Character Defining Moments

by Christina Hamlett

A lot of writers—myself included—find it useful to have real life individuals in mind as models for the fictional characters who will people their screen-plays. It can be a specific person, a facet of the author’s own persona, or a composite of multiple person-alities rolled into one. Maybe during the creative process they even go so far as to envision the celebrity “dream cast” they’d like to see act in it and, accordingly, write lines and actions that would be the most suitable to those actors’ talents and ages.

The plus side of this practice is that it helps keep characters and their speech patterns distinct from one another, especially if there are quite a few to keep track of. There’s no mixing up which one is Jerry and which one is Clyde, for instance, if Jerry and Clyde are actual people whose respective looks, accents and habits are firmly locked in the writers’ memory banks and/or reinforced through regular interaction.

The minus side is that you can write yourself into a literal box from which you can’t be rescued.

Back in the days when I ran an acting company, this method of casting reversal in my playwriting was the product of concurrently teaching acting classes and having a steady pool of new talent crossing the threshold. Each time I began penning scripts for the next season, I would not only have decided in advance which newcomers were ready for a debut but also which members of past shows would work well with them. As a result, I’d find myself purposely writing roles for players pre-cast in my head as opposed to the more traditional approach of holding structured auditions and making decisions based on who showed up.

Could other thespians have played those scenes with an equal amount of panache and credibility? Possibly. Unbeknownst to me at the time, however, I was limiting the chances of finding that out by so narrowly tailoring the roles to specific actors in my immediate company. To no great surprise, the only remaining theatrical scripts from those years which remain unsold to this day are the very same ones I had written for a young man named Billy whose proficiency with impersonations ranging from Kermit the Frog to Darth Vader went unmatched for 8+ years of production. It’s not that the scripts were bad; they just needed a succession of leads like Billy to show them at their best.

Therein lies a common problem faced by new screenwriters who, in wanting to be exacting and precise in defining character traits, unwittingly jeopardize the discovery of whether a different spin might have brought something richer to the table. While Holly-wood history is replete with memorable parts that we simply can’t imagine anyone other than the original actor playing, it will diminish your first script’s chances of a sale if you can’t write parts with a broad degree of latitude.

In each of the following examples, certain characteristics have been ascribed to each of the characters in their first appearance on screen. See if you can identify which ones are essential in terms of projecting a certain type, as well as which ones lend themselves to substitution and/or omission.

· ANN, an exceptionally homely woman of 37, wears her dark brown hair in a bun and reading glasses on a bright red chain around her neck. She has on a flower print polyester dress from Target and a granny square sweater that her favorite aunt made for her.

· Two THIEVES run past an alley where a homeless man named LARRY is passed out in front of a green dented dumpster. Larry, a former state worker, is 55 and has scraggly grey hair in a ponytail, hazel eyes, a British accent, and a mole on the left side of his bulbous nose.

· MARTY just turned 33 last month but is still living his life as an extension of high school. His jet black hair is spiked and heavily gelled. He wears a pair of John Lennon wireframes, not because his apple green eyes are bad but because he thinks they make him look cool. He wears jeans with the knees ripped out, a Grateful Dead tee-shirt, and a pair of brand new Nike tennis shoes.

· GWEN is a 5’9” career executive in her mid-40’s with a Princess Diana hairstyle, piercing blue eyes, and a size 6 figure. Her only imperfection is a slight gap between her sparkling front teeth.

How did you do? Let’s take a look.

AGE
Keep your references to age as generic as possible. Given the fact that a lot of actors and actresses pride themselves on the wide age-range they can physically play, the specificity of labeling someone as a “19-year-old coed” or “a 37-year-old drunk” could preclude those performers who fall on either side of those numbers from being called to audition. More importantly, pro-viding a precise age may throw off a prospective producer or director whose vision of that particular character is different from yours. Use, instead, the terms “toddler,” “teen,” “young adult,” “middle aged,” etc. or refer to characters by the decade in which they would most comfortably fall for the sake of the plot; i.e., “twenties,” “forties,” “eighties,” and so forth.

HAIR COLOR AND STYLE
Unless there is a familial relationship, an identify/fashion statement being made, or a dialogue reference to what is atop someone’s head (i.e., “From the red of it, I’m guessing you’re Irish” or “Did you grab the eggbeater instead of a hairbrush this morning?”), hair color and styling have nothing with the actual role. A bimbo, for instance, could just as easily be played by a brunette as a stereotypical blond. Whether a banker parts his hair on the left, the right, or is completely bald has no bearing on his ability to handle money. Apply that same logic to describing your characters’ folicles.

In the examples given, the color of Ann’s hair isn’t as important as the unflattering style that she has chosen for it. Likewise, Marty’s gel and spike look bespeaks an attachment to his wild-side youth but the exact hue is irrelevant. In addition, identifying a style in terms of a persona who popularized it only works if that style stayed the same for long enough to become a tag that will be easily understood by whoever reads the script. A reference to Princess Diana, for instance, conjures a universally consistent image; Jennifer Aniston and Cher, on the other hand, do not.

EYES
Unless the part calls for a specific eye color, don’t bother to assign one…especially to characters like the homeless Larry whose eyes aren’t even open!

CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES
Minimize the use of specifics (i.e., colors, patterns, textures) and name brands in outfitting your players on paper. (I have actually had clients who itemized every single item of clothing in spite of the fact that none of it had anything to do with the plot or the persona wearing it!)

There are three exceptions to this guideline where a certain level of costuming detail is important:

· Trademark. In LEGALLY BLOND, the heroine’s affinity for Barbie-style designer ensembles is used as an extension of how her personality is perceived by those around her. A narrowly defined wardrobe, thus, can be a tool to either validate an audience’s assumptions regarding “type” or to mislead them with an external image that runs contrary to internal values.

· Clarity. What would Indiana Jones be without that manly and well traveled fedora? To just say, “Indy is wearing a hat” invites multiple interpretation. Would he have cut the same swath in a snappy white boater? A sombrero? A bowler? In those instances where your intent could be misconstrued to the disadvantage of the character, spell out exactly what you want.

· Metamorphosis. Cher’s dowdy duds and matronly hair in the first-half scenes of her Academy Award winning MOON-STRUCK role provide a startling contrast to the glamorous, second-half makeover she undergoes for her date at the opera with Nicholas Cage. In this case, the transformation in appear-ance symbolically coincides with the character’s liberation from a previously dull and unsatisfying existence.

Is it significant that Marty is sporting a Grateful Dead tee-shirt instead of one for Smashing Pumpkins? What about the expensive Nikes which look out of place against his otherwise impoverished appearance? Is Marty an aspiring athlete who spends whatever extra cash he gets on the best sports footwear that money can buy? Did he steal those shoes from someone else and is flaunting them? Is he the only son in a wealthy family who likes to look radical just to freak out his parents? If you’re going to introduce incongruities in your character’s outward trappings, make sure you have a reason for it.

How about Ann? Two items in her ensemble are cause for curiosity. Is that granny square sweater a testament to bad taste or sentimentality? Unless the rest of Ann’s closet is exposed to us over the course of the movie, we don’t really know. And what about that bright red chain that holds her glasses, its color almost a show of defiance in the midst of drabness? Now that we’ve noticed it, what’s it doing there? Further, the details of the dress she is wearing (“flower print polyester”) are unnecessary; to simply say that it is “plain” or “cheap” is all that a reader—or costume coordinator—needs to know.

OTHER ITEMS TO OMIT

· Monikers R Us. If a role is written in as simply part of the scene’s general ambiance, he or she doesn’t need to be assigned a name (i.e., the homeless gentleman has no lines, nor is he addressed by the other characters in conversation). At the same time, don’t confuse a script reader by initially identifying characters by gender or occupation (in this case, THIEVES) and then attach names to them later on in the script. For example: “Enter JOE and MIKE, whom we recognize as the pair of thieves from page 5.”

· Accents. In my work as a script coverage consultant, I’m always amused by references to characters who are described as “fussy Brits, articulate Germans, and suave Frenchmen” ... and yet don’t say a peep for the entire scene. If you’re not going to allow them to open their mouths, assigning a specific dialect to them just doesn’t make any sense.

· Attractiveness quotient. “Ann, an exceptionally homely woman…”

Are there actually gradations of homeliness that we’re not aware of? Stick to tags such as “plain,” “handsome,” “diamond in the rough,” “drop dead gorgeous.” And is it really essential that Gwen is a size 6 or that she has a Lauren Hutton smile? Not really. A size 9 with imperfect eyebrows could probably play the part just as well.

· Extraneous explanations. Avoid background data that we don’t need to know. The origin of Ann’s dress, for instance, or Larry’s former occupation. If it’s not going to be revealed via dialogue or action, it doesn’t need to be explained in the description.

· Thought bubbles. Finally, don’t embed inner thoughts within character profiles. If Marty wears John Lennon glasses because he associates John Lennon with coolness, let this come out in the context of the story itself. If this isn’t a crucial facet of Marty’s psyche, any pair of glasses—or lack thereof—would suffice.

Former actress/director Christina Hamlett is a Pasadena, California script coverage consultant whose published works include 17 books, 104 plays and musicals, 2 optioned films, multiple shorts, and several hundred magazine articles and interviews that appear throughout the world. Her latest book proposal “COULD IT BE A MOVIE?” has just been accepted by Michael Wiese Productions, a publisher exclusively dedicated to titles regarding the film and television industry.