Please work on your full length plays. These are due on the 19th of January.
Today, let's take a look at the finer points of creating characters! Please read the article on "Building a Play" and answer the following questions:
1. What makes a character "credible"?
2. What must a writer understand about a character's motivation?
3. What (in writing terms) is a catalyst?
4. Explain "positive motivation". How does it work?
5. What is a character flaw? How can writers use character flaws in their writing?
6. What is a character's "ghost"? Give a famous example of one.
7. Where do internal conflicts come from? (apart from inside oneself)
8. How does "need" and "desire" create conflict in a play?
9. What can a writer do to make a character believable?
10. What is a protagonist's primary function?
The answers to these questions are due Thursday, Jan. 7.
Some character advice:
1. All characters need to have a clear motivation (this goes for fiction and poetry as well as drama)
2. Use the catalyst, background information, personality traits, desires and needs to create motivation
3. Avoid writing characters who are victims or act in ways that do not make psychological sense (i.e., if you can't explain why a character does something, then don't let him/her do it).
4. Remember, even antagonists think they are doing the "right thing" - give your character justification for his/her actions
5. Characters should be developed by characterization (what a character does, what other characters say about that character, or what a character says about him/herself.)
6. Use character flaws (particularly for your protagonist)
7. Creating a character requires empathy. If you are stuck, think about what YOU would do in a similar situation.
8. Remember: you are NOT your character. Don't be afraid to say things you don't believe or think are wrong or discuss controversial topics simply because you don't feel like you would when your CHARACTER might.
9. Take character names seriously. They often help identify the character and provide information. In a realistic play, the names should sound realistic. Save weird names for comedy or absurdity.
10. A character without an essential function does not belong in your play!
11. Remember you have an audience who needs to understand (and like...more or less) your protagonist(s).
12. In realistic plays characters can serve as each others antagonists.
13. An antagonist is a magnified aspect of the protagonist's shadow. Use the antagonist as a foil where appropriate.
14. Use supporting characters to move the plot along or express the theme of the play. Supporting characters can also be used as foils.
15. Supporting characters should not serve the same function. If two characters are exactly alike or interchangeable, remove one.
Use this advice as advice. It is okay to write the first draft of your play, then go back and really examine your characters and how they function within the play. This advice can and should also be carried over to your fiction writing!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The Murky Middle (Even More Advice)
Aristotle wrote that stories should have a beginning, middle, and end. Middles can be difficult. You might have a smashing opening to a stor...
1 comment:
-Hi craddock...this is Alicia Green. I finished the home work and is going to post it as a comment.
(1)Is when personal and understandable motivations stand behind them.
(2)The writer has to not only look at the circumstances confronting the character but also the reason why they took those actions. Character's personalites, desires, and needs are the source of motivations that grow into a dramatic action when the situation is right. Uderstanding the character background information, the general, pyhsical, socioloicaland psychological traits. Must need or want something.
(3)Is an event that lifts all the roadblocks to taking action and sets the charatcer free to act.
(4)Positive Motivation is an attempt to turn an negitive into a positive. Thos works by a character doing an wrong or evil act,but it an action for a good and better cause. It's not to make the character out to the bad guy.
(5)It's an error, defeat in judgement, or a shortcoming in conduct; their put especially in the greatest of characters. It is a personal blindness to our self-image.It's when a character thinks there dumb, smart, handsome, and homely; but often the way they see themselves is very different from how others would see or describe them.
(6)The "Ghost" is to create the characters flawthat identifies what actually haunts them. Something from their fast is so compelling that it cripples the character until it is put to rest. For example; A lost opportunity for love in William Shakespear Romeo and Juliet,or a failed career in death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.
(7)It's longing for two things but has to make a decision because both cant be satisfying. The arise from a moral struggle, an iner debate, or anything that creates the most formidable obsticle:Self-doubt. Must be to the character; coming from who he is and what he lacks most to be emptionally complete.
(8)The need and desire may be a conflict to the play because what the character may want may not be what the character may actually need.
(9)To make character more beleavible you must invest part of youself in to your character.
(10)An protagonist primary function is to embody a play's premise and drive it's main conflict. The character has to be running toward something; the main action and conflict is the protagonist, even if other characters has s part in it.
Post a Comment