Film Courage: Travis I’m wondering if we can talk about the levels of dimension
in a character? So if we can talk about what a three-dimensional character looks like
and then one that is two-dimensional and finally just a one-dimensional characters?
How does one look flat versus a fully fleshed out three-dimensional character?
Travis Seppala, Author/Screenwriter: I’m not sure how to do 2-D? That’s an
interesting concept…1-D and 3-D make sense. 2-D…?
Film Courage: I created that.
Travis: Okay. I guess 2-D is telling me a piece of paper, so there is that.
A single dimensional character is somebody that is just kind of there to facilitate the plot.
They are there to just basically be a moving piece along the way where they are just an anchor for
the story. They are usually somebody who the story is happening to and they are not really making any
choices, they are just kind of being pushed along with all the stuff that is occurring around the
a three-dimensional character is more like a real human being who makes choices and some of
those choices are good and some of those choices are bad. There are somebody who actually makes
decisions about thing. There are not somebody who is being pushed along by if the bad person
is running after them they are not just going upstairs because that is where the story needs to
take place. They are somebody who might actually fight back against the bad guy or somebody who
may go cower in a closet somewhere. It’s very character specific. Somebody who may have a
different experience. Have the exact same story and you have the main character be a hairdresser,
they are going to make way different decisions than a character who is a FBI agent and that
would be a three-dimensional character because they are all the choices of what they are doing
has to do with their experiences. 1D character would be we don’t…if it was an FBI agent or a
beauty salon person…it doesn’t matter because they’re just going where the story is going. So
that’s my best. Again, 2D is a piece of paper. I don’t know what to do with that for a character.
Film Courage: Or maybe they are an FBI agent that has a cover as a hair salon [owner] and
then these woman confide all of these things and they are like “Ah!” and then they get these tips.
Are there different tests though that when you look at the characters that
you’re writing and you say “You know what, this is two one-dimensional right here.”
Travis: Well I try to come up with…I am personally more of a plot writer than a character
writer. But, even in having the plot you need the characters to make sense. I still need to find the
character to have in this place. If I want an alien invasion story I am not going to write a
character who could be anything just because all I care about is the cool explosions that having an
alien invasion happen so I need to find characters that are going to make cool decisions that are
cinematic based on what’s happening to them. So if I want something that is going to be like
high impact action where the good guy is fighting back, I might have a soldier as the lead character
and they are going to make way different decisions than just the general public is.
They are going to be helping other people get out the situation. They’re going to be fighting back
against the aliens. They are going to be plotting and scheming and coming up with whatever they can
to survive, help others survive and defeat the bad guy. Whereas if I want something that is just
a terror driven thing where we are on the edge of our seats “Oh my gosh! When is this person going
to go?” I might have just a regular Joe Schmoe who has no experience, they’re just looking out
for themselves, maybe they are not helping other people unless they can’t help it who is going to
be cowering in their car and they are probably going to go at any point. So at that point it’s
like so when is this person going to go versus the soldier - Oh! When is he going to beat the aliens?
Because it’s the same setup because it’s a different character it’s a completely different
story. It’s kind of one of those things of I want this story to be about a specific…to go a certain
route I need to find the character that helps that route along and it isn’t just some random person
based on what the experiences are and even then my story because again I’m outlining so
in the outline I am coming up with what character would best facilitate it now I have to think
what decisions is this character going to make and how does this change the rest of the plot that
I originally had in mind and so going from my initial one sentence thing that I write in my
idea book maybe it can be a completely different animal now that I have the character for it.
Film Courage: If we go back to 2005
which you said was loosely based on you or it was really your story?
Travis: Right, it was a loosely based thing, like the character was going through the same
stuff that I was going through, sometimes a little more dramatic than
what my own stuff was and a vastly different outcome from what my personal experience was
but yes, that script was loosely based on the situation I was in.
Film Courage: Do you feel that that character was three-dimensional?
Travis: I feel like that character was me in a sense and me kind of living out
my own fantasy of how what I feel like I should have done. The first two-thirds of
that script was the character was a weak as I was in this situation where he was letting
this stuff happen to him and not really fighting back and I felt like the stuff I was writing was
basically like how I wanted to get out of that situation but in real life I was just
too weak to do it. I knew what needed to be done, I just couldn’t convince myself to actually do it.
So I had the character who had the same situation as me and he was just as weak as I was until he
finally found the strength to push forward and do what needed to be done and even then once I wrote
that point that was when I was able to like end that scenario in my own life. I was in an abusive
relationship as is what that was and so it was almost like a reverse Lifetime movie you where
a lot of Lifetime movies where you’ve got the woman who is being beaten by the man and stuff and
following her trail and so it was the guy being beaten by his wife at the time you know and so
in real life I couldn’t get myself to get out of that situation. I’m about to cry, I’m sorry.
Film Courage: I’m sorry. I feel bad now.
Travis: No worries. So I knew I needed to get out of that situation but I just
couldn’t get myself to do it because I was like low self-esteem at the time so I felt
like I couldn’t do any better than that. So in the writing he rose above it…I’m sorry.
So in the story he found the power that I couldn’t basically and rose above it and it
had a much, much different ending obviously than just leaving because I wanted to be like
kind of cinematic too so there was some thrillery stuff thrown into the third
act of that obviously never happened in real life but it was the same situation,
the same sort of feelings, and so that’s why it was kind of like therapy for me to get out of it.
Question For The Viewers: Anything
you can add on creating three-dimensional characters?