Let’s talk about Character / Developing Character / Exercise your character muscle Let’s talk about Character A character is the sum of their wants and the actions they take to achieve them. (Michael Gow) How well do you know your characters? If you know your character well, then you know his or her attributes, both good and bad. You know what drives your character, what their secret desire might be. Do you know what makes your character jump for joy? Shout hooray? Punch the air and yodel with glee? What does your character want, more than anything? Don’t panic if you don’t know the answers to these questions. Often you can discover the answers through the process of writing. Remember we said earlier that a lot of writing a play is actually re-writing a play. To discover more about your character, you need to do a lot of hard thinking and hard writing. We asked our playwrights to share their thoughts on making great characters. If you create a great character they will go on a journey no matter what. Use the (character) tools that actors use. Ask yourself: Who am I? What do I want? Why? (Suzie Miller) The key requirement is that characters have their own voices. This doesn't just mean that they have their own opinions or character traits; it means that they will actually speak with different syntax, punctuation, idiolect etc…(Tom Wright) As you start to know more about your character you should discover their faults and flaws, the contradictions in their attitudes and behaviours. It’s these imperfections that help a character seem real to an audience. Human beings are full of contradictions. (Jane Harrison)  |  | Most interesting characters have a flaw or a problem. That’s why we like to watch them. (Rachel Hennessy) Contradictions in characters are marvelous and life like… Characters don't live on stage unless you can give them the specific language that relates to them.
(Louis Nowra) Be wary of characters who exist only as their function in the story – The Mother, The Cop, The Bitch. Try to get to know those characters with their own story and justifications and views so they don’t just become puppets of the play. (Debra Oswald) | |  |
An audience is able to judge a character by measuring the gap between their words and their actions. The true meaning beneath what the characters are saying is referred to as “subtext”. As an exercise in subtext, try experimenting with having a couple of characters discuss something perhaps seemingly banal and everyday when in actual fact, they’re in love, or they hate each other, or one character knows that the other character is his illegitimate daughter. How does this conversation play out? In real life people are often reluctant to say exactly what they mean. Developing Character The most inconvenient fact for a writer is that characters can always just exit. They have free will. The worst situation for a character is one where only the writer is keeping them in the room.
(Tommy Murphy) Creating characters is not necessarily easy for everyone. Lally Katz asks “am I actually letting this character live…or am I just trying to force them into situations that will hopefully make me look like a good writer.” Verity Laughton points out the skill in engaging “the language and the empathy to create character.” She adds “this is an area where talent comes in” If you have a character in mind who seems quite real and has faults and attributes, if they seem to have a strong motivation to do something, even if you have no idea what that is yet, then it’s probably worth whipping out your trusty notebook. | | They may end up being a main character and you might need to write a whole play based around their motivations and wants and needs and most of all, their actions. Then again you might discover that the play is really about this character’s brother or son and their wants and needs and actions and it might be their story that needs to be told but either way you won’t know until you write it down. Let them loose in that big paddock of the imagination to do and say what they will…Make sure they sound like them, not you or every other character in the play. (Catherine Ryan) Catherine and Tommy’s advice above both illustrate the ways that characters seem to become independent of their creators. Make sure that both your character’s dialogue and actions are true to their wants and needs. | | |
Exercise your character muscle Here is a simple exercise to develop your characters and discover some things about them that you may not have known. Write the answers to the following questions as if you were your character. Don’t think too much about your answers, just let them flow from your imagination. Admire your characters. Don’t just put yourself in their shoes, long to share their triumphs and mistakes. I find this is a good way to make their actions truthful. (Tommy Murphy)
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“I always start with a character and an idea of what I want their dilemma to be. I usually start writing monologues…and doing character work to see who else is in the play.”
(Suzie Miller) |