Character development

In practice

Character development has two meanings that writers use interchangeably. The first is the prep work: deciding who a character is, what they want, what they fear and how they talk. The second is what happens on screen: how the character is tested and changed by the story. The first makes the second possible.

Most of what a writer develops never appears directly in the script. A screenplay can't stop to explain someone's childhood, so the history shows up as habits, choices and reactions. Knowing a character well lets you write the small, specific moment, like the way they refuse help or the joke they make when they're scared, that tells the audience who they are.

A character is developed through pressure, not description. Robert McKee argues in Story that true character is revealed in the choices a person makes under pressure, and that the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation. A list of traits tells a reader very little; a scene where a character has to choose between two things they want tells them everything.

Character shown through a choice

Nothing in the scene describes Nora, but the audience learns what she values and what it costs her. The choice also sets up later development: her loyalty is admirable here, and the story can test whether it turns into something that holds her back. That's character development working as both preparation and change.

What character development means

In the planning sense, character development is the process of building a person. Writers decide a character's background, goals, fears, relationships, values and flaws, and often the contradiction that makes them interesting, such as a surgeon who can't stand the sight of her own blood. Some writers fill out long questionnaires; others discover characters by drafting scenes and seeing what they do.

In the story sense, character development is the change a character undergoes. That's closely related to a character arc: the path from who the character is at the start to who they are at the end. A character who changes significantly is often called dynamic, and one who stays the same is called static. Both can be well developed.

E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel (1927) introduced another useful pair. Flat characters are built around a single idea or quality and can be summed up in a sentence. Round characters are complex enough to surprise the reader in a convincing way. Most stories need both: round protagonists, and flatter supporting characters who serve a clear function without competing for attention.

Examples of strong character development

Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is the classic example of change. He starts as a miser who sees people as costs, is shown his past, present and future, and ends the story generous and joyful. The transformation works because Dickens shows how Scrooge became who he is, so the change feels like a return to something he lost.

Woody in Toy Story develops through jealousy. He's the leader of the toys and Andy's favorite until Buzz Lightyear arrives. His fear of being replaced drives him to do something cruel, and the story makes him live with the consequences until he learns to share Andy's attention. The flaw, the choice and the change all come from one specific fear.

Phil Connors in Groundhog Day shows development through repetition. Trapped in the same day, he moves from exploiting it to despair to using it to become a better person. Because the circumstances never change, the audience can measure exactly how much Phil has changed, which makes the film a clear lesson in how character development can carry a whole story.

How to develop characters in a screenplay

Start with what the character wants and what they need. The want is the conscious goal that drives the plot; the need is the inner change the story will push them toward, often without their knowing it. The gap between the two gives you conflict inside the character as well as outside, and it points you toward the scenes that will test them.

Write the history, then cut most of it. Draft a backstory, the defining event or wound, and the habits it left behind. Then use only what the audience needs to understand the character's choices. A single detail, such as a character who always sits facing the door, can carry more history than a page of dialogue explaining it.

Test the character in every act. Each act should put the character in a situation where their usual way of coping fails, forcing a new choice. Track those choices across the draft so the change is gradual and earned. If a character behaves differently in act three without a scene that caused it, the development will feel like a convenience rather than growth.

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