Want, need, wound: the character exercise screenwriters use

Many screenwriting courses set character work early, as a biography, a worksheet or a want-versus-need exercise. The short version is three questions about your lead: what they want, what they need, and what happened to them that makes the gap between the two so hard to close. This post covers where that exercise comes from, how to fill in a one-page character sheet in about 45 minutes, and how a wound you write on paper turns into behaviour an audience can watch.

Want, need and wound in plain terms

Want is the thing your character is chasing, and it has to be visible. A camera can film someone trying to win a custody hearing, reopen a restaurant or get a brother out of jail. It can't film someone "seeking fulfilment". If you can't say what winning looks like on the last page, you don't have a want yet.

Need is what the character has to learn, accept or give up to become whole. They usually can't see it at the start. The want pulls the plot forward, and the need is what the plot is secretly testing. September C. Fawkes, who has written one of the most thorough explanations online, puts it simply: the want is "more closely linked to plot", and the need to "character arc (and by extension, theme)".

Wound (John Truby's word for it is ghost) is the past event that bent the character out of shape. No Film School quotes Truby's definition: "an event from the past that still haunts the hero in the present. The ghost is an open wound that is often the source of the hero's psychological and moral weakness." Michael Hauge adds a further step. On his site he describes a wound as a painful event the character believes they've resolved but that "is still affecting her behavior". From it the character forms a belief meant to keep them safe, and that belief is never true but is "ALWAYS logical".

So the chain runs: wound → false belief → flaw → a want that feeds the flaw → a need that would heal the wound. The exercise asks you to write each link down.

A terminology trap: Syd Field's "need" is a want

If you learned this from Syd Field, the words will seem scrambled. Field's term is dramatic need, and in a Q&A archived on his site he defines it as "what your character wants". He adds that it "usually is a concrete thing", such as "I want to win the contest." In other words, Field's dramatic need is what Fawkes and many other teachers call the want (Truby's word is desire). When a teacher says "need", check which vocabulary they mean. The exercise works either way, as long as you have one concrete outer goal and, separately, one inner change.

Where the exercise comes from

The one-page character sheet is a modern condensed version of an older assignment: the character biography.

• Syd Field's workshop. On the page for The Screenwriter's Workbook, Field describes how his course ran. The second week, he writes, is about character, and "how to give the main character a history by writing a character biography, the character's life from birth up until the time the story begins." In the Q&A mentioned above he suggests a quicker version for finding dramatic need: a "free association essay, one or two pages long" about what the character wants.
• Published syllabi. A Bellevue College scripting syllabus asks for a one-to-three-sentence logline and "a ONE page Bio of your main Character(s)", due in week 3 and graded together as one assignment. A University of Oregon screenwriting course outline sets a five-page character biography, double-spaced and "in paragraph form", worth 10% of the grade. A UT Dallas "Creating Movie Scripts" syllabus weights its character bio at 10% and schedules it alongside treatments and step outlines. Yale Summer Session's FILM 3500 syllabus gives its third class to character, listing "Want vs. Need. Objective and Flaw", with a writing assignment of "Character Worksheet and Backstories".
• The Script Lab's "unable to love" bio. Among the character exercises Michael Schilf published at The Script Lab is a one-page biography of "a person who is unable to love". The instruction behind it is really a wound exercise: you must "know and articulate the reason why this character is unable to love", and describe the character "in dramatic, cinematic terms".
• Pressure-testing. Arc Studio's list of screenwriting prompts has you list a character's attributes, desires and goals, then "for each item on the list, try to come up with one or two situations that would most challenge that specific trait."
• Voice. Stephen J. Cannell's lecture exercises, published by Writers Write, come at character through speech. One puts at least four people of different backgrounds in a stalled elevator in a government building and asks whether they "sound like four different people, or do they all sound the same?" That is the best test for the Voice line of your sheet.

Across these sources the length varies from one page to five, and so does the timing. Field and the Bellevue syllabus put the biography before the outline, while the Oregon course sets it after the treatment is due.

The deliverable: a one-page character sheet

Treat this as a 45-minute exercise with a hard stop. The sheet is short on purpose. You can hide from a vague idea in a five-page biography. On one page you can't.

Do the same for the opponent, then write a single line on how the two collide. A summary handout of Truby's The Anatomy of Story, posted online, says the best opponent is "a necessary one who is best able to attack hero". On your sheet, that means the opponent's want should push on your lead's wound, not just block their plan.

Suggested time box: 10 minutes for the lead's want and need, 10 for the wound, belief and flaw, 5 for the secret and voice, 15 for the opponent, and 5 for the collision line.

A worked example

Here's a sheet for an original feature idea, filled in the way you'd hand it in.

TEO BARAN, 41, the only mechanic for a two-boat island ferry service.

• Want: Keep the winter ferry running past a safety inspection in 30 days, so the mainland doesn't cancel the route.
• Need: Let someone else take the wheel, literally and otherwise.
• Wound: At 16 he was steering his father's fishing boat when it ran onto the rocks outside the harbour. Nobody was hurt, but the boat was lost. His father never blamed him out loud and never let him steer again.
• False belief: "If I'm not the one holding it, it breaks."
• Flaw: He redoes other people's work, sleeps on the boat and turns down help before anyone finishes offering it.
• Secret: He is losing the sight in his left eye and hasn't told the harbour office.
• Voice: Short sentences and technical words. He changes the subject to the engine when anyone asks how he is.

MARA ELLIS, 29, the regional inspector.

• Want: Close every route that runs with a single point of failure.
• Need: To accept that some risks are worth keeping a community alive for.
• Wound: Her brother drowned on a charter boat whose one engineer was working a double shift.
• False belief: "A rule nobody bends is the only thing that keeps people alive."
• Flaw: She uses the rulebook to avoid judgement calls. Every time, the safest line is the one that makes her responsible for nothing.

Collision: Mara will sign off on the route only if a second certified engineer works every crossing. Teo's want can only be reached by doing the thing his wound tells him never to do.

That last line is the point of the exercise. The want and the need are opposite ends of the same rope, and the opponent is holding one end.

How the wound shows up on screen

A wound on your sheet isn't yet anything an audience can see. On screen it has to appear as behaviour, as a choice made under pressure, or, sparingly, as a revealed memory. Here are three well-documented films that show the range.

Finding Nemo: the wound is the opening

In the film written by Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson and David Reynolds, the first scene is the wound itself. A barracuda attacks, and Marlin wakes to find Coral and all but one of their eggs gone. He vows to keep the survivor, Nemo, safe. No Film School's write-up of screenwriter James A. Hurst's framework uses this scene to illustrate the wound: an easy-to-understand trauma that makes Marlin too cautious and overprotective. Because we watched it happen, nobody has to explain it, and his hovering over Nemo reads as the flaw in action.

Get Out: the wound is withheld, then paid off in one choice

Jordan Peele's Oscar-winning screenplay handles it the other way. According to the film's plot summary, Chris reveals under hypnosis that his mother died in a hit-and-run when he was 11 and that he feels partly responsible because he delayed calling for help. The payoff comes late. Escaping, Chris accidentally hits Georgina with the car and, reminded of his mother's death, guiltily takes her into it. The wound becomes a decision in the climax, which is where it matters most.

Good Will Hunting: the wound builds the mask

Hauge uses Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's script as a lead example of inner conflict. In his reading, Will's wound is the abuse he suffered, his belief is that he must have deserved it, and his protective identity is hiding his genius by working as a janitor at MIT. The film's pivotal therapy scene goes straight at that belief: Sean keeps telling Will "It's not your fault" until Will breaks down in tears.

Early glimpse or late reveal?

Teachers disagree here, and it's worth knowing. Jen Grisanti, writing in Script Magazine, argues for an early glimpse of the wound and says she has seen stories fail by waiting too long. The Truby summary handout warns against overwriting backstory and against putting ghosts at the beginning, and advises withholding "a lot of information". The films above suggest a practical middle: show the behaviour early and hold back the explanation. We see Marlin hover over Nemo from the first minutes. In Get Out the cause comes out in the hypnosis scene, not the opening, and the full payoff waits for the climax. The wound's effects belong in act one. How much of its cause you show is your choice.

Three tests before you move on

Run the finished sheet through these checks.

1. The straight-line test. Hurst's first question, as No Film School reports it, is whether you can draw a straight line from wound to misbelief. If the wound doesn't logically produce the belief, he calls it "just melodrama". Read your wound, then your belief. Would a reasonable teenager really have drawn that conclusion?
2. The pressure test. For each field, write one situation in the story that would push hardest on it (the Arc Studio drill above). If you can't think of one, either the trait is decoration or the plot doesn't test it yet.
3. The camera test. Underline every word on the sheet that describes something we could film. Your flaw line should be mostly underlined. "Insecure" fails. "Rewrites other people's emails before they send them" passes.

Common mistakes

• A want that's really a need. "Wants to feel loved" is an inner state. Make it concrete: win back the ex before the wedding, or get the estranged father to come to the recital.
• A need that's just the want with a new label. If getting the want automatically satisfies the need, there's no tension. The want should feed the flaw, at least at first.
• A wound that's only a sad fact. "Her mother died" is a situation. "At 11 she hid the car keys so her mother couldn't drive drunk, and her mother walked instead" is an event, with a belief built into it.
• An opponent with no inner life. If you can't fill in their want and wound, they'll behave like a plot device.
• A biography that never becomes behaviour. A long biography is useful research, but the one-page sheet is what you check scenes against.

What to do with the sheet next

Take the want and the opponent's collision line into a logline. The logline exercise forces the same want into one sentence. Then test one scene: give Teo a scene where his flaw costs him something, and check it with goal, conflict, turn. If the wound keeps coming out in dialogue, rewrite that scene as a silent scene, or let the characters argue about something else while the wound sits underneath. For the full set of assignments this belongs to, see screenwriting exercises film schools assign. For series leads, whose need may take seasons to resolve, see TV writing exercises.

The exercise box above opens a practice project where you can fill in both characters. The app is free, needs no sign-up, and your work stays in your browser.

FAQ

What is the difference between a character's want and need in screenwriting?

The want is the outer goal the character consciously chases, and it drives the plot. The need is the inner change they have to make, usually without knowing it at the start, and it drives the arc. In a strong story the two pull against each other, so going after the want keeps exposing the need.

Can you give me an example of a character wound?

Marlin in Finding Nemo losing Coral and all but one of their eggs to a barracuda is the textbook case, and it produces his overprotectiveness. In Get Out, Chris's guilt over delaying a call for help the night his mother died is revealed under hypnosis and pays off in his final choice. The original example above, a teenager who ran his father's boat onto the rocks, shows the same shape: a specific event, at a specific age, that produced a rule the character still lives by.

Is a ghost the same thing as a wound?

For practical purposes, yes. "Ghost" is John Truby's term for the past event that still haunts the hero, and Fawkes notes that ghost and wound are two names for the same concept.

What's the difference between a wound and a flaw?

The wound is what happened, and the flaw is how the character now behaves because of it. A false belief connects the two. If you can't say what belief the wound created, your flaw is probably an unconnected personality trait.

How long should a character biography be for a screenplay?

It depends on the assignment. The Script Lab's exercise and the Bellevue syllabus ask for one page. The Oregon course outline sets five double-spaced pages. Field's full biography covers the character's life from birth to the start of the story. For a first pass, a one-page sheet is enough, and you can write a longer biography later if the character still feels thin.

Does every character need a wound?

Not necessarily. Fawkes writes that "many" protagonists have a ghost, not all, and that for a positive steadfast protagonist, who understands the story's truth from the beginning, the want and the need are more closely aligned and the character grows by degree. Minor characters rarely need one on the page. Your lead and your main opponent usually benefit from one, because the collision between their wounds is where the story gets its heat.

What are some good character exercises to try?

Start with the one-page sheet above. Then try the Script Lab's one-page "unable to love" biography for wound work, the Arc Studio pressure test for traits, and Cannell's four-strangers-in-a-stalled-elevator scene for voice.