It all starts with story: Part 2.

It happens more often then not that I get to a scene in a script and begin writing only to discover that I wrote dialogue and actions for a character end up breaking character. It is important to know your characters before you try telling their story.

I have spoken with many people who do not like to outline their scripts because they want to discover the characters as they write. I am very wary about believing this to be a good way to write. If you don't know where your story is going then you don't know what needs to be told and what doesn't, often time creating an inconsistant through line for your characters.

Outlining a script is one thing but is it does not tell you who your characters are and how they are going to react to situations. The outline is usually a list of key events that need to happen to create a compitent story without plot holes, but an outline is not going to tell you how a character speaks to someone or responds to a comment or even their speach patterns. You may have some idea of how your character interacts with other people, but you won't know the core of the character by an outline.

There is a way to not get stuck in the situation of breaking character. A complete biography of your character usually will help. This is where the challenge comes in, many times I have started to write a character biography and after about 1 page, sometimes 2, I figure I have written enough and can move on. This is where you need to force yourself just to write, let the words flow and don't worry about grammer or spellin -- just write. Repeate things you have already mentioned get everything down to the last detail: where he/she was born, when was he/she born, where did they go to school, their friends, family, hobbies, fears, boyfriends/girlfriends, jobs, were they ever fired, did they quit, their grades, were they liked, etc.

Any and everything you can think of write it down. Again you may only get to page 2, force your self to write to at least page 5. Write more if you like. The idea behind creating a biography of your character is to get to know how they will react to people, how they will talk, what they can talk about, etc. Your dialogue will run smoother and your characters will be speaking with meaning rather than made up circumstances.

Unfortuanately and fortunately it doesn't stop there. After the biography is done you'll have another set of things you can do to prepare yourself to write the script.