Characters Have Purpose
February 17th, 2010
Recently, I spoke with a close friend of mine. She went on a rant about a script she read having way too many characters. I didn’t read the script she spoke of but I’ve read similar ones. That made me think about being a writer and made me question how many characters I have in my screenplays.
Each character serves a purpose to your story, with the main story line and any additional story lines. If they have no purpose, delete them. This is the best advice I can give beginning writers. There is nothing worse than too many characters and confusing the reader.
One of the important aspects of a character is relate-ability. The reader and audience must relate to a character for them to stay invested in the story and character. Otherwise, why watch? Why read? And if they can’t even remember who the character is and what they’re doing there, then you must delete that character or do some major revisions.
Remember a top key to screenwriting- Less is more.
And always, always… Write with purpose. Everything you write has a purpose to the story. The characters are no exception.
Filed under: character, screenwriting | No Comments »
Welcome to ScreenplayGenius!
February 3rd, 2010
Thank you for visiting my new site called ScreenplayGenius.
After five years of learning and writing screenplays, I have decided to share my knowledge with other aspiring screenwriters. Writing a feature script is like a long journey with many challenges, obstacles and frustrations with great reward at completion. The trick is completing. Right? Well, ScreenplayGenius is here to help. Not only do I love writing screenplays, I love reading them. With all my knowledge, my goal is to provide clear, understandable, expert analysis of every script I take notes on that will help you to your end goal of completion and ready for the marketplace.
What do you do when you feel stuck in your story?
Take it to the Genius!
In addition to my services on story analysis, I will also be posting blogs regarding different aspects of writing, story and format. This will provide additional knowledge and education totally free.
I love writing and storytelling with all my heart and can’t wait to share it with you!
Filed under: character, format, screenwriting, story | No Comments »