It’s obvious that creating character in a stage or screen play is one of the most important, and, alas, most difficult and elusive parts of this form of writing. It is equally apparent that what the character says and does (as well as many other details) speaks much more about him or her than anything one can punch into the scene description. The legendary film character actor, indeed some would say Hollywood’s first “character star”, Lon Chaney, once taught actress Patsy Ruth Miller (as she recounted many years later):

You don’t have to feel the emotion enough to

cry real tears, or tear yourself apart. I don’t think

he would have approved of the “school of

acting” bit. He kept saying to me ‘You are an

actress, and an actress’ job is to make the

audience feel. It doesn’t matter if you’re torn

apart inside, unless you tear the audience

apart inside, you’re not doing your job well.’

And tear them apart he did… and all of this before the advent of sound in motion pictures. So, on the page how does one “tear them apart” or at least touch some string of resonance with the audience via character? Let us count some ways.

In some cases it’s not so much what a character says about himself or herself, but what they say about others; their observations and the advice they give. A prime example can be found in the character of Lord Henry Wotton performed to perfection by George Sanders in Albert Lewin’s surprisingly literary version of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). The dense dialogue is peppered with Wildesque paradoxes and cuttingly honest critiques. Sanders’ Lord Henry, an admitted Victorian hedonist, eloquently speaks with knowing delivery and dry tone. Upon their first meeting, Dorian is warned of Lord Henry’s bad influence on his friends, and the two chat as Lord Henry captures, kills, and mounts a butterfly:

LORD HENRY

The Gods have been good to you, Mr. Gray.

DORIAN

Why do you say that?

LORD HENRY

Because you have the most marvelous

youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.

DORIAN

I don’t feel that way, Henry.

LORD HENRY

No, you don’t feel it now, but someday you’ll

feel it terribly. What the Gods give they quickly

take away. Time is jealous of you, Mr. Gray.

Don’t squander the gold of your days. Live.

Let nothing be lost upon you. Be afraid of

nothing. There is such a little time that your

youth will last. And you can never get it back.

As we grow older our memories are haunted

by exquisite temptations we hadn’t the courage

to yield to. The world is yours for a season.

It would be tragic if you realized too late, as so

many others do, that there’s only one thing in

world worth having, and that is youth.

A telling bit of advice which becomes the crux of the story. Later Lord Henry’s advice charmingly spills forth in the presence of Dorian during a social luncheon:

DUCHESS

Ah, Henry, I wish you would tell me how

to become young again.

LORD HENRY

Can you remember any great errors you

committed in your early days, Duchess?

DUCHESS

Many of them.

LORD HENRY

Then commit then again. To regain one’s

youth one has to merely repeat one’s follies.

DUCHESS

Delightful theory!

SIR THOMAS

A dangerous theory.

LORD HENRY

One of the great secrets of life. Most people

die of a sort of creeping common sense and

discover too late the only thing one never

regrets are one’s mistakes.

Later Lord Henry encounters Dorian’s newer lower-class love, a singer in an east end tavern. Lord Henry warns Dorian “I believe she loves you so much that you don’t need to marry her.” Entertained, Dorian asks what Lord Henry would do in his place, and the answer is informed, cynical, and brutally honest:

LORD HENRY

Well, I should invite her to come to my house,

to see Basil’s portrait. Then when she says it

is time to go, I shall ask her not to leave.

She will be shocked, of course. I pretend to be

disappointed with her. If she still wished to go,

I shall become cold and indifferent. I’d ask her

to let herself out saying I couldn’t bear sad

farewells or something equally appropriate.

But if she left after that I would think her to be

as good as she is beautiful, beg her forgive-

ness, and marry her.

Needless to say, Dorian isn’t as immune to Lord Henry’s influence as he claims and he tries Henry’s “experiment,” and with disastrous results.

If Lord Henry’s tongue is so silver and his mind so rapier-like, why doesn’t he see the film’s conclusion coming? He is blind to this because of the supernatural elements of the story (and, of course, because it would kill the drama). Lord Henry is very, perhaps overly schooled in the worldly ways of life, but not in the otherworldly. In the gulf which lies between his extensive observations of nature and the extraordinarily unnatural (and ironic) event which happens to Dorian lies the suspense of the story. The seamless character of Lord Henry is the voice of earthly vice, the realist counterpoint whispering in one’s ear; the mucilage which holds the story together.

Of course, other characters can talk about a character in their absence. If done carefully to hide the expositional feel of the situation, this can be quite effective. In Alfred Hitchcock’s stark, modern, masterful The Birds (1963, screenplay by Evan Hunter), the powerful mother character of Lydia seems to have a presence even when she is absent from a scene. This seems to also be the case in other Hitchcock pictures, not the least of which being Psycho (1960). In the end, The Birds is less about attacking gulls and more about forces of human nature, emotional predation, and abandonment. Tippi Hedren’s Melanie and Susanne Pleshette’s Annie chat about Mitch and his overbearing mother as they get to know each other:

ANNIE

I was seeing a lot of him in San Francisco.

Then one weekend he invited me up to meet Lydia.

MELANIE

When was this?

ANNIE

Oh, four years ago. Shortly after his father

died. Of course, things may be different now.

MELANIE

Different?

ANNIE

With Lydia. Did she seem a trifle distant?

MELANIE

A trifle.

ANNIE

Well, then perhaps things aren’t quite so

different. When I got back to San Francisco

I spent days trying to figure out what exactly

I had done to displease her.

MELANIE

What had you done?

ANNIE

Nothing. I simply existed. So what’s the

answer? Jealous woman, right? Clinging

possessive mother? Wrong. With all due

respect to Oedipus, I don’t think that was

the case.

MELANIE

Then what was it?

ANNIE

Lydia liked me. That’s the strange part.

Now that I’m no longer a threat we’re

very good friends.

MELANIE

Why did she object to you?

ANNIE

Because she was afraid.

MELANIE

Afraid you’d take Mitch?

ANNIE

Afraid I’d give Mitch.

MELANIE

I don’t understand.

ANNIE

Afraid of any woman that could give

Mitch the one thing she can give him: love.

MELANIE

That adds up to a jealous, possessive woman.

ANNIE

No, I don’t think so. She’s only afraid of

being abandoned.

MELANIE

Someone ought to tell her she’d be

gaining a daughter.

ANNIE

No, she already has a daughter.

The powerful character of Lydia has relatively few lines in the film, perhaps as it should be. The people around her in the small town of Bodega Bay, the people whose lives she has touched are effectively speaking for her. And it is effective. Here we have the emotional center of the film before us.

Sometimes character development can occur in the most unlikely places. Evidence can be revealed in a tune whistled by a character at a particular moment, or in the most seemingly mundane of idle chit-chat. One has to be careful with the conversational dialogue or it can bog down in the “Royale with cheese” vein and seem to go nowhere. The little snapshots of life and snippets of dialogue during the bus trip from Big Spring to New York City fare much better in John Schlesinger’s poetic, disturbing Midnight Cowboy (1969), screenplay by Waldo Salt. Jon Voight’s memorable gum-chewing would-be male prostitute Joe Buck is distracted from a suggestive flashback by mother-and-child passengers on the Greyhound:

LADY

Excuse me, mister. Excuse me, but do

you have another piece of gum for her?

JOE BUCK

Oh, yes’m, ma’am I do. Here. Take one

for yourself, too.

He hands her a stick of gum.

LADY

Thank you, no. It’s just until the Dramamine

works. She gets carsick

JOE BUCK

I only get carsick on boats. But it seems

to me that’s more the fish smell than the

bouncing. Uh, how far you headed?

LADY
(points to napping daughter)

Shhhh. To Dallas.

JOE BUCK

Up Dallas way?

LADY

Where you goin’?

JOE BUCK

I’m headed on up to New York City, ma’am.

The lady stares at her sleeping daughter, ignoring Joe Buck. Joe Buck finally turns away.

It may be pedestrian, but again it tells us about the character and about the story. The only time Joe Buck has been on a boat is to fish. And it was probably a small boat considering he couldn’t get away from the stink of the catch. His lack of worldly experience and education cause him to say “carsick on boats” instead of “seasick.” Much of Midnight Cowboy is about Joe Buck’s inability to successfully connect with people. And here we see an example very early in the picture. Joe Buck and Ratzo Rizzo are later brought together by their equal personal, social, and economic failings in life.

In the end creating character is about the resonance of the details. One must know characters - in real life as well as on the page – in order to create them and shape them in to interesting, believable, effective entities. The right confession, the revealing bit of advice, the telling gesture, the overheard comment at a precise juncture can help artfully create character with economy, instead of ponderous scene description and lofty, turgid dialogue.

Josh Hickman has worked as a screenwriter, script consultant, and script doctor for over 10 years. He was Film Project Coordinator for the 5th Annual Vistas Film Festival, a judge in the 2005 Century City Film Festival Screenplay Competition in Los Angeles, and is presently Associate Producer of the comedy play The Bride Can’t Stop Coughing at The Actor’s Playpen Theater in Hollywood. Contact: hickmanscripts@gmail.com