Lesson 3

[Ronald Neustrom]

Ron Neustrom Profiles People

What I’ve learned that is improving my writing: This is one of the most valuable lessons I have ever been a part of. It promotes deep understanding of your characters and consistency: both important to a solid script. The script excerpt from LOST helped me see the skill in action. Also it helps with the connection between core traits and expression. How do we express these traits or how are these traits expressed…this lesson helps with that process.

*I adapted the assignment by listing previous interactions I had with my profile characters to establish my experience of their traits.

Person 1(Beck)

Generous, Talented, Cruel, Controlling

One time at a Thanksgiving celebration she took the turkey we brought and fed it to her family first without telling us to sit down and eat. Last week she got four new listings in a tight real estate market. This week she hosted a funeral for her father-in-law at her home for 125 people. Last month she allowed her father-in-law to come into their house for hospice care and helped take care of him but also made her husband do most of the work. She had a few drinks and called my daughter a Heffer (She’s has weight issues and is sensitive about it). She caught her husband cheating and has made his life a living hell by telling everyone in the family about it. But didn’t leave him. She made him pay for tens of thousands of dollars of couples’ therapy. She made him attend church bi-weekly for the last year and a half. She made him work from home because she doesn’t trust him in an office setting anymore.

Person 2 (Lloyd)

Unpredictable, Crass, Heroic, Selfish

One time he came to our house and started lecturing our 14-year-old son on getting pussy and getting laid. He stops by at random times without calling first. He goes into stories about killing Arabs in Afghanistan and being a sniper. He tells gay jokes about the things we do. One time playing basketball in a public park he defended me against two other black dudes. They jumped him and beat the crap out of him. He took our script and re-wrote it taking my name off it and submitted it to producers. He’s taken two tours of duty in Afghanistan. He is in a band with his daughter.

Person 3 (Thong)

Gentle, Impulsive, Jealous, Abusive

One time while renting a room from a seventy-five-year-old neighbor she locked her in her bedroom and wouldn’t let her come out. She called the police on my seventy-year-old mother-in-law for battery after she bullied her relentlessly. She made a CD of extreme religious songs because she was thinking about me. She was forbidden to come to her mother in laws house for calling the police on her but was still seen in the neighborhood spying on their party. Flew into a rage because her husband ate something before he came home for dinner. She wants him only to eat food she prepares…and she’s not a good cook. She went to her husband’s ex’s job and got her fired by spreading lies. She was arrested for sexual abuse on a male minor. She’s had seven kids and at some point, has lost custody of all of them. Two of her daughters have died from drug overdoses. She called child services on her daughter and had her children taken away. Once at a car club show she went to the director and told him her husband and my daughter were having sex because her husband didn’t want her to come to the show.

• This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by  Ronald Neustrom.

[Diane Keranen]

Diane’s Core Trait Analysis

What I’ve learned that is improving my writing is that by defining the traits of a character can provide me a roadmap, of sorts, to writing that character. Their actions are driven by their traits. Once revealed, the writing can be more precise. More powerful. More pithy.

Person 1: Generous, Fearless, Trustworthy, Provocable
These traits are absolute and seemingly always present all at the same time. They waver not at all from expected outcomes.

Person 2: Passionate, Protective, Funny, Guarded
These traits exhibit mostly separately. Funny and passionate can occur together though. Guarding themselves pops up at moments when a private struggle dares to show itself.

Person 3: Manipulative, Selfish, Secretive, Deceptive
These traits are always in play. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. They fulfill the adage, “if their lips are moving, they are lying.”