Screenwriting

What Moments Define Your Characters? – Christopher Riley

Filmcourage

Published

April 12, 2022

Christopher Riley, Screenwriter, Author, and Instructor: I had to be more than 50-years-old to experience that moment of healing. This to me is the advantage that writers have with every passing year.

How does a writer find defining moments in their own life?

Christopher: Kathy [Riley] and I have developed a list of characteristics that we think describe defining moments and they help us when we go looking for defining moments. That list includes things like the moment a dream was born, it could be the moment a dream died. Sometimes defining moments or moments of birth or death and that can be a literal death or it could be a figurative death. The death of a business, the death of a relationship or the birth of a relationship. We think about moments of discovery, so for a child who’s been adopted the moment they discover that they were adopted might redefine their understanding of themselves. A special kind of discovery is a lesson that’s learned. Dorothy in Oz makes the discovery that there’s no place like home and that discovery becomes the mantra that allows her to travel back to Kansas. It was the discovery that she needed when she set out from Kansas. She didn’t think that the people at home were…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

BIO:

Christopher Riley is a professional screenwriter who co-wrote with his wife Kathy Riley the award-winning German language courtroom thriller After the Truth. The Rileys have written scripts for Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Mandalay Television Pictures, the late Sean Connery’s Fountainbridge Films and Robert Cort Productions. Christopher produced the independent action-thriller Red Line and executive produced the web series Bump+. He is the author of the classic screenplay format guide The Hollywood Standard, now in its third edition, and teaches screenwriting at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Riley’s latest book is The Defining Moment: How Writers and Actors Build Characters (through Michael Wiese Productions).