Within the pages of your script, you are inviting the reader to meet your characters, get to know them as you do, as interesting and complex individuals with needs, desires, talents, and shortcomings. It is this mixture of components that attracts us to certain characters, repels us from others, or leaves us neutral, or worse, disinterested. How do we get those aspects and properties of each character across using only the written word? How do we then further inspire actors to take on those characteristics, and create their own unique elements, too?
As writers of any type, if we don't get all that we want onto the pages, we have not done our jobs effectively nor satisfactorily. While all readers will see in their minds unique variations of the worlds we create, there should be some threads of constancy from each to the next. When I've seen different groups stage my plays, I know that each will have a unique flavor, so I am not shocked or disappointed when one does something different from another. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised by their creativity and ingenuity in discovering some aspect I did not imagine. But overall, they should each produce the same basic story, and provide the audience with the same overall experience.
Even with recipes, each cook's final result will resemble the others, but each will possess individuality. Temperature, humidity, altitude, and quality of water will affect the dish, along with the cook's individual methods and tools.
There are three places where character descriptions are generally given: the cast list, the character's first entrance, and within the lines of the dialogue itself. This also happens to be the reverse order of the most effective places to describe a character.
The cast list should contain only the barest of descriptions for the reader to be able to differentiate the characters while perusing the script. These descriptions may be only a character's occupation, relationship with another character, or age, such as:
- MacBeth, general of the king's army
- Miss Julie, aged 24
They may sometimes be more involved, as this example from Bernard Slade's play, Tribute:
- Scottie Templeton, fifty-one but looks ten years younger. An elegant, charming, pixieish man. A mixture of Noel Coward, the Marx Brothers and Peter Pan.
The cast list is only for reference, and in my experience, is only of minimal value for the actors to use for developing their characters. In some scripts, the cast is only listed by name, with no description at all.
If the character requires a certain physical appearance, such as very tall, red-haired, or non-human (i.e., animated), then its first entrance is the best location. However, even here, too much description can bog down the flow of the reader's experience, and that can be dangerous, as discussed in the previous article.
If a character has a very detailed physical description that is critical to the script, then an appendix may be a place for such information, so that the reader may refer to it if needed, but the flow of the read is not unduly interrupted.
But for the most part, the best place for character description is within the dialogue. For one thing, it will definitely be read, by the reader, director, and actors. Italics, cast lists, and appendices may be skimmed over or omitted. The dialogue must be read. Using Shakespeare as an example, look at King Richard III. In the play's opening speech, he states:
"But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them."
Not only is this much more beautifully written than, "Richard hobbles onstage, ugly and deformed," but as it is dialogue, it must be spoken aloud to the audience and the reader must read it.
How it is interpreted is up to the director and actor, but the fundamental aspects of the character are now firmly implanted in the consciousness of the audience.
Dave Brandl - I began writing my first play in 1988. It was produced in 1989, and published in 1991. At that point I said, "Hey, this is easy." If only ...
