Creating Unforgettable Characters (8 page)

PHYSIOLOGY: Age, Sex, Posture, Appearance, Physical Defects, Heredity.

SOCIOLOGY: Class, Occupation, Education, Home Life, Religion, Political Affiliations, Hobbies, Amusements.

PSYCHOLOGY: Sex Life and Moral Standards, Ambitions, Frustrations, Temperament, Attitude toward Life, Complexes, Abilities, I.Q., Personality (extravert, introvert).
¹

Carl Sautter comments on this approach: "There is a danger to doing the three-page character biography. I still encourage writers to do it, but then I basically tell them to throw it away. Do it and know all of that but let other elements evolve as your character evolves. In a lot of ways that character is being born in front of you. Anybody can come up with a three-page history for a character, and you do find lots of good and useful elements through that exercise that you're able to use later on. But it can't stop there."

Frank Pierson
(Dog Day Afternoon, Cool Hand Luke, In Country)
adds: "What you need to know about the characters is what the actors need to know to play the scenes. What is important are the sense memories. It is not important what happened to them but how they felt about it. If you want to ask questions, don't ask the characters questions like: 'What school did they go to? Did you ever work in a factory? Was your mother a domineering woman?' . . . What you want to ask the characters is, 'What was your most embarrassing moment? Did you ever feel like a fool? What are the worst things that ever happened to you? Did you ever throw up in a public place?' You need to bring out those emotions, because those are what a character carries into a scene and colors everything he does."
²
The backstory will be different for every character. The biography by itself won't always give you relevant information. If you're writing
Hamlet,
it's not necessary to know what childhood games Hamlet played, or who was his childhood sweetheart. If you're writing
Fiddler on the Roof,
this information may be essential.

For many writers, the process of creating backstory begins first with creating a character and beginning to work on the story. As they write, they realize they don't have certain information they need about their character. Or they discover that their character is having unexpected reactions to events and people. Perhaps they don't know how their character would respond in particular circumstances. The backstory is discovered by a process of asking Why and What questions about their character.

■ Why did Karen Blixen go to Africa? What was it in her life in Denmark that motivated her to move?

• Why was Alex in
Fatal Attraction
so desperate to marry Dan and have a child? What influences in her life led her—at the age of thirty-six—to the point of madness?

■ Why is Beth in
Ordinary People
so afraid of feelings? What was she like when her children were young, when she couldn't control everything?

■ What in Murphy Brown's past led her to become an alcoholic?

■ Why did Bruce Wayne become Batman?

Getting to know the backstory of a character is similar to getting to know the past of a new friend. The information from the past deepens the relationship. Coleman Luck describes backstory in this way: "You start by looking at your character as having a fully faceted life—a life that needs to be explored. It's like going back and discovering your grandfather. Are you going to sit there and define him by listening to all the facts about him ... or by asking key questions to try to find the essence of his character?"

Finding the backstory is a process of discovery. You begin by asking questions of your character. Then you go back to try to figure out what happened in the past that might influence decisions and actions in the present.

When Bill Kelley and Earl Wallace were writing
Witness,
Bill wondered why John Book didn't have a woman in his life. He asked Earl, and together they tried to construct an answer.

"John Book was something of an enigma," Bill says. "He didn't seem to have a great deal of romantic experience; so I asked Earl, 'Why doesn't he?' and Earl said, 'Well, he doesn't have time—he's busy.' And I said, 'Come on, Earl, I know two of the busiest cops in L.A. and they have plenty of time for romance and they're both married.' So he says, 'Well, he's not a prude,' which helped define him for me. Earl did most of the work on John Book in the script, but when I started writing the novel, I had to define him even more closely. Gradually, I turned him into sort of a stiff-back, not really available to romance, the sort of person who kept asking incisive questions and scaring women off. You know Rachel may have been only the third woman in his life—ever, and that includes his sister."

James Dearden explains Alex Forrest's character: "Alex had had a long affair with an older married man which ended about six months before the story began. She thought he was going to marry her, but he didn't, so she was on the rebound. Originally there was a scene in the film about her loneliness, and about this affair, but we took it out."

Backstory information does not always have to appear in the story. In both these examples, the writer needed to know backstory information to understand the character; but it was not necessary to the story line.

Kurt Luedtke explains: "I don't think we ever do enough work on backstory. I've never known a situation where backstory was completely solved before writing the screenplay. You think you have it down but as you go down the road you see a situation and realize you don't know where that attitude comes from. Sometimes a scene will feel flat, partly because it's clear what the character is going to do. Sometimes I'll ask, 'What if he doesn't do this particular thing that most people would do? What if she doesn't say what you expect—but the opposite?'

And sometimes, one in four times, it gets interesting. And that requires more exploration of backstory."

WHAT DOES BACKSTORY REVEAL?

Backstory helps us understand why characters behave as they do. Sometimes it gives us information about the past that helps us to understand the psychology of the character in the present.

In
Fatal Attraction,
while running with Alex in the park, Dan falls down and plays "dead." His action brings out information about her backstory:

ALEX

That was a shitty thing to do.

DAN

Hey, I'm sorry. I was just fooling around. ALEX

My father died of a heart attack. I was seven years

old. It happened right in front of me.

Knowing this piece of information helps us understand much of Alex's behavior. As a result of the death of the most important male figure in her life at an early age, she distrusts men yet feels dependent upon them. The trauma—particularly if he did die in front of her—contributes to her sense of fear and insecurity. Although Alex denies her father's death minutes later, Dan discovers that it was true. This important childhood event answers the question of why Alex reacts the way she does.

In the play
Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons),
the Marquise explains how her social context determined her attitudes:

VALMONT: I often wonder how you managed to invent yourself.

MERTEUIL: I had no choice, did I, I'm a woman. Women are obliged to be far more skilful than men. . . . You can ruin us whenever the fancy takes you: all we can achieve by denouncing you is to enhance your prestige. ... So of course I had to invent: not only myself, but ways of escape no one else has ever thought of, not even I, because I had to be fast enough on my feet to know how to improvise. And I've succeeded, because I always knew I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own. . . . When I came out into society I'd already realised that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do as I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and pay attention: not to what people told me, which was naturally of no interest, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practised detachment. ... I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear; philosophers to find out what to think; and novelists to see what I could get away with. And finally I was well placed to perfect my techniques.
³

In the novel
Ordinary People,
by Judith Guest, we gain insight into Beth's need to control, through the backstory. This helps explain her inability to deal with the tragedy of her son's death.

The information comes through Calvin's point of view:

He [Calvin] can remember a period of their lives when she [Beth] felt distinctly trapped. When Jordan was two years old, with Connie toddling around after him at ten months, both of them spreading havoc in that tiny north-side apartment. "Those first five years just passed in a blur!" he has heard her say gaily at parties. But he remembers them, and remembers the scene: her figure, tense with fury as she scrubbed the fingermarks from the walls; she bursting suddenly into tears because of a toy left out of place, or a spoonful of food thrown onto the floor from the high chair. And it did not pay him to become exasperated with her. Once he had done so, had shouted at her to forget the damned cleaning schedule for once. She had flown into a rage, railed at him, and flung herself across the bed, in hysterics. Everything had to be perfect, never mind the impossible hardship it worked on her, on them all; never mind the utter lack of meaning in such perfection.
⁴

Backstory information can tell us why a character is afraid to love (perhaps because of a past hurt), or why he or she may have become cynical (perhaps because of the death of a loved one). It can give us insights into motives and actions and responses. It shows us that it s the specific influences in the past that create a very specific character in the present.

HOW MUCH BACKSTORY INFORMATION DO YOU NEED?

Many writers make the mistake of including too much backstory information. Through the use of flashbacks, voice-overs, dream sequences, they overload the script with information about the past, rather than focusing on the present.

What is dramatic is the present—the now. What is past is never as dramatic, even though it can impact on present behavior.

Carl Sautter says, "What we need to see is how this character reacts now, and if you as the writer know why he's doing it—because of some event in the past—fine. But you don't need to explain it to the audience."

Telling the audience everything about the character's past can get in the way of what is really important—the revelation of the character in the present. Backstory does not need to be talked about a great deal. Characters who have to sit down and tell about their past life tend to be boring, bland, undynamic. Long monologues, flashbacks, and exposition that give too much backstory information can be deadly, pushing the story backward rather than driving it forward into the future.

Remember the metaphor of the iceberg? Ninety percent of the backstory need not be in the script, but it should be known by the writer. The audience needs to only know enough to understand what's driving the character and will intuit a sense of the past through the character's present behavior. The richer the backstory, the richer the character.

Usually, backstory works best when it comes out a little at a time, in short pieces of dialogue. As in the examples above, the incorporation of backstory needs to be subtle, concise, and carefully worked out to illuminate and enhance the front story.

BACKSTORY IN THE NOVEL

Backstory works in similar ways in the novel, although it may be incorporated in a different form. As research for this book, I took four Santa Barbara novelists to lunch, and discussed with them ways to work with backstory in the novel. Since they are also writing teachers, they were able to give specific suggestions for both new and experienced writers.

Leonard Tourney: "The nineteenth-century novelist almost always put the backstory first—they began with the character's childhood. They had all the time in the world to explore the character, that's why the novels were so long. There's hardly a modern novel that works that way. The modern novel is front-loaded and works more like a film: the story has started before the credits come on. Most modern novels are cinematic. "

Dennis Lynds, author of C
astrata
and
Why Girls Ride Sidesaddle,
who writes under the pen name of Michael Collins: "What counts is the story you're telling. The backstory has to accommodate itself to your story. As I'm going along, I'll think I know what the past is, but something may happen in the present, and I'll say, 'No, I have to change the past.'

"Sometimes when we speak of backstory, we act as if it exists. But it's made up—it comes out of our imagination. As writers, we just put things on paper, and manipulate them. It's like taking clay—and layering and texturing the character. We make it up. It's not dramatic until you need it. It becomes important at a certain point, but not before."

Shelley Lowenkopf, writer of such mystery and suspense novels as
City of Hope
and
Love of the Lion :
"After you figure out who all of the characters are and what they want, and have decided what their relationships are with one another—then you can begin working with backstory. Backstory has to be woven through the back door. When I work with backstory, I fill in the background of all the characters as I go along. Backstory information
is
not important—until you need it! It's crucial to understand that something happened earlier, that some past event has explained motivation in the present. But you do not proceed chronologically."