Thank you to all the Excellent Actors Involved: Aly Fitzgerald (Damsel in Distress) - twitter.com/_alyfitzgerald Rain Dove (The Super Villain) - twitter.com/raindovemodel Kelsey Ellison (Manic Pixie Dream Girl) - twitter.com/kelseyellison Faust Harrison (Weird Goth Kid) - twitter.com/RhythmBeatMusic Em Bullions (Comic Relief Sidekick) - twitter.com/WannabeLinguist Simon Allison (Wise and Quirky Mentor) - twitter.com/simonalison Stephen Lynch (Charming Space Rogue) - twitter.com/StephenLynchVO Alaina Hammond (Hallmark Channel Protagonist) - twitter.com/alainahammond
I loved the part about writing useless information about a character XD I really want to do that more. I have tried it in the past, but I've never done as many as 20 for one character, and I think that would be an intriguing challenge!!!
@@PetrosofSparta Oh shit I should have gone for "sexy librarian" instead. I should have pulled my hair in a bun, then released it and removed my glasses lol
EXCELLENT video, but since you asked for more tips, here are three I would add (and you or I could do entire videos on EACH of these): 1.) Listen to How Real People Talk. Characters - as you correctly said - are story, but dialogue is characters. To write good dialogue, you have to write REAL dialogue. So LISTEN to your family, friends, etc., and when you can, at every given opportunity, EAVESDROP, EAVESDROP, EAVESDROP! Notice how women talk differently from men, black people from white people, people with college degrees from high school dropouts, Baby Boomers from Millennials. And while you're doing that, notice how people tend to say more by what they DON'T say than by what they DO. 2.) Base Your Characters on People You Encounter. It seems like an obvious shortcut: If you want your characters to be real people, make real people your characters, but you'd be surprised how rarely people take that obvious shortcut. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined a born, raised and still residing Upper Midwesterner surfer dude who deals drugs and goes by the name "Chance," nor a flamboyantly homosexual bail bondsman in rural Alabama who wears Hawaiian shirts, but now that I've met those two people in Real Life, how can I NOT make them characters? As a quick illustration, to pick one genre, here are - off the top of my head - four iconic sitcom characters who were based on real people their respective shows' creator(s) met in real life: Basil Fawlty, Alex P. Keaton, Cosmo Kramer and David Brent. 3.) Find the Piece of Yourself in All of Your Characters. If you can't understand a person on some level, you can't write them. Simple as that. So even if you were hypothetically writing a bullying narcissist who somehow reached the most powerful office in the world, can you at LEAST relate to his strong desire to be loved and accepted? The reason characters become iconic is because they speak to our shared Human Condition, and as a human, find it in them. I hope this posts this time.
Although I know what you're saying about X people talking differently from Y people, I also think that's not categorically true, that context very much matters. It's not universally true that men and women speak differently. It can be; it isn't ALWAYS. Diablo Cody falsely believes that teenagers speak LIKE TEENAGERS. No, they speak like people. A five minute conversation. between two teenage girls, taken out of context and transcribed, will not necessarily be distinguishable from a similar conversation between two women in their thirties. She did NOT deserve that Oscar. Her self-consciously "young" dialogue did not sound like actual human teenagers at all.
@@Alainahammond ABSOLUTELY. And that's the FIRST thing you should notice about, say, teenagers vs. young adults: They don't actually talk all that differently on the surface. In fact, it's cheap to make them talk all that differently. Except they do. The main difference between how teenagers and adults speak is teenagers tend to express more a performance of their presumed societal roles, but they're cognizant of the performance they're putting on. Adults - especially the older they get - tend to believe their presumed societal roles are fixed, and they think this is the "real" them, when in fact, it's just as much a performance as what the teenagers are saying. Again, if you REALLY listen, you notice people say more by what they DON'T say than by waht they DO.
@@TheTonyCaroselli Moreover, while "code switching" and AAVE are documented phenomena, I would qualify your point that black people speak differently than white people. Again, context matters. I don't think a fly on the wall, listening to a conversation between Barack and Michelle Obama, would necessarily hear any difference between their mannerisms and the verbal mannerism of a white Columbia/Harvard and Princeton/Harvard educated couple.
