How to “lean into” your story’s characters

Reflections on Receptive Writing and Reflective Writing.

I posted an article the other day: Your characters want you to tell their story Lean into your characters. After all, it’s their story.

I received this question:

This was my response.

Tina, here’s how I approach the process of “leaning into” a story’s characters. It also how I teach it.

The first and most important stage is what I call Receptive Writing. This is where we immerse ourselves in the story universe and the lives of our characters through a series of direct engagement exercises: Interview, Monologue, Stream of Consciousness. We allow all of this content to come our way and aggregate it into a Master Brainstorming List. We don’t pre-edit anything, just put it all down onto the list.

Then there are times when we step outside of the story universe and do what I call Reflective Writing. Here, instead of engaging the characters directly, we think about them, look at all that content we’ve amassed and sort through it with a series of indirect engagement exercises: Questionnaire, Biography, Free Scene.

The process of “leaning into” our characters involves bouncing back and forth between these two perspectives in relation to the characters and story universe: sometimes inside rubbing shoulders with the characters; sometimes outside thinking about what we’ve discovered.

This is where the Family of Characters is so valuable. Think about five character archetypes — Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster. Do any of our story’s characters seem to slot into one of those narrative functions? Often, they do. And you can create a “map” of those relationships. It’s a great way to understand each character, their base function in the story, and a lens through which to interpret their actions, even dialogue.

I get into this content in depth in my book The Protagonist’s Journey, but what I’ve detailed here is a distillation of that content.

Hope you find this helpful, Tina!

Indeed, I do get into this subject extensively in my book. Over 100,000 words worth! The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling is an Amazon #1 Best Seller in Film and Television. Endorsed by over thirty professional screenwriters, novelists, and academics, you may purchase it here. If you want an autographed copy, go here.

But if nothing else, your takeaway is to seek out and find the balance between Receptive Writing and Reflective Writing. As writers, we need to do both in order to lean into our characters … and enable them to drive the story-crafting process.