Wolf: “Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character.”
—Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary
Pulp Fiction
Many years ago, while traveling with some friends in Italy, I went to visit the little town of Assisi, the home of St. Francis of Assisi. We took a bus up the long and winding road to the little church and monastery high on the hill where St. Francis lived, worked and studied. I didn't know too much about him; I knew he started the Holy Order of the Franciscans and I knew he wrote sublime poetry, essays, and philosophy. The paintings and images I had seen had always showed him being surrounded by birds and other animals. It was said that he could talk to the animals, and his poetry and writings are filled with the harmony and union of nature and that all life is connected by divine consciousness. All living things are related, he said, the birds, the trees, the rocks, the rivers, the streams and oceans, we are all manifestations of the one consciousness, and as living beings we express the life force that flows through us. Call it God, or Nature, or whatever you want, it doesn't matter. It is what it is.
As we toured the tiny, sparse rooms of the church and monastery and climbed the steep paths that wandered along the wooded hills, walking through shadows and sunlight, I noticed the birds were everywhere, chirping and singing in a cacophony of sound. I stood observing this symphony of sound and movement, thought about walking on the same path as St. Francis, and I became aware that my breathing had become calm and even, my mind still, and I felt like I was in a meditative state. I looked around the beautiful landscape and wondered whether I was experiencing this feeling because of the harmony of the landscape, or whether the land and trees and birds had absorbed St. Francis’ state and I was just immersed in the energy or vibration of the place itself. I wondered whether this divine state, mind calm but senses totally alert, was the same state that St. Francis referred to in his poetry and writings.
I speculated as to whether we, as human beings, have this same potential to transcend our ordinary reality and enter this state of transcendence. It was like I had merged into the environment. I don't know how long I stood on that footpath, absorbed in this energy. It could have been a few minutes or an hour. When I looked around, I saw a large number of birds resting on tree limbs nearby, and I knew deep down inside, they were watching me, like they were tuning into my thought waves. It was an extraordinary experience.
I roused myself and started down the path leading to the monastery. As I made my way down the hill, I found myself wondering what kind of a person St. Francis was. Was he such a radiant and powerful being that he could transcend his identity as a man and merge into this living energy, or vibration, to became one with the spirit of the birds and animals of Assisi? What kind of a person was he that he could rise above his human limitations and become one with this divine energy? In other words, what qualities did St. Francis possess that made him so unique as a person?
And that brought up the question of character. It was a question I've asked myself many times, both as a teacher and a student, when writing and teaching about the qualities of character.
What makes good character?
Is it the character's purpose or motivation? Is it the dialogue that he or she speaks? Is it what the character wants to achieve during the course of the screenplay? Is it his insights or cleverness or credibility or believability? His integrity? Is it the action he goes through to achieve his dramatic purpose? What qualities must a character possess to keep us interested in him or her as he or she moves through the landscape of the screenplay?
Philosophers talk about a man's life as being measured by the sum total of his actions; our lives are “measured” by what we accomplish, or do not accomplish, in our lifetime. “Life consists in action,” Aristotle said, “and its end is a mode of action, not a quality.”
What is character?
Action is character—a person is defined by what he does, not what he says.
In a screenplay, either the character drives the action, or the action drives the character. For example, in The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne sets out on a personal journey to avenge the death of his girlfriend Marie, and to find out who is after him and why. It could be a story of revenge, but instead becomes a story of discovery and redemption. In this case, the character drives the action. He learns that his fingerprints were found in Berlin where two CIA agents were killed, while he was several thousand miles away, in Goa, India. Who is after him? And why? Midway through the film, he discovers that he was responsible for killing a Russian politician and his wife several years earlier. Now he must accept the responsibility for his actions and find the daughter of the two people he killed. It is his actions that determine his character.
In Batman Begins (Chris Nolan and David Goyer), the action drives the character. Bruce Wayne sets out to avenge the murder of his father and mother. But first, he must overcome his fear of bats. If anything, Batman Begins is a story of the caped crusader overcoming his own fears to bring justice and order to Gotham City. These two elements become the narrative thrusts that drive the story forward to its dynamic resolution.
In the classic film The Hustler, written by Sidney Carroll and Robert Rossen, from the book by Walter Tevis, Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) is a smooth-talking, fast-shooting pool player from Oakland. Fast Eddie comes to town to take on the “king of straight pool,” Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). Though Fast Eddie may be a better pool player, his attitude and his action make him, in Bert Gordon's (George C. Scott) terms, “a loser.” During the story, Fast Eddie goes from being a loser to being a winner. That is his action, his character arc.
Good characters are the heart and soul and nervous system of your screenplay. The story is told through your characters and this engages the audience to experience the universal emotions that transcend our ordinary reality. The purpose of creating good characters is to capture our unique sense of humanness, to touch, move, and inspire the audience.
“When you create characters,” the great English playwright and screenwriter, Harold Pinter says, “they observe you, their writer, warily. It may sound absurd but I've suffered two kinds of pain from my characters. I have witnessed their pain when I'm in the act of distorting or falsifying them, and I've suffered pain when I've been unable to get to the quick of them, when they willfully elude me, when they withdraw into the shadows.
“There's no question a conflict takes place between the writer and his characters. On the whole I would say the characters are the winners, and that is as it should be. When a writer sets out a blueprint for his characters and keeps them rigidly to it, where they do not at any time upset his applecart, when he has mastered them he has also killed or rather terminated their births.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in one of his journals that “when you begin with an individual, you create a type.” His first novel, This Side of Paradise, written when he was twenty-two or twenty-three, portrayed a dazzling heroine modeled after his wife Zelda. The book quickly became a best-seller, and it wasn't long before the “type” created by Fitzgerald was celebrated in the movies, in the likes of Clara Bow, who would soon become known as the “It” girl. Women all over the country imitated her, dressed like her, styled their hair like hers, and acted and talked like her. She typified “the flapper,” truly a phenomenon of the twenties.
The flapper is really a type. In the same way, James Dean was a type because he inspired others to look and act like him. The flower child of the sixties was a type, as were The Beatles and Bob Dylan. These performers influenced an entire generation. Long hair became the fashion, antiwar demonstrations became commonplace, and hippies were everywhere. Madonna is a type because she inspires a new way of thinking and dressing. Michael Jordan is a type—not only was he a great and celebrated basketball player, but an athlete who shaved his head and influenced others to do the same for more than a decade.
Creating good characters is essential to the success of your screenplay. That means you want to create “a type.” As mentioned earlier, all drama is conflict; without conflict, you have no action; without action, you have no character; without character, you have no story; and without story, you have no screenplay.
When you set out to create your characters, you must know them inside and out; you need to know their hopes and dreams and fears, their likes and dislikes, their background and mannerisms. In other words, they have to have a personal history.
Creating a character is part of the mystery of the creative process. It is an ongoing, never-ending practice. In order to really solve the problem of character, it's essential to build the foundations and fabric of his or her life, then add ingredients that will heighten and expand his or her individual portrait.
What makes good characters? Is it their purpose? Their motivation? The way they overcome, or fail to overcome, the conflict they must deal with? Is it their dialogue? Ask yourself what qualities your characters exemplify during the course of the screenplay. In order to create a character we must first establish the context of character, the qualities of behavior, that makes him or her unique, someone we can root for and identify with. Once we establish this, we can add his or her characterization, coloring and shading the various traits and mannerisms of his or her character.
Action is character. It's important to note that your character must be an active force in your screenplay, not a passive one. So many times, I read screenplays where the character only reacts to incidents, episodes, or events. He or she doesn't cause anything to happen; things merely happen to the character. If your main character is too passive, then he or she often disappears off the page and a minor character will leap forward to draw attention away from the main character.
I've read and evaluated thousands upon thousands of screenplays during the course of my career. And in all that reading and analyzing, I have come to understand there are four things that go into the making of a good character: one, the character has a strong and defined dramatic need; two, he or she has an individual point of view; three, the character personifies an attitude, and four, the character often goes through some kind of change, or transformation.
These four elements, these four essential qualities, are the anchors for what makes good characters in a screenplay. Every major character has a strong dramatic need. Dramatic need is defined as what your main character wants to win, gain, get, or achieve during the course of your screenplay. The dramatic need is his purpose, his mission, his motivation, the force that drives him through the narrative action of the story line.
In most cases, you can express the dramatic need in a sentence or two. It's usually simple and can be stated in a line of dialogue or through the character's actions. Regardless of how you express it, you, as writer, must know your character's dramatic need. If you don't know it, who does?
In Cinderella Man (Cliff Hollingsworth and Akiva Goldsman), James Braddock's dramatic need is to provide for his family. How he does this is what the movie is about. As he is rocked and socked by the Depression, his dramatic need stabilizes him and becomes the driving force keeping him going so he does not give up. Ironically, the injury he suffers to his left wrist before the Depression becomes the tool he uses to strengthen his left hand. Working as a dock worker, he lifts cargo with his left hand and when he is given a second chance to fight, his dramatic need provides him with the courage and will to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World against Max Baer.
In Thelma & Louise, the characters’ dramatic need is to escape safely to Mexico; that's what drives these two characters through the story line. In Cold Mountain, Inman's dramatic need is to return home to his love Ada, and Ada's dramatic need is to survive and adapt to the conditions around her. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo's dramatic need is to carry the ring to Mount Doom and destroy it in the fires that created it.
There are times when the dramatic need of your character changes during the course of the screenplay. If your character's dramatic need does change, it usually occurs at Plot Point I, the true beginning of your story. In American Beauty (Alan Ball), Lester's (Kevin Spacey) dramatic need is to regain his life. When the story begins he feels like a dead man and it takes meeting Angela (Mena Suvari), the young friend of his daughter, to bring him back to life. The rest of the film deals with Lester learning to live again, in joy, freedom, and full self-expression.
The dramatic need is the engine that powers your character through the story line. What is your character's dramatic need? Can you define it in a few words? State it simply and clearly? Knowing your character's dramatic need is essential. In a conversation with Waldo Salt, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home, he told me when he creates a character, he starts with the character's dramatic need; it becomes the force that drives the story's structure.
The key to a successful screenplay, Salt emphasized, was preparing the material. If you know your character's dramatic need, he said, dialogue becomes “perishable,” because the actor can always improvise lines to make it work. But, he added forcefully, the character's dramatic need is sacrosanct. That cannot be changed because it holds the entire story in place. Putting words down on paper, he said, was the easiest part of the screenwriting process; it was the visual conception of the story that took so long. And he quoted Picasso: “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”
The second thing that makes a good character is point of view. Point of view is defined as “the way a person sees, or views, the world.” Every person has an individual point of view. Point of view is a belief system, and as we know, what we believe to be true, is true for us. There's an ancient Hindu scripture titled the Yoga Vasistha, which states that “the World is as you see it.” That means that what's inside our heads—our thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories— are reflected outside, in our everyday experience. It is our minds, how we see the world, that determines our experience. “You are the baker of the bread you eat,” is the way one Great Being puts it.
Point of view shades and colors the way we see the world. Have you ever heard or reacted to phrases like: “Life is unfair,” “You can't fight City Hall,”“All life is a game of chance,” “You can't teach an old dog new tricks,” “You make your own luck,” or “Success is based on who you know”? These are all points of view. Since a point of view is a belief system, we act and react as if they are true. That's why every person has a definite and distinct point of view, singular and unique. For it is our experience that determines our point of view.
Is your character an environmentalist? A humanist? A racist? Someone who believes in fate, destiny, and astrology? Or does your character believe in voodoo, witchcraft, or that the future can be revealed through a medium or psychic? Does your character believe that the limitations we confront are self-imposed, like Neo in The Matrix? Does your character put his faith in doctors, lawyers, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times? Is your character a believer in popular culture, an advocate of Time, People, Newsweek, CNN, and the network evening news?
Point of view is an individual and independent belief system. “I believe in God” is a point of view. So is “I don't believe in God.” Or, “I don't know whether there is a God or not.” These are three separate and distinct points of view. Each is true within the individual's fabric of experience. What's important to note here is that there is no right or wrong here, no good or bad, no judgment, justification, or evaluation. Point of view is as singular and distinctive as a rose on a rose bush. No two leaves, no two flowers, no two people are ever the same.
Your character's point of view may be that the indiscriminate slaughtering of dolphins and whales is morally wrong because they are two of the most intelligent species on the planet, maybe smarter than man. Your character supports that point of view by participating in demonstrations and wearing T-shirts with Save the whales and dolphins on them. That's an aspect of characterization.
Everyone has an individual point of view. A friend of mine is a vegetarian; that expresses her point of view. Another friend marches against the war in the Middle East, and she spends time and money supporting the cause. That expresses a point of view. Imagine a confrontation between pro-choice and pro-life supporters. Two opposing points of view generate conflict.
In The Shawshank Redemption, there's a short scene between Andy and Red that reveals the differences in their points of view. After almost twenty years in Shawshank Prison, Red is cynical because, in his eyes, hope is simply a four-letter word. His spirit has been so crushed by the prison system that he angrily declares to Andy, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Drives a man insane. It's got no place here. Better get used to the idea.” But Red's emotional journey leads him to the understanding that “hope is a good thing.” The film ends on a note of hope, with Red breaking his parole and riding the bus to meet Andy in Mexico: “I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams…I hope.”
Andy has a different point of view; he believes that “there are things in this world not carved out of gray stone. That there's a small place inside of us they can never lock away. Hope.” That's what keeps Andy going in prison, that's what makes him sacrifice one week of his life in solitary,“the hole,”just so he can listen once again to an aria from a Mozart opera. Hope is a forceful dynamic in Andy Dufresne's character.
The third thing that makes good character is attitude. Attitude is defined as a “manner or opinion,” and reflects a person's personal opinion determined by an intellectual decision. An attitude, differentiated from a point of view, is determined by a personal judgment— this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is bad, this is positive or negative, angry or happy, cynical or naive, superior or inferior, liberal or conservative, optimistic or pessimistic.
Attitude encompasses a person's behavior. Do you know someone who is “always right,” about everything? That's an attitude. Being socially or morally superior is also an attitude; so is being “macho.” A political opinion expresses an attitude, as does complaining about what is wrong with the world. In professional sports, trash-talking has become a way of life. That's an attitude, as are most of the lyrics in rap music.
By the same token, have you wanted to buy something and found yourself dealing with a salesperson who does not want to be there, has negative energy, and thinks he or she is superior to you? That's attitude. Have you ever attended a function and been overdressed or underdressed, literally not wearing the “right” clothes? And some people may invariably give the impression that they are morally superior to you. That sense of righteous behavior mirrors a person's attitude. They are convinced they're right and you're wrong. Judgments, opinions, and evaluations all stem from attitude. It's an intellectual decision they make. “I would never belong to a club that would have someone like me as a member,” is the way Alvy Singer puts it in Woody Allen's Annie Hall.
Understanding your character's attitude allows you to show who she or he is by their actions and dialogue. Is he or she enthusiastic or unhappy about his or her life and job? People express different parts of themselves through their attitude—someone, for example, who feels the world owes them a living, or attributes their lack of success to “who you know.”
Sometimes, you can build a whole scene around a person's attitude. Collateral is a case in point. At Plot Point II, the first time Max really stands up to Vincent, most of the scene is driven by the attitudes of the two characters. Angry and upset, Max asks Vincent why “you didn't kill me and find another cab?” Vincent replies that the two of them are connected. “You know, fates intertwined. Cosmic coincidence. All that crap.” Max says, “You're full of shit.” Vincent, somewhat defensive, wants to justify that “all I'm doing is taking out the garbage. Killing bad people.”
The whole exchange is one of attitude. Both characters are expressing their opinions by defending their actions. Max asks Vincent why he kills people and Vincent tells him that there is “no why…. There is no good reason. No bad reason. To live or to die.” Vincent says he's totally “indifferent” to the lives he takes. “C'mon, man. Get with it. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars and a speck on one. In a blink… that's us. Lost in space. The universe don't care about you. The cop, you, me? Who notices?” Max looks at him, aghast, suddenly understanding that there will be no end to this nightmare until Max stands up for himself and takes the action that may save his life.
The exchange also reveals character, as Vincent probes and bursts Max's dream balloon. Up until now, Vincent says, Max has lived in a dream, in a “someday” state: someday he's going to fulfill his dream of starting his own limousine company, someday he's going to meet the woman of his dreams, someday he'll have it all and be fulfilled as a person. It's a pretty big “someday.” Vincent points out that there is only now, only today, this present moment, this point in time. “Someday” has become only an excuse for not going after what he truly wants.
In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) presents his attitude in the opening lines when he expresses “how I feel about life. A lot of suffering, pain, anxiety and problems—and it's all over much too quickly. That's the key joke of my adult life in terms of my relationships with women.” That's what the movie is about: his relationships with women. The film illustrates his attitude.
Sometimes it's difficult to separate point of view from attitude. Many of my students struggle to define these two qualities, but I tell them it really doesn't matter. When you're creating the basic core of your character, you're taking one large ball of wax, the character, and pulling it apart into four separate pieces. The parts and the whole, right? Who cares whether one part is point of view and another is attitude ? It doesn't make any difference; the parts and the whole are really the same thing. So if you're unsure about whether a particular character trait is a point of view or an attitude, don't worry about it. Just separate the concepts in your own mind.
The fourth quality that makes up good character is change or transformation. Does your character change during the course of your screenplay? If so, what is the change? Can you define it? Articulate it? Can you trace the emotional arc of the character from the beginning to the end? In The Truth About Cats & Dogs (Audrey Wells), both characters undergo a change that brings about a new awareness of who they are. Abby's final acceptance that she is really loved for who she is completes the character arc of the change.
From the beginning of Collateral, Max has been portrayed as being weak, a wimp, a man afraid to stand up to the cab dispatcher, a man who lives his “someday” dream pictured in the postcard. In short, this scene, set amid the fury and confusion of the speeding cab, allows us to watch Max's internal transformation from weakness to strength and ultimately leads to the film's conclusion. Max has completed his character arc.
Having a character change during the course of the screenplay is not a requirement if it doesn't fit your character. But transformation, change, seems to be universal—especially at this time in our culture. I think we're all a little like the Melvin character (Jack Nicholson) in As Good As It Gets (Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks). Melvin may be complex and fastidious as a person, but his dramatic need is expressed at the very end when he says, “When I'm with you I want to be a better person.” I think we all want that. Change, transformation, is a constant in our lives and if you can impel some kind of emotional change within your character, it creates an arc of behavior and adds another dimension to who he or she is. If you're unclear about the character's change, take the time to write an essay in a page or so, charting his or her emotional arc.
In The Hustler, Fast Eddie's dramatic need is to beat Minnesota Fats and win ten thousand dollars in one night. And the entire screenplay is woven around this dramatic action. When Fast Eddie plays Minnesota Fats the first time around, he loses. Pride, overconfidence, and a “losing” attitude—he drinks too much during the game—bring about his defeat. He is forced to accept the fact that he is, indeed, a loser. When he realizes this, he signs with Bert Gordon (George C. Scott) because “twenty-five percent of something is better than a hundred percent of nothing.” His realization and acceptance of who he is enables him to become a winner. Fast Eddie challenges Minnesota Fats and this time defeats him easily. His character arc goes from being a loser to being a winner. That is his change, his transformation.
Seabiscuit (Gary Ross) is another good example of change. Based on a true story, we see who the characters are and what they want to become. Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges) comes to San Francisco, with a few dollars in his pocket, to create his fortune. He is a man who believes in the future. But then his young son is killed in an auto accident, his wife leaves him, and Howard sinks into deep depression. He meets a young woman, marries her, and acquires an interest in horses and horse racing. But deep down, he continues to mourn for the loss of his son.
Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire) is raised in an affluent middle-class home, filled with books and intellectual discussions. But Red has a gift for riding horses. When the Depression strikes, his family is forced out of their house and into the basic struggle for survival. At about the age of fifteen, Red enters some horse races and is successful— so successful, in fact, that his father gives him away to the owner of a racing stable because he cannot provide for his son. Red feels worthless, unwanted, and his sense of self-destructive behavior soon becomes evident as he ekes out a living on the racing circuit.
Tom Smith (Chris Cooper) also has an uncanny gift of communicating with animals. The one thing that drives his life is his pursuit of freedom. In a marvelous little scene at the beginning of the film, Tom Smith is riding his horse on the open plains when he reaches a spot which is blocked by barbed wire. As he examines the fence, we hear Charles Howard talking about the future in voiceover.
Setting up these three characters is an illustration of showing what they have lost in their lives: Howard has lost his son; Pollard, his family; and Tom Smith his freedom. In addition, if you contemplate the life of the horse, Seabiscuit, he's taken away from his mother at six months, trained, punished, and ridiculed by various horse trainers. Soon, he becomes an outlaw, a defiant animal who has “forgotten what's it's like to be a horse,” as Smith observes.
These four characters are joined together in a journey, and through their efforts and teamwork, they form a rallying cry for an entire country. Howard looks upon his team as family; Red looks up to him as a father figure. Tom Smith sleeps outside under the stars. And it's through the heroic antics of Seabiscuit that they are all joined together. As Red Pollard observes in the last scene of the movie: “You know, everybody thinks we found this broken-down horse and fixed him, but we didn't…. He fixed us. Every one of us. And, I guess in a way, we kind of fixed each other, too.”
All four characters—Howard, Pollard, Smith, and Seabiscuit— have gone through a change, a transformation, and in the process, they have engaged our sensibilities in a way that touches, moves, and inspires us.
Ordinary People, written by Alvin Sargent from the novel by Judith Guest, shows Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton) undergoing a major change. In the beginning of the film, he is closed off and emotionally damaged by his brother's death and his parents’ withdrawal. By the end, he's able to open up and express himself, he's able to understand the emotional dynamics of his brother's death and let go of his painful burden of guilt, he is able to reach out and ask for help from both his father and his psychiatrist, and he finds a girl he can confide in and be comfortable with.
His father, played by Donald Sutherland, also undergoes change. He begins as conventional and complacent, but he learns to listen to his son, becomes tolerant and understanding, and soon questions himself, his attitudes, and his marriage. He even seeks help from his son's psychiatrist, played by Judd Hirsch. In short, he learns to question his own values, needs, and wants.
The only major character who does not change is Conrad's mother, played by Mary Tyler Moore. Described in the opening stage directions as being “graceful and controlled,” she is like her refrigerator: “well stocked, and perfectly organized, with nothing out of place.” She is the kind of person who believes that appearance is everything. Her house is immaculate, the closets are clean, and I'll bet anything that if you open any drawer in the entire house everything is laid out meticulously. That's the kind of person she is. She always seems to be firmly in control, unbending in attitudes and beliefs, convinced she is right. By the end of the film, father and son have changed but she has not, and the family splinters. In the last scene, father and son are sitting on the porch after the mother has left. Her leaving brings father and son closer together.
See if you can have your character go through some kind of change, either emotional or physical, as it will broaden and deepen the character in terms of a universal recognition that transcends language, color, culture, or geographic location.
If you know and can define these four elements of character— dramatic need, point of view, change, and attitude—you'll have the tools to create good characters. Sometimes they will overlap, like an attitude emerging as a point of view, or the dramatic need will bring about change, and change will affect your character's attitude. If that happens, don't worry about it. Sometimes it's necessary to take something apart in order to put it back together.
Determine your main character. What is his or her dramatic need ? What does your character want to win, gain, get, or achieve during the course of your screenplay? What is the emotional or physical force that drives your character through the screenplay from beginning to end? Define it, articulate it. Write it down in a sentence or two. Define it clearly and succinctly.
Do the same with your character's point of view. How does your character see the world? Through rose-colored glasses, like a dreamer or idealist, like the opening scene of Wes Anderson's brilliant Rushmore ? Or, through jaded and cynical eyes, like Lester Burnham in American Beauty? Remember, it's a belief system. Know your character's point of view. Write it down. Define it.
Do the same with your character's attitude. What is your character's manner or opinion? Write it down. Define it.
What about change ? Does your character go through any change during the screenplay? What is it? Write it down. Define it.
You should be able to define these four qualities in a few sentences. The thinking time is more relevant here than the writing time. As I've said before, the hardest thing about writing is knowing what to write. Think about the qualities that go into making a good character and see how they apply to your characters.
