8 Essential Questions to Help You Write Your Character-Driven Screenplay
Nail your next script by asking the right character questions before you even start outlining
Let’s discuss the 8 essential questions I’ve learned to ask myself about my characters before I even start outlining my latest feature script or TV pilot script. I’ve found the answers to them to be more important to my characters’ development and, thus, the narrative’s action/plot than anything else I do when breaking a story.
Okay, small tweak to what I just said. I actually start every project with a question I want to explore – a theme – but the very next step is to work out who my characters are and how they might help bring this theme to life for audiences (of which I include myself, since I’m the film/pilot’s first audience member).
These characters dictate what happens in every scene, not me – which I know is a bit semantical. But it needs to be true, I think, if you want to write something good. They also animate my initial theme, bringing it to life in unexpected ways even for me, its alleged architect.
The answers to the 8 questions I’m about to share with you reveal my characters’ core values, which is to say their unique way of understanding and navigating the world around them. Once I know their values, I can break a script’s outline from the POV of my characters rather than my own. What I mean is, my characters’ values explain how they’ll fundamentally respond to almost any scenario and, in turn, reveal the general plot of my narrative.
Why should you listen to me?
For those who don’t read me regularly, why should you take anything I have to say here seriously rather than just dismiss me as any of 1,000 screenwriting gurus trying to sell you a get-rich quick scheme?
To be fair, you probably should. Or at least read on with some degree of wariness.
That said, I’m not a screenwriting guru and, while I appreciate paid supporters of the arts & culture conversation I’m having here, I would never suggest screenwriting is a route to getting rich — at least not anymore. You should worry more about producing a quality story, a sample piece of art that might lead to paying work one day, through study and hard work – and that’s somewhere I think I can help you focus your energy based on things I’ve learned.
As for my credentials, I’ve been a professional screenwriter for nearly 20 years. I’ve had short fiction, a novel titled Psalms for the End of the World, and multiple graphic novels published. I’ve studied under brilliant authors, developed scripts with some of the world’s biggest filmmakers and producers, and been employed by most of the biggest studios, networks, and streamers out there.
Long story short: I’ve learned a thing or two about storytelling at this point in my life.
As always for me, though, the trick isn’t so much to tell you how you should do it – I hate how-to instruction like this – but show you how I do it instead. My hope is you then use my examples to help you interrogate your current approach and develop better methods through that study and hard work I mentioned. Yes, kids, screenwriting takes a lot of both.
What is the difference between character-driven and plot-driven narratives?
“Character is plot, plot is character.”
The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald said this.
Stephen King, one of the most successful storytellers of the 20th and 21st centuries, is more brutal in his assessment:
“Of course, the writer can impose control; It’s just a really shitty idea. Writing controlled fiction is called ‘plotting.’ Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however… that is called ‘storytelling.’ Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration.”
Translation (if you agree with their assessments, which I generally do): Your characters make decisions, not you.
When you tell them what to do, rather than them leading the narrative, then something inauthentic begins to bubble up in your work and, soon enough, a reader or maybe even your producer is telling you that you’re writing something that feels too plotty rather than character-driven.
This is a tricky balance and I don’t think we have room here to talk about why your audience tends to reject plot-driven stories, but I think we can distill it this way:
Plot-driven narratives leave audiences feeling like they’re watching a summary of events – a kind of dramatized beat sheet that sprang from a sexy, hooky logline. Basically, the idea drives the story rather than the characters.
Films suffer from this today as that beat sheet is often real and follows all the same major plot points found in any number of other films. Predictability is the name of this game. (You can read my thoughts on this kind of beat sheet writing here: “Don’t Save the Cat...Put It in the Blender!”)
On the other hand, character-driven narratives ask audiences to become passengers in characters’ internal, emotional journeys and, thus, part of the narrative itself. Basically, the narrative begins with the characters and is entirely driven by them. How they respond to situations determines what happens next. This results in wild, unpredictable plot developments that nevertheless feel true.
Put another way: The characters – and you, the audience – get swept up in the story as opposed to feeling manipulated by the experience (even though you still are, which is the real magic of good film/TV – see The Sixth Sense).
Development of scripts typically leads to a hybrid of these two regardless of how a screenwriter starts their project, as notes are answered to satisfy producer and studio/streamer/network concerns. Good notes emphasize and strengthen the connection between characters and plot, that the former entirely drives the latter. Bad notes clarify the plot by making the characters do things that they wouldn’t, thus undermining the integrity of the narrative for audiences – and typically leading to further rewrites or other writers being hired to “fix” your work.
How to use my 8 essential character questions
These questions do not explain every detail about who my characters are. Over the years, I’ve come to rely on them because of how economically they get me to an outline that I can more or less rely on to begin turning into a screenplay.
You might say they summarize a lot of bigger questions about who we are – our identities, basically – into a handful of core values.
The character values these questions reveal only how characters will react to a situation, which is different than specificity. Specificity comes from the color, the shading, the nuance – whatever you want to call it – that you discover later while actually writing the screenplay. The title of their favorite song, something their father said to them on graduation day, language tics, how they feel about their own or others’ racial or gender identities, divorces, first loves, their politics, abandoned dreams – these are all, in some way or another, expressions of the questions I’m about to share. Or so they are, from my perspective and experience.
In short: What I’m sharing here is a hack of sorts. Your characters’ values help you create a character-driven outline that you can then bring to life relatively confident that where you’re taking your story will be true to them rather than your sexy, hooky logline. You then have to make your characters feel real — or full-formed — on the page.
However, it should be said, this isn’t the only way to write a screenplay.
I’ve written and sold scripts I literally make up from page one, including the names of my characters. I’ve written and sold scripts that were so heavily plotted beforehand that I’m not sure if the characters even mattered. I know plenty of writers who still do one or the other, alternate between the two, or prefer a third method that directly hybridizes the two from inception and rely on heavy editing to make the characters explain less natural plot developments along the way – something I have also tried.
So, you should experiment with any method you think will work for you, but I would venture say that, based on my own experiences selling and developing more than 40 film/TV projects, 20 years of friendship with professional screenwriters, and three years here interrogating top-level and sometimes even legendary screenwriters about their process for your own education…answering the following questions will at least dramatically improve your chances of writing a good screenplay.
And before you ask: no, I don’t directly answer these questions in a worksheet or Word doc or anything like that. I’ve been screenwriting – and writing in general – so long, I work through them all in my head as I drive my kids to school, take the train into the city, wander through the bush, or enjoy all the delicious coffee so many of you buy me on here. However, if you’re an aspiring or emerging screenwriter, a worksheet with these questions laid out so you can answer them in actual writing might be helpful to you, which is why a downloadable worksheet outlining these questions will be available at the end of this article.
My 8 Essential Character Questions
Please note that the titles of the many, many film/TV screenplay examples I provide take you to a PDF copy of the scripts for you to download and study for free, presuming I was able to track them down for you. These are for educational purposes only and you should take advantage of those links as quickly as possible, as they have a tendency to break over time. You can also find a collection of my curated screenplay collections here, where you’ll find hundreds of titles to help you in your screenwriting journey.
WHAT DO THEY THINK THEY WANT?
This should hopefully be an easy question. It’s the need, desire, or goal that sets your character’s story in motion. However, that’s very straight-forward and very rarely does a great story conclude with a character simply getting what they wanted. Consider the Rolling Stones’ lyrics, “You can’t always get what you want / But if you try sometime, you’ll find / You get what you need.”
While every other question I share here will come with copious examples to help you better interrogate your own work, I’m going to skip doing so with this one. Just look at the history of narrative storytelling to understand that it’s nearly impossible to tell a story about a character without a goal of some kind to motivate them — even if they don’t understand what they’re after yet themselves.
WHAT DO THEY REALLY WANT/NEED (OR: WHAT IS THEIR SECRET DESIRE)?
I know I just said “you get what you need”, but what your character is really after, I find, is a secret desire – even if they’re not remotely consciousness of what they need. This secret desire tends to turn into your narrative’s theme, though not always. At a very minimum, it presents either a source of narrative-shaking conflict or the engine of your character’s climactic transformation.
Examples (all of which are intentionally reductive and sometimes even pretend away complicated, tangled themes to make them eminently clear):
Casablanca: Rick Blaine thinks he wants to hide from World War II, but what he really wants is to get back into the fight – even if he has to give up the love of his life to do that.
Notting Hill: Anna Scott tries to protect her celebrity status from tabloid controversy at all costs, but what she really wants is to have a normal life away from her job.
Read my article “What That Last Brownie Really Means in ‘Notting Hill’” here.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: Elliot tries to hold on to E.T. (the childhood that was destroyed when his father walked out on his mother), but what he really needs is accept the loss and grow up.
Black Panther: T’Challa sets out to emulate his father and keep Wakanda secret from the world, but as a son and a king, what he really needs to do is atone for this isolation by helping those around the globe who have long suffered from colonialism and its systemic aftereffects.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indiana Jones thinks he wants the biggest archaeological find of his life – the Ark of the Covenant – but what he really needs is Marion Ravenwood.
Read my article “Indiana Jones and the Lesson of New Perspectives” here.
Ben-Hur (1959): Judah Ben-Hur seeks emancipation from enslavement/imprisonment for himself, his family, and metaphorically his people, but what he really needs is spiritual emancipation by way of the messiah.
Aliens: Ellen Ripley believes she must face her greatest fear to move past the trauma, but what she really needs is closure over the loss of her daughter (two objectives that writer-director James Cameron deftly marries by the finale of the film).
Ad Astra: Roy McBride thinks he can fix himself by traveling to the far end of our solar system to reconnect with his father (a metaphor for our search for answers in the coldness of space), but what he really needs to discover is the human connection he’s missing is right here on Earth.
Sinners: The Smokestack Twins return home to Mississippi to open a juke joint that’s Black-owned, Black-run, and for only Black patrons, but what they really need is to be reunited with their families.
Spider-Man (2002): Peter Parker wants to be with Mary Jane Parker, but what he really needs is to be a super-hero who uses his great power for good. This decision reveals how he has grown as a character.
THERE’S PROBABLY AN EXTERNAL OBSTACLE IN YOUR STORY. WHETHER THERE IS OR ISN’T…HOW IS YOUR CHARACTER STANDING IN THEIR OWN WAY?
Characters typically must do more than confront an external obstacle standing in the way of their stated goals. They’re also standing in their own way in some way or another, sabotaging their own secret desires. Overcoming this personal shortcoming is key to their narrative victory.
Examples:
The Sixth Sense: Dr. Malcolm Crowe is dead and is trapped on Earth as a ghost because he cannot see the truth of his situation. He has created an elaborate narrative around his home life and marriage to sustain this delusion, to such a degree that he chooses to see his wife moving on with another man as an act of infidelity. It’s only when he realizes the extent of his emotional obstructionism — pre- and post-death — that he can move on.
Read my article “What About ‘The Sixth Sense’s’ Other Twist?” here.
Logan: Logan is haunted by the violence of his past that, despite his best attempts to leave it behind, he keeps repeating in the present. This is exacerbated by a unique plot device, which sees the beast within him externalized in the form of a clone he must first run from and then ultimately confront to answer the great question of his life: am I a man or an animal?
Read my article “A Tale of Two (Aging) Heroes: ‘Logan’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’” here.
Read my artist-on-artist conversation with Logan co-screenwriter Scott Frank here.
Five Easy Pieces: Bobby Dupea runs from anything that smacks of his past or genuine human connection. His non-conformity, which could be a reason to admire him, is actually his refusal to face his own numerous shortcomings. Remember, not all narratives require growth from characters. The audience might be expected to grow/learn from the narrative instead, whereas the characters remain doomed to tread water or even perish from their inability to change.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indiana Jones is an atheist who constantly dismisses the spiritual expertise and warnings of those around him even as proximity to the Ark of the Covenant and its potential for destruction increases with the film’s global stakes. In the end, he must abandon this atheism if he’s going to survive the wrath of God unleashed by the Ark of the Covenant. In a single act of faith, he saves his and Marion Ravenwood’s lives.
American Fiction: Author Monk Ellison disdains Black stereotypes in life and narratives so much that he’s become bitter and mean, elitist, and ultimately professionally unsuccessful despite his high opinion of himself. This complicates his relationship with his family, blows up a new romantic relationship, and leads to him writing a new book that defies his ambitions for it and Black culture at every possible turn.
The Edge of Seventeen: Nadine uses her best friend hooking up with her brother as an excuse to slowly, catastrophically push everyone around her away – whatever it takes to directly deal with how the death of her father has blown up her interior and exterior lives.
Listen to my conversation with Edge of Seventeen’s writer and director (and my friend) Kelly Fremon Craig here.
La Dolce Vita: Marcello, a paparazzo living a hedonistic life in post-WWII Rome, constantly rejects spiritual messengers in favor of material, self-destructive pleasures.
Inside Out: The problem I describe is doubled in a unique narrative structure that brings our interior lives to narrative life. Riley is struggling with big changes in her teenage life, which results in her externalizing that angst in ways that threaten her tight family unit and exacerbates her mental health struggles. Her stated need to just make things go back to the way they were is dramatized in her interior life, where the emotion of Joy tries to pretend away the emotion of Sadness, complicating the plot. Sadness, in this case, is Riley’s secret desire. It’s not until Sadness is accepted and embraced as healthy that Riley can truly grow and a narrative resolution be reached.
Read my artist-on-artist conversation with Inside Out co-screenwriter (and dear friend) Meg LeFauve here.
HOW FAR WILL THEY GO TO ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS?
This question is a bit trickier to answer, because there are so many possible ways to answer it. Try to focus on the world – or confines – of your story. What they won’t do explains your characters’ kryptonite, so to say, and a lot of potential conflict. But also, what narrative norm they will transgress could very well explain their downfall (or ultimate victory).
Examples:
