Nadel Paris - Developing Your Back Story

1. Nadel Paris - Developing Your Back Story Real people of flesh and blood have more depth and character about them than you can possibly display on the big screen. Why? Because we have years of actual life experience. We interact with other people on a daily basis (at least most of us do!), all the while creating and solving our own personal dramas. The dilemmas we face every day help shape our personal character and define our personality. Every time we are forced to make a decision and choose one path over another, we are subtlety changed as an individual. Those changes add up over time. Eventually, they define our character. The more we experience life, the more likely our character and our actions can be readily defined by those closest to us. The people closest to us will, in all likelihood, know what choices we will make under certain circumstances. Similar to life, the more in depth the back story, the more we expect characters to behave in a certain manner, and the more shocking it is when they don't! Our life experience is our back story. When people meet us, everything prior to that particular moment is considered our back story. Our motivations, desires, and goals are a direct reflection of our life experiences. We do the things we do because of the events we have experienced in our past. It's as simple as that. Nadel Paris believes that when you develop your characters, it's good to have a back story to support their entire motivation system and their reasoning for making the

2. choices they do throughout your script. Although it is helpful to having a back story for every character, it is certainly not necessary. A sample back story is from the movie Payback. The main character, Porter, is driven by what happened prior: his partner convinced Porter's wife to double cross him in a robbery for $70,000. Porter ends up shot and left for dead. The rest of the movie is about Porter's attempt to get his money back. A strong back story can resonate throughout an entire film and create a life of its own. In Unforgiven, William Munny is a reformed killer trying to care for his two children. His wife, now deceased, cured him of drinking, thieving, and murder. The back story: she died, leaving him alone to care for their young son and daughter with only her memory to restrain him from becoming the murderer he once was. The back story for William Munny becomes very strong because it is often repeated by other characters throughout the entire story. In fact, the very first scene shows a gunfighter attempting to convince William Munny to join him in a hired killing. The gunfighter rattles on about how dangerous and cold-hearted William Munny used to be in the old days. With a properly developed back story, your characters motivations and actions can be justified from the very first scene. As mentioned above, back stories are not essential for developing a strong script, but they make things easier and allow the writer to focus on more present storyline elements. Use them and they will help shape and define your characters. Ms. Nadel Paris is a screenwriter, published author, recording artist, musician, music producer, songwriter and a dancer. Nadel and her staff have been the driving factor towards personal growth for children for years. To know more about Ms. Nadel, please visit here: http://www.nadel-paris.com/