Screen Time

**Screen Time** is a term used to describe a character's appearance and actions within a story. It is important factor to determine how admirable or how heinous a character can be. A character's screen time can be divided into two categorizations: **On-Screen** and **Off-Screen**. On-Screen actions show a character's actions as they appear in the media that they are in while Off-Screen actions are often told via dialogue to describe a character's actions that did not happen on-screen.

The action of a character is determined through their actions on-screen and off-screen and used to determine whether the character is a hero, villain, or neutral character in addition to how admirable or heinous a character is.

## On-Screen Actions

A character's actions on-screen is important to determine how admirable or how heinous a character is. It is through a character's on-screen actions that it is important to the plot and an important part of the character's characterization within the story. A character's actions on screen also have important impact on the tone of the story and can have an impact on other characters within the story.

In addition, quick shots that show snippets of a character's actions would constitute being on-screen and can be important towards determining the admirable or heinous acts of a character.

## Off-Screen Actions

A character's off-screen actions is important factor to a character's characterization. However, the actions of a character and its impact to the plot is what is important to determine the character's heinousness or admirableness within the story they appear in.

Off-screen actions are often either told through dialogue or the story narration or shown through context clues or character's actions on screen.

### Acts that are considered

Off-screen actions that are relevant are the ones that are directly important to the actions of the character on-screen.

* **Patterned behavior / Modus Operandi**: A character's patterned behavior or modus operandi that goes hand-in-hand with a character's action on-screen are important factors that is considered even if the actions are off-screened. If the patterned behavior and actions are shown in-part or in-whole through a specific episode, chapter, arc that a character appears in, then their off-screen actions is not irrelevant detail to the plot.
* **Meaningful to build-up character background**: Not all actions to a character can be shown on screen. Some information and details can be shown off-screen that goes along with building up the character. Information told about a character is important as long as it serves the purpose to explain the character's actions on-screen and add to the character's characterization.
* **Aftermath of an incident**: Shots or scenes that shows the result of an action on the setting that was committed off-screen would be important off-screen factor that is relevant characterization to the character and important impact on the plot.

### Acts that are not considered

Often times, a character's off-screen actions are not relevant information for a character to be considered: Pure Good (Rank 1 +), Near Pure Good (Rank 2 +), Inconsistently Admirable (Rank 3 +), Pure Evil (Rank 1 -), Near Pure Evil (Rank 2 -), or Inconsistently Heinous (Rank 3 -).

Superfluous details about a character that have no importance to the plot and is not directly connected to a character's actions on-screen would be factored out of a character meeting the criteria for any of the aforementioned moral concepts. Superfluous off-screen actions may be important to characterizing the character but would also be considered unimportant factor if it does not have any tangible impact on the setting.