Character



A Character is a conscious entity in a play that pursues an Action. They are most often human beings, but can be defined however the playwright wants them to be (there've been plenty of animal characters, robot characters, invisible characters, etc.), although, in the end, a human being is going to have to portray that character in some way.

An audience learns about a character by the choices that character makes onstage. If a character chooses to kiss someone, an audience will assume one thing. If a character stomps out of a room, an audience will assume another.

What a character does tells the audience who they are. And, as playwrights, your material is entirely what they do - their Actions. The same way that a painting amounts to many, many brush-strokes, a character amounts to many, many choices. A character is a being made of the sum of its onstage choices.

So, the question becomes: where do those choices come from? There are at least four places that you can look to dig into a character.

Qualities
See also Given Circumstances, Character Voice

Even if a character were to be physically born onstage, it would still have qualities (mainly, being small, squishy, and new to everything to the point where it hurts). A character's qualities are any pre-existing conditions that they walk onstage with. These could include, but are not limited to:

Physical Qualities : height, weight, gender, race, hair color, eye color, any physical deformities, etc.

Mental Qualities : habits, IQ, nervous ticks, hopes, fears, mother tongue, accents, any "buttons" that could get pressed, perceptions of who they are, goals, etc.

Social Qualities : relationships with other characters, status, job, economic class, groups they identify with, social roles (caregiver, mooch, hero, villain), etc.

The important thing to remember about qualities is that if you treat them just as information on file about your character, you won't get any mileage out of them. You could write an elaborate psychological evaluation of your character, but if the audience doesn't see it onstage, it literally doesn't exist in the world of your play - even if you intended it to. The audience won't see any character qualities unless it sees them in Action - by having a character with a certain given social role, or a certain physical deformity, you've set up certain choices that character will make. What happens when a nurse refuses to treat a patient? It says a lot about that character, doesn't it?

Another important role that character qualities play is providing Obstacles. That nurse we've been talking about has certain obstacles that come with her job. A patient has a different set. You can use a character's qualities to provide things for them to fight against and try to overcome onstage. You can also look at certain physical states, like drunkeness, pain, and so on, as physical qualities that pose an obstacle for characters - a drunken man may want to look sober, and a woman in pain may want not want to show it.

Emotions
See also Motivation

The events that happen onstage are going to create an emotional reaction in all the characters in the scene, whether that reaction is ambivalence, sly laughter, or blinding rage. Each of these emotions will happen, and will likely cause the character to do something, whether it's something they've never done before, or to do what they're already doing even harder, or to stop what they're doing altogether.

Let's say a character walks onstage and rests their hand on the stove, except the burner was left on. She pulls her hand away, shrieks, and kicks a nearby chair. The way that moment worked, was Event (she put her hand on the burner), Emotion (pain, anger, etc.), Action (kicks a chair). Stimulus, emotional reaction, physical reaction.

In any moment, the choices a character makes will spring out of their emotional state. That emotional state will be caused by their environment, and any Qualities they have going into the scene. It's important to understand where your characters are immediately coming from right before they do anything, because their immediate emotional response, as you can see with the burner, will determine their immediate physical reaction. Tracking these emotional reactions will help to keep your story honest. If the woman in the burner scene above were to place her hand on the burner, then start singing Yankee Doodle Dandy as she skipped away, the audience would most likely scratch their head and disengage.

From one moment to the next, one emotion leads to a choice, which leads to another emotion, and so on.

The trouble with emotions is that they can be hard to track sometimes, but this is where you must apply your personal empathy. If you were in that character's shoes (had that character's qualities), how would you feel in that moment? You'd be surprised just how accurate your personal empathy can be.

Action
See main article, Action.

So, a character has arrived onstage. They have a number of Qualities (see above), and at least one emotional state that is propelling them into Action. The question is, because of those qualities, and because of that emotional state, what does the character want?

Your character's Actions are the only way we are going to be able to see who they are. Here're some helpful pieces of advice to keep that pathway between your audience and your character clear.

Characters Need Opportunities: A character at least needs to THINK they'll be succesful. When a character choses to do something, the audience will be aware, even unconsciously, of some of the reasons for their choice. If it's obvious that they'll fail, or that the odds are just too stacked against them, why would they try? If there's no hope of success, there's no Conflict, and the play is over even though people are still onstage.

Characters Need Obstacles: While too much of an Obstacle will stunt what a character is doing, finding enough of a challenge for them will make their Action thrilling and interesting. You can't load the game against your characters, but you also can't make it a cake-walk.

Characters Need to Face Those Obstacles: It's very easy to slip into writing a passive character, who either avoids the problems in the play, instead of confronting them, or who simply lets things happen to them, instead of causing things to happen. Usually, in the place of actually working on the problem, there're long monologues about how distraught they are. This is generally less interesting than a play where people deal with problems.

Characters (for the most part) Need to be Capable: With a couple of exceptions, characters should have the ability to face the challenges that are put in front of them - whether they know it or not. A scene with a four year old trying to handle a hostage situation, realistically, would be just painful to watch. The main exception to this rule is if you want to be funny - if you want to write a play about a tortured four year old. However, even in that exception, the rule still applies. What's funnier? A play where a four-year-old bumbles trying to talk down a terrorist, or a play where a four year old actually does?

Characters Need to be Able to Change: From moment to moment, and throughout the scene. How a character copes with new information tells us a lot about who they are. When new information is revealed in the course of your scene, your character needs to adjust. Maybe that's a change in tactics, maybe that's a change in their Action. Writing a character who doesn't let himself be effected by the rest of the scene you're writing will railroad your story, and your character.

Strategy and Tactics
See main article Strategy and Tactics

Tactics are visible. That's they're biggest advantage when you're trying to create a compelling character. All that background, all the character's emotions, all that is currently invisible. But, by finding physical tactics that bring all that to bare in the scene, you'll create a way to externalize it. Essentially, to make the invisible visible. In a sense, all the rest of the character preparation you may find yourself doing goes into picking the right tactics.

Specifically, how would YOUR character go about getting THIS job done, in THIS situation? You may find that using strong verbs to summarize your tactics makes writing flow easier. There's a big difference between "yelling at her" and "obliterating her."

The audience's understanding of the character will come from the sum of the tactics they see her perform. In a theater, you can't actually see the thoughts that the character is thinking while they're doing something (unless you find a way to theatrically portray their thoughts). The only way an audience can see what a character is by looking at all the tactics she's picking, and using that to judge what the character must be thinking, must be going through, and so on. So, in order to paint a full character, you have to make sure they use appropriate tactics.