Screenwriting : Creating isolated characters by Lars T. Moen

First thought is, 'Can they leave the confined universe in their minds?'. Even if they have never seen the outside world it might be interesting for the audience to see what a 'Virgin' mind produces.

Might be interesting, but it kind of goes against the story I have in mind. I'm trying to find examples of other films or plays or stories like it, but can't really find much. I mean: Picture two guys who have lived in say... A space station or a fallout shelter their entire lives. All they know are each other, and whatever they have floating around that other people have left behind there. Guess I'll just have to sit down and write it out.

A movie called 'Mindwalk' was four five people-ish, but they were all at this one house, just trying to figure out life. It might have some elements you are looking for. That's a tough genre to flush out, but keep kicking!

Tarzan, Nell, Moon, then there is the real life stuff like an article about a group of people who lived in an underground bunker for more than 15 years I believe in Russia. It was some cult I believe where there were children born there that had never seen anything besides what was around them and never seen the sun before. Just off the top of my head.

Thanks Rachel.

... never seen the sun... now that in itself is a scary thought... :)

Maybe this will help. I try to figure out the personalities of the characters and that helps in working out how they will behave. Look up The 9 Enneagram Types of personalities and you can see how they break down.

There is also the SDI Interperative guide. I was introduced to it as a part of the Briggs-Meyer's personality test used where I work to help people learn how to work together to achieve common goals, when peoples personalities often add as much conflict to that process as opportunity to create something new and completely unexpected. You can find out more about SDI by looking at www.personalstrenghts.com They have a set of questions you ask yourself, and then the responses are plotted as an arrow on a tri-color (red/blue/green) triangular chart. Red is: aggressive/leading. Blue is:altruistic/nurturing. Green is: analytic/autonomizing. The answers to the question are plotted as an arrow (from one area of the chart to another) that describes where a person generally resides in the triangular graph under "no stress", then goes to the point where the person tends (indicated from the responses on the questionaire) to go when in conflict. The point being - people (and characters) are not static. If you look for a single way to describe your character, they will be monotone and boring to watch or listen to. And it is likely that they will also have a weak character arch. So, if you use a questionaire like the one in SDI to have your characters define who "they" are by having your characters answer the questions, then you can see how your character would realisticlly react given the circumstances in your story. You can accomplish this by getting the resources for the SDI program and then use the answers to chart your characters. If you want a particular kind of conflict, then you can see what personality traits will best bring out the meta-story - i.e., the point you want to make with your story in the first place. Since the tringle is broken into the 3-basic personality dynamics, (+ the 4th being someone almost exactly in the middle), the basic number of directions each of them can go in stress/conflict is 4. That gives 16 different character archs and an almost infinted number of personality types. Intereseting stuff... Lots of food for thought. Enjoy.

Dave your link is incorrect so here is the corrected one. http://www.personalstrengths.com/

http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/enneagram.htm

Thank you Michael. Corrected.

Thank you so much for all these links. Very helpful!

Watch the opening of "Twins" (Schwartznegger, DiVito)