You should play this game constantly and you should never settle for the pat or non-problematical. Shitfully boring characters take five minutes to create and are forgotten in the same amount of time. Being original takes time and work, but its worth it and you’ll know this when you reach a point where you are excited and inspired by the unique contribution each of your characters will bring to your production.
Landscapes and other Phenomena as Characters
Consider also that characters may be elements from the natural world such as droughts, floods, blizzards, earthquakes, lightning, tidal waves, meteor storms, sand storms, avalanches etc.
Similarly disruption of your character’s environment through elements such as power failure, communication breakdown, war, plague, pollution, water and food contamination, etc. all have dramatic potential as ‘characters’. At all times you must explore the worth, the personality not just of everyone, but of everything.
Distinguishing Characteristics
'Screenwriting skill is manifested principally as an ability to create, differentiate and motivate, memorable characters. The most important aspect of this process is the definition of those characteristics that set your characters apart. This is not just the character’s appearance, but also the factors that cause them to respond idiosyncratically to stimuli. Likewise characterisation consists of discriminating and emphasising the oddities of appearance and behaviour that mark the individual. Conflict is born of the discrepancies then revealed. Conflict, in turn, is the prime means whereby drama is precipitated, focussed and sustained. So drama stems from the following progression:
Character Design = Conflict = Narrative Drama'
Let’s think of a few practical examples of the character traits of an individual determining, or at least contributing to the drama they are invloved in.
The Woman in Cloud Cover is engaged in a battle with her own depression, her condition has taken on a physical form of a cloud and it insinuates itself into every aspect of her life.
In Murmer, a man lives in crippling fear of revealing what is in his heart. His heart however wants to heard.
The Big Sister in On The Way, is so wrapped up in being 'in charge' that she convinces herself that she knows where she's going even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary.
Ok, so what can we do to contribute to the individuality of characters? Here are some aspects to be considered:
a) Physical Diversity
If you are not going to be heavily reliant on dialogue (and let’s hope you’re not) then physical appearance is the first aspect which must set your characters apart from each other. Strive not to create characters which are clones of each other unless you are wanting to create the impression of interchangable teaming hordes. This is where the laws of contrast come into play.
So ... if you want to establish that a character is hyper, put that character amongst slow movers, slow thinkers. If you want to establish that a character is intrinsically good, put that character amongst evil, wicked, mean and nasty types. If you want to establish their rake-like proportions, then place that character in the immediate vicinity of heavyweights. Look at the contrast between Ren and Stimpy; the clean-limbed, good and bright figure of Otaku and the pulsating, muscle bound, orange-eyed, evil Jawpan. Would Snow White have had the same impact if she was as dumpy as the dwarves? Nah!
Along the above lines think also of contrast in size - In The Iron Giant, the Giant's relationship with Hogarth is given real tension by the enormous contrast between his size and strength and that of the boy. King Kong would have been tranquilised within his first five minutes of freedom if he wasn’t the size of the Empire State. You can produce instant conflict when you selectively and radically alter scale.
The chemistry which exists between characters is also a telling point. Characters have to react to each other. If they remained indifferent throughout you would have a complete non-event on your hands. Imagine if Fernando told Stephen to "shut up" right from the outset. And that’s just what he did for the rest of the film. Without complaint, without struggle ... and the point of the film was???? What about Snow White’s wicked stepmother? If all she said on hearing that Snow White had survived was, “Oh well, easy come easy go”, you have absolutely no reason to tell the story.
I can’t stress enough how very, very important your choice of characters is in conveying your story. They can mean the difference between “ho-hum ... next!” and “outstanding!”
b) Personality
Physical appearance is the first thing we register about your characters, their personalities must then sustain them through the rest of your story. As with appearance, it helps to establish a dominant aspect. The key here is motivation. What does your character want and how badly do they want it? Think for instance of Macbeth, driven by a blinding ambition to get the crown. What if this wasn’t the case, what’s if his ambition was only luke warm? What if Lady Macbeth had come to him and said “How now My Lord, let’s away to kill the King” and he says “Och Aye Flower absolutely! ...but not tedday, me and the lads are jousting tedday, pr'haps tomorrraa...”. Personality traits have to be striking, vivid, reactionary, otherwise your story will leave your characters untouched, and since they are the essence of your story, why even bother telling it?
Understanding what makes your characters tick is not only enjoyable its essential. It helps you get to the point where they dictate to you what they want to do, but they also become more real, more tangible. Since you are not starting off with flesh and blood characters to begin with; you have to put extra effort into establishing them as believable entities.
c) Health
How many times have you seen an on-screen character burp, fart, urinate, squeeze a zit, put on deoderant, pick their nose, be told that their breath stinks, pick spinach from their teeth, suffer from an in-grown toe-nail? Hardly ever probably. Why not? Bad health affects all of us at some stage and some of us all the time, it’s life, it’s real, it’s substance. So use things like a dicky heart, cataracts, deafness, nervous tics, speech impediments, ulcers, alcoholism, venereal disease, harelip, flatulence, epilepsy, impotence, chronic morbid depression, scabies, club foot, sebacious cysts.
d) Speech
The way your character speaks is another method of establishing an idiosyncratic being. Do they drawl, snort, pant, slobber, wheeze, whine, stutter, lisp, shout, strangle their vowels, snigger? Or are they mute? Do they sound as they look? Does the truck driver speak like Prince Charles, do the aliens communicate in the vernacular of fad conscious teenagers or does the family dog spout Shakespeare in a deep, resonant baritone? What tension and interest can be created through the realtionship between what your character looks and sounds like. The way your characters speak, the noises they make will tell us about their age, health, education, upbringing, nationality and state of mind. How your characters speak can be as important as what they say.
e) Movement and Mannerisms
Your character doesn’t need to verbalise “I am a chronic worrier, erring on the side of depression”. Chain-smoking, eye-rubbing, ear-pulling, nervous tics, eye-swivelling, nail biting, gulping, finger tapping, fidgeting, scratching, sighing, moaning and nervous laughter will convey the message far more effectively and will be far more memorable.
Think also of character movement. Think about the wharfie who skips, the ballet dancer who limps, the catwalk model who can't walk in a straight line, the dog who leans upright and cross-legged while smoking a cigarette cigarette, the fat woman who floats like a balloon, the penguins who square dance, the snowman who flies, the insects who dive bomb, the pig who totters - any of these singular characteristics of movement can give further weight to characterisation.
f) Occupation and Interests
As I pointed out in my Dennis Nielson example, the recreational activities of characters should be compared and contrasted to a character’s occupation (if they have such a thing). Your character takes on added dimension if you can provide these details. Think about:
The plumber who studies Burmese cooking
The morgue attendant who breeds finches
The socialite who speaks Pidgin English
The physicist who repairs dolls
The nun who cheats at cards
The doctor who does night-shift in a slaughter house
This form of contrast is an invitation to cast against type. If you can taunt the audience’s preconceptions you can make dynamic characterisation and hence, lasting memories.
Character Transition
This is as essential as having your characters react to their surroundings and each other. If your characters don’t undergo some form of change during your story, then what was the point of the story, and could it have been done minus the characters? It’s by character transition that you convey the moral of your story. For instance, the Big Sister in On The Way starts out in charge, she assumes that as she's the oldest , she knows more than her younger sibling but by the end of the film, she's come to realise that as Little Sister was actually capable of directing them to Auntie's house, the balance between the two has shifted a little and her position of Keeper of The Knowlege is no longer unassailable. In Murmer, The Man has decided that he can't live without his heart, so he's going to have to learn to live with it. Similarly, in Cloud Cover, The Woman realises that she has to accept that her depression as part of her and to own it, not fight it.
Transformation of Appearance
Audiences like to see transformations, it gratifies their own yearnings to change their spots, whether physically, emotionally, financially or intellectually. That’s why films like “Batman”, "The Devil wears Prada", “Pinocchio”, “The Little Mermaid”, "Mulan" and "Appeal" appeal. Physical transformation can be interpreted as conventionally or outrageously as you wish. Imagine the plump, hairy, middle-aged man who has longed to dress as a woman and go out in public. Once transformed, perhaps to the outside world he still looks like a plump, hairy, middle-aged man in a dress but in his own mind he beautiful, he is free and he is as he always wanted to be, his transforamtion is complete. Physical transformation takes many forms beyond caterpillar into butterfly or duckling into swan. Especially in the world of animation.
FINALLY....
Please remember to think about E.M.I.S. (The External Manifestations of the Internal State) - these are the very, very, very powerful visual and auditory clues that reveal to your audience critical, otherwise hidden, information about the character's hopes, ambitions, education, motivation, desires, flaws, emotions, reactions... When designing your character, ask yourself:
1. What does the character want and how will they get it?
2. What should the audience know about this character?
3. How will they know it?