Pre-Production Unit: Research - Writing Research: Fleshing Out The Characters Part 2: Building The Characters

With some techniques at my hand I began to rework the characters in Grit to make each one more individual in their speaking. I did this by listing several character traits:

Sean

- Very intelligent.
- Confident.
- Clear talker: well spoken.


Archie

(Non-Delusional Archie)

- Huge vocabulary.

- Knows what to say and how to say it.

- Borderline manipulative.

(Delusional Archie)

- Paranoid.

- Doesn’t say much.

- Anger issues.

- Drinks to solve problems.

Zoe

- Very expressive.
- Clever sense of humour.
- Favours small talk.
- Pauses a lot in sentences.

Perry

- Cracks jokes whenever he can.

- Fast talker.

- Talks a lot.

- Has no shame: comfortable with who he is.

- Very social.

Trigg

- Rude
- Little remorse to things that don't concern him
- Can be nice and compassionate
- Intimidating despite not being physically empowering
- Not afraid of anything

These additions to the bios will help out significantly with future script drafts as it will be easier to work out how a particular character would respond to a certain piece of dialogue.

For example: In a serious situation; Perry would try and make a joke or attempt to lighten the mood whereas Zoe would say very little but chose the correct words to convey her emotions in the most economical way possible. Sean would try to find a solution to the situation and even take a stab at lifting morale and Archie would diffuse the situation by wording his sentence in a clever way.