This week’s video explores how you can communicate your character’s deepest needs and feelings without resorting to info dumps.
Through the lens of a TV adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, I explain how simple actions and visuals can speak volumes about a character’s past and present needs and desires.
Hello, Jane Cleland here.
The question is, “How do I show a character’s needs or feelings without an info dump?” Well, your instinct is exactly right—no info dumps. We have to show characters’ needs and feelings through behavior, dialogue, what other people say about them, and inner reflections.
One of my favorite examples is a television series based on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. The series opens with a young Miss Marple saying goodbye passionately to a handsome young man in uniform at a train station. All around are other women saying passionate goodbyes to young men in uniform. World War I.
Well, now, when the story opens, we have an older Miss Marple, and the story unfolds. We don’t think anything about it; we don’t hear anything about it until later when, at the end of the night, she opens a dresser drawer and pulls out a framed photo of that young man. At some point, we learn he’d been married, which means she couldn’t have even grieved in public. She touches the cheek of the man in the photo, kisses it, and puts it back in the drawer.
Isn’t that touching? I just think it’s so touching. All these years later, she says goodnight to him every night. Touching. That’s an example of showing behavior that reveals needs and feelings. It also answers the question about why Miss Marple is unmarried. That’s showing, not telling.
How about you? Any examples of where we reveal deep, important feelings and needs in a way that is not an info dump? I’d love to hear about them—put them in the comment section.
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Thank you!
*Transcripts are software-generated. To report any transcription errors, please use my contact form!
