Everything Film School Taught Me About Character Creation

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The Foundations of Screenwriting - Syd Field

Something that has stuck with me the most from my screenwriting classes was this: character is plot.

By that, my prof meant that our main character’s arc is (literally) the main plot. As a 17-year-old who had always struggled with writing a cohesive story past the beginning, my mind was blown—how could it be so simple?

She taught us five critical things that go into character building: Goal, Objective, Unconscious Need, Disrupting Characteristic, and a Formative Event. In this post, I'll take you through what each is, and how to use them to create a character arc (and thus, a plot).

1.       Objective

The actionable (your character can work at it) objective of the story. What your character is physically doing throughout the story. Frodo taking the ring to Mordor is his Objective, Rapunzel going to see the lanterns in Tangled. Mulan protecting her dad by taking his place. Essentially, objective is what I always used to think of as plot.

2.       Goal

The intention behind the objective. Why is your character doing this? This is usually the emotional core of the story, where we tuck away arc and characterization. Rapunzel wants to see the lanterns to finally get out and start her life. Mulan wants to prove she’s worthy. Your character wants to make someone proud, or hurt someone who’s hurt them, or feel loved.

This is the emotion behind their objective and cannot on its own be turned into an arc. One cannot ‘prove themselves worthy’ out of a void, that’s the goal, you also need an objective, ‘prove themselves worthy through taking their father’s place in the war’.

3.       Unconscious need

This tends to be where I get stuck the most. The good thing is, both words are hints on what to do here. Unconscious meaning your character doesn’t realize it, couldn’t put it into words, and definitely doesn’t say it out loud.

Need, is the start of how to answer this blank space. Your character needs to realize something they haven’t been aware of to achieve their goal. Or they need to realize a flaw in their goal. For example, a woman wants to run for president (objective) to make her mother proud (goal), but she needs to realize all her mother wants is to spend more time with her, and by using all her time to campaign for president, she’s actually splitting them further apart. Mulan needs to not rely so much on external validation for her own worth if she wants to feel worthy (goal).

Your need is character specific, which means no one else should need the same thing. If your need can apply to multiple people, you probably didn’t get specific enough. Everyone needs to be loved, everyone needs to feel cared for. However, not everyone closed themselves off from relationships and needs to open up to people if they want to foster a connection. See the difference?

This step will directly influence how you write your climax, because it leads to a choice your character makes. They can either realize their need and adhere to it (Fine, I’ll take my name out of the campaign for president/call my parents/apologize to the people I’ve hurt) or continue with their objective despite it. Typically, characters that ignore their need after they realize it are considered to have tragic arcs. Getting your character to realize their need is the end of their positive arc, it’s what we’ve been working towards all along.

4.       Disrupting Characteristic

This one is fun. This step is adding a flaw to your character, specifically, it’s the flaw that’s holding them back from meeting their need. If there was nothing holding them back, wouldn’t they be satisfied with life already? So that’s the easiest place to start with this one, what they need, and what could possibly be holding them back from it.

If they need to see their father as he truly is, maybe their disrupting characteristic is that they’re optimistic to a fault. This characteristic could be a thing the character does (idolizes their father, acts fiercely independent, etc.) or a belief they have about themselves or the world (self conscious, believes humans are inherently cruel, etc.) It’s the epitome of their internal conflict, they need something, but some ingrained part of them is keeping them from it. Evil? Absolutely. But us writers tend to be.

The disrupting characteristic is the internal arc your character goes through, they are working and being challenged throughout the story to overcome this characteristic.

5.       Formative Event

This is essentially your beginnings of backstory. The formative event Is the (usually) singular event in a character’s past that made them to be who they are today—importantly, that developed their need and disrupting characteristic. Your character showed up to school in their new dress and was bullied, Mirabelle didn’t get her gift in Encanto, a mom left, or a dog died. The reason they are the way that they are. From this, you can build up the rest of their backstory. Moana is chosen by the ocean, her parents try to keep her away from the ocean, she grows up unsure about the idea of being the next chief. If you’re struggling with backstory, start here, build around it.

Speaking of backstory, it’s my invisible sixth step (or… first, really) because all of these things you come to know about your character is developed out of backstory (which makes it a pretty good place to start). It makes sense, really, if these steps are who they are, they’ve become that way because of where they’ve come from.

How does this all give you a plot? The answer lies in how your character changes. We’ve created someone who wants something, and needs something else, and unless we take them on a journey so they can figure it out, we’ll never have a story. So that journey to help them realize their need? That’s your plot.

And if you'd like to see that in action, the quickest way is through a logline.

Loglines are a tool taught to screenwriters because they tend to work as a team and might have to keep characters consistent over the course of a series or show. To keep things straight, they’ll create a character profile that has everything you need to know about a character in order to write them.

This profile will have the basics like: appearance, voice (with examples), basic characteristics, name, age, background, etc. And to sum up their arc throughout the story or series, they’ll write a logline. It’s a few sentences that show how the character begins, the conflict they go through, and then how they change because of it.

Loglines go A but B so C:

A – Character and their flaw

B – Conflict they go through

C – How they change

Here's an example of what Moana's logline might have looked like (from the movie... Moana):

Headstrong Moana feels conflicted over her place as the next chief to her people, but when her island starts dying due to a spreading darkness, she is sent across the sea to return the heart of T'Fiti and save her people, discovering her true place as the bridge between her people and their voyaging ancestors.

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