The Key to Character Introductions

What is it we need to know about a character to help us craft an effective introduction? Their core essence.

In my university screenwriting courses, it’s interesting to see how my students handle character introductions. Here is a random selection from their scripts before I schooled them on a better way to approach the task:

EMMA (20), a pretty, young girl wearing a weathered dress.

BUCKLEY, 25, is tall and ungainly. Gentle and soft-spoken, he does not fit in with his surroundings.

CELESTE SMITH, a frumpy 25 year-old, sits across a desk from a STUFFY BUSINESSWOMAN conducting a job interview.

LENA EDWARDS, late twenties, attractive and conservatively dressed, makes her way to the podium amidst applause.

Each introduction is comprised of some physical description, followed by a ‘talking heads’ scene [two or more characters exchanging dialogue]. What do we really learn about the characters? What can a reader take with them from these descriptions to identify the character as being unique? What about the introduction is at all entertaining?

The fundamental issue here: The writers described external aspects of each character when what helps a reader learn something meaningful, grab onto something unique, and find something entertaining usually lies inside the character — what I call core essence.

Core essence is that critical aspect of a character’s being that defines who they are. It is a foundational part of their persona, a thumbnail summary of that which lies at the center of the psyche. And it can only be found inside the character, their Internal World.

Any writer who has engaged in even a small measure of character development will have trafficked in these type of questions: What is driving this character? What do they want? What do they need? What is it they fear most? What lies at the base of who they are? We take all those queries and address them to the primary characters in our story, and if we keep drilling down into them, we discover their core essence.

What can we do when we determine a character’s core essence? We brainstorm ways to present that idea in an entertaining fashion when we introduce the character. A simple way to think about this is to answer this question: They are the kind of character who…

A good example is the screenplay Shakespeare in Love, written by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman. The Protagonist is Will Shakespeare. What is his core essence? He is a creative individual who has yet to find his Muse, instead having spent the majority of his adult life wasting time in a series of meaningless sexual liaisons and low-brow writing projects to pay for more wine and women. In other words, he is lost.

How do the screenwriters introduce him? Once they establish Will’s physical surroundings, there is this:

At infrequent intervals further pieces of screw up paper are tossed towards the shelf. The man who is throwing them, WILL SHAKESPEARE, is bent over a table, writing studiously with a quill.

Now we see what he is writing: WILL is practising his signature over and over again. Will Shagsbeard… W Shakspur… William Shasper… Each time he is dissatisfied, and each time he screws up the attempt and tosses it away.

Here we have a perfect distillation of the Protagonist’s core essence, a writer looking for his Muse, a man scratching out names as he looks for his true identity, a lost soul.

He is the kind of person who is more concerned about fame than putting in the hard work it will take to get there as a writer.

In The King’s Speech, written by David Seidler, the Protagonist is the Duke of York, second son of King George V, who at the time ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. Bertie, as the Duke is known, is a good and kind man, described in the script as “handsome, sensitive.” Too sensitive as it turns out, an intensely private individual forced into the limelight, pulled toward monarchical responsibility, yet rebelling against that possibility with every inch of his being.

How does the screenwriter introduce him? On the occasion of Bertie’s inaugural radio broadcast staged at Wembley Stadium in front of tens of thousands of loyal British subjects, his coming out party as it were:

EXT. ROYAL PODIUM — DAY

HAND-HELD CAMERA, BERTIE’S POV: far ahead, at a seemingly impossible distance, is the huge intimidating microphone, the only thing between the terrified observer and 100,000 people.

Silence falls over the stadium. Overhead, thick roiling clouds.

BERTIE approaches…like a death march.

Bertie’s eyes widen in terror as he reaches the microphone. The red transmission light blinks four times then glows solid red.

Bertie is frozen at the microphone. His neck and jaw muscles contract and quiver.

BERTIE
I have received from his Majesty
the K-K-K…

Bertie gulps for air like a beached fish.

Here again a memorable distillation of the Protagonist’s core essence: the man who would be King… who doesn’t want to be King, symbolized powerfully by his stuttering and inability to recite words necessary for anyone who might wear the crown.

He is the kind of person who is forced to be a public figure… but loathes every moment of those experiences.

In the script Unforgiven, written by David Webb Peoples, the Protagonist is Bill Munny. A retired Old West gunslinger, he is trying to make a go of it as a farmer, the contrast of these two aspects of his persona conveying much of his core essence. How does the screenwriter introduce him in the script?

EXT. HOG PEN — DAY

The hog in the mud, snorting and squealing, ugly as hell and BILL MUNNY in the mud with him, pushing and shoving, trying to move the stubborn animal and Munny goes down face first and comes up more covered with mud than he already was and the words on the screen say,

WRITTEN WORDS (super)
Some months later, Hodgeman County
Kansas.

Munny is thirty-five or forty years old, his hair is thinning and his moustache droops glumly over his stubbled jaw. If it were not for his eyes he would look like any pig farmer with his canvas overalls tucked in his boots pushing on a hog. He is pushing on the hog again, grunting with the effort, when he hears the voice.

THE KID’S VOICE (O.S.)
You don’t look like no rootin’,
tootin’, sonofabitchin’, cold-blooded
assassin.

Everything about this introductory moment suggests that Munny is no farmer, rather at his core he still has the essence of a gunslinger, a truth the rest of the story proves out.

He is the kind of person who is trying to live by the straight and narrow… but feels a powerful pull toward the crooked path.

Determining the core essence of a character not only helps in constructing an effective introduction, it also gives the writer a clear understanding of that individual and their particular function in relation to the overall narrative. Whether it’s Will Shakespeare, a writer who has yet to find his unique creative identity, Bertie, a private soul thrust into a public role, or Bill Munny, a gunslinger waiting to be called back to action, thumbnail sketches such as these provide a thematic touchstone for a writer they can come back to again and again in the writing process — to remind them what that character is fundamentally about and help steer the course of the narrative .

Takeaway: A character’s core essence is critical in understanding an individual and in laying the groundwork for their introduction.