When we’re developing characters for a screenplay, it’s very easy to focus on the big moments.
What do they want?
What are they afraid of?
What happened to them in their past?
How will they change over the course of the story?
Those are all important questions, but sometimes we can learn just as much about a character by putting them somewhere completely ordinary. One of my favourite exercises for doing this is The Restaurant Experience. The basic idea is simple: take your character out for a meal and see what they do. That’s it. No murder. No dramatic revelation. No plot twist. Just lunch.
It sounds like a fairly uninteresting exercise, but that’s actually the point.
Why Restaurants?
Everyday situations are full of tiny decisions. We make hundreds of them without really thinking about them. Where do we sit? What do we order? How do we speak to the waiter? Do we make conversation with the person we’re with? Do we check our phone? Do we notice the people around us? What happens when something goes wrong? These decisions can reveal an enormous amount about a person.
A character’s behaviour in a restaurant can tell you about their confidence, upbringing, insecurities, social status and worldview without you ever having to explicitly state any of those things. That’s useful because screenwriting isn’t about telling the audience who your character is. It’s about showing them.
The Exercise
Start by putting your character in a restaurant. It can be anywhere. A greasy spoon café. A fast-food restaurant. A family pub. A trendy independent restaurant. Or an expensive Michelin-starred establishment. The choice is yours.
Your character might be eating alone, meeting a friend, going on a date, celebrating a birthday or simply grabbing lunch between two other activities. The important thing is that, initially at least, nothing dramatic happens. Don’t be tempted to manufacture a plot twist. Instead, observe your character. Imagine that you’re sitting at the next table and watching them. What do they do?
Start Asking Questions
There are lots of questions you can ask while writing the scene. Why have they come here? Is this their favourite restaurant? Was it somebody else’s choice? Are they here because they can’t afford anything else? Or are they trying to impress someone?
Did they choose the restaurant themselves? This can tell you quite a lot. Perhaps they’re very particular about where they eat. Perhaps they don’t care at all. Maybe they deliberately choose somewhere familiar because they hate trying new things.
Are they comfortable in this environment? A character walking into an expensive restaurant might immediately reveal whether they’ve been somewhere like this before. Do they understand the etiquette? Do they know what the different utensils are for? Are they pretending to be more comfortable than they really are? Or do they walk in as though they own the place?
What do they notice first? Is it the food? The décor? The other customers? The prices? The staff? The exits? That last one might be particularly interesting depending on the character you’re writing.
Watch How They Treat People
One of the most revealing parts of this exercise is watching how your character interacts with the waiting staff. Do they say please and thank you? Are they friendly? Are they dismissive? Do they make eye contact? Do they treat the waiter as an equal? Do they become irritated if they’re kept waiting? This can tell us a great deal about someone. A character who is charming and polite to their date but rude to the waiter is revealing something important. Likewise, someone who is nervous and awkward around everyone else but immediately becomes warm and friendly when speaking to the restaurant staff tells us something too. The character doesn’t need to explain any of this. Their behaviour does the work for you.
What Do They Order?
Even the food your character chooses can tell you something. Do they order their usual? Do they try something adventurous? Do they ask lots of questions? Do they choose the cheapest item? Do they order the most expensive thing on the menu? Perhaps they pretend to like something because everyone else is ordering it. Maybe they’re incredibly particular about how their food is prepared. Maybe they don’t care what they eat at all. Again, none of these choices needs to be significant on its own. But collectively, they begin to create a picture of the character. And that’s really what we’re looking for.
What Happens When Something Goes Wrong?
This is where the exercise can become particularly revealing. Imagine that the waiter brings the wrong meal. How does your character respond? Do they politely explain the mistake? Do they get angry? Do they eat it anyway because they don’t want to cause a fuss? Do they blame somebody else? Do they make a joke? Do they refuse to say anything but complain about it later?
There isn’t a correct answer. The important thing is what your character would do. Small inconveniences can be incredibly useful because they force us to make decisions. And decisions reveal character.
Look Beyond Your Character
Don’t forget to observe the world around them. Does your character watch the other diners? Are they interested in what other people are doing? Do they notice somebody arguing at another table? Do they judge the couple sitting nearby? Do they find themselves attracted to someone? Do the other diners notice them?
Perhaps your character is completely absorbed in their own world and doesn’t notice anything. Perhaps they’re constantly observing everyone else. That difference alone can tell you something about their personality.
The Most Important Question
Once you’ve finished writing the scene, read it back. Then ask yourself, did my character surprise me? That’s probably the most important question in the entire exercise. If your character behaved exactly as you expected, that’s fine. But if they did something you hadn’t anticipated, pay attention. You may have discovered something.
Ask yourself:
- Did they behave differently from how I expected?
- What did I learn that wasn’t in my original character notes?
- Did their dialogue sound distinctive?
- What did their behaviour reveal about them?
- Would another character have behaved differently in the same situation?
That last question is particularly useful. Imagine putting five different characters in exactly the same restaurant. They should all have different experiences. The restaurant hasn’t changed. They have.
Try Changing the Context
Once you’ve written the scene, try writing it again. But change just one thing. Perhaps your character was eating alone in the first version, but now they’re on a first date. Or perhaps they’re meeting someone they absolutely hate. Maybe they’re celebrating a promotion. Maybe they’ve just been fired. Maybe they’re waiting for somebody who is late. Or perhaps they’re hiding in the restaurant after committing a crime.
The physical environment hasn’t changed. But the character has. Suddenly, all those little decisions start to look different. They might order differently. They might speak differently to the staff. They might notice different things. They might become more self-conscious. They might be much more aggressive. They might even behave in ways that contradict what we previously thought we knew about them. That’s useful. We all behave differently depending on who we’re with and what we’re experiencing, and our characters should be no different.
Go Back Six Months Later
There’s another variation that can be particularly useful if you’re developing a character arc. Put your character in the same restaurant six months later. Don’t change the restaurant. Change the character’s circumstances
What has happened during those six months? Have they fallen in love? Lost somebody? Changed careers? Made a new friend? Betrayed someone? Overcome one of their fears? Become more confident? Become less confident?
Now watch how those changes affect their behaviour. Perhaps they order something completely different. Perhaps they sit somewhere else. Perhaps they’re now comfortable in an environment that previously made them nervous. Or perhaps the restaurant has become associated with something painful.
This can be a great way of discovering potential character arcs for your screenplay. Rather than deciding in advance that a character is going to “become more confident”, you can explore what that change actually looks like.
Small Details Make Real Characters
One of the biggest challenges in screenwriting is making fictional characters feel like real people. Big dramatic moments are important, but real people are defined by the small things they do every day. How they order coffee. How they react when somebody cuts in front of them. Whether they return a shopping trolley. How they speak to strangers. What they eat. What annoys them. What makes them laugh. Whether they apologise when they’re wrong. These seemingly insignificant details accumulate. Eventually, they create someone who feels like a person rather than a collection of plot functions.
That’s why I like the Restaurant Experience exercise. It takes the pressure off. You don’t have to worry about advancing the plot. You don’t have to create a dramatic confrontation. You just have to spend some time with your character. Watch them. Listen to them. See what they do when nobody is asking them to save the world. Because sometimes that’s where you discover who they really are. And once you know who your characters are, writing the screenplay becomes a lot easier.
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