Screenwriting Tips, You Hack

Chapter | eight

Showing Character: Surprises, Sock Puppets, and Bad, Bad Men

A screenplay is only as good as the characters in it. The world doesn't need any more moustache-twirling villains, comic-relief friends, and one-use characters. The outrageously gay best friend, the wise old man dispensing wisdom, the tragically single and tragically uncool middle-aged woman – we've seen them a thousand times, and we'd be happy to never see them again.

But here's the thing: these characters were cool, once. We believed in Ben Kenobi as the wise old master; we loved James Callis as Bridget Jones's fantastically gay pal. The archetypes become stereotypes only when screenwriters get lazy, cut corners, and forget to approach them with the humanity, depth, ...