Character Breakdown

U

USLatin

Panamaniac
Does anyone have a couple of good links to famous examples or guides?

I have seen extremely long individual descriptions which take you though the full storyline, and single paragraphs for each of the leads. At the moment I would appreciate reading a bit on the subject.

I would like to see if there are any guidelines or conventions in place, especially if it touches on the style most favorable for the intended use of the breakdown. I might only want a paragraph or less before reading a script, but I would love 2-3 pages to go along with the short one for casting... that sort of thing.

Thank you for the help! :beer:
 
USLatin said:
Does anyone have a couple of good links to famous examples or guides?

I have seen extremely long individual descriptions which take you though the full storyline, and single paragraphs for each of the leads. At the moment I would appreciate reading a bit on the subject.

I would like to see if there are any guidelines or conventions in place, especially if it touches on the style most favorable for the intended use of the breakdown. I might only want a paragraph or less before reading a script, but I would love 2-3 pages to go along with the short one for casting... that sort of thing.

Thank you for the help! :beer:
Click to expand...

www.theunknownscreenwriter.com -- I appreciate his something-of-the-sort-no-bs approach to the craft. However much of it you take to the heart is up to you. But, he's got some great thoughts on character breakdown, examples of character sheets and all of the visual goodies/stimulants that got me to progress as a writer.

Guideline or Convetions, though? The one thing that Unk (that's what he likes to be called) wants you to remember is that: there are no guidelines or conventions. You learn what everyone else does, figure out what success is generally composed of then throw it all out and create your own convetion. Now, if you're asking what you can do to get started, well, there's a guy here that sold his screenplay/script and offered up a link to a character breakdown that was quite fancy. I can't remember his DVXuser name, but the name of the script had somethin to do with LEMON. So if you search for that under the Screenwriting forum you should find it.

My favorite method for character breakdown is this:

1. Name, age, race, light description.
2. Flaws, Character tidbits.
3. Associative words, four to five.
4. Seeks, Wants, will Get.

Character A seeks but really just wants B which will lead him to C by the time I'm done with his ass.

Here are two exmaples:

Avery Ashton : Caucasian, Male, 22, 5' 10", Dark Hair and Eyes. Near-Sighted (Glasses). Socially Awkward, Co-Dependent, Intelligent, Hyper Cautious, Scared. Seeks the stable point in life, financial and emotional security. Longs for adventure, chaos and true independence but won't tell you that, though.

Pete Pa : Asian-American, Male, 22, 5' 10", Dark Hair and Eyes. Shaggy, unruly Hair and appearance, but awkwardly stylish. Popular, Independent, Street Smart, Carefree, Courageous. Seeks the highest high in life, the craziest adventure imaginable. Hopes that everything will be alright.

Why this way? A literal visual reference to the character and what's normally invisible, the personality. I try to pick keywords that evoke an image. When I say Popular, to myself, that immediately makes me think that this character is surrounded by people trying to say hi, making jokes to impress or even giving them gifts if it's a female.

When I say Awkward, I can immediately imagine a scene where character C is trying to give a speech and makes an uncomfortable joke.

Along those same lines, when you get to the part about seeking and hoping, or the contradiction it's sort of like installing another dimension. It may be cheating, but it's been an effective way to map out the character's course of action, how he or she will respond to those around them and of course where they go in the end.

Lastly, doing this drastically speeds up my outlining and development time. There's nothing worse to me than trolling around in development stages, especially the outline. I want to get these characters off of the character select screen and into the virtual sandbox to find out what's gonna happen. Of course, you find that out when you do the outline, but hopefully you get where I'm going with it.

This is just my method, though, and it's worked for me quite well. In fact, I really hate short form and am a fan of long form (feature length), but I finally tried this method on a short and it works for me.

As far as paragraphs and pages go? It's not uncommon to find notebooks belonging to writers detailing the background of a character down to how they were concepted. This isn't wrong, and in fact it's a sure fire way to know who you're writing about. What they did at age five and seven, and what happened because they did that?

I would suspect that a heavy drama or something grounded in a Militant World would definitely be the kind of thing I spend a lot of time writing character backgrounds for. Then again, I won't know until I get to those genres.

In addition to all of that, check for Unk's blog entry about Character Types. It's a short chronicle detailing the types of characters and, if nothing else, is quite an interesting and immersive read on separating the characters and classing them; I loves it.
 
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