Playing Off the Ball
One thing that I've gotten increasingly better at, which consequently has raised its importance in my mind is "playing off the ball." What I mean by this is that I now do a lot of writing when I'm not actually sitting in front of the computer typing. It's mainly about keeping my brain active creatively - sometimes by reading, being perceptive - so that I have a general openness to ideas when and if they come. This allows me to accomplish a lot, in a better, less pressurized way I think, when it seems like I'm not really doing anything at all. What happens then is that I end up building concepts and scenes and themes and characters naturally over the course of several days; nothing is forced.
And "Happy Thanksgiving" to the 8 or 9 spammers who are reading this.
Of course, if you write movies, the creation of sympathetic characters is one of your primary jobs. At least if you're writing in the commercial realm. When first approaching characters - I'm talking early drafts - this can be a pretty big challenge for me personally. A lot goes into the creation of a primary character - what do they want, what are their flaws, what inside the person can the audience identify with...is the character sympathetic or not? In the end, the big question, the one Kubrick "taught" me to ask about all things movie related is...is it true and is it interesting? Often, I find that the thing I initially concentrate on is making the character interesting. This can be defined in all sorts of ways - different things interest different people - but contrast and its sharper cousin conflict are two things I'm drawn to. The result is that there are times, early on, when my primary characters are interesting but not sympathetic. Which brings me to a fairly important question - what makes a character sympathetic?
