.
Sherlock Holmes is described by Arthur Conan Doyle as tall and spare with a hawklike face, wearing a deerstalker hat and a long gray traveling cloak. He is cold and precise, with extraordinary powers of observation.1
Father Brown, created by G. K. Chesterton, is a short, chubby Catholic priest, always carrying brown paper parcels and a large umbrella. He has a vast store of humor, wisdom, and insight into human nature.2
Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is a little Belgian detective with an egg-shaped head and a passion for order3; and Miss Marple is an elderly lady, "so charming, so innocent, such a fluffy and pink and white old lady, with an old-fashioned tweed coat and skirt, a couple of scarves and a small felt hat with a bird's wing. "4
In scripts particularly, the physical description can be strengthened if it is also actable. That means that something is implied that an actor can use—some sense of the character's movement, or of a certain look, such as the hunch of the shoulders, the tilt of the head, a particular walk. Such descriptions give clues the actor can use to build the role. "Pretty" is difficult to act; "strong" and "handsome" are not very helpful.
In Fatal Attraction, Alex Forrest is defined in terms of a look, the kind of clothes she chooses, and a sense of attitude to her age:
At that moment, an extremely attractive blond girl passes by. . . . She turns and gives him a look to make hell freeze over. . . . She really is sensational-looking. She must be in her thirties, but she dresses younger, trendily, and gets away with it.
Here is a description of the main character from a film called Dance of the Damned, written, directed, and produced by two of my clients, Katt Shea and Andy Rubin (and available on videotape). Notice how many details there are that could be helpful to the actor—details of movement, feeling, and intention. The description conveys a sense of yearning that will play throughout the film:
The man turns away from his reflection—his acutely handsome face: ethereal, sad, with a childlike naivete. And yet there is something in the way he moves, the tilt of his head—an alien-otherness, a catlike tentativeness, a predatory grace.
Another of my clients, Sandi Steinberg, has written one of my favorite descriptions, which gives a sense of the comic dimensions that are to come in her script, Curses:
Maria-Theresa, 50's, awakens with a start, a big woman with small illusions—180 Guatemalan pounds squeezed into a pink lace teddy. She grabs a cluster of garlic to her bosom and begins to chant.
In writing actable descriptions, it's important to be both general enough that a number of actors can play the role and specific enough that there's a definite character being
created. A description that evokes other qualities and associations can engage an actor's imagination, convincing him or her that this is a character worth doing.
THE CORE OF THE CHARACTER
Characters need to be consistent. This does not mean that they are predictable or stereotypical. It means that characters, like people, have a kind of core personality that defines who they are and gives us expectations about how they will act. If characters deviate from this core, they may come across as incredible, as not making sense or adding up.
As Barry Morrow explains, "Part of the appeal of characters in a film is their predictability. You understand who they are and you have a sense of their history and their code of honor and their ethics and their world view. The character is going to have to choose and make certain choices which the audience can anticipate and enjoy watching."
Advertising executive Michael Gill concurs, and adds: "I think with characters—just like with your friends—you want a certain consistency. You don't want your friends to change every time you talk to them. You don't want them to be one place at one time and a totally different place emotionally and psychologically the next.
"What you look for is people that have known characteristics. So once you've created a successful character, then the art is to try to keep it fresh and current and at the same time maintain those consistent specific feelings and details that are very reassuring to people."