What is character, and how do you write it?

Character is not a description but a choice made under pressure. Want versus need, the function of contradiction, subtext, and why an audience follows anyone at all.

Character is the most discussed and most misunderstood part of a screenplay. The reason is simple: we treat character as a description. It is not a description; it is a pattern of behaviour.

"Thirty-five, dark-haired, withdrawn, estranged from his father" — that is not a character, it is an ID card. The audience cannot see any of it. All they can see is what the character does.

Character is the choice made under pressure

You do not learn who someone is in their comfortable moments. What they choose when they have something to lose is who they are. Creating a character is therefore really creating situations of choice.

A practical test: put your character in a scene between two bad options. If you know what they will choose, you have a character. If you don't, you don't yet.

Want versus need

This is the most durable distinction in screenwriting. What a character wants drives the story; what they need makes the story about something.

Strong endings often force the character to choose between the want and the need. If the two are the same thing, the story has nothing to say.

No contradiction, no depth

A consistent character is a dull one. The interesting character is consistently contradictory: brave, with one area where they are a coward; honest, except about one thing. Lajos Egri calls this the character's "bone structure" — the physical, social and psychological layers pushing against each other is what makes a character move.

The contradiction cannot be arbitrary. "Very gentle and also very violent" is a fault, not a description. But "someone who cannot say no to anyone, and therefore turns to violence when the people he loves need protecting" — that is a character.

Character is built under the dialogue, not in it

People rarely say the thing they mean. Dialogue comes alive when what is being discussed on the surface differs from what is turning underneath.

Nobody here is talking about dinner. The subject is trust. That is subtext — and we learn who a character is less from what they say than from what they avoid saying.

Why does an audience follow a character?

Likeability is not required; many compelling characters are not likeable. What is required is interest, and interest comes from three places:

• Competence — watching someone very good at something is a pleasure.
• Purpose — we are curious about someone who badly wants something.
• Stakes — we cannot leave someone who has something to lose.

Blake Snyder's "save the cat" idea is really a sub-clause of this: showing the hero doing something likeable early is the shortest route to attaching the audience. Being a shortcut does not make it bad; believing it is the only route does.

Supporting characters mirror the lead

A well-written supporting character has a function: to show one side of the lead. Someone who faces the same choice and decides differently makes the lead's decision mean something. A supporting character who is interesting alone but does not touch the story is surplus, however well written.

A checklist

1. Does the character have a concrete want, one that could be spoken aloud in a scene?
2. Is a person standing in the way of that want, or only an abstract obstacle?
3. Do they make at least one choice that costs them something?
4. Is there any gap between what they say and what they do?
5. If you removed them, would the story collapse — or just get shorter?

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