The 2 Things You Need To Be Using Instead of Long Character Backstories
Aaron Sorkin is a genius. I’m not the first one to figure that out, which is why he has an excellent Broadway play turned award-winning film, awards for The West Wing, and his own Masterclass.
Recently, I forced my two younger brothers to watch an episode of his Masterclass with me on character building where I knew he would be talking about A Few Good Men, one of our favorite movies of all time.
“The properties of people and the properties of character have almost nothing to do with each other. They really don’t. I know it seems like they do because we look alike, but people don’t speak in dialogue. Their lives don’t unfold in a series of scenes that form a narrative arc.” — A.S.
In this particular class episode, he harped on how most people write stories. They sit down, and they start telling this character’s life story since they were born.
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