It's very noticeable to me, but a lot of movies will end a scene jarringly with a secondary character asking a question, doing something of notice, or even being introduced then cutting away fast before they can ever really do anything. It's that awkwardness that sticks with the audience that helps them to remember.  

Quoted from CameronD It's very noticeable to me, but a lot of movies will end a scene jarringly with a secondary character asking a question, doing something of notice, or even being introduced then cutting away fast before they can ever really do anything. It's that awkwardness that sticks with the audience that helps them to remember.

Thanks. that gave me an idea how to make a secondary character stand out a bit from the tertiary characters, while also shortening her intro scene by a couple lines of dialogue (she asked the protagonist a question, but now that I look at it the answer doesn't really move the story forward).

I entered this script into a couple contests with coverage service, mostly to gauge if the coverage is worth the money, and I do agree that areas of overlap in their critiques need to be addressed.

One of those overlaps was having too many named characters, which goes right back to my concern about readers overweighting their importance.

Quoted Text One of the biggest areas to work on in the script comes with character. As is the case with the narrative, the script introduces so many different contestants into the pages that they essentially blend together and become difficult to differentiate. It may be smarter to just focus on fewer characters here, but if the script wishes to mention this many characters than the pages need to find a way to imbue them with some distinct personalities. A good example of this comes with the bandits Zurina and Itzel, and their penchant for stealing adds some fun personality to the pages. However, this comes too infrequently to really make an impact, and it ultimately prevents the script from having an opportunity to develop its more important characters.

Quoted Text I think my biggest concern for you here is that there are way too many characters in this script. The ensemble cast, speaking only about named characters (meaning proper names vs. functional names like “Guard #1”) easily eclipses 30 named characters. ... Also, once Holly enters the contest, the script rapid-fire introduces a ton of contestants, who are all named. There’s the previously introduced Aimee, and then new characters Sandra (p27), Yvonne Shola (p28), Jade (p29), Gwyneth and Ursa (p29), Rhonda (p30), Edith and Dorinda (p30), Becky and Lavender (p32), Olivia, Cybil, and Kaitlin (p34), Itzel and Zurina (p36), Tara (p38), Qiana and Nichole (p39), AND Valerie and Whitley (p40). That’s 20 new characters introduced in 12 pages. It’s asking a lot of the reading audience to keep straight all these new players, who are quickly introduced and then thrown into the mix. It becomes a bit of a “traffic jam” of characters.

The problems is that referring to characters by first name seems to flag them as important, they don't even have last names because they're peasants, and very brief descriptions were not enough to clarify their minor roles for either reader. This annoys me a bit since military dramas seem to get away with giving names to a zillion characters, many of whom don't even survive their intro scenes.

I'd been using a heuristic that if someone had lines in two or more scenes, that person should have a name, and that name should be mentioned (which often meant putting them in the "traffic jam" of contestant intros). For anyone who kept notes while reading the full script, there are 23 named contestants and each one starts with a different letter of the alphabet (Aimee, Becky, Cybil, Dorinda, Edith, Flora, Gwyneth, Holly, Itzel, Jade, Kaitlin, Lavender, Nichole, Olivia, Qiana, Rhonda, Sandra, Tara, Ursa, Valerie, Whitley, Yvonne, Zurina). There never was an "X;" I'd demoted the "I," "M," "P" and "Z" in a previous round of editing; and introduced new characters into the "I" and "Z" slots.

I suppose I need to demote the tertiary characters to non-name labels, remove their name mentions, and see if I can move some of their lines to others. This will free up at least a couple pages that can be spent on developing the secondary characters.

(Edit: The not-yet-posted draft now has only 12 contestants with names.)

The top part of this page might help:

http://screenreads.com/formatting/direction/capitalization-introducing_characters.html

Quoted from tjalex The top part of this page might help: http://screenreads.com/formatting/direction/capitalization-introducing_characters.html

Thanks. That looks like sound advice (though I've heard contradictory advice on capping groups upon introduction), though my problem is a little different.

Since starting this thread I found out that the term "tertiary character" has an actual technical meaning... something like BANK TELLER or IRATE DRIVER where the writer basically leaves characterization up to the director and casting team. On the other hand, the writer has some distinct ideas on how a secondary character's part should be acted and spoken.

What I wanted was something between a secondary character and a tertiary character. One of them has a tertiary-sounding name (HERALD) and the remainder had first names (KAITLIN, SANDRA, ZURINA, etc.). These "2.5-ary" characters had tidbits of characterization (the Herald is a pompous ass, Kaitlin is a stickler for rules of etiquette, Sandra limps due to a work-related injury, Zurina has been raised a thief) but anything beyond that scope was more or less up for grabs.

In particular, I wanted each fictional country to have about 20% minorities without specifying every last character's ethnicity. That can come later when and if it ever gets to the point of casting, and these "2.5-ary" characters would be a nice place to handle that. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I thought that "KAITLIN" would look better on an actor's CV than "TENSE YOUNG WOMAN". There's also the fact that this film would work well as animation, which allows quite a bit of flexibility in casting (some can play several minor roles).

Unfortunately, without some sure-fire way to telegraph a named character's minor importance, I'm forced to demote a lot of these characters for the sake of not making readers' heads explode.

Don't worry, I kept a copy of the script with everyone's name, and I could put them back if this ever progressed to a shooting script