Introducing Characters

As I sit here re-reading some of the screenplays I’ve written, I’m struck by how often I singularly fail to introduce the characters for the audience. Especially the protagonists (pretty important, Shirley?). In reading scripts from my peers on recent courses, I’m not alone in missing this.

Obviously, this is down to forgetting to read the script as though I was the final audience. Not the producer, or director, or whoever, but someone sitting actually watching something I’ve written. As a result, I’ll introduce the character in the scene description, and that’s it. I never refer to them by name in the dialogue. Or even in any other way, such as a name badge, a massive banner celebrating their birthday or a “Wanted” poster.

That’s not really very clever of me, so this is a blog-as-external-brain post. Hopefully it will serve to remind me to not be so forgetful in future.

Also, I must stop calling characters “Tom”.

And in fact, writing this post has made me think that we’re forgetting to introduce the main character in the game I’m working on. I’ll just go and check that…