On characters and relationships

13 Jun, 2024

Came up with a new character, DANNI, who surprised me, and I met CHRIS for the first time. I write met, because though I knew he would exist and had some awareness of what he would look like. But as soon as he arrived I felt like he needed a foil other than one of the extant characters; he needed someone younger than him to bring out vulnerability¹. I’m always interested in getting to the quick of vulnerability as fast as I can in a first draft, because nothing gets you to really know someone like the things that make them vulnerable. For this, my question is usually along the lines of “What could be happening, or what could someone else do or say, that would make this character uncomfortable?” This really got the play moving when I wrote its first scene; all I had was an image: two old women, sitting in a nursing home, watching a violent action film with the volume cranked up. But that image, as Pinter ² notes, is merely a starting point: "I had no further information". Getting things going required vulnerability. I try not to force this too much, though, because such vulnerabilities need to be revealed, gradually, through character action and dialogue. In the case of Olive and Judith in the opening, and as is usually the case, I like to do what Martin McDonagh does: get my characters talking, and simply listen to what they want to say. Here's the opening to John Rambo's Nipples (this is the first draft, and therefore subject to a lot of change), in which you can see the set-up generate a conversation, that leads to a vulnerability:

JUDITH’s room. 

JUDITH and OLIVE are watching an action film on the television. The volume is very loud, which doesn’t seem to bother the women. (JUDITH is in her mid-eighties, small, compact and coiled like a spring. She’s a retired teacher from North London. Jewish. OLIVE is even smaller but soft-looking, a little younger than JUDITH.  She’s a retired and widowed housewife originally from rural Ireland, but settled in England. A devout Catholic.) Judith is sitting on the bed, her feet up, eating from a huge bowl of popcorn, which sits on the bed between the two women. Olive is sitting in a small armchair near the bed. Her hand will drift over to the bowl of popcorn periodically.

OLIVE (Referring to the TV) The breasts on him. On what’s his name again.

JUDITH Sylvester Stallone. I told you eight times already.

OLIVE Is that like, ‘stallion’?

JUDITH I have no idea. He’s Italian.

OLIVE Is he now. Skin like a, a, a walnut. Very brown he is, and a very shiny and even brown he is, too. Even on the breasts.

JUDITH Did you say ‘breasts’?

OLIVE I did. See the breasts on him.

JUDITH They aren’t breasts. He’s very muscular. Breasts, honestly. He’s a man.

OLIVE Did I not say ‘he’. Did you not hear me just now say that. Did you not mark ‘he’ as the first word I did say?

JUDITH How are you reconciling ‘he’ with ‘breasts’, then?

OLIVE Look at ‘em. They’re round as a mammy’s bosom. And mark the nipples. Did you ever see such nipples on a man. I’ll say confidently that you have not.

JUDITH I suppose it depends on now many men’s nipples you’ve seen. When it comes to you, I’ll bet you’ve seen a grand total of two.

OLIVE Two? Two?

JUDITH And so there’s no ambiguity, let me clarify. The two I’m talking of are a pair in themselves. So I’m not saying you’ve seen two pairs of nipples, making four individual nipples. I’m saying you’ve seen one pair, making two individual nipples.

OLIVE A single pair of man’s nipples. That’s all you’ve saying I’ve seen?

JUDITH You catch on fast.

OLIVE But a point of clarity, if I might. Are we talking the nipples we’ve seen in films and the tele and the like, or are we talking just real men we’ve seen, in the flesh, like?

JUDITH In the flesh, or you’d count old Sly here, wouldn’t you. And I maintain that your lot in life has been a singular pair of men’s nipples.

OLIVE Now, you, you think you’ve got the run of me, but you have not. See, you are right about the nipples I have seen. Is a pair of ‘em only. But shame you’re expecting me to feel, at my inexperience like, but I feel no shame at all in telling that I was a virgin when I did meet my Ciaran, who is in heaven now please God ...  (crosses herself) ... and that I was faithful to him near fifty year, and I have been faithful to him since. He was and always will be the only man for me.

JUDITH Oh, Jesus Christ. Not this record again.

OLIVE I’ll be interrupting you for a few reasons there now. You’ll not be taking the Lord’s name in vain in my company, you will not. And have I not asked it of you many times before, and nice besides?

JUDITH You have. But that hasn’t stopped you saying the thing you say that I don’t like.

OLIVE What’s this now? I did never call you anything you didn’t like.

Footnotes