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