The Power Of Compelling Characters
By Fatimah Binta Gimsay
“When I think of my wife, I always think of the back of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brain, trying to get answers. The primal questions of a marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?”
These words belong to Nicholas Dunne and they open the scenes of Gone Girl. When you read and hear these words, you immediately have the same questions as Nick. You are intrigued, curious, confused and a little on the edge at the same time. You know nothing about this couple but you are already interested. Whatever happens after those lines don’t really matter because your attention has been pulled in.
If Nick continues talking for another hour, you’d get anxious because you have to know what it is about this wife of his. Look at it, you already care about a character you know nothing about. You just know her husband wants to unspool her brain and now you want the same thing.
That’s the power of a well written character and guess what? Amy Dunne is one of the best characters I have personally encountered. Let me tell you why…
I have a soft spot for so-called complicated characters. I do not find them complicated and I use that term loosely. Yes, I am that person rooting for the labelled villain. No, I don’t get off being contrarian. It’s not a title that makes me edgy, it’s just a pattern because a lot of villains have been well created and also well acted. They are not preachy, on the nose and placards of self righteous messages. This is massive credit to writers who have been able to take close to rotten characters and place them centre stage for us to root for.
The first character I was supposed to hate to love was Bola Abayomi from Jacob’s Cross. He was the classic black sheep of his family and had the charisma to match. Bola was so good at being horrible that you had no choice but to root for him. You can give credit to the actor (Fabian Lojede) but you also admit how brilliantly awful he was. As a storyteller, you should be deeply passionate about your characters.
There’s no space to be chill or unbothered about what happens to your people. It’s lazy and a sign that you’re stopping yourself from being vulnerable. The amazing showrunner of YOU, Sera Gamble says that you should get drunk with your characters.
That’s the best way to know them. Here’s another great way to know characters — you can already tell if you want to get drunk with them. I cannot drink anything around Amy Dunne. That’s how scary the woman can be and that’s how well the writer made sure I understood the character. Words cannot express how much of an awful person she is and at the same time words cannot express how much I want to see her win. It is important to go all the way with your characters and be able to defend them.
This is because you need to realise that your characters have to be real people. Yes, fiction is amazing and things must be elevated. However, people cannot relate to perfection. Nobody is rooting for the self righteous amazing person who suffered for 10 episodes straight. It’s tiring and the level of empathy needed for that has been exhausted by real life activities. I always say you know you’ve done well with a character when the audience can scold them and empathise with them at the same time.
When your audience gives your characters strong emotions, that’s something. You do not want people indifferent to your characters. Amy Dunne is a successful way to use a character to drive a story because you are just wondering what her next step is. Back to the opening quote, she has been established as unpredictable, mysterious and possibly mysterious.
Nailing your character’s traits down informs how they drive the story and it keeps their actions organic.
“Her hair is dark blonde, maybe honey. It was tied back. She was slim, about 25–26. She had very delicate features. Her eyes are sort of cat-like. Wide, but alert. Her lips are full. She has a long neck, high cheekbones. Skin is smooth and bright. She had a lost look in her eye that was both direct and also chilling. She was totally focussed, yet almost entirely inaccessible.”
Here is a quote of Eve Polastri describing a woman she met for less than two minutes in a hospital bathroom. This woman would turn out to be a highly skilled Russian Assassin named Villanelle in the series known as Killing Eve. This show is the perfect example of what not to do with a character.
In the first season, Villanelle was introduced to us as a psychopathic assassin who happened to be the most adorable person in the room. Here’s the thing, you can get drunk with Season 1 Villanelle because her character journey was so clear and we knew that she only killed on assignments. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was amazing in summarising the character with her dialogue in the season finale of that first season.
Villanelle’s character arc was to go from cold blooded murderer to someone seeking understanding and the compassion she didn’t understand. However, by season three the writers made her a caricature because a lot of writers are not comfortable writing morally ambiguous characters and they believe they have to suddenly be Patrick Batemen or weirdly cartoon-like in behaviour.
So, yes even if you’re a writing psychopathic character, you have to honour them and understand them. The opposites of Killing Eve are a German show called Kleo and a Korean show called It’s Okay not to be Okay. Both female characters were on the spectrum of Antisocial Personality Disorder but the writers honoured their various character journeys. At some point Kleo almost became cartoonish as well but you can forgive them unlike Killing Eve.
(One day, I will stop ranting about Killing Eve.)
The key to honouring your characters is to constantly remember that they’re people with goals, needs and wants. You think of Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Modern Family, The Office, Nightcrawler, The Dark Knight, Goblin and so much more. Think of your favourite shows from comedy to fantasy and horror. The characters that give you comforting or heartbreaking quotes. There’s a reason people mourn and burn down the internet when characters are wrongfully handled.
Your characters are canvases for you to create and not project on. Avoid seeing your characters as extensions of yourselves and you will actually treat them better. Yes, you’re the creator and magician or whatever shiny term you’re holding onto but a well done character should be their own person. All you’re doing is taking them through a journey. So once again, yes you can be a lover of rice and create a character that dies when they eat a grain of rice. You’re a storyteller, you must remember that it’s not about you.
Take your character out for a drink. Sit them down and ask them hard questions. Do not rush the process. Let your characters be vulnerable with you.
As terrible and seemingly perfect Amy Dunne was, she had vulnerable moments. The woman was a sheltered only child who didn’t know the price of milk. That’s a character that real life psychiatrists have diagnosed and people fear. She doesn’t know how much milk is and she was robbed even after staging the perfect crime scene.
Our amazingly trained Russian assassin could charm anyone before slaughtering them but she was an awkward idiot around children (and maternal figures). In fact the first 3 minutes of Killing Eve is one of the best character introductions I’ve seen because this woman spends time mimicking a sincere smile only for her to dunk an ice-cream on a child. That’s all you needed to know to get you curious, intrigued and confused at the same time.
Good characters drive the show, don’t tell, narrative. Once you know your character, you know how they can show emotions instead of constantly being on the nose. If your bubbly character withdraws from hugging a newly introduced character, we immediately know something is up.
See it as pumping your characters with all the qualities needed for the story and exhaust them till they get to the finish line. Take them on a journey because when your film or series starts, we should be meeting the character in one of the most important moments of their lives. If not, we don’t care.
Is your character a narcissistic bored housewife who decides to fake her death because her husband cheated on her? Is your story about a terminally ill chemistry teacher who sells crystal meth for survival? Is this about the corruption arc of a small-time lawyer trying to make it? (Notice how character descriptions make your loglines better).
Your character has to start somewhere and end somewhere different. Yes, your character can be a psycho but psychos have lives too. They don’t spend all day cackling in the mirror and rubbing their palms. Avoid copying and pasting stereotypes that look cool but have no heart. I focus on the dark characters because a lot of writers are excited to write dark and edgy things but forget to include the heart or juiciness. There’s a need to assume that dark characters and so-called dark stories equate great storytelling. We get carried away with embellishing characters with quirky laughs or unrealistic manner of speaking that we forget to ask what their favourite meal is.
What is your character’s favourite meal? That one meal they will crave even when there’s a gun to their head.
Character work is important because it reiterates the point that storytelling is not an easy job and it requires you to care. Storytelling is a full time job. You must care. You must be willing to be vulnerable. Some of your characters should make you cringe and at the same time you understand that’s who they are. You don’t cringe and immediately panic about tweaking them for the audience. Let your audience meet your characters for who they are. Unfortunately, you cannot predict who and what they will love. Some things will land and some things will be ignored. That’s sadly not for you to control.
Characters should be raw and go all the way with who they say they are. If you start off with a sweetheart, their change in behaviour must be relevant to the story. This frustrates the audience because they want to influence how the character behaves, and that shouldn’t worry you because it means they care, and it also means that the character is a person.
“What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?”
These are Nick Dunne’s final lines. It only makes sense for me to end this article on that note.
Fatimah Binta Gimsay is a Director, Producer and Researcher. Her award winning short film “Ijo” has screened in almost 15 film festivals around the world. She has worked on multiple television projects for Africa Magic and written a number of web series on YouTube. She is currently Script Editor on Africa Magic’s next Telenovela “Covenant” which premieres on the 3rd of October, 2022.
You can watch Ijo Here
