Will Dunne - Character, Scene, and Story : New Tools from the Dramatic Writers Companion

STAGE FLESHING OUT THE BONES

Use an interview process to uncover information about your character in a dramatic wayfrom the characters perspective and in the characters voice.

Explore your characters credo: what key beliefs it includes, how these beliefs arose, and what impact they might have on the dramatic journey.

Characters tend to be emotional beings. Learn more about your characters by exploring their dominant emotions and how they might translate into dramatic elements.

Whether or not your characters mother and father are in the story, they have probably played a critical role in shaping his or her physical, psychological, and social makeup. Use this exercise to learn more about your characters parents and how they might influence story events.

STAGE GETTING TO KNOW THE CHARACTER BETTER

Sense memory is a technique in which actors recall a specific physical detail from a past experience in order to relive the experience emotionally. Writers can use a similar technique to trigger emotional truths about their characters.

If to err is to be human, you can ground your character in humanity by identifying his or her weaknesses, flaws, and limitations and exploring how these imperfections might contribute to story events.

What do objects and other physical elements reveal about your character? Explore the physical realm of your story to gain new insights about the character at two key points: the beginning and the end of the dramatic journey.

Though the audience never meets them, offstage characters can have a profound effect on story events. This exercise helps you identify the most important offstage characters in your story and why they matter.

Flesh out two characters at a specific time in the story and record your responses side by side so that you can easily compare them in telling categories, such as most important relationship, dominant emotion, and burning desire.

STAGE UNDERSTANDING WHO THE CHARACTER REALLY IS

Develop a fact sheet that highlights critical truths about your character that could affect how your story unfolds.

Find out more about a character by asking two other characters from your story to describe him or her. In the end, your findings may reveal important information about all three characters and their relationships.

What would your character write in a journal, secret letter, or other private document that he or she would never tell others? Use instinctive writing to explore a characters innermost thoughts and desires.

What characters do is often more important than what they say, especially when their actions contradict their words. Use this exercise to explore the doings of a characterbefore, during, and after the story.

STAGE MAKING THINGS HAPPEN

Discover new ideas for dramatic action by exploring a scenes physical life: the setting and whats in it.

A dramatic story depicts changes that occur as characters pursue their goals and deal with obstacles. But sometimes what doesnt change is also important. Use this exercise to explore how new circumstances and unwavering truths can both affect how a scene unfolds.

The backstory is everything that happened in the world of the characters before the story begins. The only parts of this backstory that matter, however, are those that influence the characters here and now. Use this exercise to explore how the past can force its way into the present to ignite dramatic action.

In drama, desire operates on three levels: story (what the character wants overall), scene (what the character wants at a particular time and place), and beat (what the character wants from moment to moment). Explore these different levels of desire and their impact on the dramatic action of a scene.

How might your character be his or her own worst enemy? Who else might pose an obstacle to the characters success? How might the setting or current situation add to the problem? Explore different types of conflicts that your character might face when pursuing a scenic objective.

Objective is what the character wants. Motivation is why the character wants it. Define a characters objective for a scene, and explore two levels of motivation to achieve it: the apparent reasons for the characters actions and the hidden reasons, whether conscious or subconscious.

Learn more about characters by exploring how they try to get what they want: what strategies and tactics they choose, how well they execute these actions, how they manage the unexpected, and how they act under rising pressure.

Some scenes divide into smaller units of action called French scenes, which are each demarcated by the entrance or exit of a character. Flesh out character motivations for arriving in a scene after it starts or leaving before it ends, and explore the results of such comings and goings.

STAGE REFINING THE ACTION

Color is a basic component of the physical realm that grounds your characters in the truths of the world they inhabit. Work intuitively to tap the power of color and find new ideas and insights for a scene.

Emotions tend to exist not in isolation but in layers. Explore the conscious and subconscious feelings that might influence the thoughts and actions of your characters as they interact here and now to cause a dramatic event.

We enter the lives of dramatic characters when they have compelling reasons to act without delay. Develop a scene by focusing on two of its fundamental elements: importance and urgency.