1.6: Developing Characters

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Creating original characters is one of the most fun and rewarding experiences you will have as an artist. You are bringing something into being through your imagination and audience members will live and see the world through this character’s eyes and experiences and often this fictional character will make a lasting impact on actual people’s lives.

When creating characters, you want to make sure that each individual in your play has a direct tie to the conflict and theme of your story. If for example your conflict or story centers around a plane crashing or disappearing, you want to start by creating the character by its relationship to the event: “I am the captain of the plane that crashed” “I am the widow of a passenger on the plane that crashed” “I am the flight controller that last spoke to the pilot of the plane that crashed” etc.

This allows you to start with a character directly tied to the event and therefore logically connected to your play. This character is not defined by gender, name, personality, etc. at this point. Once you have created enough characters from this exercise you can begin giving them an identity.

There are many ways you can explore and develop character’s identities. You can ask actors to improvise a backstory and interview the character. You can go to a public place and base a character off of people you observe. You can base a character off of a friend or acquaintance. Or you can simply use your imagination and create the character from your head.

One primary component that a character must possess is a strong need or desire or goal that drives their actions and is tied directly to the conflict of the play. Character is all action and character is found and defined for the audience in the character’s actions and how the character pursues their objective or goal. Make sure that each character in your play has a strong and identifiable need and allow that to guide the actions they take throughout the story.

Once you have the idea or conflict you then create a person based on their relationship to the idea or conflict. State the character existence as “I am the (Relationship) to/from the (Idea / Conflict).”

An example of this would be if your play were based on a conflict centered around an inheritance you would create a character with a phrase like: “I am the favorite child of the person who is bestowing the inheritance.” or “I am the corrupt lawyer in charge of arbitrating the inheritance.”

Have each person write down the characters that they create and place them around the room and have everyone walk around the room and look at the ideas as though they were art exhibits at a museum. Once everyone has had a chance to see every idea select 10-20 that stand out. Then decide which characters you would like to have in your play.