Character Traits vs Character Development: Is Your Character an Adjective or a Verb?

Character Traits vs Character Development

Today we are going to be talking about character traits, character development and how to write great characters in your screenplay. 

Basically, all of character development comes down to one really simple concept:

A lot of people think that characters are adjectives. They think that a character is “funny,” “responsible,” “smart,” “kind” or “hard-working.” But characters are actually verbs.

When developing characters, writers often think that characters are their traits. But what makes a character feel like a character is  actually the verbs that they do. 

If you want to understand if you are building great characters, or if you are simply building what I call characteristics, all you have to do is ask yourself: is my character an adjective or is my character a verb? 

If your character is an adjective, there's a really good chance that you are not writing a character, but a stereotype.

In other words, that you're writing “a funny best friend,” as opposed to this funny best friend, that you are writing “a brilliant scientist” rather than this brilliant scientist. 

It's not our traits that make us who we are. It's our actions. 

If you think about your best friend, I'm sure they have a lot of the same traits as any other best friend.

They may be caring. They may be reliable, smart, dependable, fun to hang out with. They have a bunch of character traits of adjectives that describe them, and all these adjectives are true. 

But at the same time, you probably wouldn't trade your best friend for my best friend.

Even if they have the same trades. Even if my best friend is also reliable, dependable, smart, fun to hang out with… you still wouldn’t want to trade. And the reason you wouldn't trade is that your best friend does stuff, has done stuff and continues to do stuff. They continue to take actions with you, towards you and around you that makes you fall in love with them. That makes you remember them. That makes you say, “that is so them.” 

It's not the adjectives that lead to character development, it's the verbs. It's the things your characters are doing. 

In my Write Your Screenplay class, I call this concept the how of the character: how is this character slightly different than any other character? 

But the how is never independent of the action. The how is how the character does the verbs that make them, them. 

When you're developing characters in a screenplay, there are usually four elements in play.

The first element: does the character want anything? 

How tangible is the want? The less tangible the want is, the harder your character development is going to be. Because the less tangible the want is, the less specific the actions that the character is going to take to get the want. 

If the character wants a Starbucks, for example, it's a relatively tangible want. But if the character wants a venti latte with oat milk, that's a more specific want. And just in the want, we're already starting to understand that character. Because the venti latte with oat milk character is completely different than the whole milk with whipped cream character, who is completely different than the frappuccino character.

If the character is not pursuing anything, or if the thing they're pursuing is too general, it becomes harder and harder to write them. Whereas the more specific they are,