Screenwriting: Hanging out with your characters

At the start of August I’m going to start the second draft of my film ‘If We Aren’t Married’, which gives me just over a month till my deadline of the 8th September.

One of the comments that Coops made when giving feedback was that you need to give the audience a chance to get to know the characters and get some form of attachment to them.
So before I start the rewrite I thought it would be good to see how other films do this, and as my film is a chick flick, I’ve got a good resource of them.

However, after watching a few this evening; watching only the parts the female and male leads are hanging out together it seems that all they do in this time is talk relationships! Even the ones where the characters have been friends for a long time. All the conversations are as I thought to carry the plot forward.

I’ve got a big collection to work through, but at a glance I think the only film that does show the two leads just hanging out for the sake of hanging out are ‘When Harry Met Sally and One Day.’ (If you can think of anymore films that show female and male leads hanging out for the sake of hanging out, let me know.)

This got me thinking about my own friendships with guys. I think every time I hang out with my guy mates I would briefly mention relationship updates but not dwell on it. On Thursday I went bowling with a group of guys from work and I was the only girl. We went out for food and drink afterwards and chatted about a wide range of subjects; films, politics, even Pokemon!

Tom, Chris and John to name a few of my uni mates I’ve known for over 10 years. I’ve been to cricket matches with Chris, lots of nights out with all of them and many road trips to uni meet ups.
My mate Dan and I try to celebrate pancake day with each other each year. Ando and I try to meet up at Nandos because it rhymes!

When I was at uni my friend Tom whose mum worked with my mum was the friend that back in the day when I had a monthly pay as you go package and you had to use all your minutes or lose them, I’d call him at the end of every month to use all my minutes.

Audrey Hepburn once said; ‘Everything I learned, I learned from the movies.’ Well I’m afraid the icon that you are Audrey, you maybe wrong on this occasion. Time to look back on friendships old and new for inspiration.