Writing Characters That Don't Suck

By now you've no doubt seen and heard the remarkable Susan Boyle, and whatever you may think of her looks and talent, there's no escaping a certain fundamental prejudice that her sudden fame embodies -- one perhaps best expressed in the pitch-perfect headline and lead paragraphs of this Onion-like parody written by humorist Andy Borowitz, Talented Ugly Person Baffles World:

The success of singer Susan Boyle on the reality show "Britain's Got Talent" has caused both television networks and their viewers to reconsider the intrinsic value of ugly people, media experts say.

In living rooms around the world as well as in the executive suites of media giants, those exposed to the Susan Boyle phenomenon are grappling with the paradox - thought impossible up until now - that an ugly person could be talented.

Right.  Aren't all beautiful people as skilled and perfect in their morals and intelligence as they are in physical attributes, whereas unattractive people must be ugly through and through?

Reacting to people's reactions to Boyle, my journalist wife Tater articulated a trope well-known in her writing circles: that people always defy your assumptions when you meet them.  And it made me reflect on all the awful spec scripts I read on a regular basis, so many of them distinguished -- or rather disgraced -- by their simplistic, stereotypical and flat characterization work.

Lazy screenwriters -- much like the lazy people who were so gobsmacked by Susan Boyle -- give their characters one distinguishing physical attribute, with a corresponding personality.  Steve's the smart-alecky overweight guy who's always hitting on chicks and getting shot down; Sally's the perfectly coiffed executive who's a control freak and doesn't know how to dance.

In the annals of bad writing, it's only the hoariest of two-dimensional clichés that allow for an ostensible reversal, i.e. a character who "surprises" you with a central contradiction: witness the whore with a heart of gold, and the sinfully wicked priest.  But any alert and conscious writer knows that complexity is the very coin of the realm in the human dramedy, that gold lies in the contradictory details.

I've been enjoying -- nay, rapturously inhaling -- the recent BBC adaptation of Dickens' Little Dorrit (fifth and final episode coming up next Sunday night on your local PBS station), largely because Charles Dickens was so smart about constructing memorable characters.  I'm reading the novel now, because I was curious to see how screenwriter Andrew Davies, who did the excellent Bleak House and Pride and Prejudice before this, so deftly dramatized it (the relationship between page and screen is fascinating and well rewards study).

While Dickens is justly famous for vividly marrying physicality to personality (even the name "Uriah Heep" euphoniously expresses exactly what that slimy character is about), he often plays upon disparity.  Dickens is so keenly attuned to this key idea of reversals, i.e. the telling contradictions between a character's appearance and their inner life, that he blatantly builds one of Dorrit's characters upon it.  Christopher Casby is a patriarchal older man with a shining bald dome and Biblical beard, but nonetheless a "selfish, crafty landlord who grinds his tenants by proxy," whom Dickens further describes as:

...looking so supremely benignant that nobody could suppose the property screwed or jobbed under such a man; for similar reasons he now got more money out of his wretched lettings, unquestioned, than anybody with a less knobby and less shining crown could possibly have done...  Many people select their models, much as the painters select theirs; and that, whereas in the Royal Academy some evil old ruffian of a dog-stealer will annually be found embodying all the cardinal virtues, on account of his eyelashes, or his chin, or his legs... so, in the great social Exhibition, accessories are often accepted in lieu of the internal character.

What you see is not what you get -- at least not in the most intriguing characters one meets, whether in fiction or real life.

Why was Meryl Streep so hot to play Julia Childs in Nora Ephron's upcoming Julie & Julia, a woman whom many people remember best as Dan Ackroyd in frowsy-wigged drag, stumbling around the SNL kitchen blurting mealy-mouthed "oh, dear!"s as her thumb bled geysers?  Maybe it's because, as Missy Schwartz notes in the current EW, the real Julia Childs "...after working as an overseas spy in the 1940s, became, at 38, one of the few students at Paris' Cordon Bleu cooking school. Then she co-write an 800-page cookbook."

Wait, wait -- you had me at "spy."  Julia Childs was... Mata Hari?

If you want to write a character that doesn't suck, look for their contradictions.  Want to really wow your audience?  Write someone who isn't what they look like or seem to be, thus paying homage to a fundamental truth about being human.  Write a Susan Boyle.

 

Comments

[Chris]

I had this exact problem recently, trying to present two minor sidekick characters. I realized I had made the Big, Dumb Guy and the Scrawny, Fast-talking Guy.

And then thinking that the problem could be solved with those all too common reversals.

Complexity requires such a skilled subtlety. Practice, I suppose.

[E.C. Henry]

Susan Boyle has a voice like an angel. Her plight catches your fancy, unemployed yet she's got gold in cast iron pot exterior. Everyone has gifts -- it's just sometime you have to get past their rough packaging to see that.

Interesting bridge, Billy, Susan Boyle to writing fresh characters. There's a lot of factors that make people interesting. Inner contradtions may be ONE of the factors, but I don't think htat's the end-all.

Like say the choices people make in light of the world they face. That can make them interesting: Forest Gump, and again Tom Hank's character in "Saving Private Ryan."
Accomplishments can make characters memorible. Victor Frankenstien, Patton, Emlia Erhart. What they did draws us in to want to know more about them.

Will give you Melvin Udal from "As Good as It Gets." That character may be the best illustration that inner conflicts make for memorible characters. All I'm trying to respectfully add is that their is a few other ways of accopmlishing creating memorible characters than just focusing on inner conflicts.

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[J]

I recently watched Rachel Getting Married, and the characters in that were quite interesting...except, to me, the lead. Anne Hathaway was great, but I felt like her character was too obvious, too one-note. The people around her were the complicated, multi-layered ones.

[FLewis]

I really don’t get all the chatter about Susan Boyle not looking like a supermodel. Gee, how many famous singers are really knockout beautiful? Not many and it didn't matter in the past.

Only in our present day world, tainted by so-called reality television, has appearance come to be almost as important as talent.It makes me glad Mama Cass Elliot or Janis Joplin or Luciano Pavarotti or Louis Armstrong never appeared on “American Idol.”

Also, there are still plenty of singers today (from hip-hop-to-pop-to-country) who are lucky they’re famous for their talent and do not have to depend on their looks to make a buck.

Oh, I do agree on creating interesting textured characters who surprise the reader or viewer in ways that make them more appealing.

[Third World Girl]

Ditto on falling into this trap with the secondary character: the clueless Lothario in the romcom.

I'm writing him now and just realized after reading this that he's too one note and that I've got to give him at least one scene where he gets a chance to show us he's more than we think.

Thanks Billy.

[JamminGirl]

Funny, but I'm always amazed when I see someone both beautiful AND talented or beautiful AND smart. People with commercial looks often get a leg up so they don't develope other aspects of themselve, in my thinking...

In terms of characters, I don't necessarily agree with you that one has to you contrast between looks/station and behaviour.
If a writer has a grasp on understanding people then they will naturally write better characters. If we diagnose 'contrast' as the fix for bad writing, then we will very much see a plethora of a new kind of 'bad' characters.

Writers need to look around them and study the REAL people that they see. Look up how to study people online then use those methods to measure the people around them. Once done, include those characters in the screenplays.

People are complex. There's alot to work with.

[Désirée]

I think it is every screenwriter's responsibility not to cling to clichés as they where the truth.

It's so easy to put a female in that kind of role and a male in that and the stupid guy got to ugly and/or fat.

Not only do our characters become more interesting if we leave the clichés behind. We also stop fertilising the clichés themselfs.

[Dave]

She's just lucky Seth Rogan paved the way for her to be accepted :)

The whole thing with Susan Boyle reminded me my teenage years when I suddenly realised one day, oh, you have to be a good singer AND good looking to make it as a pop star(generally and a few exceptions).

cheers
Dave.

[mernitman]

Chris: Yes, as in the guy asking directions from a New Yorker: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" (Practice!)

Absolutely, EC: And I never meant to imply it was "The End-All."

J: Hmm. Maybe because Rachel's singular job is just to keep herself together? She's more of a reactor.

You're welcome, Third World Girl.

Sure, Jammin' Girl: complexity, studying real people, etc. I'm simply arguing against the one and two-dimensional constructs one all too often sees (and reads).

FLewis: Good points.

Desiree: Stop fertilizing cliches! Good motto.

Dave: Wait, wait -- Susan Boyle and Seth Rogen in... [your title here]

[Dave]

The Boner of the Opera?
Low Expectations?
Shirley Valentine: The Reefer Experiment?
When Rogsey Met Boylesy?

If you like any, I'll rip up a script that will make your eyes bleed and where not knowing English becomes a blessing.

Pleasant nightmares.....
cheers
Dave.

[Pagan Sphinx]

What a fantastic blog and related web sites you have going here. I'm glad you gave that "shout out" after finding Alice Neel images on my blog. Otherwise, I would not have found you!

Regarding only a few things you touch upon in this post: I actually saw the clip of Susan Boyle on American Idol, a show I tend to detest, overall. My partner loves to hate it, so we tune in occasionally; usually toward the end when America picks her favorite. I'm with the commenter above who states that they just don't get it. I don't understand why Susan Boyle would want to be a pop idol, firstly. I know that if I could sing, I would not; even if my less than adequate looks allowed me to. Way too much is made of fame. There's a part of me that wishes Susan had continued to sing at her church and had not been exposed to a world audience. Often when something special is plucked from its element, it loses something. (shrug)

And then about Little Dorrit, which we absolutely loved. As a Dickens fan, I had never read that one. If only television could contain more gems like this one.

I'll be back!

[mernitman]

Dave: I'm going with Rogsey and Boysey. Man your engines...

Pagan Sphinx: What a great name you have (resisting the temptation to simply keep writing it, Pagan Sphinx, paging Pagan Sphinx)...

"Often when something special is plucked from its element, it loses something." That about says it, I think.

[Kele]

Just wanted to say thanks for your book "Writing the Romantic Comedy" (and the blog).

I've been writing SPs for some time and this is a book I would recommend to anyone - regardless of their chosen genre.

You made me look at several things in a new way and I'm absolutely dying to rewrite - but I'm going to wait at least a week - don't have anybody to lock it up for me - but - I'm going to try and practice some self restraint.

[mernitman]

Kele: Glad you find the book and blog helpful. Please make that a long week - even two (?!) - you'll be happy you stepped away and got a fresh perspective.