Novels vs. Films: Writing Character Descriptions
Coming up with great characters is not always an easy task. In fact it’s usually rather difficult. When you’re writing character descriptions for the big screen (or the little one), would you use the exact same approach as you would in writing a novel or short story?
I wouldn’t. And I’ll tell you why.
Novels vs. Films
When you’re writing a novel or a short story, your reader will never see your image of the character unless you give a detailed description. Have you ever been reading a book and envisioned one of the characters as a scrawny redhead with freckles, only to find out later during one of the writer’s descriptive moments that the character is actually a large-boned blond? I hate when that happens. Some authors choose to describe their character’s looks, but many do not, or only give very general details like hair and eye color. Your imagination gets to plug in the rest.
You don’t want to do that when you’re writing a screenplay. The reason for this is because someone, and it’s not your audience, is going to determine exactly what your character looks like, how they act, what their issues, strengths, weaknesses are, and then they’re going to go out and find an actor to play the character they’ve envisioned.
Who would do such a thing with your character? It will usually be the director or producer, possibly working with a casting agent.
Writing Character Descriptions in Detail
Since you lose all creative control the moment you sell your screenplay, it’s a good idea to get as much description in there as possible.
You can practice writing character descriptions by drafting written sketches and descriptions of your characters. Here’s what you’ll want to cover:
- Name, age, occupation
- Hair and eye color, weight, height, any outstanding or unusual marks, tattoos, etc.
- Personality, tastes, interests
- Family, background, education, major life experiences
- Something to indicate the character’s larger issue as it will relate to a plot
Then, go out and cast your characters. Think about all the established actors out there and audition them for these roles. Try to envision the actors pulling off your characters’ looks, attitudes, mannerisms, and overall personality.
Character Writing
Whether your characters are destined for print or the big screen, imagining your character through a real live person (the actor) will make the character more present and tangible in your mind. Also, writing character sketches is good practice, even if your characters never make it to the final draft, or the movie theater.
Have fun with it! Feel free to post your character descriptions in the comments. And have a great weekend!
Okay, while I’d love to participate in this one, I’m far too familiar with writing character descriptions and know full well that a proper character has a *ton* of description, from family to past history to personality to looks to skills to weaknesses to quirks. I’d fill up your comment section with a small story
I purposefully skipped things like eye color. I think that so long as you know enough about a character, the details can get filled in on their own by the audience so long as the description isn’t elaborated on after they’ve been introduced. There are so many more interesting things about characters than eye color, besides.
I have a hero, a villain, and a side character in here. See if you can tell which one is which.
Kione Remerdii dressed well, but gave the impression that he was not yet quite used to velvet. He was, however, perfectly comfortable with how he wore his hair. It was naturally long, black, silky, stretching down to his waist, and without any further help the sheen and volume would have made even pretty girls jealous. Kione must have employed an expert stylist, because he came to the noble’s functions with it pulled into elaborate plaits, tiny strands braided and wrapped into other patterns, into star-shaped twists and tiny spiraling braids that rested with an understated sense of casualty behind his ears and draping down the front of his wine-colored velvets. He changed the look frequently, and the day after the announcement of his promotion to a lord with his own coat of arms he began putting pins in his hair so that pearls dotted the black cascade, diamonds which caught the light and glittered while he himself stood a fair distance away from the every-day politics with all the body language of the polite and humble. And perhaps because of his rank, his rapid set of promotions, his youth and eligibility, people came to him instead. He bore it all with practiced good graces and an ease that lead the suspicious to theorize that his unassuming popularity had been Kione’s intentions all along.
—
Dacha played cards with the other two maids, but rarely won. Ana would panic when she was losing a hand, and usually grabbed someone else outside of the game to take her place so that she wouldn’t have to face the consequences of having an expressive face. Saffira, inversely, never spoke, and snapped the cards down on the table when she played them, quickly, efficiently, quietly, but also very aware of everything that went on around her. Dacha was somewhere between the two, and a little unlike either. Her chubby fingers fanned her cards in front of her face, intent, determined, and the more she lost to Saffira the louder and louder Dacha’s stream of vulgarity would run from her mouth. She wasn’t always like that, though those that knew her fairly well would be quick to confirm her as uncouth and competative. She also had a rampant, self-deprecating sense of humor and often referred to her bulk as ‘the power of fat’, which supposedly could overcome any melee weapon by simply sitting on her opponent and breaking wind. She was not a particularly good maid, for all that. Dacha left picking outfits and gossiping to Ana, and performed only unskilled, mundane tasks like drawing baths, carrying packages and delivering letters in and out of her lady’s chambers. Like the silent Saffira, who carried knives in her colorful, baggy robes, Dacha’s real purpose was to fill in for the bodyguards that her lady wasn’t allowed to have.
—
Rylan switched between being a servant, a nobleman, and a street thug on a regular basis, and though he usually seemed to have good intentions, sometimes used the wrong persona for certain situations. He’d deck a man for saying something derogatory about a lady behind her back, or sometimes turn stiff and formal among company in a common home, speaking with an authority that he shouldn’t have had a right to. He never shied away from violence, and was frequently the cause of a fight if a lady seemed to need defending, a by-product of a different and more chivalrous culture and alien to his current surroundings. People who didn’t know him well attributed this to his red hair, and usually considered him to be an unusually loyal mercenary. Once word got out that he had at one point been a gladiator fighter the common perception of him was ‘explained’, smoothed over, assumed, and dismissed.
Yes, very true: writing novel characters or screenplay characters are totally different techniques. For screenplays, 1-3 lines is all you should use to describe a lead character (visual things, physical, tics, movement, etc) and only 1 line descriptions for non-lead characters or crowd scenes. Screenplay characters are revealed through their dialog and action. Whereas for novels, 500 pages could be dedicated solely to describing one character without ever mentioning skin color or height or hair, instead a novel author might write wholly about the person’s thoughts.
Very helpful information about creating characters for screenplays!
I wanted to congratulate you on your recent win! It was a very close race.
Smiles,
Michele
@James, Small stories are welcome
@Eliza, There’s really no way to tell which of your three characters are the protagonist, antagonist, etc. Unless I’m missing a clue… If I had to guess, I’d say Kione is the villain, and Rylan is the hero.
@Jaden, True true!
@Michele, Congrats to you too! Very nice job!
I’m trying to improve my writing skills and at the moment I’m trying to write fanfics of animes and books that I know just to try to get used to writing and to learn my style of writing. I’m thinking about becoming an author so I need all of the corrective criticism I can get. This is a copy of the Prologue for one of my favorite stories that I’m writing. It’s when I describe the three main characters and give a little bit of a back story. The anime it’s based off of is called Fruits Basket if anyone wants to know. Sorry, but the story doesn’t have a title yet. Please tell me what you think.
Prologue
Akito sat in his room waiting for the New Years Banquette to start. Being only eleven years old, he didn’t find much interest in his cousins dancing around like idiots but he still had to attend. This year his older cousin, Ritsu, was going to dance with the old ram zodiac member. The ram was old and was soon to die, by then the new ram would be born and the cycle will start again.
Finally, Shigure, another zodiac member, came to get Akito beckoning him to follow quickly. Shigure was only nineteen but he was still Akito’s favorite family member of all. After walking through at least three gates before coming upon a large house-like building, as they got closer Akito saw three familiar figures, to his right sitting next to a pillar by the door sat a small silver fox her fur shone brightly in the lights that came from inside the building. She looked at the new comers, her one bright turquoise, one deep blue eyes lighting up when she recognized Shigure. Akito looked to his left he saw a black wolf pup mostly hidden by the shadow of the pillar she sat by. Her hazel-green eyes shook nervously. Akito tilted his head back to look up at the large orange and black striped tiger that was lying on the roof of the entryway. The tiger gave a cold glare at Akito and Shigure, which was useless due to his warm brown eyes.
Akito, with eyes wide in wonder, turned to Shigure and asked, “Why do we have those three animals sit in front of the entryway each year for the dance? I never see them anywhere else.”
Shigure paused for a second then slowly replied, “They are part of the zodiac curse. They are supposed to be the guards for the banquette.”
“Then why aren’t they part of the banquette?” he asked. He quickly thought of the story of the zodiacs before exclaiming, “Hey, I’ve never heard of a fox, wolf or a tiger in the story of the zodiac, explain that.”
“I’ll tell you the story tonight after dinner, ok?” Shigure quickly compromised.
“Fine,” Akito sighed, every year he sees those same animals sitting in front of the banquette hall, but then he never sees them again until next New Years.
Back outside the fox shifted herself into a more comfortable sitting position and in a blink of an eye where the fox once sat was an eight-year-old girl, her shoulder length silver hair created a curtain around her tired face. Slowly a seven-year-old little girl came out from behind the pillar where she was hiding. Her hazel eyes filled with tears, her waist length black hair dragging on the ground as she crawled over to the silver haired girl.
She made her way onto the girls lap and sat there in silence for a few moments before mumbling into the girl’s chest, “Why do we have to do this? Why can’t we even eat with the others? It’s not fare!! I’m hungry, and it’s getting cold.”
A lively ten-year-old boy jumped down from the roof he was so recently laying on. “It’s because of what we are. It’s our job to watch but never do. But you’re right, Miki. It isn’t fair.”
The boy’s warm brown eyes turned sad and distant. He turned quickly, making his red hair fly from his eyes, and jumped back up onto the roof in one leap.
“Tekeshi, you’re not helping,” the silver haired girl remarked.
“Oh, and you are, Zetsumei,” he retaliated.
“More than you are,” she shouted, her eyes filling with angry tears.
“Stop fighting!” Miki yelled suddenly before Tekeshi could fire hateful words back. “Please, stop fighting. There’s enough fighting in the Sohma house, we don’t need more.”
Surprised, Zetsumei look down at the small girl on her lap. Her eyes softened and she whispered, just loud enough for Tekeshi and Miki to hear, “You’re right, Miki, There is too much fighting in the Sohma family. We’ll try not to fight anymore, k?”
“Ok,” Miki whispered back, relived.
“Guys, I have a proposition,” Tekeshi said after a long period of silence, not realizing that Miki had fallen asleep in her sister’s arms. Zetsumei quickly informed him of just that by giving him a quick sharp ‘Shh’. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know that she fell asleep,” He quietly apologized and continued quietly, “Zetsumei, I think we should run away from Sohma house.”
“Why?”
“Well ‘cause, think about it. It’s not good for us to be here and Miki was right, there are way to many problems here and we aren’t the only ones who get mistreated. I know Miki doesn’t know about Kyo but he’s my closest cousin, he practically the only Sohma I’m actually related to and it’s the same for you two and Shigure. We know how hard the zodiac life is anyway and it’s only gonna get harder the longer we’re here.” Tekeshi paused to make sure Zetsumei was listening.
“So what do you propose we do then? If we just run away they would just hunt us down and drag us back.”
“I say we wait a year and train in martial arts during that year, and we already have the advantage of what we are. Then next year during the New Years Banquette, we run for it while everyone’s in there, not watching us. I’ve thought about it long and hard and I think we’ve really got a chance if we do this right,” Tekeshi finished, looking down at Zetsumei, waiting for a reaction.
She released a heavy sigh and looked Tekeshi right in the eye. “Tekeshi, you’ve really thought this through. You must have spent weeks planning this out and finding all the holes that we could escape through.” She sighed again, diverting her eyes back to her little sister. “Tekeshi,” she started, “If you are really serious about this and really think that we can pull it off, then I trust you with me and my sister’s lives.”
(If anyone wants to know the meanings of the names of my three main characters just ask.)