Creating Characters

Doctors Series Producer Peter Lloyd's final instalment explains the process behind creating a truly great character.

Characters don’t just leap up, fully formed (though Mrs Tembe came close). Some are incredibly hard to create. You have the basic structure of a character, but sometimes this just isn’t working and you can’t quite put your finger on it. If you’re not careful you end up putting all kinds of ticks and tricks in to make them interesting e.g. ‘supports the Villa’ or ‘collects china pigs’ … and they never work. It’s too much like trump cards. And the next time someone says ‘has a dry sense of humour’ in a story meeting, I’m going to make them leave the room and stick their head in a bucket. Everyone likes to think they have a dry sense of humour and sure, people with humour are always winning, but tell that to a writer and they’ll tear their hair out.

There are all kinds of ways to create characters. There’s a whole industry (based in Hollywood naturally) that’s dedicated to systems and archetypes and templates for dramatic characters. Great writers don’t need them; in fact many top writers are very vocal about systems and templates – they loath them, find them stultifying and needless. But these are very talented men and women and stuff like this comes naturally to them. Then there are the rest of us …

A lot of long running gang shows like Doctors need to have some kind of guide because the characters are written by so many different writers. Otherwise everyone is shouty and says exactly what they think all the time. Or everyone is repressed and never says what they mean. But really we need some kind of a mixture don’t we?

There are shows that do have shouty people endlessly and, to be honest, they become quite tedious after a while. These are often cop shows and are an example of plot dominating, with character coming a low second. But aren’t dramas more interesting when a good deal of hard work has gone into the characterisation? Jane Tennison anyone?

I’ve developed my own model for character generation over the years, which always proves a useful starting point, although that’s all it is. In story meetings people often talk about real people they’ve met/are related to which is always useful as examples of behaviour, but they’re never very useful dramatically. Real people are less consistent and more chaotic than fictional characters – and the audience likes to know where they are with someone they’re supposed to love/hate/sympathise with. Of course our characters can be chaotic and inconsistent, but the audience likes to be in on the secret of why they are behaving like that. Unless you know a person really well, you never have that kind of intimacy, and intimacy is a huge draw to fictional characters. If you’ve created your characters well, then the audience will be able to anticipate how their favourites are going to behave. Of course sometimes you can subvert that and have some fun with it.

But you need to know what your character’s flaws are, and what their strengths are. The writers have got to put them into all kinds of situations and they need to know what makes them tick and how to write them. If I’ve got a good sense of a character’s ‘voice’, I will write some sample scenes to give writers a clue and use at auditions. Some writers really struggle to get these voices right. They may be more interested in plotting than they are in characters. They may be brilliant at writing their own characters but less interested in writing someone else’s. But if you’re going to write for series drama, you’re going to have to get the knack of it, or you’ll be rewritten somewhere down the line … and you probably won’t be asked back.

So, after all this mapping and ticking and strategizing and matching and mismatching, you produce a biography that hopefully makes things clear to the writers, make-up and costume designers. You’ve also thought about what kind of car they’d drive for the art department and if you’ve supplied enough of a physical description, give the casting directors some idea of what you’re looking for, but then you can’t be so prescriptive that they laugh you out of the office.

But after all this, it comes down to casting the right actor. However much prep work you do, if you pick the wrong actor, or worse, a bad actor, then you’re screwed and all your hard work comes to nought.

Read Peter Lloyd's musings on the departure of some of his favourite Doctors actors

Read Peter Lloyd's musings on the perils of finding the best actor for the role

Read Peter Lloyd's piece explaining the inspiration behind the character names in Doctors.