Knowing how to introduce your character is all well and good. But how do you do it without setting your reader’s teeth on edge? In this blog, I’ll talk you through introducing characters mainly in a screenplay format.
The Oops Moments
We’ve no doubt seen all the weird and wacky ways of introducing characters. As a female, I must admit I have cringed at some of the descriptions of women as our male counterparts have tried to describe us and how our boobs move as we walk.
Some of the introductions are just plain laughable because they’re so bad. Like really bad. For screenplays, what we as readers are fed up of seeing are the stereotypes of the kick-ass woman. That or being “pretty” or just the “dumb blonde”.
How To Write Character Introductions Properly
When we’re describing characters, especially in screenplays, we want to have a feel for who they are. At the same time we want a little description about what they look like. Novels are a little different as we’ve got a certain amount of leeway on word count. But that doesn’t mean you can have reams of pages describing the shade of blue their jumper is. Just don’t do it to yourself or your readers.
There are a few ways to describe characters in screenplays so they look like these:
DANNY (30s) attempts to make himself a coffee from the swanky machine but all he does is decorate his crisp white shirt with a large coffee stain.
MICHAELA, a twenty-something, sharp-suited know-it-all pushes her hair back to reveal the Chief’s badge pinned to her chest.
Lurking in the shadows is POPPY. She may look innocent but she’ll happily slit your throat with the knife tucked into her sock given the slightest encouragement.
Can you see how we’ve given a feeling for the character by how their introduced? Their looks don’t necessarily need to come into it, but you can if you like. What we’re aiming for a sense of the character by the actions that introduce them and what they do in the rest of your script.
What you also need to be aware of is when you’re introducing a character for the first time, in the action/description you need to put their name in capitals and then from then on it’s lowercase. This would mean you would see POPPY when she’s first introduced and then becomes Poppy in any mention of her afterwards.
So I hope this has been helpful in making sure you don’t write cringy character introductions. If you want more examples of how other writers have done this, find scripts online from film and TV and see how they’ve done it or read Clive Frayne and Lucy V Hay’s book Don’t Screw Up Characters. Don’t just copy the examples out there though. That’s just cheating.
Happy writing!
If you want to write autistic characters, opening images, strong story ideas or writing diverse stories, then you can check out these older blog posts for some inspiration.