Kind of a green question if will, but what's the protocol when you're introducing characters that are unidentified/unnamed earlier, which of course become identified properly later on.
ie. two men watching in car from a distance (first time they appear in the screenplay), later on in the story they become developed characters.
When do cap them, and what are the rules about that?
thanks,
Unless there's some particular reason not to identify characters by name upon their first appearance, you should generally identify them by name. The fact that they may not figure prominently in events for awhile -- or that the audience won't get to know their names doesn't mean that you shouldn't give them a name, again, unless there's some particular reason why they're supposed to remain unidentified for story purposes.
In that case, you want to identify them initially in some more distinctive way that FIRST MAN or MAN -- something like ANGRY MAN or THIN BLOND WOMAN.
Then, when you make the revelation, personally, I think you need to make the point clearly.
Somebody says, "Come in, Joanne." and the Thin Blond Woman that we saw earlier in the crowd comes in through the door.
Regarding the "show don't tell" objection -- it's important to understand that it's possible to do all sorts of things on the screen for which there is no precise equivalent on the page. One can simply track along a crowd full of people and then come to a stop and hold the image on a single person in the crowd for a few seconds longer than normal -- so that one person in the crowd stands out. You're not zooming in or cutting to a close shot or necessarily doing anything all that terribly explicit, but it's possible in quite subtle ways to impress the "presence" of somebody on the minds of the audience -- and then, much later, to recall that particular person to the minds of the audience.
You're still "showing" -- not telling. But when you have to do that on the page, there isn't anything that's quite the equivalent. You have to specifically identify the critical details. If there's a blond in the crowd that needs to be taken note of, though she doesn't particularly draw attention to herself at the time -- you have to sort of say as much, in those words, and then leave it to the director to figure out how to convey that.
Sometimes what you want to do on screen is to introduce something early, have people forget about it -- and then what the "something" reappears later -- they see it and remember it.
But when you're reading, you don't have the experience of a person or a thing stepping into your point of view so you suddenly see it and remember it from earlier in the movie.
If its a distinctive enough something, maybe you can simply describe it and rely on its distinctiveness for the reader to make the connection.
But these things aren't always inherently distinctive.
For instance, we instantly recognize faces -- so if we've seen someone from earlier in the movie and that person shows up later on, there's a good chance that we're going to remember who that person is.
But unless we're talking about somebody with a great big scar or a mole or something like that -- that's not going to fly on the page.
So sometimes you sort of have "say it" -- this "somebody" shows up -- and we know who it is, because he was glimpsed earlier in the movie.
It's not so much "telling" as approximating the experience that a viewer would hopefully have when watching the movie.
NMS
