New screenwriting class: “Character Introductions”

When the sage wordsmith Mick Jagger once penned, “Please allow me to introduce myself,” he was definitely onto something. And we think we are, too, with the newest Screenwriting Master Class offering Craft: Character Introductions, a 1-week online writing course which provides perhaps the first and last words on this critical subject.

Why critical? The average screenplay features between 15–25 characters. Because you have been working with those characters for months, you may know how they sound and what they look like. But what about a script reader? Think about how hard it is for them to sort out, distinguish between and remember every new character in a script, especially if they’re covering more than one project at a time.

That means every single time you introduce a character, you are confronted by a challenge:

How can I usher this character into the story

in an entertaining, informative and memorable way?

Fortunately there are some key tricks of the screenwriting trade we have picked up in our five decades of writing screenplays to help you do just that. More after the jump!

Some of the key tips the course offers:

• Learn what a character’s core essence is and why it’s so important in drafting a strong introduction.
• Dig into the concept of editorializing, a powerful tool in boosting the effectiveness of your character introductions.
• Understand the importance of physicality as personality and why you should never just describe a character’s exterior features.
• Find out how you can use dialogue, action and objects to introduce characters and convey key aspects of their personalities.
• Discover how Narrative Voice provides a coherent point-of-view from which you can craft multiple character introductions.
• See how to handle the introduction of primary characters, secondary characters, even tertiary characters.

Effective character introductions not only make for a better script, they contribute to the perception of agents, managers, producers and studio executives that you have a professional understanding of the screenwriting craft because you care about every detail of your screenplay

Craft: Character Introductions runs from Monday, December 5 through Sunday December 11. The 1-week course includes:

• 7 written lectures featuring numerous examples of character introductions in well-known movie screenplays, lectures you can download, save and refer to again and again.
• Daily online forum discussions where you can participate in question-and-answer sessions about that day’s lecture content.
• A teleconference with all the class participants and the instructor where we dig into the course subject matter and screenwriting in general.
• Optional writing exercises to use a variety of ways to introduce characters from your own stories.

Every character you introduce deserves careful thought and attention. Armed with key tips this course provides, you will be empowered to craft compelling, entertaining and memorable character introductions.

For more information and to enroll in Craft: Character Introductions, go here.