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CHAPTER III
CHARACTERIZATION
You have been told what drama is. You understand that to write for the screen you must put your dramatic action into pictures. This brings us to the subject of characterization. To build a drama there must be a group of characters, held together by a series of happenings which lead to a dramatic climax.
Great dramatists and great novelists are remembered by their characterizations. Some of the characters of fiction are as familiar as are the real people of history. And they have exerted great influence on the shaping of our lives. Hamlet, Shylock, King Lear, Lady Macbeth, Portia, Ophelia have all grown to seem real. So have Ibsen's characters. So have Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean and the characters created by Dickens, Thackeray and Hawthorne. So have those of many of our later writers.
But the great original screen characterizations have not yet been conceived. They will be some day. For there is nothing that man can think or feel which will not be interpreted on the screen when the writers, the directors and the actors have become great enough artists.
CHARACTERIZATION AND PLOT
One remembers great characterizations with more clearness than the plot through which the writer has moved them, as one remembers the people whom he has met, but must make an effort to recall the circumstances surrounding such meetings. People are of first importance. It is always the individual in whom we are interested. We read of crime. It shocks us. But we are interested in the criminal. Crowds gather around a jail or courthouse to catch a glimpse of such an offender. The newspapers print columns about him — where he was born, what his home life was, what his people were like, what sort of life he led. All of this information is devoured by thousands, curious to learn everything pertaining to this man and what it was that prompted him to commit this crime. Curiosity is intensified if the man happens to be a minister's son. Why? Give your own analysis of this.
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