Michael Keaton is awesome; thus, many of him must be beyond awesome. The movie Multiplicity put this thesis to the test (in a movie where a guy clones himself a bunch of times, each clone becoming more and more stupid).
However, outside of this movie, it’s generally thought of as a bad thing to have characters who all act and talk alike.
Shows like The Brady Bunch, where there’s a family of eight with only minimal differences between characters, The Newsroom, where in Sorkin-ish ways all the characters talk precisely and wittily—far more than anyone would in real life—or Velma, where one might miss the character complexity of the original Scooby-Doo (Ruh roh!), all fall victim to this issue.
Often this is the result of a writer being unable to write characters who aren’t exactly like them—or writing all characters as the idealized version of how they wish they talked to people. Sometimes, the tone of the piece is so dominant that the characters become interchangeable extensions of that tone, like in Euphoria or The Politician (you’ll want to fill these in).
But that’s the diagnosis. Is there a cure for what we’ll call clone-itis? This would be a terrible article if there weren’t.
Like many parts of writing, not being able to escape your own voice is a mindset issue. It’s a lack of empathy. And no, you’re not necessarily a sociopath (unless you wrote blankblank), but empathy is going to be the solution for you here.
I’m not talking about fake empathy—like posting a meme on your social media page and calling it a day. I’m talking about real empathy.
Let’s look at one of the best impressionists: James Adomian.
This guy nails the characters he plays. It’s not just because he gets the voice or mannerisms right (which he does), but because he can IMPROVISE as Jesse Ventura and Paul Giamatti. That means he has the ability to tap into how these people think and act—even if exaggerated.
You can do the same. (And if not, it’s time to work on your observation skills. Forthcoming article… maybe.)
You know that one friend you can nail an impression of? Or that significant other whose words you can predict exactly—tone and all? That’s where you start.
Start by knowing people who are already different from you. Anticipate them. Let your imagination control them in situations. Let it speak for them, act for them, and place them in situations you’ve never seen them in—with some degree of accuracy.
And if you’re a weirdo who only hangs out with other weirdos exactly like you, then yeah, it’s time to meet new people. At the very least, get out there into crowded cafes and people-watch. You’ll start discovering people left and right. Just don’t get punched in the face for staring.
There’s that funny expression: truth is stranger than fiction. And it has writing implications. Sometimes weird things that actually happen in real life are unbelievable in fiction.
That time you got everyone on a subway car to do a standing ovation for the grandma who barely made it on? Might not read as believable in a script (OK, was it just me?).
The same goes for characters.
Sometimes your very real, very grounded friend doesn’t work on screen. Maybe they seem not quite real (because real-real is different from film-real), or maybe they come across as too one-dimensional—especially because our brains naturally categorize the people we know.
And that’s OK. The next step is separating the character from the source material. How can you start creating a brand-new character from your imaginary friend based on a real person?
One way is to combine people. Sometimes a composite of two people becomes a more interesting character than either alone.
Or you can plug and play different attributes. You know your friend Kevin, who watches sports all day and shouts at the screen? What if he’s also secretly a huge fan of ballet? And your friend Kim, the dedicated mother? What if she also can’t get enough Adderall?
Now you’re inventing new, believable characters. And even better—your friends won’t come after you for it.
In my series Tragedy Club, I based almost every character on someone from high school. But I also changed them. My friend Dylan got a healthy dose of Michael Cera. My friend Tony became a former child star who cries at the drop of a hat.
But I didn’t keep the names. For the love of everything, change the names.
Even within a range of personalities, there's a range for how characters behave within the world you've built.
Gilligan’s Island might have an incompetent sailor, a millionaire, and a professor, but they all kind of feel like they belong to the same world.
Tony Soprano might act very differently from Dr. Melfi, but if someone acted like Lucy Ricardo in that world, she’d seem wildly out of place (although, come to think of it, I’d love to see that).
You set your tone from the start based on the characters you include. Everyone in 24 is dark and moody, making humor nearly nonexistent. But Breaking Bad gives you stoic Walter White and goofy Skinny Pete.
Characters aren’t out of place if you condition your audience to expect a range right from the beginning. So you might as well lean away from homogeneity as far as you comfortably can—right away.
The trick of all of this is that you are the writer, so by definition, there will always be a little bit of you in every character.
You will fall in love with your characters, control them, make them speak, and pull their strings.
When something happens in your story, it’s easy to ask yourself, “What would I do in this scenario?”—thus creating a bunch of Michael Keatons, each one dumber than the last.
But it’s much more powerful to ask: “What would this character do?” And while there’s still a bit of Keaton in there, one of them is Batman, one is Beetlejuice, and another is the cop he played in Jackie Brown.
So my conclusion? Michael Keaton cooks. But also—let your empathy flow as a writer. Your diverse range of characters, and those experiencing them, will appreciate it.
Thanks for reading!
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