KCACTF: Say What? Making Your Characters Speak on the Page

We were all very excited to attend this workshop because we thought it would be geared towards actors and how we can bring characters to life from scripts.  When the doors were closed and we were told that we were there to learn how to create realistic characters when writing scripts, we all looked around at each other and made faces of "Oh crap!"  Haha!  We were at a workshop for writers.  It all ended up fine though because the workshop was very interesting and I learned a lot about characterization and interpreting what the playwright is trying to say.

"As a writer, it is just words on the page until we give it to the performer.  A good performer can bring out ideas you hadn't thought of.  Your words are not set in stone, they are not solid ground.  Things may change, this is okay!"  Putting on my writer brain, I am trying to think about how I would take this.  I could imagine myself sitting in a room with an actor discussing my work and being very hesitant to make changes.  There would be a lot of "buts" and explaining why I wanted something worded a certain way.  I have so much respect for people who can pour out so much time and emotion and allow others to perform and interpret it.  He said, "This is not the book world.  This goes into other people's hands and they have to be able to do something with it."

What do you know about your character?  Specifics include:  age, gender, physicality, education, economics, profession, religion, location, and point of origin.  "You have to write these things into the script or the person won't get it.  You are handing this off, give them all that you possibly can."

Questions to ask:  Intelligence level?  Any mental illnesses?  Learning experiences?  How does the character see him/herself?  How does the character believe that he/she is perceived by others?  Does the character seem to be ruled by emotion?  Introvert or extrovert?  How does the character deal with anger, sadness, conflict or loss?  What does the character want out of life?  What would the character change in life?  Judgemental, generous, stingy, polite, rude?

Words:  speech patterns, slang, jargon, vocab, poetic, lyrical, dirty, impediments, interrupts.  A speech pattern in a distinctive manner of oral expression.  The expression is determined by the personality created for that particular character.  Slang is based on:  location, region, social group, religious group, age, gender, time period, education.  "Slang changes all the time.  It's the actor's and director's job to bring it to life and look things up."  Jargon is the language, especially vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group (such as medical jargon, CSI, etc.)  It is unintelligable, meaningless talk or writing-gibberish.

His suggestions for where to come up with stories and dialogue was to "go somewhere, grab a cup of coffee and just listen to people talk."  He also mentioned reading small town newspapers.  He once found an article titled "Dog Shoots Owner with Gun."  Haha, now that would make for an interesting story!

"All dialogue should be moving toward something."  According to Alfred Hitchcock, a good story is "life with the dull parts pulled out."  "Don't let your dialogue turn into too much narrative.  Start your story in the middle of something."  He also suggested to use profanity sparingly because it can clog a good story or script.

Haha, a quote I enjoyed was, "Actors need words, don't make them improvise!"  As an actress I very much appreciate all of the hard work that goes into creating a script.  This workshop allowed me to understand the process of creating characters.  I will use this knowledge when developing my characters for the stage.  I will also pay attention to every coma, pause, or beat that is in a script and do my work with researching anything that is written that I do not understand.  Thank you writers!!!!!!  :)