Mark Boutros - The Craft of Character: How to create deep and engaging characters your audience will never forget

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Edited by: Jasmin Naim

C haracter is at the heart of every story. Of course, there are gripping plot points that stick in our minds, but thats because those moments happen to and through characters we are connected to. Those moments are actions taken or consequences suffered by characters, and we feel those moments because we are drawn to character.

There are great story concepts with strong hooks, but without a compelling character at the heart of a concept an idea becomes flat and forgettable. Characters are the experience and they give us something to love, hate and relate to. They make us want to keep watching and reading in the hope we get to see them finish their journey and get what they need or what we feel they deserve.

The aim of this book is to help you to develop characters that are lifelike, not just stock types weve met a thousand times before. Of course, stock types can be useful starting points, but you still have to make your characters come across as unique and banish clichs to avoid falling into stereotyping. A heavy reliance on stock types can steer us away from originality and encourage laziness in character development.

Ive sat in many development meetings for new comedy shows where people compare the characters in the new show to ones weve seen before. This is our Joey from Friends. They can be our George from Seinfeld. Shes our Leslie from Parks and Recreation and so on. Thats normal as they do represent types, but if youre taking that approach and populating an idea with types, the key is to develop them from there. Problems occur when people think a close copy is good enough and then they dont take the time to get to the heart of a character, because they think the type is the heart.

Its no surprise that many ideas go from being bold and new to more of the same as fear grips the development process and dilutes character. Then those projects have little chance of being made unless theres a star name attached to add gravitas to a slender idea.

Rather than creating the new (insert name), create something new. Frasier Crane, Walter White, Arya Stark, Fleabag; they werent the new someone else, they were new characters. Sadly, people now use them as frameworks to stick fresh characters into until the next hit comes along and the cycle repeats with a new template of characters.

In this book well discuss what character is and well touch upon story structure and dialogue because they flow through each other, but really this book is about understanding character so you can make yours as deep and emotionally engaging as possible. Everyone develops character differently, our brains naturally jump around and different triggers set us off in different directions, but Ill give you the essential questions you need to keep in your mind, whatever point you are at in your process.

Writers are always searching for a magic formula, but there isnt one. The path to better writing is to continually practice your craft and develop positive writing habits that inform your process. I will give you tools that help you to do this. The order I have written the chapters in is the order I find the most useful when developing character, but its about creating processes that work for you, so once youve read it, shape what best fits your working methods.

Ill also look at common character mistakes and give you exercises to help you to understand your characters better.

Some of the exercises I set will annoy you and youll be tempted to skip them thinking they dont matter, and thats entirely up to you, but I advise you to put the work in. How do you get to know people better? By spending time with them and moving from a shallow level of connection to a meaningful, deep one. Its the same with characters. By knowing your character deeply, youll create someone engaging and multi-layered, and youll make the writing process more fluid. You will find that plot comes out of your character instead of having to crowbar character into a plot. Development is about giving characters emotional depth and saving yourself time in the rewriting process.

Ill mostly use television programmes as references, but will also touch upon films, books, and Ill point out some of the differences between genres when it comes to characterisation.

Something I have struggled with in the past is the amount of references present in writing books, as I havent read or seen most of them, so dont feel like youre less of a writer if you dont know the references I refer to. In the exercises Ive given examples that should make up for any references that dont land.

A bit about me

Ive worked as a writer and a producer for well over a decade on shows for the major UK broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky One, Sky Arts, Disney and the Cartoon Network. Ive written on The Reluctant Landlord, The Amazing World of Gumball, The Dumping Ground, and I co-wrote an episode called The Greatest. Of All Time about Muhammad Ali, which featured in season one of Urban Myths and was International Emmy nominated in 2018, and I won the silver in the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards in 2016.

One thing Ive learned through my successes and failures is that problems start and end with character. Concerns arise such as, Why is the character doing this? Or, Do I care about the character? Or, I dont believe theyd do this. Or, Ive seen this before.

In television, sometimes a producer will criticise a series pitch because they dont believe there is enough story to sustain multiple episodes. That doesnt mean youre missing plot, it means the character journey isnt engaging enough, because the character isnt developed well enough to carry a series.

Ive made several mistakes on my writers journey, but theyve helped me to get to a point where Im getting more jobs on existing shows and more of my original ideas optioned. I want to help you to avoid making the same mistakes I made, so you can improve your process sooner and know which pitfalls to watch out for.

For a full list of my credits you can visit www.mark-boutros.com/credits. Ive had a scattered career from writing comedy, drama, fantasy, romance and crime, to teaching screenwriting and creating empathy in the Google Assistant, which is artificial intelligence but requires understanding of character nonetheless. All of my experiences have allowed me to develop skills in various areas but it always comes back to the same thing.