Character Bios

So I've just fallen in love with Community. I mean I'm proper head over heels, walking along the beach at sun-set, already imaging our future together in love with Community. The meta-humour relating to TV tropes and movie cliches is right up my sub-plot, as are the relentless pop-culture references, and, it's just a great sit-com, with a bunch of characters you can't wait to hang out with.

The Wikipedia page on the cast and characters is a perfect example of how to write short character bios. Obviously the more you know about your characters the better, but the few lines featured on Community's Wikipedia page sums up each character's major personality traits, their flaws and their subsequent room for growth.

Annie's bio jumped out at me, it reads -

"the youngest member of the group, a compulsive over-achiever, relentlessly organised and comparatively innocent. Annie was extremely unpopular in high school and formerly addicted to Addarall, which has caused her to be very insecure and desperate to prove herself in a variety of extra-curricular groups despite already being considered naturally intelligent and attractive by others. She is normally kind and docile, but can quickly turn obsessed or throw a tantrum when she fails to achieve or is denied something she strongly cares about, even if it's about something as simple as a pen."

This last line reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules to writing, the third states - "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Characters with wants, aims and desires are essential because this is the centre of conflict - your character wants something, but something or someone gets in their way of obtaining it - voila! - conflict. Your characters' specific traits will set up the point of conflict for single scenes, whole episodes and a full season's narrative arch. For example Jeff wanting a date with Britta; this isn't only the over-arching point of conflict for series 1 but also the set-up for the show itself - Jeff creates the study group where our loveable bunch of misfits come together and become close friends, so he can be closer to Britta.

Using Wikipedia's Cast and Characters section is a great basis for writing your own character bios, try reading the entries for your favourite shows, see how they sum up David Brent, Tim Bisley and Phil Dunphey's strengths and weaknesses, then get off the bloody Internet and start writing!

The Lost Room & MacGuffins

In a lecture he gave at Columbia university way back when in 1939, Alfred Hitchcock defined MacGuffins as, "the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is almost always the papers." It's the thing that the main characters want, Marcellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction, unobtanium in Avatar, and the meaning of rosebud in Citizen Kane. In the first act at least, it's what drives the characters and story forward.

The Lost Room is a 2006 sci-fi series about the eponymous motel room and a bunch of everyday objects that possess unusual powers. The protagonist, detective Joe Miller, has to hunt down these objects to rescue his nitwit daughter who got lost in the lost room. It opens with some shady deal to get the Key - the Key can open any hinged door and turn it into a portal to the Lost Room - the deal goes south and the Key ends up in the hands of Joe Miller. Each episode revolves around a different object, a different MacGuffin, and the more MacGuffins we meet the more we learn about the mythology of the Lost Room, it's objects and the numerous cabals searching for the powerful objects.

It's a great hidden gem of a show, and demonstrates not only how to use MacGuffins in storytelling, but also how ultimately meaningless most MacGuffins are - they'll propel the characters and story along for the first act or two but after that, the climax and resolution really revolves around the protagonist coming to terms with their personal flaw or solving some internal conflict, which will probably have been externalized with the MacGuffin or via the characters' relationship to it. In the case of the Lost Room it was Joe's stupid daughter and his anxiety about being an inadequate father - an anxiety which was fully substantiated when he lost her in a portal to another universe. Simply, find his daughter and he's a good father.

An interesting example of MacGuffins in modern cinema are the Infinity Stones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the Avengers, and Captain America: The First Avenger, it was the Tesseract, in Guardians of the Galaxy it looks to be the mysterious orb Chris Pratt's Star Lord is trying to steal in the trailer, and in Thor: The Dark World it was the Aether. These are the Infinity Stones and it's these MacGuffins (and the heroes) that tie the plots together of each individual movie, as well as the different phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because, as will transpire in Avengers 3, the uber-villain Thanos is trying to get his big purple mitts on all six of the Infinity Stones - whoever holds all six stones in the Infinity Gauntlet gains omnipotence, omniscience and God-like power - so this Infinity Gauntlet will be the ultimate MacGuffin of not only Avengers 3 but the whole MCU and stopping Thanos will be our heroes' ultimate goal. Their first aim will be to keep the Infinity MacGuffins away from Thanos, except they'll fail, all will be seemingly lost, and there'll be an epic showdown, from which our heroes will no doubt emerge victorious. But not all of them, I bet.

Bryan Cranston & Aaron Paul read Breaking Bad finale Felina

Lena Dunham on writing Girls

"Write stories that feel like yours and feel close to you rather than trying to fill a hole in the industry."

Lena Dunham

Girls is a pretty fantastic show, the first season never had a dull moment and from the opening scene where Hannah's parents tell her they're going to cut her off, you knew this was a generational sitcom that was going to talk to a lot of twenty-somethings. Although season 2 felt like it wobbled a little with a few missteps I'm excited that it's back. Here writer, director and star, Lena Dunham talks about the creation of the show, about being open with her drafts, getting feedback from Executive Producers Jennifer Konner and Judd Apatow, and soundtracking her writing process.

Empire Podcast - Three Flavours Cornetto Triology special

The Empire podcasts are a wealth of information on film and television development, as well as being delightfully entertaining thanks to the characters in the Empire team. Their knowledge, humour and ability to put almost every actor, director, and writer at ease, always gets the best out of them.

This one here's a Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy special with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. Their work is testament to how important finding a writing partner can be to your work. Something magic happens whenever these guys get together, and the two share stories about how they met, how Spaced was developed and produced, and plenty of amusing on-set anecdotes from three of the best British comedies of the last decade. Interesting to hear how, before writing Shaun of the Dead, they read Syd Field's book 'Screenplay' and then would watch their favourite movies and match the story events to Syd Field's paradigm, and were surprised how many fit into the structure.

Breaking Bad scripts

Discovered this fantastic Tumblr called Cinephelia and Beyond - an amazing resource for any film fan, especially those into development, directing, screenwriting, and the like. They were awesome enough to find and post a few PDFs of Breaking Bad scripts.

Obviously, this made me wet with happiness. I've looked into purchasing some episode scripts but they're as yet unavailable, or at least they were the last time I checked Amazon. Worry not, though, because follow this link and you can read the scripts for the pilot and a few from season 3, including 'No Mas' - one of the tensest episodes in the series, which is saying a lot, coz every episode of Breaking Bad is a nail biting lesson in suspenseful storytelling.

They're not only great, action packed scripts, but they're also beautifully written. Note in the pilot episode how Vince uses the word 'galumphing' to describe the way the RV moves. When was the last time you used the word 'galumphing'? Yeah me neither, until I had read the script, now I try to use it at least once a day.

Say Your Prayers

Seinfeld Writing Seinfeld

"We're kinda in the middle of something here!"