Joshua Adams's Lounge Discussions

Characters are what they do, what they say, and how the react and interact with the world around them -- that informs the viewer with everything they need to know but wanting more (as long as you don't do a dump all at once).

A professor of mine once wanted us to write the characters bio from birth to the moment the story starts but I always thought that was a bit much. My advice would be to just spend a lot of time with your character to find out what makes them tick. When did they start to come in to their own, what's the second most significant event in their lives (assuming your story is about to be the number one significant event), things like that. This year I found that writing is asking questions.

This post is from eight years ago, but the challenge remains eternal.

One day I will run into an old post here from years ago and argue with myself.

Character and Story are connected and can not be pulled apart. So if you have a story, you also have your lead character.

Though this comes at it from the Character side, it illustrates the connection, so that you can easily start from your story and find the character.

http://www.scriptsecrets.net/tips/tip166.htm

One of the things that you need to think about is how everything you write is autobiographical whether you know it or not - so it's better to know it and use that knowledge. Which means acknowledging and using your flaws as part of the story. That makes the story personal and emotional.

There's a quote that is attributed to at least a dozen writers that writing is easy: you just open a vein and bleed on the page.

Monty Python Holy Grail ?! Airplane is amazing however.

Some Like It Hot - great performances (Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Joe E. Brown), beautifully written, clever dialogue - movies don't get better than this.

if kem can add i will too "holy grail"

Whenever I'm asked this question, only one answer (since 1984, at least) is always the first and best to come to mind : Ghostbusters, To this day,that is the single funniest film (with the most quotable dialogue) that I have ever seen.

Kem: I love "My Fellow Americans!" Great little movie with two classic talents. I watch it about 2-3 times a year. A few years back I watched it with my girlfriend, and for weeks afterward she kept referring to me as "Blinky."

Link is too long to be copied/pasted properly. Run it through www.bit.ly first :)

Fixed...Thanks, Joshua.

Great article, thanks for sharing!

Absolutely.

The problem is that it's limited to 134 characters, so there's really not that much room to go deeper into describing.

I'd drop the 'ing' from "rivaling" to make it an "old rival agency". Maybe even drop 'old' or replace with 'once'. "...to settle the score with a once rival agency." Frees up some characters as well. To Princess' point, I'd also open with the ex-assassin. Something like "An ex-assassin frantically searches an America ravaged by mutated dogs for his fiance and to settle a score with an old rival agency." (133 characters) Also, is his fiance kidnapped by the old rival? If so, is there a way to tie the two together? "An ex-assassin frantically searches an America ravaged by mutated dogs to free his fiance from an old rival agency." (115 characters) Then, you might even be able to add an adjective for the ex-assassin.

The Princess is here! Love it. I will let others chime in, but the first thing I noticed is that it doesn't speak to the challenge the hero faces. When confronted with (this) our hero does (this) only to discover (this)...

Thanks a lot for the inputs everyone, very highly appreciated! I'm gonna take all of this into consideration, talk a bit with Miss Princess and hopefully come up with something much better than what I got. @Matt Tucker: Genius suggestion! Sounds much more professional and descriptive. The plan is that she's kidnapped by the rival agency yes, but that's not something our protagonist knows, as his memory is gone. All he knows is that this woman meant the world to him at some point. So basically it's a part of a bigger "mystery". @Richard Botto: Thanks a lot for taking the time to help out! Definitively gonna rework the logline around this great piece of advice.