Every author faces a central challenge: how real are your characters? The answer goes a long way to determining the success of your project, whether it’s a novel or a script. There is no firm rule about writing a character—some like to write with a real person/actor in mind. Others want to make up a unique character that will hopefully attract the interest of A-list actors. I’ve tried it both ways and have this compelling piece of advice: do what you’re most comfortable with. How’s that for intellectual depth?
Whichever path you choose, I do think doing a background study on your core characters is a great way to get inside your character and to make their actions and words more true. Even if most of your thoughts and research may not make it into your final script or book, they inform your characters. Were they picked on in school? Were they married before? What traits did they pick up from their parents and which did they develop on their own?
The first novel I wrote, Left for Alive, centered around political radicals and convicts who had served their sentences and were now adrift in the world they’d re-entered. I had a better feel for the political refugees, given that I’d been a semi-radical in my early adult years. But I’d never served time and needed to get inside the heads of those who had, and who were now trying to enter a world that had passed them by.
Luckily, I had a resource. My favorite teacher from high school, who I was still in touch with, was spending his retirement as a prison chaplain in a couple of prisons. I picked his brain and then wrote the first draft and asked him to run it by his prisoner students. They came back with what I regarded as high praise, telling the chaplain that they were sure I’d done time. That’s still the best review I’ve ever gotten.
One question that came up from my early readers was: are these characters based on people you know? The simple answer was: no. They were all collages of some of my favorite people: a little bit here, a little bit there. The goal of each was that these collages, taken individually and collectively, would ring true to my readers. Let me give you two examples:
The core conceit of Left for Alive involves the physical similarities of two brothers, while in reality they couldn’t be more different. As a writer, I had no doubt this was possible. But as a screenwriter I wondered if this was plausible: after all, with a novel I can create a reality and sympathy that would convince readers that these two characters would be real and distinguishable. The answer came in a fresh viewing of The Social Network, where Armie Hammer played The Winkelvoss twins. And even though my brothers were more different than the Winkelvosses, it was encouraging.
Did I write with an actor in mind? Not in the case of Left for Alive but I tried it in my second novel, The Devil’s Breath, a crime/suspense piece that occurs in Auschwitz. The core of this piece was a husband/wife duo who came from the Warsaw ghetto to Auschwitz. She an investigative reporter, he a detective. For those two I felt like I needed models. Casting the woman was easy: from Day One she was Vera Farmiga. People thought it was because of her work in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. That wasn’t the case. The couple that was at the center of the book/script had a certain sense of both partnership and dark humor—even in Auschwitz. And for that I recalled a scene in Up In the Air, where Vera Farmiga and George Clooney meet in the bar and try to impress each other with how many miles they’ve flown and which perks are the best for major flyers like them. It’s probably the scene that most people remember, a homage to the clever husband/wife from the Fifties and before (Tracy and Hepburn; William Powell and Myrna Loy; etc.)
NOTE: Let me be clear: I wasn’t trying to turn Auschwitz into a background for a rom-com. I just wanted two strong characters, in which the woman might have more on the ball than the man. I happened to meet Vera Farmiga at the Napa Valley festival. When I told her that she’d been the model for the character and which scene I remembered her for—not the Auschwitz film but the Ivan Reitman film—she was intrigued. But she didn’t want to get typecast for period pieces, especially the Holocaust.
For the male protagonist, I had Timothy Oliphant in mind, more for his Justified work, but Deadwood as well. His understated delivery and his way of looking at the world through a unique lens made him a great model for Divko.
The key for all these characters is to make them as real as possible. Read their dialogue out loud, to both yourself and your friends. You’ll know right away if it’s too stiff or too long. Give your characters flaws—not just the antagonist but the protagonist as well.
That’s it. Hope your writing is going well. And please take a look at The Forever Factor if you haven’t already.
