ADWIT: The Audio Drama Writers' Independent Toolkit
Want there to be more good audio drama? Lindsay and Sarah do. Each episode, they'll discuss an aspect of audio drama, examples from current audio drama podcasts, and writing exercises so writers can play along. Join Sarah Golding and Lindsay Harris Friel on a voyage of discovery on the seas of audio drama podcasts.
ADWIT: The Audio Drama Writers' Independent Toolkit
Character Breakdowns That Jump Off the Page
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Sarah and Lindsay explore how to craft character breakdowns that genuinely serve audio drama production, focusing on vocal qualities and core characteristics rather than irrelevant physical attributes and other animals.
• Character breakdowns serve many key purposes including concisely guiding actors/casting directors, showing character relationships, and informing technical production choices if deftly employed.
• Effective breakdowns include vocal qualities, status, relationships, and intentions rather than physical appearance
• Consider what "singing voice part" might match your character (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone) or orchestral instrument a character might be to instantly convey vocal quality
• Script clues like sentence length, punctuation, vocabulary choices, and verbal tics help create distinctive character voices
• Characters are distinguished by what they want and how they pursue it— objectives - some are direct "blunt instruments," others subtle and calculating
• Great characters may have internal conflicts between their public and private selves
• A character web showing relationships and conflicts helps visualize how characters interact
• Focus on what drives characters, their objectives, and the barriers they face
Links for ADWIT EP 303
John Yorke Into the woods - a five act journey into story
Hamlet to Hamilton - Emily C A Snyder
TUMBLR page - F**k yeah character development - worksheets a plenty
Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid - oxygen food shelter sleep...
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Sarah and Lindsay
Hello, hello, welcome to ... what are we welcoming them to today Lindsay?.
SARAH:Today we're going to welcome them to ADWIT.
SARAH:(Gasp) To ADWIT Podcast. We're in the right place, and so are you, to learn more about amazing techniques today, on the effective character breakdowns that you, too, can create, and also think about making your dialogue just truly groovy, right, Lindsay?
SARAH:Yes, Absolutely. This is the Audio Drama Writer's Independent Toolkit, and we are here to give you the tools and techniques you need to make amazing s tories
SARAH:SARAH
SARAH:amazing,
SARAH:... Truly amazing Because you're brilliant you are and shove them into people's ears. We want to hear you being amazing.
SARAH:Yes, okay, so okay, lindsay, where do we start Writing effective character breakdowns for production? Yes, why do we need them? What are they for? Yes, why do we?
SARAH:need them. What are they for? Well, they're for several reasons, one of the least of which is you're letting the actor, the performer, know what they're supposed to be doing that day. Right, you are letting other performers know how their character is going to relate to those characters, and you are also letting your collaborators on your tech team know how to do their job. For example, if your character is a ghost and you want to add some reverb on their voice, or if they have magic powers and you want to add a little extra something on their voice to make them more interesting.
SARAH:If they're outside, if they're inside.
SARAH:Yes, there's all sorts of exciting things.
SARAH:Okay, so where do we start with a good, effective character breakdown. Then what would you suggest?
SARAH:vocal qualities and I think they need to be made clear in the audition sides. Yes, they need to be clear in I don't know how much they need to be clear in the script. Sarah, what do you think?
SARAH:I think audition sides is definitely key for voice actors, but also, with my producer hat on, to be able to convey who I want to cast for these shows, like myself, even with regards to vocal qualities and so on, it's really key to be able to understand the elements of who that person is, their status, perhaps who they might be relating to, reacting to, and any key information about potential ages, intentions and social standing, standing, historical standing. I mean, you know, there's a lot of interesting things that you can learn very quickly just by from one word in your character breakdown. That will just help guide a brilliant casting as well.
SARAH:Wow now that you've said that. I would really love to see an example of say one that you've gotten. If you had one in front of you right now, but you don't, I could get one, you could get one. Give me a sec.
SARAH:Okay. So a character I'd like to talk about that I've recently got the role of, and I was really intrigued to audition for it. So part of the Dex legacy kind of universe, if you like. It's a new podcast coming out called Wasteland. At the time of recording this we haven't yet recorded this show, but it's in the next few weeks.
SARAH:So I have General Azright Zarekin, so we already know they're a general, they're military. That's the basics of what I've got so far.
SARAH:Zarekin is a powerful leader in the Zanossi military. She has a strong history, running specialist secret research projects, interacting with politicians at the highest level to secure support and funding. She is cynical, shrewd and doesn't take any crap. In episode one, her primary project, the Mecca program, is about to be shut down. She knows this is a mistake and she's tired by the whole process. As soon as the bomb is dropped and the political situation changes, the strength of her convictions shine through. She is a force to be reckoned with. Captain Sarah Sachs is a favourite of hers because she's damn good at her job. Now there's so much in there that makes me think this is a woman in control. They wanted an RP accent, so I've lent into that and so I've got sharp consonants, I've played into that and so I've got sharp consonants, I've played with that and I can even play in here. If you want the audition, just a section of it, to show what I did with that information, would that be useful? I?
SARAH:think the answer to that is yes oh please shut up.
SARAH:Our relationship will not go well if you ask questions and refuse to listen to the answers. I am not here to be shouted at by you or anybody. I am here to do a damn fine job and if you get in that way, well then you can listen to the cries of the people when everything around them is dust. So, yeah, I thought there was so much in there. That just tells me a lot about this character very quickly. And, uh, the keywords in there I so I circled. So when I get these breakdowns I circle key things so on my document that you can't see it's just underlines and different colors. So circled words include powerful, cynical, shrewd, doesn't take any crap, is underlined and like arrows at it right strength of her convictions is another thing and forced to be reckoned with right. So all of those things point to somebody who is assured and confident and, to be honest, has a lot of history that has got her to where she is and I think a lot of um females in positions of power potentially have been through a lot of crap yes, exactly
SARAH:so. So with that she has a certain energy to her voice as well. Right, and so that has come from all those key words. Cynical truth doesn't take any crap. So yeah, I think your choice of words in that short paragraph is really key to just helping your auditionees and then also casting people to fathom has this person got those things and those qualities to their voice? So you think, like, how do I show that I don't want any crap? My energy is high, I'm speaking succinctly, I'm hitting the consonants harder, I am driving those sentences through with quite a lot of power to the end. There's no fading out.
SARAH:Yes, and I was intrigued just by listening to you read it, because I thought, well, this is going to be a great role for Sarah's energy level. I was thinking to myself this is a good fit for Sarah. Because of Sarah's energy level, I can see how she's going to be a stiletto as opposed to a saw blade. And then you said, and she's tired of the bureaucratic nonsense. And I thought, oh, you just added another layer. I like this. So yeah, this is going to be interesting. I'm really looking forward to this.
SARAH:Yes, that's a good example.
SARAH:Yeah, now another thing I think I would add in terms of what does everybody need to know? A shorthand that I would use and you tell me if this helps or not is what singing part would their voice be?
SARAH:They're not singing necessarily.
SARAH:Yeah. But for example, are they an alto, are they a soprano, are they a baritone? Because there's a big difference between a medieval king who is a tenor and a medieval king who is a baritone. And you're going to get different visceral reactions to say a man who is saying I am the king of all of England, who is sitting here saying I am the king of all of England, as opposed to I am the king of all of England or whatever. So I like to put singing vocal parts in there. It helps me think and also I think the actor knows what kind of pipes you're looking for. So, sarah, when you're looking at a script, what clues in the text tell you how the character speaks?
SARAH:I think length of sentences is interesting with regards to sort of the sharpness of that Colloquialisms. There's warm words and sharp words as we read them right. So if something's more rounded and kind and warm, that's going to come through with the language that's being used, as opposed to if someone's being spiky and cactusy and sharp. Um and so choice of language really works and I think, bearing in mind who your audience is as well. So, like for the narrator, for Silly Old Bear, I speak very differently and warmly for her right.
SARAH:So I go to a different place. Yeah, it's a soft breathy.
SARAH:It's a different space too, the bubbly of Mrs Sheffield, who is very much in control of what she tries to do, even though she's a bit of a fool really, of what she tries to do, even though she's a bit of a fool really. So, yeah, I think there's the use of language which works for your demographic, that the piece is aimed for, and also just the resonance of it, the shape of it, the punctuation in it. I use a lot of breath work in my pieces. It may be too much, who knows, but it's just what I do. So, yeah, I use the punctuation and put in more.
SARAH:So the key things that I'm looking for are the words that I'm going to emphasize in that specific voice set, that I'm going to emphasize in that specific voice set.
SARAH:Yeah.
SARAH:And where I'm going to breathe, of course, because sometimes sentences are very, very long and so you have to put in your own breath point. It's not kind of put in by punctuation.
SARAH:You just reminded me of two things. One of them is, in the Tempest, gonzalo, who is the one who helped Prospero Miranda to escape after Antonio usurped the throne. His opening speech, or the first speech that he has as a character, has all of these vowels in it, much more so than the other characters so far, and it gives you this sense that a director I once knew used this to justify the fact that the role should be played by a woman rather than a man, because of this roundness, this openness, this whole thing. So it's a thought. I'm not saying it's the only way to think about the Tempest, but it's a feminine and masculine-based dialogue.
SARAH:That's really interesting.
SARAH:Well, yeah, Emily would know a lot more about that than I do. Yeah, she'd be. Yeah, tell me, from Hamlet to Hamilton, that's her podcast. Yes, yes, she would be the one to listen to about that.
SARAH:Another thing is Edward Albee is precious about or well, he was, he's no longer with us precious about his punctuation to the point that it was a comma is a beat, an ellipsis or three dots is a thought. An ellipsis or three dots is a thought. Like, if you're saying Martha, it's time for us to go, a period is a full stop, for a reason, you never say Martha, it's time for us to go. If there's a period at the end of the sentence, it's Martha, it's time for us to go, full stop. Yeah, there's nothing there, and that's one of the things.
SARAH:That's about how those two particular writers work. Every writer works a little bit differently, but thank you for telling me what you look for as you're going through a script those are some ways that you can make character clear is these textual clues. There are zillions of character worksheets out there and I really don't want to get into them too much. There is a Tumblr called yeah, character Development that has a whole list of character sheets I am going to link to it in the show notes. The reason I bring it up is because the detail that they ask people for is ridiculous, absolutely.
SARAH:But it's beautiful, there's pictures and there's all sorts of inspiration in there, right?
SARAH:Yeah, but there's also things like what does your character wear when they go to bed? And unless there's a scene that takes place, with them being woken up in the middle of the night and dragged outside, I don't really care.
SARAH:So hot seating, gone crazy. What was the last thing you licked?
SARAH:Yeah, it's for people who want to spend all day building characters and never get any further. Okay, so relevant things is more useful. Well, let's talk about what's relevant. I mean, for example, if you ask the most diehard Wooden Overcoats fan how much they know about Antigone, they probably know a lot, but they probably don't know whether or not she owns a horse. I'm pretty sure she does not own a horse.
SARAH:No, that would be dangerous for the horse and everyone else, I feel.
SARAH:Yeah, sarah. Do you remember what the names of the characters were in? Can you Help Me Find my Mom? No other than mom.
SARAH:Yeah, me neither. I really can't, I can't remember at all. So is that important?
SARAH:Yeah, exactly, I can remember the relationship.
SARAH:Yes, do you know? That's really interesting. I think names become important when there's a bigger cast. Names become important when it's harder to discern who might be speaking next in a space. But that one was a small cast and so there were like four or five characters and they weren't all in all at once until like when they'd been established. So, yes, I think names do become when your first episode comes out, just so you can orient OK, that's Tom and that's Bill and that's Sausage, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but in this one sort of a standalone episode.
SARAH:The other thing, too, was that the characters were all so different from each other. I mean, there were like a couple of men at the beginning who were just like lady, I can't talk to you right now and then there's the mother and the daughter. But other than that, we don't really need to know all of these details, but I do know that the mom is bilingual and can play the piano beautifully. Well. Yeah, and those are the things we also know that her memory loss didn't prevent her from attending her daughter's wedding way in the past, ending her daughter's wedding way in the past. So there are things that we know. It really shows that plot and overall relationships are more important than these tiny details of Labels and names.
SARAH:Yes, exactly. I think what's really relevant is how do their values cohere or clash with other characters?
SARAH:Now, now there's the knob. Yeah right, that's the nitty-gritty. Yeah, where's the conflict.
SARAH:Bring it lindsay, exactly. And what do they want in terms of how the plot is moving forward, how the situation's happening? How are they going to get what they want?
SARAH:gosh, that's all actors need to know what do I want? I'm not going to get it. What are the barriers? Do I achieve it? Hooray.
SARAH:Exactly, instead of a character worksheet.
SARAH:Yes, although I do love a worksheet.
SARAH:I do love a good worksheet. I love a worksheet.
SARAH:I like a little exam. I don't miss exams, but I like filling in boxes in worksheets.
SARAH:You know what? I think those worksheets must be just a dopamine blasto that everybody is like there. I wrote today oh, okay, I'd like to see a character web, A character web of how they all.
SARAH:I'm imagining a massive web now, with Tom Crowley over there and Felix Trench over there.
SARAH:Well, if you had a wooden? I started making a wooden overcoats character web and then I thought, oh Lindsay, that way lies madness.
SARAH:We don't mean a giant spider web. This is where I was going, right, okay?
SARAH:You really want to put Tom Crowley and Felix Trench in a big spider web? No, I'm not going to tell you no, but Okay, never mind.
SARAH:So yeah, if you put your most important characters in the center, say you put Felix and Chapman in the center of your web, and then around that you have all the characters, how they relate to each other, like what was Agatha Doyle, the one who ran the sweet shop and also solved all the mysteries? How she relate to felix and how does she relate to chapman? How does the mayor relate to felix? How do you know? These are all so, all of these little arrows.
SARAH:You can put them in all different colors and you can make your very own psycho mood board so there'd be a labeling system with these arrows, so an arrow and then in a box, and then that arrow would tell you what that arrow means.
SARAH:Yes, yeah, you could put in little colors or flags, like you could put in a little thing that says like oh well, they went to school together. That's how they know each other, or they're they, they work together, their employer and employee. I'm sure that everybody here could come up with great ways to make one of those things and have loads of fun doing it.
SARAH:If you make one, please send it to us and we'll put it on our socials. We would love to see it, please, I mean, and share it. No, we're not going to. So that we can really understand our characters that bit more right and their relationships and their dynamics and their conflicts together, I solemnly swear not to plagiarize your work.
SARAH:I'm going to have crazy dreams tonight. Yes, okay. So, sarah, do you want to talk some more, or do you think you covered everything about what you need in the script?
SARAH:I didn't cover the half of it. Lindsay, oh good, what is an actor? What do I need from that script? Yeah, what should we put in there?
SARAH:I need hints towards my intentions to people or things or places. I need an understanding of the place I'm in doing that thing, the proximity I have to the other people I'm talking to in this thing. So you know, if I'm shouting across a corridor in a mad mad castle in Scotland, right, if I'm doing that, I need to have the knowledge I can step back and away from my microphone and still be heard, Whereas, like you know, if I'm meant to be in a lovely any Scottish library, there's a little old lady talking to a person just there. I need to know that. So proximity, I think I lovely any Scottish lay place. There's a little old lady talking to a person just there. I need to know that. So proximity.
SARAH:I think I need to know my status with regards to the people and things in place I'm reacting to and within there, I do need to have an identifiable objective, I feel, and that would be up to me you don't have to tell me what my objective is, but I need to know what I want to obtain. And just going Stanislavski for a moment, who is a Russian theater director and proactive, brilliant creator of what is now known as the Method. Essentially, the super objective is a thing that drives all the actions of your person from beginning to end, from the moment you enter the piece to the moment you finish, and so the super objective is fueled by many, many, many objectives. So you might have a different objective every time you appear in a scene, but your super objective is the thing that thrusts you from beginning to end of this piece. So I need to be able to identify that and understand that, so that information must be garnable. Is garnable a word in the text.
SARAH:Well, here's an easy, easy, easy example. Let's all take our old friend Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh, winnie the Pooh, he's lovely. What does he want more? What's his super objective?
SARAH:To have happiness with his friends.
SARAH:Honey, comfort, friendship, building up his friends, coziness, happiness, I'd say, is his core. Happiness is at his core, but it's a particular kind of happiness, like curling up with a jar of honey and a good friend, maybe many good friends all together in a nice cozy place out in nature. That's sort of a super objective. And then what would the objectives be? The smaller objectives be to get there. Leslie KENDRICK Like, for example, the time he was out of honey and there was a hive, a beehive and a tree that he was quite sure had honey in it. Yes, so first he had to go and get balloons and then he had to have Christopher Robin walk back and forth with an umbrella saying, oh dear, it looks like rain.
SARAH:He's a problem solver. Yeah, who needs enthusiasm? Mm-hmm, he needs support. Mm-hmm, yes, yep. And then enthusiasm he needs supporting yes. And then the be brave enough to climb the tree. Yes, like to go up, like, via that method, climb the tree. But, yes, be brave enough to try.
SARAH:Yeah, exactly so those are. These are all the little clues that we put together in the in the script. Oh, what was the clues in the text that tell you how the character speaks?
SARAH:well. Well, these are so many like, because we all have vocal tics anyway. Like things we words we use and repeat People use like a lot like this, like that, like the other. I got this verbal tic. You know what I mean. One of my lecturers at university he said that a lot and in a lot of our year we're using that. You know what I mean. And it's like these verbal tics kind of the specific characters that no other character should have, the same ones preferably, unless there is a reason for it.
SARAH:Um, so, giving verbal tics and things that are repetition I think also, just thinking about, um, the playfulness of words, um, it's important to, as I say, vary sentences. So there might be some characters who use very what I guess could be called highbrow language, um, intense words, words that you know you might have to look up in a dictionary, and other characters might use monosyllabic language of a less perhaps educated nature. Yeah, so you've got disparity in use of language as well, but also how people speak in, as much as some people might find it harder to be eloquent, like what I do.
SARAH:There's also another thing that you just reminded me of is the idea that's like what if the language that you're speaking is not your first language, or if you grew up in a household that spoke more than one language? So if you have a situation like people who speak Spanglish or whatever it's like, you have people who, when you're blending a couple of different languages.
SARAH:That's always interesting to me, Truly, I mean yeah, that's a beautiful character place to play, right.
SARAH:I think popular culture of the time and idiom of the place and time you're writing in, the era you're writing in, is obviously key. With Bridgerton style language you have a certain eloquence and a certain way of behaving as a lady or someone from a different class or member of royalty, right. So you need to think about the specifics for the role in society, and culturally as well. I think the whole accents thing is fascinating too, because it's like I've played Scottish and Irish characters and so on, and in my own family tendrils I have Scottish and Irish ancestry, Yorkshire ancestry and so on. So I feel like those have come from somewhere and I don't necessarily need someone to spell out B-A-W-B-A-G-S for me, right, I can say it.
SARAH:Yeah, yeah.
SARAH:If I need to.
SARAH:So I think what is? What is, bardax, that whole debate about writing? I'll tell you later. Oh, okay, that's Matthew. But basically it's like you don't have to necessarily write out specifically like I ain't gonna have a cup of tea, mate. Yeah, for a Cockney accent. Yeah, I think some things are useful. So the word I ain't probably is more useful than saying I haven't. But if, uh, as a voice actor, that I've got this is a cockney character for whatever reason, that's been told to me to either audition or do the part right and it's got, have I, I have, um, I have herpes, give me some cream. Um, I might say like I've got herpes, give me some cream, right. So I'll do that, naturally, just to play with the light reaction. So, yeah, I think you don't always have to like beat yourself up to try and get that specifically right. If you've indicated a specific type of accent or thing, you need intention wise, the voice actor could do the hard work if they're right for the role exactly well, voice actors are super smart.
SARAH:I think so they're really lovely and clever and so smart. Yeah, also, I just wanted to mention with regards to something that came up, so in sci-fi shows, of course, there's, you know, all sorts of otherworldly accents and characters and types. Sure, I've done things before where I've learnt words backwards and read the script backwards and then they've played it forwards.
SARAH:Oh, that's like the David Lynch thing in Twin Peaks.
SARAH:Yeah, it sounds freaky, which is always quite fun, but also like Travis Vengroff's show Vast, I played a specific space captain in that and that particular race of character had a specific N sound that came with all of their dialogue, and so we recorded specific things using this n sound. I can have a look, see if you can find the specific people who are this. And, uh, yeah, he just edited that with the actual dialogue that we did to give it this specific sound, um, so that all of those people were identifiable as that specific kind of folk.
SARAH:So, yeah, there's a lot you can do. Do you remember that Doctor who episode? The one with it was a new who episode with David Tennant, and oh Lord, have mercy on my soul, I won't. It was when we first meet the Master, but he thought he was someone else. Oh, yes, soul, it was when we first meet the master, but he thought he was someone else, and it was Derek Jacoby. That was it, derek Jacoby playing the master, and Jacoby quite sorry, derek Jacoby.
SARAH:And he had this assistant that she had this thing that every time she started a sentence, she would say Chen, and every time she finished a sentence, she would say Chen. And every time she finished a sentence, she would say though, and it was sort of this weird vocal tick that was like it was sort of like to get your attention and to apologize for speaking. It was this really submissive sort of thing. Like Chen, do you want me to get you a cup of coffee, though? Like Chen, do you want me to get you a cup of coffee, though? Right? And it was this weird little tick, and by the end of it he said to her something like those vocal ticks of yours have been driving me crazy for years and it was just an interesting little thing to put in here.
SARAH:So give them something specific that works for those roles that nobody else has.
SARAH:Yeah, exactly, I think that's really fun.
SARAH:And then if you're having a role, you're playing a lot, then it just becomes part of you and you maybe even start to add them in where you think they might work properly. Yeah, work well.
SARAH:Yeah, what do you do when your characters are too similar? Rip up the script. No, yeah, rip up the script, throw it out the window. Have a nice day.
SARAH:Don't write audio drama, just kidding that that is something I'm not great at as a writer, I tend to inject vicarisms to them all and I want them all to be groovy, fun. Um, I can't do that. So, yeah, I think it's about really raking your script for intention and thoughtfulness and thinking what's working.
SARAH:What is it? Yes, I think it's really got to be what is at their core, what they want and how they're going to get it, and I hate it when writers talk about their own work all the time, but that's the example that I have access to. In Yarn Soxa, I was getting very frustrated because all the characters sounded like Americans performing Shakespeare. They sort of let us go then to the blah, blah, blah kind of thing.
SARAH:And I was getting very frustrated.
SARAH:Yeah, because everybody all sounded alike or they sounded like what Americans think ancient people sounded like, and so I had to have Yarnsoxa meet someone from the year 2065 in Scottsdale, arizona, and we cast an African-American woman, and then they sounded too much alike, which was driving me crazy. But at their core, the way that they will go about getting what they want is different. For example, yarn Soxa is a blunt instrument. If she doesn't like something, she will pull out an axe and smash it until it's gone. This woman, nykia, needed to destroy the same corporation that Yarn Soxa didn't like, and her thing was a computer virus. So her voice is going to be a little bit different because she's going to be a little bit like no, keep your voice down, we're going to talk about something and I don't want anybody else to hear us.
SARAH:As opposed to your own Sox who's like I'm going to go in there and I'm going to smash everybody, as opposed to her being come on. We got to tiptoe, and that gives you some difference, even when their voices do sound really alike. It was weird that they sounded so much alike. But if you look at Betty and JJ in Mockery Manor, they're played by the same Warning spoilers for Mockery Manor. They're played by the same person because they're twins. How can you, the audience, tell the difference? What do you think, Sarah, they're not answering us.
SARAH:That's rude, isn't it?
SARAH:Why are they answering us?
SARAH:How can you tell the difference? Because there's gentle differences between the lilts and the attitude and the pitch and the placement and the ferocity, and I feel as well, just you know, there's sort of like good, good, bad energy going on you know what?
SARAH:um, I think at the beginning it was. I think in the first season it was more like hello I'm betty and I'm posh, hello I'm jj and I'm the average person who was in a bad situation. Yes, and then by the end.
SARAH:Yeah, and then by the third season you get a bit more. I'm JJ and I'm tired of putting up with everybody else's nonsense, and I'm Betty and I really want to be girl detective, so I'm very determined to solve the mystery kind of thing. So it seems like once they got more comfortable with the characters after a couple of seasons, it's much easier to tell the difference as it just being a case of like. Do you remember the Patty Duke show? Patty Duke, no, I'm sorry, you don't know the Patty Duke show. Never mind, the Patty Duke show was. Patty Duke played two cousins that were identical and one of them was posh and the other one was like I like rock and rolling cheeseburgers and the other one's like no, I like. You know where Patty adores a minuet, the ballet rousse or crepe suzette, Nevermind, Sorry. Okay, See, he cast very different performers with like an age difference, a dialect difference, gender difference or Sarah. What else should they do?
SARAH:well, I think it's a lot about uh playing with uh, as I say, sentence structures, definite punctuation. You know, if you've got someone with short, sharp sentences, with a lot of kind of punctuation and they're going to pronounce things differently, right? So, different rhythms, different melodies. I think what you said earlier about what member?
SARAH:of the choir are you?
SARAH:it's about thinking what member of the musical orchestra are you? Who's a piccolo? Who's a violinist? First violin. Who's the trombone? Come in and be a bit tromboning.
SARAH:Yeah, but we're talking about at the scripting stage as opposed to the production stage. Yeah, but there's. But I mean we're talking about at the scripted, at the scripting stage, as opposed to the production stage. Yes, we're. Yeah, I think it's really gotta be the you know what do they want and how will they get it? Are they going to tiptoe or are they going to smash Truly?
SARAH:And also you know, you talked a little bit, but you know, gosh, I've had some people with absolutely gorgeous, silky, deep, beautiful voices.
SARAH:Why thank you Sarah?
SARAH:No, yeah, I know, I know what you mean, though, and then you know. There's the people with the shrill sing-songy beautiful. And then there's the people who can do boy voices, who are 49 years old, and stuff, and it's just like there's such an array of beautiful qualities in that yes that change. So, uh, yeah, just casting people with a range of different sharpnesses and different melodies and energies, it's really key yeah, but that's not in the writing yeah, if you can hear them in your head but I think that's
SARAH:the other thing to underline at this point when you do write something and it's in your head, speak it out, put it into a microphone and listen back to what you've done with it.
SARAH:Or get an actor friend who can do all the accents you think you need and do the same so you can listen to it, because I think that's one of the key things we need to do more of so when Cameron Manheim was in unfortunately I might bring up TV a lot in this episode and I really hope I don't when Cameron Manheim was first in the TV show the Practice, which was a huge hit in the US I don't know if it was a big deal on your side of the pond, but the Practice it was a TV show about a law practice and it was a procedure. I remember LA Law yeah, no, it's kind of like that, but different. First day of shooting, first episode, they're introducing the hot lawyer played by Dylan McDermott and his clever sidekick played by Cameron Mannheim, who, if you can't put a face with the name, she's a tremendous actor. She's really, really good. But she also got where she did because she would show up at casting calls for men and she's a big woman. She's a big, tall woman and she's a-.
SARAH:She's formidable, she sounds formidable.
SARAH:She wrote a book called Wake Up, I'm Fat To give you an idea. And she would show up for these casting calls where the assumption was like we're casting a doctor to do two lines, so we need a man. And she would come in and say listen, I'm not aobia, bullshit thing that they do on TV. He's walking along with a briefcase and a file folder full of papers and they're heading to court and she's got a donut and a cup of coffee because she's the fat woman, right, right, which is stupid. And then she thought to herself here we go, they're giving me a donut and a cup of coffee because I'm the fat sidekick. I hate that.
SARAH:And then she turned around and looked at Dylan McDermott and said wait a minute, I'm your girl Friday from your law practice. What if this were your breakfast? And he said that's brilliant. So they were walking along and the whole thing was he's got the suitcase and the papers to show what his priorities are, her priorities, to make sure that he doesn't have a low blood sugar attack and drop dead on the courtroom floor. So she's running along and they're talking about the case. Meanwhile she is feeding him the donut and the coffee as she's talking to him. So it gives you this great sense of she is a character who is making sure he's at his best when he goes into that courtroom, whereas he's basically just like look, please don't get powdered sugar on my tie, and so on and so forth, and basically you need to give every. Everybody wants something. How are you going to show it? How are you going to make it happen?
SARAH:yeah, truly every single character is the center of their own story yeah, I I kind of see it as like giving every character their their, their drunk scene or their bum scene, or you know the the scene they deserve to really get their teeth into, because that's what we really want as actors yes, and I'm sure, as a writer, you want to shock people, people engage people, make people laugh, make people cry, make people engage in a moment, perhaps.
SARAH:Hey, sarah, yeah, john York, who is the guy who created EastEnders, has written a book called Into the Woods A Five-Act Journey Into Story. Oh, lindsay, and I want to sit here and just read the book to you, she will, if you're not careful listeners. Yeah, be careful.
SARAH:Don't encourage her.
SARAH:Yeah, don't get it yourself. His whole point is that what it boils down to is choices when presented with conflict are what shows your character. His whole thing is like everybody has their public self and their private self. Like who are you on Facebook? Facebook, who are you in real life?
SARAH:I'm a twat in both sarah you're not a twat, we're not okay.
SARAH:Yeah, all right, I'm a bit yeah I mean like okay, just to give you an idea, my facebook posts are all like I, I am on top of it. I am not overwhelmed, I am not burned out. I spent the whole day with my brother. Okay, so my brother and I went swimming the other day. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but for an autistic person it's terrifying. That's right, my goodness and I worked on him to get him invested in the small steps to get him in the water at a local YMCA that is less than a mile from it's half a mile from our house. We walked there. You would have thought I was beating him with sticks. He hated it so much because it was new. What did I put on Facebook? I put hey, here's a really good picture of my brother sitting and eating a tuna sandwich. We just went for a swim today and I'm so proud of him. But what you don't know is the sitting around going. I can't believe I'm paying X dollars a month for a pool membership that he's not using, x dollars a month for a pool membership that he's not using. And the little boy who loved to swim that I miss so much, and the grown man who desperately needs that buoyancy. I'm not going to go into all that on Facebook. I'm just going to say I'm proud of my brother because he went swimming.
SARAH:Yeah, great characters, as John York said, they are consciously or subconsciously at war with themselves. Truly so, yeah, so like. For example, let's take a look at probably one of the best presidents of my lifetime, president Barack Obama. Yep, the guy was so beloved, yeah, still so beloved. Everybody loves him. I love him, everybody loves him. Still so beloved, everybody loves him, everybody loves him. Nicest guy. He also gave us state surveillance and the drone program, which means that the United States can commit acts of war without asking Congress, and I was not very happy with Mr Obama for that, but he also gave us the Affordable Care.
SARAH:Act. So you know, everybody is Turbulent. We contain multitudes.
SARAH:Turbulent is a good word, isn't it? Yes, turbulent, turbulent. How turbulent are you today, on a scale of one to turbulent?
SARAH:Exactly so, sarah, let's think for a minute. How well do you remember that character you played in the Orphans, the one who was like a senator, or something. Yeah, Alan, the one who was like a senator or something. Yeah, I played in the Orphans.
SARAH:How well do you remember that, as in what, as in the scenes she was in, okay.
SARAH:I guess what I'm saying is what's her public self like and what's her private self like? There was a big secret she was hiding and I can't remember what it was.
SARAH:Well, she just had feelings that she couldn't share because she was this hard-nosed bitch, um, who was pretty much only after an hour, really, and didn't matter who was going to be destroyed in the process of getting it. But, um, yeah, we haven't yet seen it. There's another season that I read and Zach, for one reason or another, is doing other groovy things, so it's never been seen the last day, but it did explore a few more of the character relationships that she had with other people. I thought that was really interesting. A bit more vulnerability side.
SARAH:But again, that's why you need a character web.
SARAH:Yeah, yeah. Just got a vision then of the people on it.
SARAH:So Maslow's Need Hierarchy is if you're a psychologist or whatever, maslow's Need Hierarchy is a system of what people need. I will put a link in the show notes for people who want it. But basically it's like the base of this. It's a pyramid, it's like a food pyramid and at the bottom, bottom of your pyramid you have basic things that everybody needs, like oxygen, food, shelter, sex, sleep, like the things that you need to keep yourself alive yes, you can have them separately yes.
SARAH:And then on the next one, you've got things like um potatoes, potatoes, or um education, like things you know, more like self-actualization needs like I want to learn how to do uh, I want to learn how to do woodworking, because it'll make me feel good about myself, the things you know. And then finally, up at the top, you get these. It's also needs like do I want food and will anything do, or do I want crunchy potatoes cooked in duck fat, made with love by my husband, who loves food more than anything else in the world Apart from you? Yeah, exactly, boy, I got to tell you like one last story, tell me a story. I was working on the Fiction Podcast Weekly and I found a casting call for a job yes, podcast Weekly. And I found a casting call for a job. Yes, they wanted I believe it was like a mother and a daughter, yeah, and in the description they said that they wanted a girl with black hair or black or very dark brown hair and brown eyes for an audio drama.
SARAH:That's really helpful. Would that exclude me? It's nice, because I don't feel I can play someone with black hair.
SARAH:Oh, Sarah, I don't know. Do you think you could play?
SARAH:someone I don't know now. Now you got me thinking. Have I been ginger all this time, blessed?
SARAH:And that's the other thing that's so beautiful about, like, if I say to you, okay, yes, okay, I'm gonna say a phrase right now and think of imagine what it means to you and then tell me what it is a handsome prince um michael palin.
SARAH:Oh, just basically that's lovely oh, that's lovely.
SARAH:Oh, that's lovely. Oh, he was kind of hot when he was Lancelot. Wait, which one was he in which night? Galahad, I think. So. Anyway, it doesn't matter the point is if I say a handsome prince, you immediately imagine Michael Palin. If I think of a handsome prince I'm not going to lie to you the first thing that comes to mind is Prince Rogers Nelson. May he rest in peace. May his memory be a blessing.
SARAH:Prince, oh sorry, right, okay, want to be your lover.
SARAH:Yeah, the musician, the guy who basically came out on stage with all these rock legends in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while they were all playing, while my guitar gently weeps, and he just mopped the floor with them. If you say a handsome prince, I'm going to think of Prince. I could also think of Prince Eric from Little Mermaid, so on and so forth. I could think of Prince Eric from Little Mermaid there's and so forth. I could think of Prince Eric from Little Mermaid. There's a lot of things.
SARAH:The point is that if every time we tell a story, we are going to bring in our own perceptions, well, that too. But I mean we're going to bring in our own. The pictures in our mind are going to be filled in by our own preferences and experiences and so on, so we don't need to tell people like this character has brown hair and brown eyes. Because what's great is that when I listen to Silly Old Bear, the bear that I imagine is a poo bear that my father had when he was growing up, that they gave to me when I was a baby and it lived at my grandmother's house I don't know where it is now and if I slept over there, I was allowed to sleep with it and it looked so much like the bear in the mill things and stuff like that.
SARAH:So when I listened to Silly Old Bear, I imagined that wonderful, safe feeling of being tucked into bed by my grandmother with that sweet I'm not going to cry that sweet, lovely, mushy bear who was just like all you know, just a, just a, you know, practically a plush bag with, like some you know, the stuffing all messed up and everything. But boy did I love him. And when I do, kind and other people are going to think of something different, and that's the beauty of it. Yeah, sarah, what do you think about creating characters and so on? Well, this has been such a ramble, but we're having a good time.
SARAH:The key thing is that, if you're, you're writing these character descriptions to really think what would be useful for a character to take away, to think about the vocal qualities they can bring to it. That's essentially why you're writing this character breakdown for audio, right, you don't need to say they wear jeans and they have, you know, one eyebrow piercing. It's about, like you know, their energies, their intentions, their perhaps even class and society. You know there's so many different things to like. Just help someone pitch it at the right place and how they relate to the people around. Someone pitch it at the right place, yeah, and how they relate to the people around them in the scene, right?
SARAH:yeah, it's not just what they want and how they're going to get it. It's what they want, how they're going to get it and how they're not going to get it. Barriers in their way. Yeah, the how they're going to be like, um, I'm not. You know, if I want my hair to look really great, I'm not going to shave my head and start wearing a wig, even though I could, but it would be too hot if I worry. Yeah, I mean, everybody has a different way of going about what they want to do.
SARAH:Indeed, so, yeah, brilliant. I'm just waiting for there to be you know groovy audio ex-matic role. Nobody seems to write those. I'll make it happen.
SARAH:Probably not nice audio, actually, that's probably why, anyway, we hope that some of this has been really useful to kind of claw your ideas of what is to be put in your effective character breakdowns, and do send us some good examples if you like, and we can read them out in future episodes and perhaps do a revisit to this one. But yeah, thank you so much for listening. We hope this has been useful. Yes, thank you. Thank you, write to us on writersadwit at gmailcom.
SARAH:Don't forget that you can also talk to us on our Discord. We have a Discord community. There will be a link in the show notes, parting words of wisdom. I think people should read John York's book, though, because it's very good. Deeper, deeper, but it's very. This tome, john York's Into the Woods. John York Into the Woods A Five-Act Journey into Story. He also has a podcast. I wonder, if we asked him nicely to come on the show, if he would.
SARAH:Possibly, how exciting, possibly, brilliant, well thank you very much for listening folks, Thank you.
SARAH:Happy. Well, thank you very much. Happy writing onward and upward. Bye, bye. 6630 Productions.
