Right now I'm talking about Sam (I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I've altered the characters' names so that they all don't have three syllables and end with 'a').
While I was creating my characters, I had to go through this long and annoying process of writing full biographies. For each. Single. One. Good thing there are only three characters, right?
Anyway, I had to talk about their "interior life" and their "exterior life".
The interior life just included the broad story -- born here, went to school there, lived over there, has three brothers, all of that. Things that other people who would meet this character wouldn't know off the bat.
The exterior life included three categories. Private life, professional life, and personal life. Private life is more of what the character does when they are alone, professional life includes school and/or work, and personal life talks about the character's relationship with people.
I've decided to share a bit of each life in this blog throughout my process.
Whoever reads these little biographies then watches my movie, or vice versa, might appreciate the film a bit more, with some of this "secret" information.
So here's Sam. (All of this is just snippets of my character notes)
Interior life:
"Female, born and lives in New York. She had one brother, but passed away as soon as he was born. Her mother and father were distant in her late childhood because they had to work all the time. Her childhood was ok, not happy or sad. Her schoolmates picked her on sometimes. She won’t admit that being teased hurt her, so she pretends to be strong and apathetic. Her outgoingness was part of the reason why she was teased so much, so she started to become an introvert in her late elementary years."
Exterior life:
Professional life: "SAM is a junior in high school. She keeps pushing this fact away, but she’s not very content with her life. She wishes that she could just start over. She never has arguments with anyone, because she is just a presence, not actually talking. She is an extreme perfectionist, and she thinks everything she does isn’t perfect. She’s afraid of failure most of the time."
Personal life: "SAM has never had a boyfriend before, even though there are boys who admire her. She thinks that being in a relationship would ruin her for life, because she doesn’t trust boys. When SAM is home, she does homework, reads, and writes. Sometimes she plays the violin. She doesn’t really like the violin, but her parents do."
Private life: "When SAM is alone, she does the same thing when she is home -- homework, read, or write. She listens to music when she does all of this. She listens to alternative or rock, anything really, except for country. She despises country."
