So this is the start of what I promised I would write about. When talking about characters, You may as well start off by talking about character introductions, right?
Right.
I posted the following as a thread over at Done Deal, and thought it was worth putting up here. Comment with your thoughts, disagreements, or YOUR favorite character intros.
Newbies, take notes!
I have noticed, as I have been reading a number of scripts from newer writers (and writers new to the boards), that there seems to be this strange unspoken pattern of moving away from character intros. Not in sold scripts, or by successful writers, but by the masses trying to break in. Many don’t even write them, and others write intros that tell us absolutely nothing.
I believe the character intro is one of our greatest tools as screenwriters. We should utilize the hell out of it - especially for our protagonists!
Here are a few character intros that stuck out to me. I believe these are excellent examples of what we should be doing in our scripts.
from Entourage:
ERIC MURPHY. Hight impaired. Off-beat looks. Kinetic. A JACK RUSSELL TERRIER in a man’s body.
MIKE “TURTLE” QUINN, a former high-school lineman, still wears his championship ring. He’s a guy who talks and eats with is hands. He wears an XXL vintage “Clyde” Frazier jersey.
JOHNNY “DRAMA” CHASE, thinning hair and zero body fat, the elder statesman here, drinks low-carb beer, dresses impeccably. Drama’s half as good-looking and twice as neurotic as his younger brother…
VINCENT CHASE who wears a Yankees cap pulled low and a black tee. Vince is old school cool; McQueen smooth.
from Y the Last Man:
YORICK BROWN, an oddly attractive 20-something white guy who looks all wrong in a tie. He’s wearing one anyway.
from The Zookeeper:
This is ANDREW BRECKMAN, late thirties, lovable and sweet.
from The Low Dweller:
…and there’s a pie-eyed man at the base, late twenties, sturdy and thick-wristed. His eyes are dark brown, but the liquor’s in him and they’re barely open now.
This is the low dweller, CHARLIE ‘SLIM’ HENDRICK.
from The Monster Squad:
For the record: VLAD THE IMPALER was a Romanian prince whose hobby was violent murder… but that was hundreds of years ago. NOW he’s your basic, run-of-the-mill, undead personification of evil. No blood in his face. Pleanty in his eyes.
MR. METZGER, a stern, silly-looking man, sits at his desk across from one PATRICK RHODES: sincere, impetuous, soon to be a hero, only right now he’s in TROUBLE…
from Roundtable:
SIR LANCELOT, a handsome blonde knight in shimmering gold armor riding a majestic white steed bravely leads THREE OTHER KNIGHTS into mounted battle.
from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:
AN ALMOST HANDSOME MAN enters, dressed a tad shabby, sports the only tie he owns; welcome HARRY, our narrator.
from Hot For Teacher:
Tight on DREW. He’s 17, decent enough looking, if slightly nerdy. All skin and bones poking through his pajamas. At the moment he’s quite distressed.
from Galahad:
SIR GALAHAD OF AVALON (30s) wears a silver-black beard over his weather-worn face. Wavy black hair hangs over his broad shoulders. His gray eyes survey the tremendous estate.
from Arena:
CPL. KARL JENNER (27), a heavy-set black man with a sniper rifle slung across his back, turns to the guy next to him.
PFC. MATT DEACON’s a 24 year-old redneck who joined up as soon as he was old enough to leave the family farm.
SGT. LEON PETROVSKY (38), the tough, grizzled bastard who’s seen it all before, rolls his eyes.
PFC. SHAWN RAWLINS (19), chimes in. The baby of the group, his not good at hiding his hero worship for Jenner.
***
These are pretty much all from recent specs/sales, with the exception of Shane Blacks intros from Monster Squad (and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang which is only 3 years old). I did that for a reason. I don’t want to pull out a ton of archaic examples and have people tell me they “have no bearing on the current market”. This is a snapshot of the current market.
Notice, they are all different. They all have their own style. Still, they all do the same thing. They introduce us to the character. As John August said, “the best character introductions tend to include both a sense of what you see (the character’s physical appearance) and an intriguing tidbit about their personality and/or situation.”
Funny concept, huh? A character introduction actually introducing us to the character. It is amazing how often I see writers NOT doing this.
Don’t just tell us what they look like. Use what they look like to tell us WHO THEY ARE! Give us a little more depth. Be poetic. Let your prose run a little. It’s the only chance in screenwriting you get to actually DO that! Take advantage of it, and paint us a picture of a character that will sweep us off our feet and carry us swooning all the way through his or her story.
So how do you do that? You start with amazing characters. More on that in my next post, where we talk about the suspension of disbelief and “a semblance of truth”!
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