Filter Characteristics for better Characters

One thing most writers struggle with is differentiating characters in a story, and "making them real" rather than stereotypical. Short of coming down with schizophrenia, what can we do to get inside the heads of so many different characters to understand why they do the things they do, say the things they say, see the world the way they see it? I hope that we know it is important to do this especially with the main characters: the hero, the manipulator/mentor and the villain. But, when there is so much competition for readers' attention, even the minor characters have to quickly take form in their mind as the story unfolds.

Observation is a time-tested tool for most writers, but unless you have a voice over narrative in your film then the observation of characters falls into the lap of the audience. Therefore, once again, the art of knowing and showing is the necessary evil of screenwriting. You must know what is behind your character's choices and then show the subtleties to the audience for them to observe. It's not enough to give a redneck character a southern accent to make his choices consistent with a "real" human being. You must understand his frame of reference, how he filters the world, in order to understand how to manipulate him. Where to start?

Back-story is sold to screenwriters as a sure-fire way to develop characters. Knowing what happened to a character BEFORE the film starts, and creating a believable history that a writer may or may not draw upon in dialogue and action in the film is a good thing. Right? Some writers create such intricate back-stories that they might fill up a completely different film. Some back-stories do become "prequel" films, in fact. It is dangerous territory for a writer, though to delve into the pre-film history too deeply, because I’ve seen it lead writers away from perfectly viable stories often.

Studying and understanding the way people communicate and perceive the world in general must be in a writer’s tool chest. I’ve written of the “point of view” of the screenwriter being important to a screenplay’s very hypothesis, and so taking this logic further into a story follows like this: the point of view of each character is important to the character’s very hypothesis. It may not be entirely necessary to construct a complete history for every character to do this well. (What did she say???)

Neuro-Linguistic Programming has been around since the 1970s. In the forty years since, there has been a boatload of research done on the behavior of human beings in the world. Focusing just on what we know through NLP can help writers understand how characters filter information differently. This can be a short cut to creating a plausible set of traits for any character in your screenplay. There are experts who can help you quickly understand why a person might respond to information presented one way, and ignore or be confused by the same information presented another way. Last night I went to a fun class about this field taught by expert, Tracy L. Brown, a Master Certified NLP Practitioner, to learn more. She was so entertaining as she showed us how people give their lies away, or how we might get out of speeding tickets by simply changing the way we communicate.

It was clear to me from the outset that each believable character in your screenplay will necessarily have a specific filter through which they either get or refuse information, and that knowledge will drive many entertaining moments in a film. For instance, I’m a visual leaning person. I respond to the way things appear in presentation. I used to call myself a marketer’s dream come true, but maybe only for those who paint me a pretty picture. A close second is my auditory perception, or how things sound, and I always question whether something resonates with me, or sounds true. Put me in a room of kinesthetic people who want to touch and feel can really creep me out. Present me with a stack of facts or credentials that give me no visual clues and I’m just slogging through it with pure pain. These traits get more pronounced when there are big decisions to be made. I’m skeptical if it doesn’t “look good,” and I become enthusiastic if I feel I have a reasonable perspective, and these visual words naturally fall into the way I speak and color my world.

Therefore, as you create your characters mull over mixing and matching types. Consider a hero and villain who perceive the world through different filters and how they must finally reinterpret each other. Think about how people build connection when they exhibit similar filters. Consider what choices are made seemingly out of an arbitrary disregard for the facts, but are actually made because of the filter of perception that character carries around with them. All character decisions have an emotional basis, of course, but the filter frames the emotion. As a screenwriter, you can begin to work with the language you use to define those filters, and you may even be able to learn an infallible way to hook agents and producers through use of NLP and garner the rare, “Green Light” for your project.