A film can be of two types – character driven or plot driven. Great films work by bringing emotions to life and building a connection with the audience. Only films that are capable of doing this keep audiences hooked on to the screen. Characters are the elements which help build this connection. At this point, your film’s screenplay is not yet on paper. You are not limited by actors, budget, locations, editing, music etc. All that matters right now is how you wield your pen in a way that makes your characters more believable.

Every character in your script should have a place and definition. A believable character entices a variety of emotions in you and your audiences. When you are writing your script you see an awe-inspiring character in your head. You are amazed by your imagination. You write a brilliant script but half way through you realize something. You can no longer identify your awe-inspiring character. This is when the wise among us use something called the Character Sketch.

Types of Characters

Protagonist: The protagonist is the main character of your film who drives the story. S/he is also the character who faces a conflict that makes her/him undergo some sort of character change. The protagonist is someone the audiences identify with. There are many ways to build a connection between the protagonist and the audience. They might be likeable, inspiring or even evoke sympathy to keep the connection going. In Lagaan for instance, Bhuvan (Aamir Khan) is the protagonist who leads a team of villagers in a fight against a British ruler to set his village free of taxes. In Sholay, all three protagonists, Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar), Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra) are men who exude strength and will.

Antogonist: The antagonist is the character who prevents the protagonist from getting what he wants. Continuing with our previous example, the antagonist in the movie Lagaan would be Captain Andrew Russell (Paul Blackthorne), the British commanding officer who sets momentum to a change in our protagonist (Aamir Khan), by introducing a conflict in the name of a fateful cricket match.

In both cases the protagonist and antagonist may not be easily defined. The main character might be fighting a myriad of internal and external forces at the same time. An antagonist might not always be in the form of a human. Hence, antagonistic forces can be natural disasters (storms, earthquakes, volcanoes), aliens or man made disasters (nuclear bombs, plane crashes, wars) etc.

A Character Sketch is never complete. It is the known which acts as a security deposit and the unknown that keeps us filling the pages. Your characters should never cease to surprise you. A character might start off being an archetype, but great characters are ones that somewhere deviate from what you expect from them.

Every character has three broad dimensions – Physiology, Sociology & Psychology. Writing these dimensions for your characters helps you understand them better. You quickly grasp why a character reacts in a certain way because you know what makes him/her tick.

Physiology: Perhaps the most obvious dimension of a character is his physiology. A deaf person will react differently from someone who isn’t. Similarly someone can be short, beautiful, blind, handicapped – every physical feature makes a difference to the character’s psyche. The way we are made and physically shaped affects our sensitivities to the world around us.

Sociology: The second dimension that should define your character is Sociology – the environment that surrounds your character. If your character grew up on the streets his reactions would have a certain unique characteristic. This is further defined by asking more questions about your character. Did he have parents? How did they treat him? Did he have a sibling? Did he face sexual abuse? Interaction with people, economy, city, education, friends, family and religion all make an impression on a person’s character.

Psychology: The third and final dimension of your character is what you get when you put your character with a certain physiology in a certain societal setting. It is the result of the two dimensions. For example, if a character meets with an accident, what does he do? If he has lost a loved one before how will he react? Has he experienced such loss before? If his face was damaged beyond recognition how will that affect his psyche? Was he happy with the way he looked before the incident? Will his personality cause him to go into depression or get on with life? The psychology of your character reflects his mental state and thus forms the final dimension.

Only on understanding the three dimensions of your character will you be able to create an effective character. The character sketch will enable you to predict how your character will react realistically. Even if your character is performing an uncharacteristic action it needs a motivation that can be traced back to your sketch.

A character sketch is drawn out using the following parameters:

Physiology

1. Sex

2. Age

3. Height and Weight

4. Colour of hair, eyes, skin

5. Posture

6. Appearance (Good looking, obese, lean, pleasant)

7. Defects

8. Heredity

Sociology

1. Class (lower, upper, middle)

2. Occupation (type of work, attitude towards work, income)

3. Education (type of school, level of education)

4. Life at home (parents, siblings, earning power, parents separated, divorced, character’s marital status, children)

5. Religion

6. Race, Nationality

7. Place in community (head of a club, respected, wanted)

8. Political affiliations

Psychology

1. Sex life, moral standards

2. Personal premise, ambition

3. Frustrations, disappointments

4. Temperament (easygoing, pessimistic)

5. Attitude towards life (resigned, militant)

6. Complexes (obsessions, inhibitions, superstitions, phobias)

7. Extrovert, introvert

8. Abilities (languages, talents)

9. Qualities

10. I.Q.

Following these guidelines, you can write a detailed character sketch for a character you have in mind. It is imperative that you spend good time and cover some important traits of your characters.

An example of a character sketch:

Abriti Shah

Physiology:

1. Abriti is a 31 year old working professional. She is tall and fair complexioned with brown eyes. She is always well dressed and pretty looking but if you look closely you will see a tinge of tiredness in her face. She prefers to wear bright colours and branded clothes. Likes to flaunt her wardrobe.

2. She suffers from fatigue and stress.

3. Likes to smoke cigarettes but doesn’t admit she is addicted to them.

Sociology:

1. She comes from a middle class background but has worked her way up the corporate ladder. Works as the Vice President of Human Resources at an airline. She has changed many jobs but has not let that fact affect her career. She used to enjoy her job but now is losing sight of her goals. She always wants to quit and discover what she really wants to do.

2. Has been involved with only two men in her life who left her for other women. She shows no interest in relationships anymore and has built an invisible shield around her.

3. Her family died in a car accident when she was seven. She has one brother whom she doesn’t relate with; he is married and lives in Australia. No immediate family except her aunt who raised her and is no more. She has many friends but none is too close.

4. Her only pleasure in life in traveling. She takes two weeks off in a year just to travel. She is a globetrotter and likes to explore the history of every place that she visits.

Psychology:

1. Aggressive and meticulous at work, she sets the highest standards for herself. She hates failures and doesn’t like dealing with them. She is afraid of no one and makes sure her competition is wary of her. Her sex life is dormant.

2. Wants to be happy.

3. She hates herself for not marrying her first boyfriend when he asked her.

4. She believes in giving everyone a fair chance but is unforgiving when someone goes wrong.

5. She is stubborn and doesn’t believe in taking advice.

6. Doesn’t get emotionally involved with anyone.

Exercise:

Write a character sketch that will help you discover your characters. Remember, a character sketch reflects everything your character does from the way s/he dresses, the kind of shoes s/he wears, the way s/he eats, speaks, etc.

Audiences like to relate with characters they see on screen. But at some point, your characters need to make that leap out of their ordinary self. Give your characters conflicts that will enable them to exhibit shades of grey that will inevitably make them different from the rest of us.

Ganesh Prabhu