I typed up brief character bios with every character's motivation clearly stated. I printed the bios out, then taped them to the shelf above my computer, so as I wrote I could look up at every moment and remember why each person was there. It seems so simple, but it helped me out a lot. I'd been having trouble in the development stage of this script in figuring out exactly what my arcs were, but being able to see it clearly articulated exactly what everybody wanted - that helped me stay on target during the writing phase.
My story was about soldiers in combat situations, so I was reading this book about Blackwater as part of my research, and I came upon a story about a battle on a rooftop in Iraq. One of the soldiers said that after the battle they felt "Terrified but victorious," which is just a fantastic way to describe all the emotions a soldier must be feeling after a tense combat situation. I wrote that in big permanent marker at the bottom of my bio sheet: TERRIFIED BUT VICTORIOUS. So every time I had a fight scene, I remembered: terrified but victorious. It was right there on the sheet above my head.
As I wrote, I found myself not going back to my outline so much since I remembered my plot well, but instead, going back to that bio page over and over. I kept looking at it to remind me about what's going on in everybody's head.
So as I began to embark on my new script this morning, I printed out my outline and put it on my little paper holder thingee, and then I typed up my character bios and taped them to the shelf above my head. It's my new thing. I highly recommend it.
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