Melanie provides some jumpstart to your creative writing efforts with a look at breaking free from what the characters you usually write – namely, middle aged frustrated writers who share your gender. In this article she gives some much needed consideration towards the characteristics of the players in your story.
In summary then, the age in which you establish your worldview will determine how you perceive current events for the rest of your life. When creating characters of any particular age, you would do well to consider the cultural landscape that was prevalent when each character was indoctrinated.
Screenwriter John August elaborates on his own personal saga with Alice in Wonderland and gives an insight towards the struggles even an established screenwriter can have getting their work on screen.
This adaption of Alice was the closest of any of mine to becoming real. I love what I wrote, so it’s disappointing and frustrating that it won’t end up on screen. But that reality is a big part of any working screenwriter’s life. Much more important than this half-written movie was maintaining relationships with studios and filmmakers I hope to keep working with for the next few decades.
Protagonist and Main Character are two separate terms that describe two very different concepts of story. Often they are mistaken for the same thing. The reason to split them apart is because it is more accurate to do so. The explanation is provided in this choice link.
You’ve probably noticed that we’ve used common terms such as Protagonist, Main Character, and Central Character in very specific ways. In actual practice, most authors bandy these terms about more or less interchangeably. There’s nothing wrong with that, but for structural purposes it’s not very precise. That’s why you’ll see Dramatica being something of a stickler in its use of terms and their definitions: it’s the only way to be clear.
Regardless of whether your Main Character changes or not, how does he or she get there? Does your character simply flip a switch at the end of the story? Or does he or she grapple with and grieve over the issue right up to the moment of truth?
Melanie reveals that Change or Steadfast does not have to be an either/or/black/white binary decision. There are an unlimited number of ways an author can shade this concept of Main Character. As long as, in the end, the audience can determine which of the principal characters changes and which remains steadfast, the story will still make sense. How the story gets there is where the art comes in.
