Hello all creatives and social networkers around the world. Today’s title implies a very important discussion, hence I will take care of presenting it so, as well! Today I will try to pose the educational, experiential as well as artistic sides of getting into the minds of characters, walking in our characters’ shoes and find out what makes them believable for writers, as well as general tips of … what actually works (you have a first taste by the title 😉)
I have been taking very analytical lessons by ScreenCraft, an organization located in Beverly Hills, California, on developing dramatic movie ideas. So, this is where the origin of the wonder “getting into the minds of characters” actually began. Did they bite the forbidden fruit? No. Did they say something they shouldn’t have said, heard something they shouldn’t have heard, did something they shouldn’t have done? It depends on the viewing angle…!
Those of us who have seen La La Land, would probably give everything to feel and live like its main protagonists, Sebastian & Mia, even if it deals about the joy and pain of pursuing your dreams. Today’s discussion is about the analytics all around it, not just the film but the experience of any of it. You may have seen High School Musical, or Step Up 2 The Streets, or Good Will Hunting, or Dead Poets Society or many more films independent from the genre and now many of us are writers. When we create an experience with scenes and narrative action, we ideally need first-hand experience about those scenes and actions. Ideally, we should reveal as much information as possible in our scene headings that play an organic part in the entire screenplay, it’s how we set up a story dealing basically with personal, indirect (relevant) or in our best of options, educational experiences, this actually means first-hand knowledge. Let’s find out where this leads before we draw our first conclusion. Many of us when we eventually have to explain the conflicts of character development and actually develop characters with scenes and structures, we come up with topics, ideas and analyses that we have to experience them to make them believable, how could we possibly know how the character acts and behaves?
For example, in the first draft of my 3rd book that needs plenty of work, I talk about a ballerine. A ballerine by whom I feel attracted, so if I’d like to describe how she communicates, behaves and acts with her dancing students I would have to come up with relevant descriptions… Perhaps someone else would like to describe the acrobatics of Cirque Du Soleil, or if it's a musical or a film with dancers, it’s the setting of a “screenwriting story” that determines what’s necessary and what’s not. For example, the screenwriter in La La Land is not expected to come up with lyrics, he talks about music numbers but someone else will come up with writing music. Eventually though, the writer has to deal with the method, the research, the atmosphere, the imagination and the acting of the script. As well as beginners say, we have to be familiar with the material…
1.) What would my character do in this situation?
2.) What would hurt my character most?
3.) How would my character react to this conflict?
4.) How would my character shine in this situation?
That’s The Magical If 😉
Conclusions rise from the fact that to develop characters effectively we must deepen in their psychology, we must deepen in their worlds and their routines, we must deepen in their dreams and nightmares and wonders, we must deepen in their habits and tastes and we do not have such an expertise. All the above define the limits of where writing what we don’t know of stops, and we have to come up with writing on what we feel familiar with. This will give us a sense of our repertorie, but again, to make quantum leaps we need to work with concrete paradigms.
In the competitive world of USA actors in America, the big names that are professionals are not mere professional actors but professional celebrities. Projects and writers have bombarded us with Hollywood’s next flair of the week relevant with an artist’s journey, musicals, melodramas, etc but like writers, both actors and writers have to get along with agents, have to market themselves, have to do public relations, have to give interviews, have to work with publishers and the internet and these movies describe the overall feeling and excitement of growing up as an artist… If we’d like to portray hunting fame in a screenplay and put an actor socialize, are we aware of public relations? Do we get the overall atmospheres of festivals and journalists surrounding them? Eventually we will come up with scenes and subtractive logic in a screenplay, but “can we”, though? If we possess the experience, it’s fine. If we don’t possess the experience, we should seek something relevant (indirect) that we possess. We should definitely count on reading books, watching movies, talking with people and the ideal is that we could be educated on these things. If La La Land deals with Mia becoming an actress, what’s the dimensionality of being an actor?
In ancient Greece the paths of knowledge had been parallelized with drama. The entire education was a theater according to ancient Greece. This took place for no matter what happens with our educational lives, our professional identities and our expertise, when we have to portray characters doing all the previous we eventually have to come up with our most fundamental conclusion for today that “right education” means “right theatre”…! For example, those of you that will take a look at my profile:
A.) Communication
B.) Conflict Management
C.) Emotional Intelligence
D.) Public Relations
E.) Marketing
F.) Writing – Screenwriting
G.) Psychology Elements
H.) Logic
I.) Career & Strategy
J.) Scaling Up
K.) Fantasy
L.) Being an entrepreneur of one’s self
All the previous dimensions have been part of my educational profile and are also part of an actor’s life as well…! In The Words of Emily Logan, Joel & Emily begin as student actors in high-shool and later on Joel will deal with professional drama and Emily with English literature. Developing a screenplay requires a packet of things. Do my characters portray that packet? If I’d like them to deal with personal development, it’s very easy to theorize but eventually, how can our previous dimensions help us in terms of building up their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in their profiles? Better visualization at the end of the day for the actors, means better visualization of my profile, direct or indirect.
Of course, if someone writes action, or thriller or sci-fi, it’s both an actor’s educational dimensions (he will have to sell it to actors eventually) as well as education relevant with helping the genre of the script deal with the important things of its subject matter and make the script shine. Can we? Personally speaking, attending not just introductory classes on screenwriting, but the analytical art presented by ScreenCraft, made me realize my education is the other side (the real one) of an actor’s life, as a writer and by being both me and the actor who we truly are! Actors need a very strong inner life to counterbalance their fantasy life and quite often, this means being well-searched on the above fields…
Realizing that right education means right theater, we realize that the building blocks of a writer’s art and creative profile are the building blocks of his/her artistic materials. Someone who is keen on history will develop historical novels. Someone who likes science will engage in science fiction 😉 Someone else will produce courtroom drama because he has experience with law and justice, like in A Few Good Men, or A Time To Kill or Erin Brockovich. To come up with material we have to put ourselves in our characters shoes and find out ourselves, how the heck are we going to put them in believable situations that seem real. If someone wants to get to know a character really well, it’s the writer’s subjects and expertise that need becoming aware of it, building it as well as refining it… Have you felt that in your interactions and feedback? Quite often, it’s about people we assume to know, but we do not quite know really well after all… Have a great time folks!
