Natalia de la Vega

     A few days ago I talked about how the main and probably only character in my film opening will be called Natalia de la Vega and she will be Puerto Rican, though I don't know if I'm gonna mention a specific nationality. I mentioned before that I used New York Times Best Selling Author J.T. Ellison's article How To Build A Character in order to start the process of developing my character. I'm going to keep using that as a bit of a guide. J.T. Ellison states that the first things she decides are some physical features like eye and hair color (which I have no control over since I chose my actress before I chose my character) but also things like socio-economic status, age and level of education.
     Natalia de la Vega will be a 18 year old Puerto Rican senior in high school from a middle-class family. Since I want that dramatic alone-in-the-world kind of feeling, I need to make her stone suspenseful, dramatic and maybe sad. It was actually my boyfriend who helped me come up with the idea I think I'm going to go through with. I had this feeling that my story should be about a runaway; it's just something that has been in the back of my mind for a little while. But I needed to figure out: why would she run away? So I asked him that exactly, "Why would a teenage girl run away from home?", to which he answered quite simply: "abuse".
     A lightbulb went off in my head and I started thinking. I realized she had to be 18 to run away without being forced back into her house. I think I'm going to have her family be abusive towards her (whatever the specific abusive member it may be) as the reason she ran away, or maybe her being a lesbian in an unaccepting family. Natalia will be a teenage girl, smart, with her whole future lined up, who gives up as she does not have a good home life.
     I decided to consult yet another article about building characters, this time it is called How To Build A Strong Character In Your Writing? A few questions I found useful were "What are they feeling and experiencing?" and "Why are they doing what they are doing?" Why is Natalia running away? Her abusive/unaccepting family. What is she feeling? Loneliness and sadness. She's probably feeling alone and depressed and like she is the only person she could trust, but also powerful an independent if not she wouldn't be able to be running away.
     The author also talks about how it's important to step into the shoes of your character in order to fully understand them. I think that if I was Natalia, I would be scared. I would be terrified and lonely but so determined to make a better life for myself that I would push through it. I need to really keep her character in mind throughout all this in order for my scene to make sense.