Friday 26 April 2013

Character Running Out of Steam?

I had the pleasure of working with dramaturg Michelle Temperley, who helped me with script development. One of the characters in the piece I was working on was stuck somehow and a bit two dimensional. She suggested, in order to bring the character to life, I imagined what they were doing during the half hour before the scene they were in. That was it for me. The character filled out, got busy again and was off.

Not only did that exercise help with what I was doing then, it has helped since.

Any time you're stuck with your writing, think of what was going on before, in a character's life. I use the idea in classes too. The newspapers are full of reported local and national incidents. Imagine some of the people whose faces end up looking at you from a page, the houses, the bombed areas, the charity functions and winning goals. Try placing the key people in these scenes in the private and unreported parts of their lives, in the half hour before the events they were involved in,  to better understand their character and motivation.

Have a go. Just jot down a few notes at first and see what you get.

Thanks Michelle. Lovely memories of Oldham Coliseum play-writing workshops.


What do you do when you're writing and you run out of ideas?

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