Your Characters Background: The Antagonist.

You might be wondering if you have been following this blog why I write about one subject and not follow a linear progression. From writing about me writing, to planning act one, to what I will talk about today: writing a character background.

The reason for this is simple. What I write about on the blog is what I am doing at that precise moment in time in the planning process of my script.

I am currently giving my antagonist (the bad guy!oooooo!) a background, still using the fantastic mapping software. The reason I'm doing this is to give my character a reason to do what he has done. To discover his motivation. Motivation is central to any story be it a script or a novel. Say for instance a novel starts with a grocer being murdered in his convenience store (a wee bit of the American lingo coming out me noo!). Here we have an INCITING INCIDENT (remember that one?) 

So who did it? We will say this character (who I'm making up right now,) called Billy. So Billy killed the grocer. Why did Billy do it? he wanted to steal the money from the till. But why? Does he have a drug habit? is he in a lot of debt? We will say debt. How did he get in debt? A loan-shark maybe? Did he lose his job? Maybe both? Why did he go to a lone-shark in the first place? To keep a roof over his head and feed his family? All of a sudden we have motivation with emotion attached. 

In the space of minutes I have created a background story for Billy, a guy who lost got paid off and couldn't find another job. Bills where due and the cupboards where empty. He was put on to a loan-shark who gave him the money but now the first payments due. If he fails to pay he knows the 'sharks heavies will soon sort him out! He needs money fast! He decides to rob Mr. Havant's grocery store. Tuesdays are always busy at Mr Havant's, there should be plenty of cash to cover his first payment in the till, maybe enough left over to buy junior a new pair of shoes. But when he holds up the joint Old Mr Havant does something Billy didn't expect. He fights back and Billy accidentally kills him in the tussle. 

You have the basis of a story by just working backwards from the Inciting Incident. And all by using Kipling's six honest serving-men...

I KEEP six honest serving-men

 (They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When 

 And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

 I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,

 I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,

 For I am busy then,

As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

 For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views; 

I know a person small—

She keeps ten million serving-men,

Who get no rest at all!

She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,

 From the second she opens her eyes—

One million Hows, two million Wheres,

And seven million Whys!

And it is this story maybe a hard nosed detective from the bronx has to uncover and piece together. But that journey will be reserved for Act 2. When i get to it!

 This is the way I'm doing it and it seems to suit my needs. Most books will tell you to do a character bio, going as deep as what school your character went to, what his pet dog was called. As far as I'm concerned, doing it that way is a load of utter bollox and a waste of precious time that could be spent actually planning something you can use and is helpful to get a feel of what the character is going through.

Just to point out, the script I'm planning is not about Billy killing a guy in a grocery store or about a hard nosed detective from the bronx!

This Blog was written while listening to In Rainbow by Radiohead.

The Open University

So, I have applied for a placement on the Open Uni and I hope to get a BA (Hons) English Language and Lit. I won't find out if I'm successful for awhile yet and the course doesn't start until October. I need to get my skills up and I need to start practising my non-existent essay skills. I don't mind telling you, I'm shitting it!

I have been out of school for over 20 years and I haven't studied seriously ever! ha! however it is time to get serious and knuckle down.

Any tips would be appreciated!

Act One and the Door of no Return.

I've been tinkering and building Act One of the screenplay I am currently working on tonight. The Screenplay is called "Shanks". It is a detective story 250 years in the future. I have never written a detective story before and its a bit daunting coming up with clever clues to sprinkle along the way. The software i'm using really is helpful as I can colour co-ordinate each thread of the tale. That means I can keep track and follow each thread to its conclusion.

Just for those who are not familiar with the nuts and bolts of story telling, I'll give you a quick 101 in telling stories...

Most stories are made up of 3 Acts...

The 3 Act Structure.

The first Act is your set up. Main characters are established and the lead up to plot point 1 is laid down. The foundation of the story is set. If your are writing a script for say...Doctor Who, there would be no need to establish the main characters, (as they are already establish during the run of the show. Kinda obvious when you think about it, eh?). It should also contain the "Inciting Incident". I will explain this in a bit more detail later. It should also include Plot Point 1, which is the "Door of No Return" (known from now on as the DONR). This is the incident that forces the Protagonist (your main character) go on the "journey" that is in Act Two, otherwise what is there to stop your character from going "fuck that!" and head off to his bed?

We are going to assume that whatever Plot Point 1 was is enough to stop the character going to his kip and he has went through the DONR and has found himself in Act 2. Act 2 is the meat of your story. This is where the action takes place. Your character has his objective and there are incidents that are trying to stop him reaching that objective. This is your basic plot. You would then reach the mid point of the story and WHAM! a major setback occurs. Character keeps going on until Plot Point 2 which takes him through another DONR and he finds himself in...

Act 3 is where all your story strands come together and the stories climax occurs. The End. credits roll and you can go and make a cuppa tea.

Hold on! Not finished quite yet.

So back to that bloody Plot Point One. Now most of the books I have read on writing and planning get a little bit confused. They say a big event pulls your character into the action.This is not the case. Don't get confused by the two. A building blowing up would not put your character in Act 2 unless he was trapped in the building trying to get out or if your character is a parent, their baby being kidnapped. But that is not a DONR either. They are what is commonly known as Inciting Incidents. Lets go with the baby story. Baby is kidnapped. Pretty major thing to happen. The police tell the parents to stay home, let the professionals deal with this. Weeks go by and the police have no leads. The parents decide to take matters into their own hands as the police have failed them. That is the Plot Point One. That is the DONR. The love for the child drags them kicking and screming into Act 2, the search for the baby.

Lets look at this in a real tv show. As I referenced Doctor Who earlier I will use that.  If you wish to follow what I'm blethering about, search for "The Unquiet Dead," written by the wonderful Mark Gattiss, on www.stagevu.com.

The Unquiet Dead

The Ep. opens in a funeral palor in the 1800's. a man is weeping over his grandmother who is dead in the coffin. The Inciting incident is coming up...wait for it...the corpse comes alive and strangles the grand son and goes running into the night screaming.

Pretty big event. But not the the DONR. Why not? Because the main Characters, The Doctor and Rose, are not involved in this incident at all. They are still travelling in time and space in the TARDIS. However this incident will lead to the DONR.

 In what way?

Well the dead woman goes to see her favourite author Charles Dickens read "A Christmas Carol" in the local theatre. That is what was planned before she died. The Doctor and Rose arrive in Cardiff only to be met with screaming theatre goers, rushing out as the dead woman's "ghost" leaves her body and flies around the hall. The Doctor cant resist a mystery and rushes in to discover that the "ghosts" are aliens made of gas. The aliens get away through the gas pipes leaving The Doctor to search for them and find out why they are on earth. He is hooked into Act 2, the hunt for the aliens.

If you look at any tv show this is pretty standard procedure. Watch a show or a film, see if you can find the Inciting Incident and the DONR. It should be there with in the first 15-20 minutes.

Time for a cuppa! happy hunting!

Nothing much to report tonight.

I spent most of the evening trying to find mapping software to build up a story. I could have used paper but I don't find it practical as the paper gets out of sequence and my living room has scraps of paper all over the place. pain in the arse trying to hunt plot ideas down..

I found this Mind Mapping software that seems to fit the bill. I started "Mapping" out Act One of a script of what i hope one day will be a 6 part TV show. (Why dream small? Dream big!) I actually have Act 2 done as well (on paper) but will flesh it out with the mind mapping software.

For those of you who do not know what mind mapping is this is a mind map:

Mind Map

here is a wiki take on a mind map : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map.

I find it quite useful in generating ideas but within the program i can lay out my acts and plan out what happens step by step in an interesting way. 

here is a link to the program. it's free and it's small. might come in handy if your looking to generate ideas. http://www.edrawsoft.com/freemind.php

Also tonight I was asked to phone a friend who had a writing challenge for me. Turns out it was a very interesting challenge. I don't want to say too much just now as it might come to nothing. We shall See.

Playing On the Spotify tonight: Murray Gold – Doctor Who: Series 5 soundtrack. most enjoyable, relaxing and beautiful.

Now time for a cup of tea and bed!

The End of Day One.

I must admit, not a bad wee day in cyber world. Started a blog and actally wrote on it for once, gained 16 followers on twitter today alone, had a re-tweet by Seven of Nine, and was called a twat by an angry, patriotic Geordie. Doesn't get much better than this!

Tomorrow I will be working on the plot for of my detective story. Act 3 is sitting blank at the moment but i have ideas!

Also, I might blog about the method I'm using to develop my plots. Or break down a script to study it. Who knows?

But before I go to bed, switch the light out and listen to the Radio Free Skaro podcast (Whovians, check this out, It is sensational!) i will leave you with this thought...

Why are all the BBC weather girls pregnant?

Origin Of The Passion (with a bonus character dissection thrown in for good measure!)

Dan Dare from the 80' Eagle

So where did I get this passion for writing?

When I was eleven in 1984, I read a comic called Eagle. Dan Dare-Pilot of The Future was the lead story and his exploits fired my imagination every week as he battled his old enemy The Mekon and his emotionless Treens.  I would sit every Friday night at tea time waiting on the paperboy to arrive, wondering how Dan and his companions would get out of last week’s cliff hanger!

The Mekon

The Character of Dare was, from my point of view, multi-layered but not too complex. They gave him a history in this universe I found him in. In my imagination he was real like you and me. (You are real, aren't you?) He had parents; ("Looks like this is the end of Mr And Mrs Dare's little boy!"). He had friends and friendships that had lasted since he had been a cadet in the Space Fleet academy. Fellow cadets were jealous of him because he was the great, great , grandson of the legendary Space Fleet hero/icon Dan Dare (whose exploits where followed by children in the 50's and 60's version of the Eagle). They believed that being related to a famous Space Fleet hero the powers that be must be inclined to give you a free pass. They projected their failings onto him while at the same time his superiors where harder on him because they thought he would expect an easy ride in the academy being related to said hero. This gave the character a nice dimension.  I’m sure there are a few lessons in there about character development for any new writer come to think about it.

 I wanted to create adventure stories just like Dan Dare. I started my own little comic (with Dan in it of course!) Not one original character in it mind you, but I was eleven, I didn’t care! I created about 50 of these little comics. I look on these times with fondness even though there was a darkness behind them too. I was mocked by my family. Told they were “shit” by adults who really should have known better to talk to a child creating something like that.  So I stopped. In the head of this eleven year old, I believed I wasn’t good enough.

Years went by and I grew into a man. Met a woman on the net, moved to the States, got married, separated, and moved back to Scotland. You know, the usual stuff. In the middle of all this I started writing again. I started and stopped at first. I just couldn't get going. doubts kept creeping in. "I really am shit at this" i said to myself, sounding just like my dad. I just didn’t know HOW to write properly.  My wife, who I have to say, even with all her faults, encouraged me to keep writing. I can't overstate this enough. She said I should go to a writers group and I met a fantastic bunch of people who encouraged each other. They offered me advice and didn’t tell me it was “shit” (not to my face anyway. Ha!) They gave me the confidence i always needed to hear and I wanted to please them with my writing. I still keep in touch with some of them and consider them friends for life. I hope they will follow this blog. So, Dedicated Reader, I found my passion again and want to please as many people as I can with my words. so onwards and upwards! ad astra! To the Stars!

As a foot note, thee Mighty Celtic Won 0-2. Ya Dancer!

Introductions.

This blog is a journal for me. It is a way of me to keep writing while I am at planning stages of scripts. If you, Devoted Reader, enjoy it, then all the better.

If you are reading this then I'm going to assume you know me in some capacity. The one thing you might not know about me is that I enjoy TRYING to write stories. "What? Are you some kind of poof or weirdo?" I hear you cry? No, to one, yes, to the other. I will let you decide which is which. (If, for some strange reason, you do not know me, enjoy my ramblings and want to know something about me then just ask. I don’t bite, unless you want me too.)

I say trying as I have never actually finished a story. Ever.  I have numerous stories, short and long, that I have started to write but because of lack of planning or i'm too busy reading books on how to write, I lose the passion and stop. The same goes for scripts, which I feel is what I want to write for the time being. Hopefully this blog will keep me interested in the process long enough while I plan stories before writing them. So that’s the story so far. Time for a cuppa, and watch the Mighty Celtic play the not so mighty Rangers of Berwick.

And if there are ANY grammar errors in the blog, please don't hesitate to let me know.