Dramaticapedia

Introduction

If you already have a story idea, it is a simple matter to create a whole cast of characters that will grow out of your plot. In this lesson we’re going to lay out a method of developing characters from a thumbnail sketch of what your story is about.

The most concise way to describe the key elements of a story is with a “Thumbnail Sketch.” This is simply a short line or two, less than a paragraph, that gets right to the heart of the matter. You see them all the time in TV Guide listings and in the short descriptions that show up on cable or satellite television program information.

A thumbnail sketch of The Matrix, for example, might read, “A computer hacker discovers that the world we know is really just a huge computer program. He is freed from the program by a group of rebels intent on destroying the system, and ultimately joins them as their most powerful cyber warrior.”

Clearly, there is a lot more to the finished movie than that, but the thumbnail sketch provides enough information to get a good feel for what the story is about. Generally, such a description contains information about the plot, since the audience will choose what they want to watch on the kind of things they expect to happen in a story. If it is an action story, there may be no mention of characters at all as in, “A giant meteor threatens to demolish the earth.” If it is a love story, there may be little plot but several characters, as in, “A young Amish girl falls in love with a traveling salesman. Her father and his chosen match for her oppose the romance, but her free-minded mother and exiled aunt encourage her.”

Whether or not characters are specifically mentioned in a thumbnail sketch, they are always at least inferred. For your own story, then, the first step is to come up with a short description like those used as illustrations above. For the purposes of this lesson, we’ll propose the following hypothetical story to use as an example:

Suppose our story is described as the tribulations of a town Marshall trying to fend off a gang of outlaws who bleed the town dry.

The Expected Characters

The only explicitly called for characters are the Marshall and the gang. So, we’ll list them as required characters of the story. Certainly you could tell a story with just those characters, but it might seem a little under-populated. Realistically, you’d expect the gang to have a leader and the town to have a mayor. The Marshall might have a deputy. And, if the town is being bled dry, then some businessmen and shopkeepers would be in order as well. So the second stage of the process is to step a bit beyond what is actually written and to slightly enlarge the dramatic world described to include secondary and support characters too. The Usual Characters

Range a little wider now, and list some characters that aren’t necessarily expected, but wouldn’t seem particularly out of place in such a story.

Example:

A saloon girl, a bartender, blacksmith, rancher, preacher, school teacher, etc.

Now, let yourself go a bit and list a number of characters that would seem somewhat out of place, but still explainable, in such a story.

Example:

A troupe of traveling acrobats, Ulysses S. Grant, a Prussian Duke, a bird watcher.

Adding one or two somewhat unexpected characters to a story can liven up the cast and make it seem original, rather than predictable.

Finally, pull out all the stops and list some completely inappropriate characters that would take a heap of explaining to your reader/audience if they showed up in your story.

Example:

Richard Nixon, Martians, the Ghost of Julius Caesar

Although you’ll likely discard most of these characters, just the process of coming up with them can lead to new ideas and directions for your story.

For example, the town Marshall might become more interesting if he was a history buff, specifically reading about the Roman Empire. In his first run-in with the gang, he is knocked out cold with a concussion. For the rest of the story, he keeps imagining the Ghost of Julius Caesar, giving him unwanted advice.

Now, you assemble all the characters you have proposed for your story so far, be they Expected, Usual, Unusual, or Outlandish.

The task at hand is to weed out of this list of prospective characters all the ones we are sure we don’t want in our story. At first blush, this might seem easy, but before you make hasty decisions, keep in mind the use we came up with for Caesar’s Ghost. Consider: How might traveling acrobats be employed dramatically? As a place for the marshal to hide in greasepaint when the gang temporarily takes over the town? Or how about if the school teacher befriends them, and then employs their aid in busting the deputy out of jail when he falls under the gang’s control?

How about Ulysses S. Grant showing up on his way to a meeting with the governor, and the gang members must impersonate honest town’s folk until he and his armed cavalry escort have departed? Could make for a very tense or a very funny scene, depending on how you play it.

Try to put each of these characters in juxtaposition with each of the others, at least as a mental exercise, to see if any kind of chemistry boils up between them. In this way, you may find that some of the least likely characters on your initial consideration turn out to be almost indispensable to the development of your story!

You may not have noticed, but a lot of what we have just done with characters has had the added benefit of developing whole sequences of events, series of interactions, and additional plot lines. In fact, working with characters in this way often does as much for your story’s plot as it does in the creation of characters themselves.

Hence, it is never too early to work with characters. As soon as you have an initial story idea, no matter how lacking in detail or thinly developed it may be, it can pay to work with your characters as a means of adding to your plot!

1. Open a TV Listing Guide or view some descriptions on your cable or satellite guide.

2. Pick 3 descriptions from movies you know and list the explicitly called for characters.

3. Base on your knowledge of each story, list the usual characters, unusual characters, and outlandish characters (if any).

4. Pick 3 descriptions from movies you don’t know and list the explicitly called for characters.

5. Use your imagination to devise usual characters, unusual characters, and outlandish characters for each story.

6. Watch each of the three movies you hadn’t seen and see how your proposed characters compare to what was actually done.

7. Consider that you might write your own story based on the description with the characters you created and have it be so different from the actual movie that it has become your own story! (This is also a handy trick for coming up with your own original story ideas based on the hundreds of descriptions available each week. More than likely, your creative concepts will be nothing like the movie the description was portraying!)

1. Write a thumbnail sketch for a story you wish to develop.

2. List the explicitly described characters.

3. Come up with some additional supporting “usual” characters.

4. Be a bit creative and propose some unusual characters.

5. Let yourself loose and devise some outlandish characters.

6. Imagine each of the characters interacting with each of the others and determine which characters to employ in your story.

7. Use the scenarios created by your character interactions to expand your story’s plot.

Introduction

Writers tend to create characters that are more or less the same age as themselves. On the one hand, this follows the old adage that one should write about what one knows. But in real life, we encounter people of all ages in most situations. Of course, we often see stories that pay homage to the necessary younger or older person, but we just as often find gaps of age groups in which there are no characters at all, rather than a smooth spectrum of ages.

In addition, there are many considerations to age other than the superficial appearance, manner of dress, and stereotypical expectations. In this lesson we’re going to uncover a variety of traits that bear on an accurate portrayal of age, and even offer the opportunity to explore seldom-depicted human issues associated with age.

The Attributes of Age

People in general, and writers in particular, tend to stereotype the attributes of age more than just about any other character trait. There are, of course, the physical aspects of age, ranging from size, smoothness of skin, strength, mobility to the various ailments associated with our progress through life. Then there are the mental and emotional qualities that we expect to find at various points in life. But the process of aging involves some far more subtle components to our journey through life.

Anatomical vs. Chronological age

Before examining any specific traits, it is important to note the difference between anatomical and chronological age. Anatomical age is the condition of your body whereas chronological age is the actual number of years you’ve been around. For example, if you are thirty years old, but all worn out and genetically biased to age prematurely, you might look more akin to what people would expect of a fifty year old. Nonetheless, you wouldn’t have the same interests in music or direct knowledge of the popular culture as someone who was actually fifty years old. When describing a character, you might choose to play off your reader expectations by letting them assume the physical condition, based on your description of age. Or, you might wish to create some additional interest in your character by describing it as “A middle-aged man so fit and healthy, he was still “carded” whenever he vacationed in Vegas.” Such a description adds an element of interest and immediately sets your character out at an individual.

Jargon

Far too often, characters are portrayed as speaking in the same generic conversational language we hear on television. The only variance to that is the overlay of ethic buzzwords to our standard sanitized TV through template. In other words, characters act as if they all through alike, even if they had completely different cultural upbringings. But aging is an ongoing evolution of culture, rooting the individual into thought patterns of his or her formative hears, and tempered (to some degree) by the ongoing cultural indoctrination of a social lifestyle.

Characters, therefore, tend to pick up a basic vocabulary reflective of both their ethnicity AND their age. For example, a black man who fought for civil rights along side Dr. Martin Luther King, would not be using the same jargon ad a black man advancing the cause of rights today. And neither of these would use the same vocabulary as a young black man in the center city, trying to find his way out through education. To simply overlay the “black jargon” template on such characters is the same kind of unconscious subtle prejudice promoted by “flesh colored” crayons.

Sure, we all learn to drop some of the more dated terms and expletives of our youth in order to appear “hip” or “with it,” but in the end we either sound silly trying to use the new ones, or avoid them altogether, leaving us bland and un-passionate in our conversation. Both of these approaches can be depicted in your characters as well, and can provide a great deal of information about the kind of mind your character possesses.

Outlook

Speaking of character minds, we all have a culturally created filter that focuses our attention on some things, and blinds us to (or diminishes) others. Sometimes, this is built into the language itself. When it is hot, the Spanish say, “hace calor” (it makes heat). This phrasing is due to the underlying beliefs of the people who developed that language that see every object, even those that are inanimate, as possessing a spirit. So, when it is hot, this is not a mindless state of affairs due to meteorological conditions, but rather to the intent of the spirit of the weather. Of course, if you were to ask a modern Spanish speaking person if they believed in such a thing, you would likely receive a negative reply. And yet, because this concept permeates the language (making everyday items masculine or feminine), it cannot help but alter the way native speakers of the language will frame their thoughts.

As another example, the Japanese population of world war two was indoctrinated in the culture of honor, duty, and putting the needs of society above those of the individual. Although most countries foster this view, in war-time Japan, it was carried to the extreme, resulting in an effective Kamikaze force, and also in whole units that chose a suicidal charge against oncoming forces, rather than to be humiliated by defeat or capture.

Corporate Japan was built around these Samurai ideals, and workers commonly perceived themselves as existing to serve their companies with loyalty and unquestioning obedience. But when the economy faltered, those who expected to remain with their companies for life were laid off, or even permanently fired. This led to a disillusionment of the “group first” mentality, especially among the young, who had not yet become settled in their beliefs. So, today, there is still a gap between the old-guard corporate executives, and the millions of teenagers to whom they market. Age, in this case, creates a significant difference in the way the world looks.

Continuing with the notion of generation gaps, I grew up when the rallying cry was “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Of course, now we’re all in our fifties or even sixties, so we are forced to admit that we, ourselves, have in fact become “the Establishment.”

But that is what is visible and obvious to us. The real difference between my generation and the post Yuppie, post GenX, GenY, Gen? Generation is far more foundational. In conversations with my daughter I discovered that while I see myself on the other side of the generation gap, she does not perceive one at all! This is due to primarily to the plethora of high-quality recorded media programs, which capture so many fine performances and presentations when the artists and great thinkers were in their prime. We live in a TV Land universe in which no great works ever die; they are just reborn on Cable.

To my daughter’s generation, it is only important whether or not you have something worth saying. How old you are has nothing to do with your importance or relevance. In short, the difference between my generation and the younger generation is that we perceive a difference between the generations and they don’t!

In summary then, the age in which you establish your worldview will determine how you perceive current events for the rest of your life. When creating characters of any particular age, you would do well to consider the cultural landscape that was prevalent when each character was indoctrinated.

Comfort Symbols

We all share the same human emotional needs. And we each experience moments that fulfill those needs. Those experiences become fond memories, and many of the trappings of those experiences become comfort symbols. In later life, we seek out those symbols to trigger the re-experiencing of the cherished moments. Perhaps your family served a particular food in your childhood that you associate with warmth and love. For example, my mother grew up during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Her family was often short of food. So, as a snack, they would give her a piece of bread spread with lard and mustard! Now the thought very nearly sickens me, but she often yearned for that flavor again, as it reminded her of the love she received as a child.

Once we have locked into symbols that we can use to trigger emotional experiences, we seldom need to replace them. They are our comfort symbols upon which we can always rely. This has two effects as we age: One, we latch on to performers and music, as an example, that age along with us. We recall them at their prime when we first encountered them, and also have spent years aging along with them. This leads us to suddenly wake up one day and realize we no longer know who they are referring to in popular culture magazines and entertainment reporting televisions shows. In other words, the popular culture has passed us by. Two, we see many of our symbols (favorite advertising campaigns, a restaurant where we went on our first date, etc.) vanish as they are replaced with new and current concerns. So, the world around us seems less relevant, less familiar, and less comfortable, just as we seem to the world at large.

When creating characters, take into account the potential ongoing and growing sense of loss, sadness, and connection between characters and their environment. And don’t think this is a problem only for the elderly. My 24-year-old son laments that there are kids growing up today who never knew a world without personal computers! He says it makes him feel old.

Physical Attributes

Babies have a soft spot on their heads that doesn’t harden up for quite a while after birth. Cartilage wears out. Teens in puberty have raging hormones. Young kids grow so fast that they don’t have a chance to get used to the size and strength of their bodies before they have changed again, not unlike trying to drive a new and different car every day. I can’t remember the last time I ran full-tilt. I’m not sure it would be safe, today! Point is, our bodies are always changing. Sometimes the state we are in has positive and/or negative qualities – other times the changing itself is positive or negative.

When creating characters, give some thought to the physical attributes and detriments of any given age, and consider how they not only affect the abilities and mannerisms of your characters, but their mental and emotional baselines as well.

Conclusion?

Sure, we could go on and on exploring specifics of age and aging, but since it is a pandemic human condition, it touches virtually every human experience and endeavor. The point here is not to completely cover the subject, but to encourage you to consider it when creating each of your characters. It isn’t enough to simply describe a character as “a middle-aged man,” or “a perky 8 year old boy.” You owe it to your characters and to your readers or audience to incorporate the aging experience into their development, just as it is inexorably integrated into our own.

A writer recently asked:

I purchased your Storyweaver, because I’ve had many stories rumbling around in my head for years. Several of them are adaptations of old tv dramas and old movies.

My stories are totally different from the originals, but use the same characters names.

I guess my main question is: am I legally allowed to write these stories?

I’m guessing there must be some sort of rights acquired in order to do so. If that’s the case, I’ll have to forget it. I can’t afford the possible hundreds of thousands it would cost to acquire rights to characters names… and without these characters, my stories wouldn’t be the same.

Thank you for any help you can possibly provide.

Respectfully yours,

SV

My reply:

Hi, SV

While a character name cannot be copyrighted, it can be trademarked. And, in copyright cases, character names can be taken into consideration as part of an overall argument of infringement.

For example, there is no doubt you cannot get away with calling a character Luke Skywalker, even if you were telling a story about an orange and an apple, and Luke was the apple.

At the other end of the scale, you couldn’t get away with publishing a story about a young farm boy in a galaxy far far away whose father turns out to be the villain, and both of whom use a paranormal power (know as the PP) to move objects and control minds no matter what you called them, even Fred and Ethyl.

And in the middle are character names such as Joe Smith, which don’t really ring a bell with most people as belonging uniquely to some previously published work. Those kinds of names can be used without concern, even if they have been previously published in some obscure fiction.

In the end, it is up to you to determine if the character names are so identifiable that using them would violate copyright or intellectual property rights, and if you run into trouble, then it is up to the courts.

Hope this helps.

Melanie

I love index cards. I hate index cards. They are the best way to organize and re-organize my thoughts and story concepts before I write. But, they are time-consuming to fill out, impossible to edit, and UG-LY when stuck to a wall.

Finally, I go so frustrated I hired a programmer to build an interactive index card program designed to meet my story development needs.

The result is Throughline, and (I’m not kidding you here) it has changed my life! Not only did it streamline my work on stories, but I’ve started using it for everything from “Things to Do” to shopping lists!

The beauty of the program is its simplicity.  Click one button to create a new card.  Click once on the card to give it a name.  Double-click on the card to open the “content window” (essentially, the back of the card) where you can enter any information you want.  Drag and drop cards to rearrange them in any order you like.  You can give each card a color, change the font, and justify the text.

By description it doesn’t sound like much, but wait until you actually start using it!  In fact, why don’t you take it out for a test drive by downloading the Windows Demo.  (Sorry, no Mac demo at this time).  Or, since we have a 90 day money back satisfaction guarantee, why not just buy it so you can save, export, and print your cards.

Either way, once you’ve given it a whirl I’m pretty sure you’re going to feel like I do:  how did I ever get by without this thing?

Click here for complete details about all the features and how to use them, and let me know what you think!

Contributed by Teresa Darnold 

A character can be seen as being more thoughtful or more creative if they say things that are inventive and unique. Phrases that the reader has never heard or read before will seem new and fresh – unlike many colloquialisms that are said so often they have lost all original meaning, like; ‘We’re/they’re/somebody’s not out of the woods yet’. Now – while this might make some sense when the story is taking place in Washington state, when you hear newscasters say it when describing a car chase in the middle of a California desert or in the city of Los Angeles – it makes very little sense at all. 

If you’d like to see what I mean – try this; start to listen to your local evening news reports for the ‘Not out of the woods yet’ phrase and you might find yourself surprised at how often it’s used. It’s so overused we really don’t hear it being used. Likewise, if you fill up your story with characters uttering commonly called-upon colloquialisms, metaphors and puns, your story stands the chance of being as memorable as the evening news itself. 

Lawn Janitors. Have you ever heard the phrase before? They’re those guys who do little more than run a lawnmower, edger and/or leaf blower at your bank or apartment. Can such technicians really be called a ‘Gardener’ if their entire job involves cutting grass, sweeping up said grass, and then taking said cut grass to the trash?  I’m pretty confident you haven’t heard that one before because I just made it up for the purposes of this article.  And that’s what you should do for your stories as well. 

For example, Shawn Levy, the director of Night at the Museum I & II used a word in the sequel that he and his wife had made up in their own private conversations: “jimmyjack”.  It is intended to mean something like “crackjack” in its old usage, but with more of a sense of “splendid” than “top notch”. 

In his commentary on preparing the movie he says he gave the word to the character of Amelia Erheart because it simultaneously enhanced her personality and also made her unique.  Further, the sound of the word fit in with her time period.  And finally, it gave the audience something memorable to repeat, which leads to more word-of-mouth and recognition for a movie (or a book or stage play, for that matter). 

Think of all the clever, totally devised phraseology in other movies such as Men In Black, Beetlejuice, and Avatar, and books like Harry Potter, Interview with the Vampire, and anything by Clive Cussler. 

Now, admittedly, it isn’t always easy to come up with an inventive new word or phrase on the fly, so a good trick is to train yourself to notice when they pop up all on their own, such as when you mis-hear a phrase on TV or the radio, or when you mispronounce something in your own conversation. 

When you hear it, jot it down straightaway in your writer’s notebook.  You DO carry a writer’s notebook don’t you? – or at least the modern equivalent such as a smart phone, ipad, or voice recorder? 

Well if you don’t, you should – and for a lot of other reasons besides only made-up phrases.  And if you do, you will be richly rewarded with richer dialog and descriptions.  Or, as I always say, you’ll more pleased than a butt-happy, foot-happy kick-a-roo pony!

Like to contribute an article to Dramaticapedia?

Email your submission to mail@storymind.com

“Snakes… Why did it have to be snakes….???”

What a character likes and dislikes takes the curse of its larger than life stature. Whether you are writing a novel, play, screenplay, or teleplay, your characters loom in the hearts and minds of the audience. No one can relate to a loom. To humanize your characters and bring them down to size, give them feelings rather than just points of view.

You work in an office. Everyone does their job. The place runs like clockwork. Who ARE these people?! Until you know if they love football but hate sushi, you don’t really know them all. Who CARES what their purposes are; what do they take in their coffee, or tea, or do they not touch either but guzzle cola and pistachios.

Red. Does it do anything for them? What about wall paper patterns with thousands of little ducks? The things your characters like and don’t like set them apart from the crowd. And letting yourself go a little bit off the wall can bring forth attractions and repulsions that can suggest settings for a whole scene, sequence, or even the whole story itself.

Work yourself into the words. If you have pet likes and dislikes, this is the place to spout off about them. Assign them to your characters and you can get back at all those hated things, and express all those yearnings for the loved ones.

Excerpted from
Dramatica Story Development Software

Your thematic message (moral of the story) has two sides: the Issue and the Counterpoint. The Issue is the human quality under examination in your story (such as greed) and the Counterpoint is the opposite trait (such as Generosity), presented for contrast. Together, they play both sides of the moral dilemma. But how do you go about making your thematic point to your readers or audience?

The most important key to a successful thematic argument is never, ever play the message issue and counterpoint together at the same time. Why? Because the thematic argument is an emotional one, not one of reason. You are trying to sway your reader/audience to adopt your moral view as an author. This will not happen if you keep showing one side of the argument as “good” and the other side as “bad” in direct comparison. Such a thematic argument would seem one-sided, and treat the issues as being black-and-white, rather than gray-scale.

In real life, moral decisions are seldom cut-and-dried. Although we may hold views that are clearly defined, in practice it all comes down to the context of the specific situation. For example, it is wrong to steal in general. But, it might be proper to steal from the enemy during a war, or from a large market when you baby is starving. In the end, all moral views become a little blurry around the edges when push comes to shove.

Statements of absolutes do not a thematic argument make. Rather, your most powerful message will deal with the lesser of two evils, the greater of two goods, or the degree of goodness or badness of each side of the argument. In fact, there are often situations where both sides of the moral argument are equally good, equally bad, or that both sides are either good nor bad in the particular situation being explored in the story.

The way to create this more powerful, more believable, and more persuasive thematic argument is as follows:

1. Determine in advance whether each side is good, bad, or neutral.

Do this by assigning an arbitrary “value” to both the Message Issue and the Counterpoint. For example, we might choose a scale with +5 being abolutely good, -5 being absolutely bad, and zero being neutral.

If our thematic argument is Greed vs. Generosity, then Greed (our Message Issue) might be a -3, and Generosity (our Counterpoint) might be a -2. This would mean that both Greed and Generosity are both bad (being in the negative) but that Generosity is a little less bad than Greed since Generosity is only a -2 and Greed is a -3.

2. Show the good and bad aspects of both the Message Issue and the Counterpoint.

Make sure the examples of each side of the thematic argument that you have already developed don’t portray either side as being all good or all bad. In fact, even if one side of the argument turns out to be bad in the end, it might be shown as good initially. But over the course of the story, that first impression is changed by seeing that side in other contexts.

3. Have the good and bad aspects “average out” to the thematic conclusion you want.

By putting each side of the thematic argument on a roller coaster of good and bad aspects, it blurs the issues, just as in real life. But the reader/audience will “average out” all of their exposures to each side of the argument and draw their own conclusions at the end of the story.

In this way, the argument will move out of the realm of intellectual consideration and become a viewpoint arrived by feel. And, since you have not only shown both sides, but the good and the bad of each side, your message will be easier to swallow. And finally, since you never directly compared the two sides, the reader/audience will not feel that your message has been shoved down its throat.

A story without a clear indication of success or failure is a failure with your readers or audience. You need to work out exactly how the audience will know the goal is achieved or not.

This might seem obvious in an action story, but may be much more difficult in a story about character growth.

Success and Failure don’t have to be binary choices; they can be matters of degree. For example, the effort to bring back a treasure may fail, but the adventurers discover one large ruby that fell into their pack. Or, someone seeking true love might find love but with someone who is rather annoying.

Whether either of these examples is a partial success or a partial failure depends largely on how you portray the characters’ attitudes to the imperfect achievement. To ensure a sense of closure in your readers/audience, make sure they know exactly how things end up on the success/failure scale.

A goal is what the characters chase, but what chases the characters? The consequence doubles the dramatic tension in a story by providing a negative result if the goal is not achieved.

Consequences may be emotional or logistic, but the more intense they are, the greater the tension. Often it provides greater depth if there are emotional consequences when there is an external goal, and external consequences if there is an emotional goal.

Your story might be about avoiding the consequences or it might begin with the consequences already in place, and the goal is intended to end them.

If the consequences are intense enough, it can help provide motivation for characters who have no specific personal goals.