Character Studies

I just watched Person of Interest's penultimate episode, .exe, and I'm in awe of all the complex characters they have.  There's the Machine, who only wants to help humanity because that's what she was taught by her creator, Harold Finch.  Harold, himself, is shrouded in mystery and we've gotten very little about who he really is over the seasons.  There's John Reese, not the first lost soul that helps Finch help the Machine, but as the series comes to an end next week, it looks like he's going to be the last.  He's got a military background, a CIA background, basically he's your Jack of All Trades who's signature is shooting the bad guys in the kneecaps.  Then there's Sameen Shaw, who also has a CIA / spy background, who likes killing people and can't feel emotions.  At all.

And that's just the good guys.  The antagonists are just as complex, make me want to know exactly what make them tick, and yet I want them to fail.  I want them to fail in such a way that everything they want is burned to the ground and the good guys win.  They've got a Machine too - Samaritan - and an evil Harold (John Greer) and Greer has different Johns and Shaws to help him out in his own ways.  I want to know more about why Greer chose his path, even though they did show us in a background episode, but I feel there's more.  There's got to be more.

I bring this up, mostly because I'm in awe of the writing and the acting, but because we can learn from this.  It's not easy and you have to love, unconditionally, what you decide to take to study.  If you don't love the thing you're going to unpack, then it's not going to work.  You're going to get frustrated and you're going to hate it in the end.  You won't take anything away from it.  On the flip side, you might unpack it and end up hating the thing you love.  I went down this hole with Grey's Anatomy, in trying to understand how to work out romance and chick lit, and I had to take a break from the show.  So, make sure that you want to do this and you won't end up hating what you're unpacking.

Simply put, you take the character that interests you the most and unpack why.  It can be as simple as you like the actor playing the character to the character giving an impassioned speech that makes you rethink what you know about them.  If it's more the actor than the character, then you need to look to the actor.  Is it the way they're delivering the lines?  A little twitch of the head that seems to bring the character together?  Or is it simply the whole package that the actor shows everything the character could be?  For example, I'll watch nearly anything with Tom Cruise in it due to how he plays his characters.  Same goes for Matt Damon.  It's more how they play the character than how the character plays them, if you get my meaning.

Now, if it's the character, what about them?  Is it that they're leading from behind?  Or is it that they're the best leader of the group?  What is the trait that draws you to them and, once you find it, are you going to be able to write it?  Or, when you dive into what makes the character tick, do you regret doing so?  Do you realize that he or she would make a better villain?  You can still use what you find but put it into the villain file instead of the hero pile.

For those of you who are wondering what to do if you realize the plot is the reason you love your favorite show... well, do the same thing.  Find the one thing in the plot that you love and figure out why.  Is it the plot twists that you can't seem coming but feel completely natural?  Learn how to write like that - it's hard but it can be done.  Or do you like how there are a million plot threads that lead to one conclusion (or at least we hope so, Game of Thrones)?  I recommend a big white board where you can connect A to B all the way to Z.

So, character studies, of characters that you love, is one of the easier things to do.  As I was told recently, if you don't love it, then don't do it.  There's no reason to force yourself to do anything that isn't going to help you in the long term.  I hope that this helps someone.  If you try to do a character study in the way above, feel free to hop in the comments and say how well it worked or didn't work for you.

Until next time, keep on writing.