Action is Character

I am a screenwriter.  They tell you to say that even if you’ve never had anything optioned, produced or published.  If you’ve written a script, you’re a screenwriter.  And in screenwriting, one of the first foundational rules they tell you about writing characters is that “action is character.”  I’m going to cop to that excuse as to why there isn’t this long prattling introduction as to who I am and why this blog exists.  A screenplay contains the scantest slugline to describe a character in shorthand, figuring that the action and dialogue will speak in detail.  Mine would be something like:

FormerlyGay is a 44 year-old disabled man.  Part geek, part comic, part writer, part artist; yet, he is more than the sum of his parts.  Raised a Christian but never really knowing what it meant to be committed to becoming a new creation in Christ, FormerlyGay now seeks what it means to be a complete man and comfortable in his own skin.

That’s the overly-long slugline.  From the action and dialogue, it is up to you to figure out who the character is.

~ by formerlygay on January 8, 2006.