Plausible characters

Yves Lavandier has in his book Writing Drama an interesting chapter about creating characters.

It is obvious that he does not care much for most characters in movies or even Shakespeare’s plays, giving one example after another of what he regards as bad.

He considers character’s change close to needless since it does not happen in real life. He also disagrees with characters appearing as talking candelabras or cars (tell that to Disney and Pixar – they make millions on this concept).

But despite this rather pompous and bitter attitude towards movie characters part of a many-zeros-in-a-row-dollar industry he has some – in my opinion – important reflections.

One of these is that a character must base his/hers action from the way he/she is characterized, not in a way to suit structure.

He gives an excellent example of this with the scene from When Harry Met Sally where Sally fakes an orgasm at diner.

Yves Lavandier writes:
“It is undoubtedly an excellent scene, but is does not chime with the way Sally has been characterised up to now as a discreet, sensitive and if anything rather buttoned-up young woman.”

And I think he is right.

The scene is great. But Sally isn’t likely to behave like that.

In that case we need a setup telling us that she feels too discreet, too buttoned-up, need to be more visible, brave or something else justifying her action.

A scene in a movie is part of a larger concept and no matter how brilliant a scene is, it ruins the movie if a character suddenly behaves in the opposite way from before, just to fit the needs of the story and structure.

Filmography links and data courtesy of
The Internet Movie Database.