Should Ethnicity & Race be Included in Screenplay Character Descriptions?
32Should Ethnicity & Race be Included in Screenplay Character Descriptions?
When should screenwriters include ethnicity and race in their screenplay character descriptions? In this short video, I'll give you my take on how to be sensitive to ethnicity and race considerations when writing your screenplay.
FULL VIDEO:
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TRANSCRIPT:
I have several thoughts about including ethnicity and race in a character description in a script:
On one hand, if ethnicity or race doesn’t impact the story at all, then why include it? There’s a good argument to be made that if ethnicity or race doesn’t matter, then those characters don’t need to be labeled.
On the other hand, if the character’s ethnicity or race is imperative to a deeper understanding of the character, then it definitely SHOULD be included.
And finally, as Justin is pointing out here: If you set the expectation with the person reading the script that most of the characters’ ethnicities and races are important, then not including them may cause the reader to pause and wonder if you–the screenwriter–made a mistake.
In other words, you keep indicating to me that the ethnicities and races of these characters are very important–and in our script, they are–and if that’s true, then any time you leave them out, it’s confusing.
Justin’s feedback was: “I would include it for all the primary characters. Because if it’s not included, based on how important it is for many of these characters, the reader could get frustrated when it’s not included for specific characters.”
I totally agree with Justin on that, so part of my revisions to The Harlequin will be including ethnicity and race for all the primary characters.
As a side note, most of my recent screenplays have included very diverse characters. To me, that’s not a political statement or me trying to prove I’m somehow “woke.” Really it’s just me trying to put really interesting characters into the story in ways that create conflict and drama.