Christopher Riley, Screenwriter, Author, and Instructor: It’s not a formula, it’s not paint-by-numbers but it at least is a way to say Here’s how I’m going to start my work today.
Film Courage: Before you and Kathy wrote The Defining Moment what was your process for writing characters?
Christopher: Kathy and I approach character from lots of different angles because characters are slippery critters that have a lot of facets, a lot of dimensions. For many years we have asked these questions about what are the moments that define these characters. That’s a really important part of what we’ve always done. We also have a set of what we call The Hero Questions where we ask things like what does this character want because every character is driven by some intention. Then we ask how does this character need to grow and change because the most interesting characters very often do transform in some way or even adjust.
Not all characters and all genres transform but often there’s at least a small growth or adjustment in them and that’s satisfying, that’s where some of the emotion comes from for the audience. We ask what terrible thing will happen if the hero doesn’t get what they want and that helps us zero in on the stakes of the story. For the the external stakes we ask what terrible thing will happen if they don’t grow and change in the way they need to and that gets at the internal stakes and we ask how’s the audience going to relate to this character, what are they going to be rooting for in relation to this character because we’re really convinced that if we are not rooting for our protagonist, we’re not going to be invested emotionally in the outcome of the story, if we don’t care, we’re bored. We’ve also got a list of character qualities that I’ve stolen from my friend Dr. Sydney Showers and so I call those Dr. Showers Eight Character Traits and she is a gifted writer who’s just compiled this list of character traits and they include some of the things that are included in the hero questions but she asks some other things…(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).
BUY THE BOOK – THE DEFINING MOMENT: How Writers and Actors Build Characters (by Christopher and Kathy Riley)
BUY THE BOOK – THE HOLLYWOOD STANDARD: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style
CONNECT WITH CHRISTOPHER RILEY
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