One of the ways to write a great screenplay is to create characters who are believable and by believable I mean characters whom your viewers can relate with in one aspect or another.

It is undeniable that fictitious movies abound and lots of viewers fall in love with them, no doubt. But I think people are greatly moved and easily get emotional when they watch a movie that relates what they have personally experienced or are even experiencing in their daily lives.

In this article therefore, I am going to walk you through those ways you can make your characters believable in a screenplay.

How To Make Your Characters Believable In A Screenplay.

To make your characters believable in your screenplay you must be able to show them as real people by making their human characteristics stand out, and not portray them as some robots or fictional objects, below are therefore some of the ways to can adopt:

1. Surround them with family members and friends.
2. Give them an occupation.
3. What is your character’s goal.
4. Create obstacles that prevents him from achieving his goals.
5. Your character must have a flaw.
6. Character arc is also essential.

1. Surround them with family members and friends.

You need to surround your characters with family members and friends if you want to make then believable in your screenplay.

I don’t believe there is any human being that goes through life all alone. Even though a serial killer or an hardened criminal is an orphan, he must have a lady or ladies somewhere he is spending some of his time with.

And how about his clients and victims? All these are the real life people you can surround him with to show that he is actually a human being, and not a robot who just wakes up and start to kill or steal from people without a reason.

2. Give them an occupation.

To make your characters believable in a screenplay, you must give them an occupation.

Everyone in life at one time or another is aspiring to become something, and to do so they must acquire an educational certificate or learn a particular skill or handwork.

So when writing your screenplay, make sure you show your viewers what they are pursuing in their life.

It is however not a crime for your character to have more than one occupation. For example, I am writing this article for blogging purposes and that makes me a blogger. Once am done with this article and shut down my computer I will be going to my farm where I am cultivating tomato plants, and what does that make me? a farmer of course.

Besides blogging and farming, I still have other side hustles like videography, photography, financial adviser, evangelists etc.

And many a times, this diverse occupations engage me to the point that I am unable to deliver people’s work in time.

Can you see how I have tactfully given you a story about a real life human being who catches one issue after the other because he is unable to manage the several occupations he expertise in.

3. What is your character’s goal or objective?

Every believable character in a screenplay must have a goal or objective, that is to say what they are trying to get, achieve or accomplish in life.

It is very important to note here that a goal or objective is different from an occupation because often times human beings pursue goal that is different from their life work force.

And also the ability to mix your characters occupation and goal is what is going to make your screenplay very interesting.

Now let’s go back to the serial killer whose occupation is to kill people; yes killing is an occupation if someone is doing it to get paid, searching for true love because his life time has been all along lonely.

Having lost both parents at age 2 and being maltreated by his only surviving aunt who becomes her first victim, he one day looks back at his life and yearns for true love.

Now killing is his occupation while true love is the goal he is pursuing in life.

4. Create obstacles that prevents him from achieving his goals.

If you want your character to be believable in a screenplay, make sure you create several obstacles that will always show up to prevent him from achieving his goals.

In real life, achieving one’s goal is always very hard because of the obstacles that always presents itself every now and then.

These obstacles will therefore compel the character to adopt several measures of eliminating them in order to achieve his goals.

Now let’s once again look at our serial killer finding the true love he is searching for in one of his victims whom he decided to spare her life having to contend with the victims ex who is employing several strategies to eliminate him.

5. Your character must have a flaw.

Any screenplay that lacks a character’s flaw can never be seen or termed as believable because so long as there is no perfect human being on earth, each and everyone of us must have one skeleton or two hiding in our cupboards.

For example, I can’t recount the years I have been addicted to pornography and masturbation, and even though I was able to abstain myself from them for so many years, I found myself falling back in when I had a little issue with my spouse.

So even though you are writing a story about a highly religious person the community loves and reference, make sure you show us a wrong character or two he exhibits when he is all by himself.

You will make your screenplay more believable if you are able to show how this flaw is preventing your character from achieving their goal or objective.

So ensure you don’t make your character too perfect or too weak but blend those characters in a way that will show that your character is definitely a human being.

Even Jesus Christ who was born of the Holy Spirit had an anger issues on two occasions where he cursed a fig tree to die due to hunger and scattered the temple because people were using it for business purposes.

6. Character arc is also essential.

Character arc is another key ingredient you can incorporate into your screenplay if you want to make your character believable.

It is very important to note at this point that character arc is very different from character flaw, because so many screenwriters always look on both terms as the same.

Now while character flaw is the weakness or negative traits that a character possesses, character arc on the other hand is the transformation or change of attitude which the character achieves after realizing and overcoming his flaws.