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08/14/2008: Introducing...


Let's talk character descriptions!

Here is what I would consider a good character introduction:

SHERRY, 40s, sharp-tongued, rich and proud, is the woman you sit next to when you want to hear snarky comments about everyone else. She's all offense because her defense sucks -- she's shockingly thin-skinned. Chain-smoker, stylish, bright-eyed, attractive in a surgical way.

Here's a less useful one:

SHERRY, 48, is tall, thin, and tastefully tan with a smoker's baritone voice. She's got bleached hair expensive enough to look natural and the work she's had done has left her as tight as the skin of a drum. Ice-blue eyes miss nothing.

I know you see the difference. The second description is highly physical. In fact, it uses visual characteristics to try to convey things about the character. This is a very good way to quickly convey character in, say, a novel, but it's not especially helpful in a script. Imagine being an actor reading those two descriptions -- which one helps you more? Which one discourages you from even showing up because you're a short green-eyed brunette? Or because you're African-American, Asian or Latina? It's good to have a clear mental image of a character as you create it, but if you describe that character too precisely, you frustrate everyone during production, and you tip off any reader of a spec to your inexperience.

(Sometimes, of course, physicality is absolutely necessary and should be described. If your spec is about a super-fat psychic, then by all means, lard it up in the description.)

Substantial, non-physical description isn't only a practical consideration. The truth is that the things that make a character memorable tend not to be physical. Ted Baxter had striking fluffy white hair, but that's not what made him Ted Baxter.

By the way, it's not cheating to invoke other characters or well-known people. Describing someone as a "hilarious endearing loudmouth of the Kathy Griffin variety" is very clear. Or, "Professor Snape with less charisma and worse hygiene" -- got it. Character description can involve throwing some pretty wild stuff together to create an evocative impression. Here's an excerpt from a script by Michael Angeli, from our Battlestar staff. This isn't a character introduction, but it's closely related. You might call it a re-introduction:

... GAETA, on the floor, head hung, blood seeping through his bandaged leg. Disgusted, resentful, broken. Not the Gaeta who historically obeyed and struggled and obeyed again, tick-tick-tick, but a man whose moral metronome has been cranked to the breaking point.

That "tick-tick-tick" is genius. Moral metronome or time bomb, it creates a visceral impression.

By the way, here's a trick. You can actually back into a memorable character. While you're writing a character description, you might want to try throwing in something that even you didn't know about the character, then write or rewrite the character to reflect it. For example, if I had written a fairly generic snarky rich woman for the roll of Sherry above, I might push myself to do better by adding that little bit about her being personally thin-skinned. It's an interesting trait, and if I had to adjust the woman's lines and actions to reflect it, I would probably end up with something much more complex and fun. Give it a try. Just throw in "easily amused" or "prone to panic" or "surprisingly soft-spoken" or "disdainful" or "fearful" or "wry," and see what it does to someone. Fun!

Lunch: left over beef with the sauce that was intended for the left over salmon. Amazing.