Beau—ootiful Soo—oop! Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!*

I enjoy writing character sketches.  When I'm struggling with what I'm trying to say and how I'm going to say it, writing character sketches often clarifies things greatly.

So what do I write?

I write about a characters childhood, education, family relationships, spirituality, love life, friends, living conditions, dreams, emotions, personality type,  quirks.  Sometimes I make lists of their favorite things, or what makes them different, or what they do in their free time.  Sometimes I make family trees.  Sometimes I write catch phrases or speech irregularities.

I generally write two or three pages for all the main characters and one or two pages for supporting characters.

I always discover something I didn't know about what I'm writing that was not what I was expecting.

When I write each new one, something is always added or changed in the previous ones I wrote.  I make sure to get the corrections or addition made in the old sketches.  This is important for me because when I get stuck during the writing (and I almost always get stuck at least once) reviewing the character sketches often reveals why I'm stuck or something that I need to add or some mistaken direction I've taken.

Not that I make these sketches some hard and fast rule that must be followed no matter what.  I've completed scripts and then looked at the character sketches and realized that I went a whole different direction and as long as it works, that' okay.

Now I need to write a plot outline.  Well, two or three maybe each delving more and more into the details, but more on that in another post.

"When you’ve cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way—”

“That generally takes some time,” interrupted the Gryphon.

“—you advance twice—”


*Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland