Creating Unforgettable Characters

by Linda Seger

  Exploring the dark side doesn't mean that your story ends on a negative note. "I challenged myself," Barry says, "to believe that the story would end up the same way—a sense of making human connections and about piecing back together your life and winnowing out the pain and going on."

  Charlie has no recognition that his actions and behavior are driven, to a great extent, by his need for his father's love and approval. According to Ron Bass, "Charlie's need is to be self-contained, to keep himself walled off from feeling the hurt of rejection. What drives Charlie is wanting his father's love, knowing he won't get it, knowing that his father might be right and that he's going to fail. The biggest problems in our lives are the ones we're always redoing, hoping that it will be different the next time, that we'll get it right. His biggest goal is to prove his father wrong, and yet deep down in his heart he keeps proving his father right. He could prove his father wrong by being a success, on his own terms in his own way, without his father's help or guidance. That would prove that he doesn't need his father's love."

  The unconscious manifests itself in your characters through their behavior, gestures, and speech. All these underlying drives and meanings that are unknown to the characters will nevertheless affect what they say and do.

  HOW PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES CREATE CHARACTER

  Although we may all be of the same human species, we are not all the same types of people. Each of us experiences life in different ways. We have varied outlooks and perceptions about life.

  Writers throughout the centuries have used an understanding of character types to help draw the broad strokes of their characters.

  In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, writers believed that the physical body could be divided into four elements, or humors, just as the physical world was divided into the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. These humors included black bile, blood, yellow bile, and phlegm. One's temperament (or character type) was determined by the predominance of one humor.

  The personality controlled by black bile was melancholic— thoughtful, sentimental, affected, unenterprising. Hamlet's gloomy indecisions and Jacques's brooding in As You Like It are instances of the melancholy temperament.

  A personality dominated by blood would be sanguine— beneficent, joyful, amorous. Falstaff would fit this temperament.

  The choleric personality, dominated by yellow bile, is easily angered, impatient, obstinate, and vengeful. Both Othello's jealousy and Lear's rashness show an extreme of choler.

  And the phlegmatic personality is composed, undemonstrative, with a coolness and calm fortitude; for example, Horatio in Hamlet.

  The perfect temperament is one in which all four humors are perfectly balanced. Conversely, a serious imbalance could produce maladjustment, craziness.

  Brutus in Julius Caesar possessed a nearly ideal balance. Marc Antony called him "the noblest Roman of them all":

  . . . the elements So mixed in him that 'Nature might stand up And say to all the world, "This was a man!"

  Ian Fleming, in Octopussy, updates these four elements in his description of a drunk. "The sanguine drunk goes gay to the point of hysteria and idiocy; the phlegmatic sinks into a morass of sullen gloom; the choleric is the fighting drunk of the cartoonists who spends much of his life in prison for smashing people and things; and the melancholic succumbs to self-pity, mawkishness, and tears."1

  Shakespeare was interested in the relationships between characters. Some types get along well because they see the world in compatible ways. But other relationships cause conflict. For instance, someone who is choleric—who demands quick actions and responses—will be driven crazy by someone who is phlegmatic and wants to think things out. Someone who is sanguine will find it depressing to be around the melancholic.

  During the last hundred years, there has been much re-interpretation of these personality types, and, as a writer, being familiar with the theories can be helpful in differentiating your characters, and strengthening character conflicts.

  Carl Jung says that most people tend toward either extraver-sion or introversion. Social extraverts focus on the outside world, and introverts focus on an inner reality. Extraverts tend to be comfortable in crowds, easily relate to others, love parties and people. Introverts are loners, pursuing solitary activities such as reading or meditation. They look within rather than without for the center of their lives.

  In drama, as in real life, most characters are extraverts. Extraverts move the action, and provide the conflict and the dynamic of the film. They are outer-directed people who function well with others and who actively interact with life. But Rain Man proved that an introvert could make a powerful character, when paired with a more active character to move the action.

  Ron Bass says, "Raymond is most certainly an introvert. The classical autistic doesn't understand other people as being that different from trees or inanimate objects. He doesn't understand that people are people.

  "Charlie is an introvert in extravert clothing. Charlie feels comfortable in a crowd because he feels he can manage it. He's gorgeous and charming, but I don't think he derives any real joy or fun from being in a crowd. He's always thinking behind his eyes, What do they want from me, what do I want from them? He's a kind of a loner in the sense that his true feelings are never shared. He is so walled off. His anger is at the surface, and he's talkative and he's aggressive and he's a take-charge guy, but he can't share his true feelings, they're hidden from himself as well as from others."

  Carl Jung added four other categories to the introvert and extravert to further the understanding of personality types: the sensation type, the thinking type, the feeling type, and the intuitive type.

  Sensation people experience life through the senses. They are attuned to their physical environment—to colors and smells, shapes and tastes. They tend to live in the present, responding to the things around them. Many sensation types make good cooks, house builders, doctors, photographers— any occupation that is physical and sensory-oriented. James

  Bond would probably be considered a sensation type— sensual, a lover of fast cars, physical activities, and beautiful women.

  Thinking types are the opposite. They think through a situation, figure out the problem, and take control to bring about a solution. They make decisions based on principles, not on feelings. They're logical, objective, methodical. Thinking types tend to make good administrators, engineers, mechanics, executives. Characters who have strong thinking functions include Perry Mason, Jessica Fletcher, MacGyver, and the Marquise in Dangerous Liaisons.

  Feeling types have a sense of rapport with others. They care, are sympathetic and warmhearted. Their feelings are often accessible and up front. Teachers, social workers, and nurses are often feeling types. In films and novels, they would include Madame de Torville in Dangerous Liaisons, Pfc. Eriksson in Casualties of War, Tess McGill in Working Girl.

  Intuitives are interested in future possibilities. They're the dreamers, with new visions, plans, ideas. They play hunches, have premonitions, and live in anticipation of what will come to pass in the future. Intuitives are often entrepreneurs, inventors, and artists whose ideas sometimes come to them "fullblown." Some bank robbers and gamblers are intuitives, looking to future enjoyment of their wealth. Obi-Wan-Kenobi from Star Wars is an intuitive who recognizes the nature of the invisible Force. Sam in "Cheers" is also an intuitive—he always has a hunch that he's going to get any woman he wants. Even Gordon Gekko in Wall Street seems to have a strong intuitive function as he plans and schemes.

  These functions never exist alone. Most people have two dominant functions and two inferior functions (sometimes called the "shadow functions "). Most people—and most characters—will tend to gain their information about the world around them either through sensation (direct experience) or through intuition. And they will tend to process information either through thinking or through feeling.

  "Charlie is a thinker and an intuitive," Ron Bass says. "He's probably one of those
people who lives by the past and the future. In spite of the fact that he might seem to be a guy who lived hedonistically in the moment, he's really driven by the ghosts of the past and he's fueled by his dreams that someday he'll strike it rich and he'll hit the jackpot. So he gets himself in these messes—settling past debts by gambling on the future glories. I'm not sure that he lives for the moment."

  An understanding of these categories can be useful to create characters who don't look and act alike, and to help you to create dynamic character relationships.

  People frequently have the greatest conflict with their opposite. The sensation detective may have trouble with the intuitive who plays hunches not based on solid evidence. The thinker may dislike the feeling type who seems overly sentimental and ignores the facts.

  Others idolize the person who expresses their weakest function. If people are weak in intuition, they may seek out the intuitive guru who will take over that function for them. If they're weak in thinking, they may seek out the idea person. Non-feeling types might turn to a passionate, moralistic preacher to carry their feeling for them. Women who are weak in sensation are particularly vulnerable to the ladies' man, or to the passionate love affair.

  Depending on the particular story you want to tell, you may find that other ways of defining character types can be helpful. In the book The Hero Within, Carol Pearson describes the "six archetypes we live by" as the orphan, the innocent, the wanderer, the martyr, the warrior, and the magician. Mark Ger-zon, in A Choice of Heroes, discusses several male character types, such as the soldier, the frontiersman, the nurturer. Jean Shinoda-Bolen, in her books, Goddesses in Every Woman and Gods in Every Man, uses god and goddess images to help understand human nature. Any of these books can be helpful for expanding individual characters and understanding differences between characters.

  EXERCISE: Writing is an act of inner exploration. Many of the writers interviewed for this book say that each character is, to some extent, an aspect of themselves. Think about what character type you identify with—thinking, intuition, sensation, feeling. Imagine responding to life as your opposite. If you're a sensation type, imagine being intuitive. If you're a thinking type, imagine life as a feeling type. How does the emphasis of each of these qualities change your personality? Think about your acquaintances. What character types do you think they are? How are they different from you?

  HOW ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR DEFINES CHARACTER

  I'm sure you know the old saying, "All of us are a little bit crazy, and thee more than me." Most psychologists recognize that the line between normal and abnormal is not a clear-cut one.

  If you are writing a script about an abnormal personality, whether about a schizophrenic, a manic-depressive, a paranoid, or a psychotic, you will need to do a great deal of specific research about the complexities of these personality disorders.

  In order to create the character of Raymond Babbitt, Barry Morrow needed to know the characteristics of the autistic, the autistic savant, and the mentally retarded. Barry relates how he became interested in the autistic savant: "I had volunteered some time every year to the Association for Retarded Citizens. One afternoon we were having a break and I felt a tap on my shoulder and there—one-half inch from my nose—was the nose of Rain Man. Kim is his name. And he cocked his head with a sort of quizzical look on his face and said to me, 'Think about it, Barry Morrow.' And I took a good yard step back and cocked my head and thought about what he had said; and he looked sort of like a Zen master in his own peculiar way, and, mercifully, just then his father showed up to make sense of it all. He introduced me to Kim and he said that Kim was so excited to meet me that that's why he got his words mixed up. What he meant to say was 'I think about you, Barry Morrow.' And he turned his head the other way and started making this groaning sound and started flapping his hands real fast, and then he started to say some names.

  "I didn't know what was going on, but then I recognized one name that seemed familiar, and then another, and I realized that what he was doing was reciting the names from the credits from my movies, Bill and Bill on His Own—in order. Then he started again with numbers, but they were going by so fast they made no sense. And his father asked Kim to slow down and told him that I didn't understand. He slowed down and I realized he was giving my phone numbers of the last eight or ten years over and over again. His father said he memorizes phone books for a hobby—thousands. He generally only memorizes the Yellow Pages but in my case he made an exception. Anything he reads he commits to memory. The more questions I asked, the more astounded I was by the answers, and there seemed to be no end to the amazing aspects of this person. I flew home and my head was just spinning with him. I just knew I had met one of the world's extraordinary creatures and how privileged I was."

  Whereas Kim was the original model for Raymond, Dustin Hoffman chose a different model for Raymond, according to Ron Bass.

  "Dustin did a tremendous amount of research on the classically autistic personality. He modeled his character after a very particular guy. This person had a brother who was not autistic, so we sat with the brother a great deal. He would imitate his autistic brother and I began to get a rhythm of who the guy was. I needed to find ways in which the guy would do things that were quirky and autistic but somehow were charming rather than off-putting. That's why we used the notion of keep

  ing the personal injury list—it's universal, since we all do it ourselves to some extent. It's very personally relatable. We added the rituals—you can have rituals that are obnoxious and very distasteful, but you can also have rituals that are very adorable. With only two hours for a movie, we chose what was charming and interesting rather than off-putting."

  Understanding abnormal behavior is essential when writing these kinds of characters. But having some knowledge about abnormal behavior can also be helpful when writing about normal characters. All of us have some of these elements within us. Giving your normal characters some of these characteristics can add conflict and interest.

  David Williamson, the Australian writer of Gallipoli and Phar Lapp, has a master's degree in psychology. He finds it useful to think of his characters in terms of clinical abnormal personality models. Although this is not how he creates them, he often returns to this model during the rewrite phase, pushing his characters slightly off the normal line in order to create more drama and more interest.

  Clinical psychology identifies a number of personality or temperament types that are seen as hindering the person's psychological functioning. Williamson diagrams them in this way:

  As with personality types, a character with an abnormal personality does not always fall completely in one category. Manic-depressives fluctuate between the two, as do paranoid-schizophrenics. You might draw upon these categories for broad strokes and consistency in creating normal characters, as well as to create strong dynamics between characters.

  Manic types think they can do anything. They appear very optimistic, exhibiting a kind of emotional euphoria. Highly excitable and often very social, manics are easily given to emotional outbursts. They can be frivolous and overtalkative. Their attention span is short and their threshold for boredom extremely low. Furthermore, as they pursue what they want, they tend to trample on others with little thought.

  Characters who are normal, but have some manic qualities, may be workaholics, driven by the need to succeed. They may be driven by greed, as is Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, or by a belief that everything will work out and they can build a whole new world, as is Allie in The Mosquito Coast, or by a conviction that they can do anything, as are the villains in Superman.

  Charlie Babbitt is a bit manic at times. Ron Bass says, "Charlie is very frenetic. He's too defensive, too self-controlled to get really depressed. I don't think Charlie is a guy that ever sat around and moped."

  Depressives are the other side of the coin. They tend to conserve their emotional energy. They are subject to black moods, feelings of worthlessness and inferiority. Some tend to be hypochondria
cs, or to blame themselves even when they are not at fault. Characters who might be considered normal, but contain a number of these qualities are: Hamlet, Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon, and David from the play Strange Snow (later made into the film Jackknife).

  Schizophrenic characters have appeared in a number of successful films. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, David and Lisa, and the television movie Promise all come to mind. Schizophrenics tend to be shy, self-conscious, overly sensitive, and easily embarrassed. They protect their ego by avoiding open conflict. They withdraw, sulk, and generally have a difficult time communicating. Arthur "Boo" Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird might be considered borderline schizophrenic, and Macon in The Accidental Tourist could be considered a normal personality with some schizophrenic characteristics, brought on by his grief over the death of his son.

  Paranoids believe people are out to get them. As a result, they tend to be aggressive. They want to be leaders, to have power and prestige over others. They are decisive, stubborn, opinionated, defensive, often competitive, arrogant, conceited, and boastful. They often harbor unreasonable grudges, are quick to take offense, and are very sensitive to any personal criticism, which supports their belief that others don't like them. Many of the Charles Bronson and Sylvester Stallone film characters show some of these qualities.

  Anxiety neurotics worry about and fear everything. They are concerned about personal safety, terror-stricken about the greenhouse effect, the ozone layer, acid rain, rape, and the general realities of life. For them, disaster lurks everywhere. They spend their lives trying to avoid anxiety. The favorite anxiety neurotic for many moviegoers is Woody Allen, in such films as Hannah and Her Sisters, Annie Hall, and Zelig.