• Ability
  
• Action
  
• Addiction
  
• Age
  
• Alternatives
  
• Ambition
  
• Amore
  
• Anticipation
  
• Astrology
  
• Attitude
  
• Authority
  

These abilities will be the tools, or lack of tools (see discussion of weaknesses below), that your characters have at their disposal to overcome obstacles and achieve their ambitions. Clear character strengths and weaknesses help drive the story and help establish dramatic potential.

Giving your characters special powers, perhaps superhuman or magical, can make it even more fun (and can change the style and genre of your story).

Defining your characters by their clothes, the books on their shelves, their body language, their gestures, their facial expressions, makes not only for more economical and dramatic storytelling, it also exploits the magic of cinema. It brings your characters and your stories to life, and it can make them jump off the page and screen.

Often cinema shows a character turning to addiction to escape or survive his problems. Those familiar with alcoholism and drug addiction will tell you that alcohol and drugs ARE the problem. Whatever direction you take, you need to get real about addiction yourself so you know how it drives your character, how it complicates his life, how he overcomes it. Research into an addiction, together with observation of addicts (active and in 'recovery'), helps you create a vivid portrait. You may attend related twelve-step recovery meetings, as long as the sessions are designated as 'open', or simply speak to a program member 'offline'.

Each year contains major importance, and should play out in the story as such. The importance should be attached to the phases of a man's life, of course, though the striations seem fewer and farther apart.

Name Characters Carefully: A dramatic script is essentially an engine for establishing and releasing dramatic potential. As such, every opportunity must be exploited to this end, particularly naming, e.g., the title, characters, places, etc. See Word Use section for more on this. Describe Characters with Purpose Character traits must be consciously and deliberately a part of the dramatic potential that will be released in the story. If they do not serve this purpose, they're just window dressing and ought to be eliminated. An angry character is angry because his inability to control his temper leads to story complications, e.g., Sonny in THE GODFATHER, or because the anger will be transformed into compassion and caring in the course of the story, or because he will encounter a meek person during the story who will teach him serenity, etc. He's not angry simply because he's angry. Match Challenges to Weaknesses: If it is established that a character fears something more than anything on Earth, we know the story will be about his coming face-to-face with this fear and overcoming it during the story. Establishing such weaknesses early makes for strong character development possibilities later in the story.

Take an Aries veteran cop, characterized by extremes in . .

winning at all costs, without regard to fairness aggressive energy mastery quick action acting before thinking childishness selfish

Toss him in with a Libran rookie partner, who is . .

fair to a fault passive suspicious of power slow to act thinking endlessly before acting emotionally mature overly generous

. . and you have a strong set-up for a story, with much ready-made material on how these characters will behave throughout the movie. How will they complement each other? How will they learn from each other? How will they change?

indifference superior/cocky selfishness carefree loving angry negative optimistic

Character attitudes predict how they will apply their abilities to achieving their ambitions. Attitudes make characters fascinating to watch. Attitudes can change in the course of the story, as the character overcomes challenges, encounters other characters, and lives and grows. Attitudes can make for considerable humor, too.

Typically, one's first dramatic story shows the central character--what the writer might optimistically call the 'hero'--going through life passively with bad things just happening to him. He's just an innocent victim with no power over, or responsibility to overpower, events and forces that affect him. This may well reflect how the writer views his own life experience.

We go to movies to see quite the opposite. We go to see the central character--a true hero with major character flaws--take direct action to defeat the weaknesses, problems, and forces that plague him and in the process changing and growing. He must have authority, therefore, authority over his own life. How much of our lives deal with gaining such authority? How does this authority relate to fate, doom, and destiny?

Interesting characters often have authority over people or things. They're powerful political, business, crime, or other such figures--that's what makes us want to watch them. Or their ambitions have been thwarted and the story shows they fighting to attain the authority they covet. Perhaps they're just highly authoritarian, controlling, manipulative with the other characters--to a degree that's perverse. The story shows this being resolved through character change.

An authority on a subject, an expert people turn to in time of need, makes an engaging character. The story can turn completely around the subject the central character masters, e.g., criminal law, mathematics, psychiatry, gun play. An amateur ornithologist might save the day when a bird must be identified or trained. A London cab driver, an authority inside his taxi as well as on streets and locations in London, might take charge of a situation and deliver the goods.

Authority can become obsessive when the domain shrinks. For the office worker it may be his cubicle, for the secretary her desk, for the janitor his cleaning closet, for the carpenter his toolbox, and for the seamstress her sewing machine. A major authority collapsing to a smaller arena, can lead to heightened intensity. The English empire stuffed into an island heightened class hierarchy. The rear admiral retires and now rules over his home as if over a battleship. A retired nurse ministers to her grandchildren as if they were her patients. A once powerful figure ends up in a wheelchair where he develops obsessive control over those who provide him with care.

Authority can be abused, such as with Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)-- leading other characters to eliminate his power. It can be the only thing a character has to offer the world, as with the computer hacker in THE SCORE (2001), leading to humor. It can be absurd, as with an eleven year-old boy portrayed as 'an expert on women', or informal, a young girl being an authority on Ken and Barbie's romance.

The underlying regal tendencies of a character might emerge situationally, as with a woman who acts the queen in a beauty shop only to return to her trailer home once fully done up.

au·thor·i·ty The power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge. One that is invested with this power, especially a government or body of government officials: land titles issued by the civil authority. the power to exercise authoritative or dominating control or influence over; "he has the authority to issue warrants" The power derived from opinion, respect, or esteem; influence of character, office, or station, or mental or moral superiority, and the like; claim to be believed or obeyed; as, an historian of no authority; a magistrate of great authority. Power to influence or persuade resulting from knowledge or experience: political observers who acquire authority with age. an expert whose views are taken as definitive; "he is an authority on corporate law" Confidence derived from experience or practice; firm self-assurance: played the sonata with authority.