What NOT to Include | Screenplay Character Descriptions

What NOT to Include | Screenplay Character Descriptions
What should be included in character descriptions in screenplays? Should you include ethnicity/race? Gender/sex? Age? On today's show, I take the studio notes I got on my screenplay and explain what I'm doing to update my screenplay!
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TRANSCRIPT:
Do NOT Include THIS in Character Descriptions! - Screenplay Techniques
When should you include ethnicity or race, sex and/or gender, and age in your character descriptions in a screenplay? We received notes from a production studio and a screenwriter on our feature script for The Harlequin.
In this video, I’ll play the feedback we received, give my take on it, and then talk a bit more about how you can use this feedback to help you shape your own screenplays.
This is How Stories Work with Jay Sherer… let’s talk about character descriptions in screenplays.
Our screenplay is about 8 characters-all of whom are comic book character archetypes-who show up at a motel because someone has uncovered their deepest, darkest secrets and wants to manipulate them with those secrets.
Because we’re playing with superhero and comic book characters archetypes-just like The Boys and Heroes and many other films and TV shows do-we have to make sure that our characters are still unique.
I have several thoughts about including ethnicity and race in a character description in a script:
On one hand, if ethnicity or race doesn’t impact the story at all, then why include it? There’s a good argument to be made that if ethnicity or race doesn’t matter, then those characters don’t need to be labeled.
On the other hand, if the character’s ethnicity or race is imperative to a deeper understanding of the character, then it definitely SHOULD be included.
Real quick, before we get to sex and gender… If you’re liking this video, please hit that LIKE button for me so more people will get a chance to see it!
Here’s some feedback from Justin regarding a character named “The Mask” and that character’s sex and/or gender…
As with race and ethnicity, Nathan-my co-writer-and I didn’t want to repeat an existing trope. We wanted to bring something new to the table.
In our script, The Mask is a mysterious character who adds many horror or thriller elements to the tension and conflict.
As such, the character feels like some sort of a hybrid between Freddy Kreuger, Jason Vorhees, and Harley Quinn.
What’s the problem then? There are two problems:
One, it needs to be clearer in the character’s description that the character is indeed female. That wasn’t spelled out clearly enough.
Two, we should attempt to play with that a bit more to make it more consequential to the story.
My takeaway is this: Making The Mask female means that her character is far more interesting and unexpected. And we should play with that more in the story.
Plus, we need to update her character description so that it’s more visually obvious that she’s a woman so that everything she does in the script is received in the way we’re intending.
In our first draft of the script, all our characters were younger.
But before we put out a second draft, I told Nathan I wanted to age up all our characters.
One, we see far more stories about younger comic book characters and superheroes…
And two, I’ve always loved Tarantino’s filmmaking approach where he takes an actor who hasn’t been working for a while and brings them back in a super cool role. I wanted to do that for actors and actresses in these roles.
Here are some important takeaways:
One: Getting feedback from people who understand storytelling and want your story to be the best story possible is AMAZING. Definitely seek it out.
Two: When it comes to character descriptions:
Make sure they don’t confuse readers.
Make sure everything you include in them is important to the story.
Three: Be creative. Billions of stories have been told-maybe trillions-try to do something different that still resonates. But don’t force something just to be different, try and make it relevant to the story itself.

[@ForMe-yp9lf]

Unique one. Thank you

[@NovRen19]

Well done Jay....excellent points of common sense and logic.

[@HowStoriesWork]

These days, common sense and logic are all too absent from conversations! 🤣🤣🤣