“How observant are you?”

Here’s a nexus of two people who have been doing the screenwriting blog thing for a long time: Mystery Man on Film Tweets a post from Julie Gray at The Rouge Wave: “How observant are you?”:

Writing good characters is something that does not come naturally to all writers. And yet, it is a very coveted skill in the world of screenwriting. How well do you write characters? Can you tell? What kind of feedback do you get — not on your pages — but in life? Do you listen to people well? Do you really hear what they are saying to you subtextually? Think of the last movie you saw at the theater — who sat on your right? How did they sit? How did they laugh — if they laughed at all. Did they hog the armrest? Did they eat their candy loudly? Did they cry there, in the dark — or would you have noticed?

The ability to write good characters is rooted, fundamentally, in a writer’s ability to observe and to mimic other people. In my work, I often see two-dimensional characters; characters who feel like marionettes not people. They mouth words but they don’t really mean them. They walk and talk, saying and doing what the writer says they should be doing — they don’t seem to have minds of their own. Sometimes, in an effort to make a character more real, a writer will assign that character tics or quirks. But even those seem inorganic and well — assigned.

This is such a great point. Writers by nature are curious. And that curiosity exhibits itself in many ways, one of the best in our desire to observe people around us.

And as a simple exercise as you continue to build all of your writing skills, the next time you are in a public place, take a few minutes and observe what people are wearing, how they do or do not gesticulate or make eye contact. How they touch, hug or hold each other. Or not. How do old people walk? Who smiles at you in passing — who averts their eyes? Watch for chewing with the mouth open, shoveling in food or eating tiny bird-bites. Observe how many people walk around with a totally blank face. Or people who have permanent frowns. Observe. It will pay off when you write.

As I said, great advice. But there’s something else that drives this post: Did you know that both Julie and MMOF have made some recent big changes in their online presence? Mystery Man has stopped blogging and started Tweeting, something I noted last month:

One of the longstanding and best screenwriting blogs around “Mystery Man on Film” has moved here. Be sure to check it out — now just called “Mystery Man”. MM is also Tweeting here.

And now Julie has surfed The Rouge Wave all the way over to her new blog Just Effing Entertain Me.

I have reached out to MMOF and Julie to do separate Q&A’s here on GITS, and they’ve both agreed. So look for that in the next few weeks, hopefully to explain what drugs they were using when they decided to make their respective big switches.

And a big honking HT to MMOF for Tweeting Julie’s post — originally from 2007! — and bringing it to my attention.

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