Film Courage: Do you have any practical exercises that writers can do
for defining or redefining their characters?
Christopher Riley, Screenwriter/Author/Instructor: I do actually so in in the book we approach
practical exercises in a variety of different ways so the first set of practical exercises has to do
with walking writers through a discovery of their own defining moments and that can be that can be a
pretty emotional thing to do to go back and and really touch those moments that have shaped us
in wonderful ways and terrible ways and then we also provide a set of exercises
that walk a writer through discovering their character's defining moments
and those are very kind of practical here's the thing to do now set this much time on
you know on the timer and start writing and keep writing until the timer goes off I'm a
kind of a believer in what Anne Lamott talks about small assignments and in her book Bird By Bird
writing can be really daunting because it's like running a marathon
it's just so much you can't imagine how much it is and so starting can be really really hard
every day when I start writing it's still that's the hardest thing I do
requires the most discipline and once I've tipped over into writing then I'm going
but it's like taking that first plunge into the cold swimming pool in the morning you just kind of
have to give yourself a push in the back and these exercises are designed to say all right blank
sheet of paper pick up a pen here's your prompt now go I find that when writers do that they
end up writing things they didn't mean to write they uncover things they didn't know were there
and I really love it when we just start writing and require ourselves to keep the pen moving
now this is a very physical way to approach it apart from a keyboard I think somehow there's
some value in actually writing with a pen or pencil and paper and so a prompt might be
you know think of your character think of how they need to grow and change now
why have they not grown and changed in that way yet
or think of the way your characters say your character's strength or their genius
when was the first time they realized that they had that strength or genius
write about that for five minutes and so you might start by writing I'm not even sure like
he knows how good he is at the trombone and I'm not sure why he doesn't know or why he's playing
the trombone in the first place and then you eventually if you just keep writing you stumble
upon something that you didn't know you were going to stumble upon and what is it about the trombone
that is just perfect for his personality what's happening when he's playing the trombone what
is he feeling and that's a really terrible example but it it shows how just doing exercises
allows you to start finding these little starters that will lead to bigger things
one of the chapters I think we start with a sentence characters start at zero
meaning as the storyteller I don't know anything about the character when they first pop into my
mind nor does the audience know anything about a character just before they step on stage
and I will only know what I know about a character through what I discover about
them and the audience will only know about a character through what I reveal about them
so I have to somehow get myself to engage with this discovery process and once I've mounded up
all of this raw material then I'm ready to start writing and doling that out in a strategic way
as I tell the story these exercises are designed to give writers and actors and directors practice
thinking about and working with characters in this way so that all of us can make the discoveries
that are going to make for rich and lifelike characters who can transform before our eyes
you know when you mentioned Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird I believe the title
if I remember correctly is based on a conversation she had with a grandfather or uncle where “You
just take it a little bit of a time, bird by bird.” Yes I think she had to write a report about
birds and she was looking out the window maybe at a flock of birds and she was just
overwhelmed how am I going to do this I think her dad was a professional writer or professor
and he said “Well Anne just take it bird by bird” and I think that's just some of the best advice
for any writer how can an actor use defining moments to build their character Kathy and I
interviewed several actors as we were writing this book because we really wanted to understand how
how these ideas could be useful to actors
we talked to two-time Emmy winner tony hale and talked to him about this and he said you know
I have found that when I will dig into my own moments that have shaped me and defined me
the performance changes in a way that is appreciable he had just come from recording
a voice for an animated project and he said and I did that I tapped into something that was really
real and deep for me and you could just tell the energy in the booth changed when I did that and he
said I don't know why I don't do that all the time I suppose it's costly emotionally to do that but
he absolutely recognized that
by thinking about the single character that he's embodying and portraying
seeking to understand what are the moments that really have shaped and define this character
how do those moments connect with my own life experience he's able to infuse
greater depth and complexity into those characters and he said when he auditions
he seeks to bring himself in that way to the role and he says I you know I may not
when I audition for that role may not be the tallest or the this or that that they're
looking for but I can guarantee that I will have delivered an audition that nobody else delivered
because they can't they don't have access to his inner life only he does that is the unique
gold that he can mine and bring forward in auditions and performances and
I think any actor can benefit from that
and what I think is so useful for me as a writer and for actors is that
we're talking about a limited number of things that we need to discover about the character
we don't have to know everything about every year of their lives
we just need to locate those moments that have most shaped them and it gives us this deep
understanding that gives all of us access in an empathetic way to the humanity of that character
but possibly the actor could have a history in their back pocket and it might lend to
a heaviness here a relief here yeah exactly and and that's that's for me as a as a writer
a really exciting thing I'm collaborating with an actor to create this character I do my part first
and then I pass the baton to the actor and the director and they bring their resources
which are different from my resources and when it all works the way we dream it will work then
you get this really rich character who does things that the writer never even imagined
and the actor has got to hope that the writer put on the page enough
for them to work with and then they can pick up that baton and carry it further.