Understanding What Motivates Your Characters’ Actions
In real life, people act with a reason. And screenplay characters need to do the same. Every character action requires motivation and intention. To create a logical story with strong, identifiable, and understandable characters, a writer needs to be aware of what drives his or her characters’ actions, and create behavior that is consistent with the characters he/she has developed.
So, what motivates your characters to do, say, react, and think as they do?
1. Previous Incidents or Backstory
Past events can influence a character’s actions. In Aliens, the character of Ripley distrusts the “synthetic person”, Bishop, because she previously had a bad experience with a robot (a really bad experience). Ripley’s driven to protect the young child Newt, because she lost the opportunity to mother her own child. How do past incidents or backstory influence your character’s behavior and choices?
2. The Unconscious Dark Side
No one is “all good” or always does the “right thing”. The unconscious dark side of a character can drive him to act in ways that go against his conscious self, whether it be as small as a little white-lie to avoid hurting a loved one’s feelings or as significant as bilking clients out of millions of dollars. What makes the police officer, devoted to justice and helping the vulnerable, take a bribe or look the other way at corruption within his department? The law-abiding, good, decent, and loving father in the film In The Bedroom is driven to kill his son’s murderer in an attempt to alleviate his wife’s suffering. What would make your character lie, cheat, steal, or even kill?
3. How A Character Gains and Processes Information
People experience life differently. Some gain information through direct experience, while some derive information through others’ experiences (note that in films your main characters will most often experience life directly). Some people process information emotionally and base their decisions on feelings, while others process information intellectually and base their decisions on principles and facts. How does your character gain and process information and how does that affect his actions?
4. Personality Disorders or Quirks
Woody Allen’s characters often suffer from neuroses that motivate their behaviors and attitudes. In Lethal Weapon, Martin Riggs’s depression influences his actions – including his willingness to take chances and his flirtations with suicide – and causes conflict with other characters, such as his partner, Murtaugh, who questions Riggs’s sanity (Riggs’s depression is a personality disorder triggered by a past event – his wife’s death). What personality disorders or quirks would explain your characters’ behaviors and choices?
Knowing what drives and motivates your characters’ actions will help you create fully developed, plausible characters, and a solid, logical storyline.
YOUR TURN: What techniques do you use to develop and support your characters’ behaviors and actions?
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Posted: February 1st, 2010
at 6:00am by Laura
Tagged with creating screenplay characters, how to write a screenplay, how to write a script, screenplay character, screenplay writing, screenwriting, script writing, scriptwriting, writing a screenplay
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Categories: Character
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4 Responses to 'Understanding What Motivates Your Characters’ Actions'
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Excellent advice Laura, thanks for that!
I would add: The more you know what your story is about (what Stanley Williams calls the moral premise, or McKee’s controlling idea or whatever name you prefer), the more you can deliberately design these aspects of your character.
The more everyone is essentially dealing with the same issue, the tighter the story feels.
My two cents.
Dave
Dave Herman
Twitter: @daveherman1 Feb 10 at 2:10 pm
[...] See the rest here: Understanding What Motivates Your Characters' Actions at About A … [...]
Understanding What Motivates Your Characters' Actions at About A … « Internet Cafe Solution
2 Feb 10 at 11:56 am
@Dave Herman
Thanks for your two cents, Dave. Great blog!
Cheers, Laura
Laura
2 Feb 10 at 4:21 pm
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