An award-winning producer and personal manager, Marilyn Atlas of Marilyn Atlas Management may be most at home in film, television, and live theater. But what she said in her screenwriting workshop, “Creating Three-Dimensional Non-Stereotypical Characters,” at the 2011 Willamette Writer’s Conference, can support you to create unforgettable characters in fiction and add depth to real people in memoir writing, too.
This was one of my favorite workshops at the conference. I could have listened to Marilyn for hours.
Here are some highlights on how to develop characters with substance and vitality:
Consider who your favorite characters are. Think of three of your favorite movie or TV characters. What are the qualities that attract you to them? What makes them outstanding, unusual or against type?
Marilyn, who often finds more good writing in TV than most feature films today, notes the unique characters in shows like Breaking Bad, The Good Wife, Mad Men, and The Wire as examples. Here are three who break out of stereotypical molds:
- In The Wire, a drug dealer recites Greek mythology.
- In The Good Wife, a cynical Indian private investigator wears hip stiletto boots, tight leather jacket and skirts. Bisexual, she uses sex as a power trip and uses any means to get what she wants.
- In Breaking Bad, a financially-strapped high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with lung cancer teams up with a former student to become a drug producer and dealer. His goal? To gain security for his family before he dies.
If you were an actor, would you want to play the role of your character? Actors want parts that are outstanding and interesting. Viewers/readers want characters to be that, too.
What are you character’s wounds? “You, the writer, need to know your character’s deepest wounds, even if you don’t tell the reader, because the actions characters take and behaviors they exhibit are predicated on their wounds,” says Marilyn.
In The Good Wife, we know the hip, cynical investigator, Kalinda, has had an extraordinary wound. Even though you don’t see what that wound is or how she got it, you see it through her actions.
For example, in one scene, she slams a baseball bat into a man’s chest and as he sits hunched over in pain, you see her on the phone saying, “Uh, my boyfriend’s had an accident, and he’s injured his chest. He’s having problems breathing. Could you send someone up please?’”
Audiences identify with main characters. Their dialogue is not only what is “said,” but what the character means by what he or she says. That’s one reason you need to let the theme be evoked through the dialogue of the characters. Marilyn gave these examples:
In Mad Men, Dan Draper states, “”Oh, you mean love. You mean the big lightning bolt to the heart where you can’t eat and you can’t work and you just run off and get married and make babies. The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.”
In Crash, Graham Waters says, “In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”
Watch beginnings of movies and TV shows to see how extraordinary characters are introduced in action and interaction. To show true mastery of developing character in action, Marilyn recommends watching Hannibal Lechter’s introduction in The Silence of the Lambs, the family dinner at the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine and Crash’s first scene.
In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lechter’s body language speaks volumes. He stands perfectly rigid in the center of his cell. He never sits or moves his head. Before he ever opens his mouth, he controls Clarissa Starling with his words, with his very presence. He is so tuned in that he smells and names her skin cream and perfume from afar. Clarissa’s responses represent equally masterful characterization. (This movie also signals the importance of character name choices and their meanings.)
Make up sheets for each character that answer certain fundamental questions: Name, sex, age, physical appearance (include how characters feel about their appearance). Ask yourself, who are your characters sociologically, physically, emotionally and psychologically? (And I would add “spiritually.”)
Continue exploring these key questions, amongst others, about your character:
- What is the character ashamed of? In order to play the character, Jack Nicholson first looks for that character’s biggest secret or shame. If it’s not in the script, he makes it up.
- What is your character afraid of?
- What does your character want? This is conscious. If characters reach a goal easily, it’s not very interesting
- What does your character need? This is unconscious.
- What adjectives evoke your character?
WRITING PROMPT: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU TO DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTER
Try this writing prompt Marilyn suggested for from five to 15 minutes. Choose three characteristics and create a scene with a character in it based on the characteristics. Or give the characteristics to a character you have already created in a scene and explore what happens. Choose your own words or do this with your writing group.
Here are the three characteristics the session members at the Willamette Writers Conference chose as our writing prompt:
Desolate Futuristic Brooding
Have fun with it. I would love to hear your thoughts and responses.
- Share the results of your writing prompt here in the comment section of this blog.
- Let us know who you find to be your favorite characters in novels/memoirs/TV or film? What attracts you to them? Share those memorable characteristics here.
- Do you have any tips you’d like to offer on how you develop characters?
- Did you find out anything new about your characters when you asked them the key questions? What answers surprised you most?
Please share those and other comments here.
More on Marilyn Atlas: An award-winning producer and personal manager, Marilyn Atlas is equally at home in the worlds of film, television, and live theater. Among her film credits are Real Women Have Curves for HBO, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and A Certain Desire, starring Sam Waterston. Her theater credits include the award-winning To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday. Committed to projects that reflect diversity, she is now in development with Brides’ March for Lifetime Television and is partnering with Broadway producer Chris Bensinger for the musical version of Real Women. I also just found out that Marilyn will be interviewed on http://mediabrandworkshop.wordpress.com/ on September 7th. Listen in for more insights.
For more on Willamette Writers and their conference: www.willamettewriters.com or on Twitter, search hashtag #wwcon11 or @wilwrite.
An award-winning producer and personal manager, Marilyn Atlas of Marilyn Atlas Management may be most at home in film, television, and live theater. But what she said in her screenwriting workshop, “Creating Three-Dimensional Non-Stereotypical Characters,” at the 2011 Willamette Writer’s Conference, can support you to create unforgettable characters in fiction and add depth to real people in memoir writing, too.
This was one of my favorite workshops at the conference. I could have listened to Marilyn for hours. Here are some highlights in how to develop characters with substance and vitality:
Consider who your favorite characters are. Think of three of your favorite movie or TV characters. What are the qualities that attract you to them? What makes them outstanding, unusual or against type.
Marilyn, who often finds more good writing in TV than most feature films today, notes the unique characters in shows like Breaking Bad, The Good Wife, Mad Men, and The Wire as examples. Here are three characters who break out of stereotypical molds:
· In The Wire, a drug dealer recites Greek mythology.
· In The Good Wife, a cynical Indian private investigator wears hip stiletto boots, tight leather jacket and skirts. Bisexual, she uses sex as a power trip and uses any means to get what she wants.
· In Breaking Bad, a financially-strapped high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with lung cancer teams up with a former student to become a drug producer and dealer. His goal? To gain security for his family before he dies.
If you were an actor, would you want to play the role of your character? Actors want parts that are outstanding and interesting. Viewers/readers want characters to be that, too.
What are you character’s wounds? “You, the writer, need to know your character’s deepest wounds, even if you don’t tell the reader, because the actions characters take and behaviors they exhibit are predicated on their wounds,” says Marilyn.
In The Good Wife, we know the hip, cynical investigator, Kalinda, has had an extraordinary wound. Even though you don’t see what that wound is or how she got it, you see it through her actions.
For example, in one scene, she slams a baseball bat into a man’s chest and as he sits hunched over in pain, you see her on the phone saying, “Uh, my boyfriend’s had an accident, and he’s injured his chest. He’s having problems breathing. Could you send someone up please?’”
Audiences identify with main characters. Their dialogue is not only what is “said,” but what the character means by what he or she says. That’s one reason you need to let the theme be evoked through the dialogue of the characters. Marilyn gave these examples:
In Mad Men, Dan Draper states, “”Oh, you mean love. You mean the big lightning bolt to the heart where you can’t eat and you can’t work and you just run off and get married and make babies. The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.”
In Crash, Graham Waters says, “In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”
Watch beginnings of movies and TV shows to see how extraordinary characters are introduced in action and interaction. To show true mastery of developing character in action, Marilyn recommends watching Hannibal Lechter’s introduction in The Silence of the Lambs, the family dinner at the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine and Crash’s first scene.
In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lechter’s body language speaks volumes. He stands perfectly rigid in the center of his cell. He never sits or moves his head. Before he ever opens his mouth, he controls Clarissa Starling with his words, with his very presence. He is so tuned in that he smells and names her skin cream and perfume from afar. Clarissa’s responses represent equally masterful characterization. (This movie also signals the importance of character name choices and their meanings.)
Make up sheets for each character that answer certain fundamental questions: Name, sex, age, physical appearance (include how characters feel about their appearance). Ask yourself, who are your characters sociologically, physically, emotionally and psychologically? (And I would add “spiritually.”)
Continue exploring these key questions, amongst others, about your character:
· What is the character ashamed of? In order to play the character, Jack Nicholson first looks for that character’s biggest secret or shame. If it’s not in the script, he makes it up.
· What is your character afraid of?
· What does your character want? This is conscious. If characters reach a goal easily, it’s not very interesting
· What does your character need? This is unconscious.
· What adjectives evoke your character?
WRITING PROMPT: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU TO DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTER
Try this writing prompt for from five to 15 minutes. Choose three characteristics and create a scene with a character in it based on the characteristics. Or give the characteristics to a character you have already created in a scene and explore what happens. Choose your own words or do this with your writing group.
Here are the three characteristics the session members at the Willamette Writers Conference chose as our writing prompt:
Desolate Futuristic Brooding
Have fun with it. I would love to hear your thoughts and responses.
· Share the results of your writing prompt here in the comment section of this blog.
· Let us know who you find to be your favorite characters in novels/memoirs/TV or film? What attracts you to them? Share those memorable characteristics here.
· Do you have any tips you’d like to offer on how you develop characters?
· Did you find out anything new about your characters when you asked them the key questions? What answers surprised you most?
Please share those and other comments here.
More on Marilyn Atlas: An award-winning producer and personal manager, Marilyn Atlas is equally at home in the worlds of film, television, and live theater. Among her film credits are Real Women Have Curves for HBO, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and A Certain Desire, starring Sam Waterston. Her theater credits include the award-winning To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday. Committed to projects that reflect diversity, she is now in development with Brides’ March for Lifetime Television and is partnering with Broadway producer Chris Bensinger for the musical version of Real Women. I also just found out that Marilyn will be interviewed on
An award-winning producer and personal manager, Marilyn Atlas of Marilyn Atlas Management may be most at home in film, television, and live theater. But what she said in her screenwriting workshop, “Creating Three-Dimensional Non-Stereotypical Characters,” at the 2011 Willamette Writer’s Conference, can support you to create unforgettable characters in fiction and add depth to real people in memoir writing, too.
This was one of my favorite workshops at the conference. I could have listened to Marilyn for hours. Here are some highlights in how to develop characters with substance and vitality:
Consider who your favorite characters are. Think of three of your favorite movie or TV characters. What are the qualities that attract you to them? What makes them outstanding, unusual or against type.
Marilyn, who often finds more good writing in TV than most feature films today, notes the unique characters in shows like Breaking Bad, The Good Wife, Mad Men, and The Wire as examples. Here are three characters who break out of stereotypical molds:
- In The Wire, a drug dealer recites Greek mythology.
- In The Good Wife, a cynical Indian private investigator wears hip stiletto boots, tight leather jacket and skirts. Bisexual, she uses sex as a power trip and uses any means to get what she wants.
- In Breaking Bad, a financially-strapped high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with lung cancer teams up with a former student to become a drug producer and dealer. His goal? To gain security for his family before he dies.
If you were an actor, would you want to play the role of your character? Actors want parts that are outstanding and interesting. Viewers/readers want characters to be that, too.
What are you character’s wounds? “You, the writer, need to know your character’s deepest wounds, even if you don’t tell the reader, because the actions characters take and behaviors they exhibit are predicated on their wounds,” says Marilyn.
In The Good Wife, we know the hip, cynical investigator, Kalinda, has had an extraordinary wound. Even though you don’t see what that wound is or how she got it, you see it through her actions.
For example, in one scene, she slams a baseball bat into a man’s chest and as he sits hunched over in pain, you see her on the phone saying, “Uh, my boyfriend’s had an accident, and he’s injured his chest. He’s having problems breathing. Could you send someone up please?’”
Audiences identify with main characters. Their dialogue is not only what is “said,” but what the character means by what he or she says. That’s one reason you need to let the theme be evoked through the dialogue of the characters. Marilyn gave these examples:
In Mad Men, Dan Draper states, “”Oh, you mean love. You mean the big lightning bolt to the heart where you can’t eat and you can’t work and you just run off and get married and make babies. The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.”
In Crash, Graham Waters says, “In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”
Watch beginnings of movies and TV shows to see how extraordinary characters are introduced in action and interaction. To show true mastery of developing character in action, Marilyn recommends watching Hannibal Lechter’s introduction in The Silence of the Lambs, the family dinner at the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine and Crash’s first scene.
In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lechter’s body language speaks volumes. He stands perfectly rigid in the center of his cell. He never sits or moves his head. Before he ever opens his mouth, he controls Clarissa Starling with his words, with his very presence. He is so tuned in that he smells and names her skin cream and perfume from afar. Clarissa’s responses represent equally masterful characterization. (This movie also signals the importance of character name choices and their meanings.)
Make up sheets for each character that answer certain fundamental questions: Name, sex, age, physical appearance (include how characters feel about their appearance). Ask yourself, who are your characters sociologically, physically, emotionally and psychologically? (And I would add “spiritually.”)
Continue exploring these key questions, amongst others, about your character:
- What is the character ashamed of? In order to play the character, Jack Nicholson first looks for that character’s biggest secret or shame. If it’s not in the script, he makes it up.
- What is your character afraid of?
- What does your character want? This is conscious. If characters reach a goal easily, it’s not very interesting
- What does your character need? This is unconscious.
- What adjectives evoke your character?
WRITING PROMPT: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU TO DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTER
Try this writing prompt for from five to 15 minutes. Choose three characteristics and create a scene with a character in it based on the characteristics. Or give the characteristics to a character you have already created in a scene and explore what happens. Choose your own words or do this with your writing group.
Here are the three characteristics the session members at the Willamette Writers Conference chose as our writing prompt:
Desolate Futuristic Brooding
Have fun with it. I would love to hear your thoughts and responses.
- Share the results of your writing prompt here in the comment section of this blog.
- Let us know who you find to be your favorite characters in novels/memoirs/TV or film? What attracts you to them? Share those memorable characteristics here.
- Do you have any tips you’d like to offer on how you develop characters?
- Did you find out anything new about your characters when you asked them the key questions? What answers surprised you most?
Please share those and other comments here.
More on Marilyn Atlas: An award-winning producer and personal manager, Marilyn Atlas is equally at home in the worlds of film, television, and live theater. Among her film credits are Real Women Have Curves for HBO, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and A Certain Desire, starring Sam Waterston. Her theater credits include the award-winning To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday. Committed to projects that reflect diversity, she is now in development with Brides’ March for Lifetime Television and is partnering with Broadway producer Chris Bensinger for the musical version of Real Women. I also just found out that Marilyn will be interviewed on http://mediabrandworkshop.wordpress.com/ on September 7th. Listen in for more insights.
For more on Willamette Writers and their conference: www.willamettewriters.com or on Twitter, search hashtag #wwcon11 or @wilwrite.
http://mediabrandworkshop.wordpress.com/ on September 7th. Listen in for more insights.
For more on Willamette Writers and their conference: www.willamettewriters.com or on Twitter, search hashtag #wwcon11 or @wilwrite.
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