Creating Unforgettable Characters Read Online Free PDF

begins with one strong stroke. There's the first vivid image that begins to give you a sense of who your character is.
    You might see the character physically—what does he look like? How does he move? Maybe you want to explore a character who's suddenly caught in a crisis. How will she act or react? You might begin with a gut feeling about what matters to this person.
    There are stages to creating character. Although not necessarily in this order, these stages include:
    1. Getting the first idea from observation or experience
    2. Creating the first broad strokes
    3. Finding the core of the character in order to create character consistency
    4. Finding the paradoxes within the character to create complexity
    5. Adding emotions, attitudes, and values to further round out the character
    6. Adding details to make the character specific and unique
    OBSERVATION
    Much of the material writers use to create characters will come from observing small details.
    Carl Sautter talks about observing an unusual character in a restaurant. This real-life scene helped him illustrate to a class how observation and imagination work together.
    "I was doing a seminar in Washington, D.C., and we were talking about character, and the students were coming up with all the characters you'd expect—the prostitute with the heart of gold, the happy fat person who is really miserable underneath, etc. And then I went to lunch and there was a guy in this coffee shop who had a bowl of soup and a knife. I was watching him, thinking, What the hell is he dunking in there? He had a plate with a roll on it, and a pat of butter—which was obviously very cold and very hard. He ceremoniously unwrapped this butter, took his knife and stuck it in the pat of butter, and then he put it in the soup to melt it, and then he spread it on his roll. Now, logically, this makes sense—a guy is using this hot soup to melt this butter for his bread. And it got me to thinking: What is that man's personality? What does that action tell you? When I returned to the class, I mentioned this to them, and we took that scenario, and asked questions about that guy. The characters they came up with—who this guy could be, and why, and how old—were ten times better than the ideas they came up with before they had started observing. "
    In creating characters for advertising, observation is particularly important. Joe Sedelmaier, one of the best creators of advertising characters, observes details closely in the people he encounters. He generally casts actors based on certain idiosyncrasies he notices in their personalities, usually casting nonprofessionals because he finds them more interesting and more real. First he observes, then he converts what he has discovered from this observation into a character. When he
    cast Clara Peller in the Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" ad, he drew upon details he had noticed about her: "I first met Clara because we needed a manicurist for a commercial we were shooting. We went across the street, and found Clara. She didn't have a speaking role, but when I finished shooting the scene, she turned to me with that deep voice and said, 'Hi, honey, how are you?' And I thought, This is terrific. So I started using her in a number of ads. When I was asked to do the Wendy's ad, I felt that the original idea was all wrong, since it used a young couple with a big bun who said, 'Where's all the beef?' So I thought it would be funnier with two old ladies. Then the idea of Clara came to me as sort of the bull in the china shop. I could hear her say, 'Well, where's all the beef?' We started shooting, but because Clara had emphysema she had trouble with 'Where's all the . . .' By the time she got to 'beef,' it was not there, so I told her to just say 'Where's the beef?'"
    INTEGRATING EXPERIENCE
    Wherever you begin in the creation of your character, ultimately you will have to draw upon your own experience. There is nowhere else to turn to know whether you've got the