Creating Characters: Let Them Whisper Their Secrets (Paperback)

~ Marisa D'vari (Author), Ken Atchity (Foreword) "Did you ever see a film or read a book, and strongly feel you have met the character before?..." (more)
Key Phrases: female personality style, story analysts, creating characters, Pretty Woman, All About Eve, Bette Davis (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Fresh, invigorating, and jam-packed with solid how to advice this amazing desktop resource reveals the secrets highly paid screenwriters and best-selling novelists furiously fight to keep under wraps.

About the Author

D'Vari has 20 years of hands-on experience working in Hollywood as a studio story analyst, consultant, and executive. She currently lives in Boston, MA and is the producer/host of the nationally-syndicated cable TV show Scene Here. She conducts seminars on screenwriting all over the country.

Ken Atchity received his PhD in comparative literature from Yale University in New Haven Connecticut. During his academic career, he served as chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at Occidental College, was a Distinguished Instructor at the UCLA Writers Program and was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Bologna in Italy. As a best-selling author Dr. Atchity has written fourteen books, including A Writer's Time and Writing Treatments That Sell. Using his multifaceted talents as a writer-mentor-editor-producer, the author founded AEI, a highly successful literary management firm specializing in author representation and movie production. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 233 pages
• Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions; illustrated edition edition (July 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941188973
• ISBN-13: 978-0941188975
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #165,624 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not such a big deal., August 25, 2005

By	Pat C. Ames "Pat C. Ames" (Indiana) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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While this book may be useful to the novice writer or one unfamiliar with personality assessment tools, I found it more irritating than helpful and not particularly original. Ms. D'vari has adapted the Myers-Briggs, Enneagram and the DISC to create her own, very simplistic, MORE system which she uses to help the writer develop the personality traits of the imagined characters.

My biggest complaint with this book was that all of the question marks were upside down and backwards! This, along with numerous typos and/or misspelled words, indicates a lack of care in either the writer, the publisher or the editor. If you can overlook these, which I found to be more grating than nails on a chalkboard, perhaps you will discover more of interest than I did.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Starts off okay but fizzles, July 27, 2006

By	TheCafeWriter (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Basically, what the author has done is to group the various related types in the Enneagram (or Myers-Briggs or Jung) into just 4 types and uses a scoring system to weight each one.

Movers - driven, goal-oriented 'Type A'
Observers - factual, aloof, and insecure
Relaters - romantic "people" person
Energizers - charming, flamboyant storyteller
(Hence "M.O.R.E.")

(There's a danger to this kind of oversimplification. If we were to divide up the world into, say, "Hispanic" and "Not Hispanic" it would simplify the categories, but a lot of nuances and depth of cultures would be lost. It seems to be counterproductive if depth is what you're looking for.)

I've tried using this book with my 3 main characters in my current project. And I find that by applying this methodology, they're more likely to be alike than different. There's not nearly enough on distinguishing characters *within* these 4 types once you have them. For example, let's say I have two Movers. They shouldn't be exactly alike, so how do I make them different? If she scores 27 for Mover and Relater, how do I balance those? If he scores 26 as an Observer and 22 as an Energizer, how do I factor in the latter?

After your characters are categorized, the book seems to fizzle and the discussion on M.O.R.E types appears to be over. The author gets into "channeling," character goal-setting (and not just for the story but for a lifetime), determining a character's wardrobe, and visualizing a character's "autopsy." It would seem that types would drive something like wardrobe choices and goals, but it's not even mentioned.

I was hoping for more.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars More Formulas From Hollywood!, February 25, 2008

By	F. Gomez "Auteur" (Echo Park, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book would appear to have potential from the first couple of pages (in which the author goes into length explaining the sources for her MORE theory ). However, the more you read, the more you feel you've read this before, written by people with better insight into character development, and who might've actually penned a screenplay or two. As she herself explains, her job capacity in the movie "business" is as an executive. Therefore, this book has an executive's values. Superficiality, one dimensionality and complete contempt for the characters we should in fact respect. Can humanity REALLY be divided into four categories? Even as I read it I found myself clustered into all four of them. True characters; human characters will never always be or show one aspect of their personality. We all want to at times be the center of attention (energizer), or care for others (relater), or think clearly before making a decision (observer) or move relentlessly forward (mover), sometimes simultaneously! But don't tell the author that! Humans have been divided into four types of people and that's that! Quite honestly, you should really re-evaluate acquiring a book endorsed by Christopher "one story fits-all" Vogler. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.