"You are, without a doubt..."

You have your story mapped out.  Plot... check.  Theme... check.  Subplot.... check. Twists that are sure to elicit a "wow, I didn't see that coming" response from the audience... so forth and so on.  

Now it's time for the characters.  Time to "define" those suckers. And if you think for one moment, by define I mean how tall/short, how fat/skinny...what color hair/eyes, or how they're dressed...

...You would be wrong.  "Walking Dead" wrong.  Don't be a zombie writer.  If your best is a zombie writer,  you should proceed to the nearest mirror and repeat at least one hundred times, "would you like fries with that?"

Okay, just kidding about the McDonalds thingy.

As FNW's (Froggy New Writers?), we've all started there.  So what really is our "default" mechanism for defining characters?  For me, and I'm reasonably sure for many others as well, I go to my bucket.  And what's in that bucket? "Framily" is in my bucket (proper acknowledgement to "Sprint" goes here).  Friends and family.  

We write what we know, so to the "framily" bucket I go.  

Now, I have a small bucket, mainly because you only have so many in your family (and even fewer which we may acknowledge/claim)... and I have limited friends.  I have limited friends because, in general, I think people suck.  But that's another blog.  

Anyway, if you return to that bucket too many times, you run the risk of having your characters across the entire spectrum of your work become cookie cutter and very familiar.  That, and soon aunt Martha will eventually notice her likeness in the however many scripts you've written and demand residuals.

You're gonna need a bigger bucket.  And by that I mean the world is your "oyster bucket".  Let me explain by going back to the future.

Some years back, I was but a single man in the Navy.  When we would pull into "ports of call", I would do what one would expect a single guy in his 20's to do.  I'll refrain from mentioning specifics because of uncertainties about  statutes of limitations and extraditions treaties and other such dribble.  In the midst of all the debauchery, pillaging and plundering, I would always take one day, find a local gathering spot, just plop down, partake of a non-alcoholic beverage and just watch.  Just watch how people interacted with each other in other countries.    Being home to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea , the Galleria Umberto in Naples Italy was one of my favorite spots to conduct my observations. And the pizza in Italy, wait... I'll save that for my food blog.

Over the years, I've kept up with that type of observation.  To this day, and my friends (the few) who follow me on social media will attest, I hop from coffee shop to coffee shop in Santa Monica.  And just watch.  (almost sounds creepy, huh?) I know, people suck in general, or so I say.  But I'm still fascinated different mannerisms, expressions and the like.

Seriously, take the time to watch, really watch people in real life.  Watch their reactions to situations.  Make your characters react in real life.  I just finished reading another article about characters in films.  One example used was in a certain horror flick, a girl and her friends are searching for her boyfriend, who unknown to them, has had his head chopped off, which she finds in the trunk of a car.  He reaction, "hey, I found him".  Really?  I'm not saying you'll find out how someone reacts to finding a severed head  by hanging around coffee shops observing people, and if you do... maybe you should find another coffee shop, but you can really learn much and create great composite characters for your screenplays simple, but focused observations.

You certainly don't want a character bloviating about him/her self in an attempt to tell the audience who they are and what they're about.  But sometimes one quick line of dialog can do the trick.  Let's go back to my opening, unfinished quote at the beginning of this blog:

James Norrington:  "you are, without a doubt, the worst pirate I have ever heard of"

Jack Sparrow:  "But you have heard of me"

That's a bucket full of narcissism, right there.

Oh, and the mistake in the title of this blog... did you catch it?

It's not "Searching for Mr. Goodbar.  It's "Looking for Mr. Goodbar".