Question on Characters

[mbarrett]

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I'll give it a whirl anyway.

I'm working on a screenplay right now where the Main Character gets killed and then comes back to life in another person body. (I know strange stuff, but hey what can you do.)

My question is - how do I write the main character in the scenes? As himself or the character he has taken over? Do I also use his voice as speaking or the character he took over.

Right now I have it up in the air. I have him speaking the dialogue as himself, but all action lines are done with the other character.

Hope this is not too confusing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[clayjs]

Mbarrett

I don't have an answer for you, but it might be helpful to look at other scripts that deal with a similar problem. Face/Off, The Change-Up, and Freaky Friday come to mind. As of right now, none of the three is on mypdfscripts.com, but its a trope that gets used now and then, so you can probably find something.

If I were to pull a solution out of the air, I think I'd probably just use a slash notation:

[JONES/SMITH
[
[Aw, Crap. Now I have somebody else's hangover...

But, that's just me.

Clay

[mbarrett]

Hi Clay,
That makes sense. Thanks. I appreciate it.
Mark

[Sean Z P Harris]

Hey Mark,

Reminds me (concept-wise) of the 80s Steve Martin All of Me.

Although probably not the same genre, you could watch it to see how the writer/director managed it in that flick.

[mbarrett]

Hi Sean,
I'll look that one up when I get a chance. Thank you.
Mark

[zzf]

A really good thing I read in Paul Gulino's "The Sequence Approach," was a little aside about how a character starts out with a WANT, a superficial desire, and after the midpoint, he transforms and then focuses on his NEED. I am not articulating it as well as I should, and I will come back with the exact quote from the book when I can.