Character-Led Screenplay Writing with David Drake

All too often we write screenplays plot first, which is another way to say cart-before-the-horse. By imposing plot onto characters we put them on rails, making them passive and disengaged.

This workshop will demonstrate a number of ways we can break out of that plot-first mould by developing our characters more deeply, following their lead, and putting decisions in their hands.

We will do a number of practical exercises to get ourselves out of the plot-first headspace. We’ll discuss how we can develop desires, needs, and the contradictions in our characters to bring them to life. We’ll put them under pressure to discover their behaviours and choices. We will also put these concepts to work by rebuilding scenes and characters from existing movies.

• Rather than characters serving a function, we will build them through a lens of desires, needs, and emergent contradictions.
• We will test how scenes might change when decisions belong to the characters rather than the plot.
• We will test real movie scenes and characters and rework them to be character lead.

The workshop will help you develop a clearer sense of your characters desires and needs, a method for finding your next scenes by listening to your characters, and an approach you can use to make your screenplays come alive.