Everything I Learned About Character, I Learned from Kids TV

When I first started writing, I struggled most with characterization. What's worse, the standard method taught to deepen characters, that damn character bio, seemed to make things worse . In exasperation, I had a screenwriting teacher in a private consult blurt, "Just model them on real people, okay?" Um...great. I'd already done this...on one of the first plays I wrote. It worked like a charm there because like most early plays the thing was semi-autobiographical and based on real events. Faced with the underworld rom-com I was halfway through... well, let's just say that these characters felt less familiar.

So I dusted off Lajos Egri's "Art of Dramatic Writing" and forced myself to do the freakin' character bios for each of the leads. I spent days on this. After ruminating over what their favorite foods were, their eye color, their favorite clothes, what laundry detergent they used...I returned to the draft of the script and finished the thing, only to find the characters were still blah.

In retrospect I realize that one of the problems was I was filling out a questionnaire, itching to get to the end so I could get back to the script. Plus, I thought of a strong character as a character buzzing with all sorts of contrasting traits. She's a rich girl...and she's smart too...and she's a great cook...and she likes dominoes! I hadn't absorbed that screenwriting is about economy and that economy needs to extend to character traits as well. Where I thought I was adding depth, I was just creating a muddy character for my poor reader who didn't know what to focus on. My character bios as super-detailed as they were, were completely devoid of character. They had no point-of-view.

It's only when I started watching Kids TV again (thanks to the Chicklet) that a lightbulb went off. Kids TV shows have to set up character and character expectations in a nano-second so the characters tend to be extreme. You never have any doubt about what Cookie Monster's like. He doesn't just prefer to have a cookie at snack time. He must eat cookies. Now! All of them! Those kids get that in a snap and they take it to the bank. They're in on the game... We all are and we watch to see if Cookie Monster will subvert our expectations or not (usually not). Same thing with Ernie. That fun trickster lives to prank Bert. Studying the relationships, you also see how much you learn about a character in opposition to another character. Ernie's essence is more emphatic next to Bert's stodginess. It's not that a good writer can't make two similar characters work side by side but boy do the colors "pop" more when they're placed in contrast.

So now when I'm stuck in a scene I ask What Would Cookie Monster Do? I zero in on the character essence and figure out whether the scene supports it or plays against it. I embrace the character bio, no longer seeing it as pointless minutiae... (though no way am I going to spend days on it, thank you very much). I look at the exercise as a better understanding how to dramatize that basic essential trait. And of course because a screenplay is about how the essence of that character changes, I look for places in the story to test and perhaps transform the archetype.

Naturally, I'm still grappling with this but I get a kick out of coverage from readers that compliments the three-dimensional characters... 'cause they're inspired by some fuzzy little muppets.