: Re: In character development for a screenplay, is it enough to present only a person's most salient characteristics? In my screenplay, I feature a CEO of an advertising agency who is "pot shaped,"

@Kristi637

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It sounds like your critic is telling you that your characters aren't three-dimensional enough for her to care about them or see them as more than thinly sketched "types." Adding backstory might or might not help that problem.

The best writing advice I've heard on detail (Sturgeon, via Delany) is that you should know much more detail than ever makes it into your final piece of writing. So you should know the entire backstory of your characters, but only put it in the screenplay if it makes sense or is needed.

In other words, the problem might not be that you're not telling enough about your characters, but that you don't know enough about them --in other words, that you haven't imagined them richly enough for them to live onscreen. The way you phrased your question suggests that you're not much interested in them beyond the role you need them to play in the plotline (something that may be coming through in your writing).

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