The Working Experience: Developing Your Character
Matty Kerr is co-creator with John Brancaccio of The Working Experience. Listen to our podcast on iTunes and Spotify and check out our website: theworkingexperience.com, for podcast episodes, videos and merchandise. You can also find us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Matty is currently working on a short film which is scheduled to be filmed in April of 2021.
The screenwriter and director Paul Schrader believes that writing, screenplays, novels etc, helps a person exorcise demons and work out neurosis. The audience watches movies to do the same thing. They see a character working through issues that they themselves are dealing with and that creates a connection, a sense of identification, which is crucial to the success of a creative piece.
What is the purpose of art if not creating a connection and helping people deal with their problems?
In order to demonstrate or reveal this connection, it is important to delve into your characters, give them a depth and dimension beyond the page. Who are these people? What drives them? What do they want from life?
Whenever you meet someone you are meeting all of their previous experiences. You, the author, should know the experiences of your characters. It makes them authentic.
Jeff Lydon: 46 Year Old White Male
Jeff worked at an insurance company or some kind of financial/investment firm. He told jokes around the office that people would politely laugh or chuckle at but he is not a funny guy. He would basically repeat routines that he had heard from other comedians. He may have read some sort of self-help book on being more popular or a better communicator and one section talked about the value of having a sense of humor, which he does not have.
One gets the impression that Jeff received practical gifts from his parents for his birthday and Christmas.
Jeff plays golf but he doesn’t really like it. He plays because that is what everyone else does.
In high school, Jeff played sports but he was not naturally very good at them. He made the teams (baseball or basketball) because he worked very hard and listened to the coaches’ instructions. He takes the same approach to comedy.
There is something very endearing but very sad about this.
By watching YouTube videos and imitating the routines of other comics such as Dane Cook, Louis CK, Kevin Hart and other successful comedians, Jeff has become convinced that he should do stand-up. He has performed at some open-mics with no success because he really doesn't understand the humor behind the jokes and his delivery is terrible.
The way Jeff feels about comedy is that there is a formula or a code he can crack. He can provide a rationale for why a routine is funny, how it meets all the metrics of being funny, but he is just not funny.
He says things like, “That should work.”
Jeff becomes obsessive about one routine involving getting butter at a restaurant. He calls it his “Lop of Butter” routine. He feels like if he could just get it right he could turn a corner with his comedy and maybe his entire life.
But he can’t get it right.
This is all an outgrowth of Jeff dissatisfaction with his life. He could never figure out what he wanted to do so he just followed the template: went to college, got a degree, got married, had kids.
The problem is, he is using the same approach to comedy because, just like his life, he really can’t figure it out.
Pamela Lydon: 43 Year Old White Female
Pam has worked as a nurse for 15 years. She wears her uniform throughout the film; she has just come home from work or is going to work.
The overwhelming feeling we get from Pam is that she is tired; the Coronavirus is causing her a lot of stress. She worries about her daughter, Angie, who was supposed to be going off the college in Florida but now cannot. She is worried about her eight year old son, Trevor, and his online schooling situation. She worries about finances since she is the only one working.
She is also tired of Jeff and was tired of him before the Coronavirus and all these other problems. The fact that he quit his job right before the pandemic is just another reason for her to feel that he is hopeless. She was already frustrated by his failure to move up in the company because he is so clueless and lacking in imagination. She had been seriously considering divorce and now she is trapped and resents him.
She really cannot stand the sight of him.
The question on her mind is: Where do I go from here?
Angie Lydon: 18 Year Old Female
Angie was supposed to go to Florida State University to play soccer and lacrosse but cannot because of the Coronavirus so she will be attending Umass. She is not happy about the situation but is not spoiled or petulant about it. She is mature enough to accept the situation with a sense of fatalism: it is what it is.
Angie is a good student, though she is not really an academic. She is very good at sports, a natural leader and captain of the soccer team. She loves the atmosphere of the team and is a stand out in any group without being obnoxious about it. She is a kind and generous person, never a bully, but maybe she had to grow into to this in the last two years.
Angie’s sexuality is ambiguous, maybe even to herself. This is exemplified in her exchange with her mother about the Korean sex dolls.
Angie is well aware of the situation with her parents, though she is not given to stress and anxiety about it: it is what it is. She is mature enough to know she can’t do much about it and doesn’t take sides.
Angie loves her parents for different reasons. She admires her mother’s patience and perseverance and they enjoy a relationship of understanding and friendship. Her mother sacrifices a lot for her and her brother and she appreciates it. However, Angie knows in the back of her mind that she does not want to be like her mother, trapped in a stress-filled, unhappy life. She sometimes wonders how her mother got caught up in this situation; maybe she should have made better choices. However, she would never say any of this to her mother.
Angie loves her father because he is, at heart, a kind man, though Angie can why her mother can’t stand him. He has never yelled at her or even said anything mean or negative. However, he is not the most effectual person and is hard to know in any meaningful way. Angie wonders how and why he could work at a job he doesn’t like for the last 25 years and not do anything about it. Angie can well understand her mother’s frustration with him but she loves him anyway. He is her dad.
Angie does not want to get caught up in this drama. She deliberately makes no comment about their relationship.
She wants to GET OUT and start living her life.
Life Experiences
When you meet someone, you are meeting all of their life experiences up to that point. These experiences make the person who they are. The thing is, you don’t know those life experiences; you only know the person in front of you. You don’t know why they have certain reactions or how they interpret information or deal with social situations.
If you are writing a screenplay, it is very valuable for you to know the life experiences of your characters. It makes them authentic.
Audiences react to authentic characters.
