Character Backstory Screenwriting
Part Two -
Inhabiting Your Character's Past
Character backstory screenwriting involves inhabiting your character's past. Imagine him or her as a child, and following their development up to the age they are when the present story starts.
This is one of the most effective strategies for digging deep into what makes your character tick. I promise you that it will be a voyage of discovery and you'll find your characters revealing aspects of their personalities that will surprise you.
Get your imagination fired up by writing very quickly with just a few strokes, short scenes set in your character's past.
Write Scenes of Your
Character's Past
Write a scene around: What is her most happy childhood memory? What made her frightened as a child? Did it give her nightmares? What was his favorite book when he was 9 years old? (Did he have one?) Was he happy at school? Did she have a special friend? Did she find it hard to make friends?
Character Backstory Screenwriting
Alongside the Secondary Characters
One of the most crucial aspects of how to write a screenplay with stand-out screenwriting is to make sure you don't create your main character in isolation from the other characters in the story.The main character must be inextricably connected to the others.Why? Because a memorable, compelling and complex main character is at least partly defined by his or her relationships with these other characters. Probably the finest example of a protagonist being strongly defined by others is Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie voted the best of all time by the Writers Guild of America), Casablanca. It's worth taking another look at this movie to see how every secondary character is a complex creation, how together, they all play a crucial part in defining Rick, and how they are all connected to the story. It was when I realized this about the character of Rick in Casablanca - the way all the other characters seemed to be conveying the layers of Rick's character to us that I started to play around with imagining my main character with the secondary characters as kids. This helped me focus on the emotional needs of the protagonist in ways that a simple character profile list couldn't begin to achieve. Character backstory screenwriting involves thinking about more than his or her own past.
Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in In The Mood For Love.
Screenwriter/Director: Wong Kar Wai.
Imagine Your Main Character
with Other Characters
When They Were All Kids
So I began writing little scenes about my character's past to find out what would happen when he interacted with the other kids (the secondary characters as children).It's really critical to try to treat all the kids as equally important - to not just focus on the main character. Try it. Put all your characters in a nursery and watch them play in the sandpit. Study the group dynamic. Who's taking charge? Who's staying in the background? Any child playing in a corner on their own? Any fighting over toys going on? Who's 'teacher's pet'? Who's talking the loudest? Who's not speaking?
Write a quick scene about two of the kids tussling over a toy.
Character Backstory Screenwriting - Teenagers
Now imagine all the characters as teenagers.Who's the tough one? How does s/he talk?Any of them the leader? Anyone a bully? Anyone being bullied? Imagine the protagonist's teenage bedroom Imagine the antagonist's teenage bedroom Imagine them all in the classroom. Who's diligently taking notes? Who's disrupting the class? Who's staring out of the window?
Character Backstory Screenwriting - Home
Write a quick scene set in your character's family home when he was a child.How does he feel about his mother? How would you convey that in the script? Do the same for his father. Has s/he any siblings? Do they get on? Or do they hate each other?
Achieving The Screenwriter's Happiest State
If you've come up with a really good backstory for all of your characters, you should find your emotional plot creating itself.That means the underlying, emotional plot will be firing up the surface plot. And when that's happening you won't be needing to refer to your character profile list or backstory notes. You'll be inhabiting the life of the characters - and they'll be telling you what to do! This is the time when the screenwriter reaches that longed-for- state - however momentarily - when struggling ceases and the screenplay starts to write itself. The characters behave in ways you hadn't anticipated as though they'e telling you how to write them. Making meaning emerges like magic.
You might find it helpful to view the
Screenwriting Character Page
alongside these character backstory pages.
Go to Character Backstory Screenwriting Part One
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