Anyone who has taken any sort of course or workshop in
creative writing will know there are a number of “rules” when it comes to the
excretion of dialogue. As one of the three Ds of Scriptwriting (Description,
Dialogue, Despair), the manner in which each creative conduit channels
conversation can dramatically vary. While every seasoned writer will tell you
that dialogue furthers plot, reveals character, complements tone, makes us
laugh, cry or become amateur film critics, here are a number of weird little
tips I’ve put together, just to add a little bit of hot sauce to your
character’s enchilada.
1) (Almost) Never
Start A Sentence With “I”
Believe it or not, one of the most used words (or, more specifically,
letter pretending to be a word) in the English language is actually the root of
many dialogue problems people encounter. Why? Because it’s a shortcut to quick
exposition or “telling” rather than “showing” – something I’ve been told is
very important when it comes to screenwriting, but, ironically, have never
implicitly been shown. Breaking it down from a “fun” grammar point of view, “I”
is mostly followed by a verb (“I ate”, “I want”, “I extradited”, etc.), which
immediately sets your dialogue on a path towards Expositionville, USA or
Borington, UK.
Of course, this
isn’t a universal rule. Perhaps you have a vain, self-centred character who
filters their experience of the world through their own self-admitted
awesomeness. Perhaps it’s the crux of a punchline in a comedic exchange (e.g.
“Nothing good ever came from Borington, UK”, “I was born in Borington, UK”). Perhaps
you just don’t give a hoot. I just think that it pays to think of an
alternative way to express your character’s opinions / thoughts / recollections that doesn’t rely on starting a sentence like I just did. Frank and Nancy said
it best when they sang “and then I go and spoil it all by saying something
stupid like ‘I extradited you’”.
2) Do Plot Quickly,
Do Character Slowly
A few years back, I wrote a time travel TV pilot. Despite
still having an unhealthy obsession over the continuing story to this day, I
hit a writing block when I reached the most important scene – introducing the
time machine, and, as a result, the entire concept of the show. Simultaneously,
the episode’s main character now finds himself with the opportunity to
potentially bring his dead daughter back to life. Naturally, the laughs in the
scene came thick and fast. However, once the fix hit me recently, it seemed
super obvious...
Done! If you get the plot points out the way quickly, maybe
even disguising them within single visuals or character interactions, the
audience has way more time to get to know and start caring for the actual
people in your story. Any plot point that has to be delivered by dialogue
because it’s too conceptual to show visually (e.g. “We have a time machine.”)
needs to boiled down to its simplest form. If you spend any longer than the
bare minimum saying something, then it becomes exposition. Not to say that “we
have a time machine” isn’t exposition – it’s just far more forgivable and blunt
enough to almost be comedic in its delivery.
3) Different
Characters Refer To Things / People Differently
This one may seem like a no-brainer or an obvious rule or
child’s play or a total pushover, but, as I’ve just proved, there can be loads
of different ways to articulate the same thing. A fun exercise (with the
emphasis on “exercise”) that I like to do is to make a massive map of all of my
characters in my story and draw lines between them. After showing this to major
studios, the best they could do was stick it on their kitchen fridge and pat me
on the head, so I realised there needed to be a little more to it. Along those
connections between each and every character, you write how they refer to one
another, whether it be their name, a shortening, a nickname, a recurring
insult, etc. Suddenly, you’re saying so much more about both people involved.
Naturally, you want some level of consistency here and
there. There’s no point in having a character called John and only ever calling
him Johnny, John-O, J-Dog, the J-Man, J-Nizzle and Yoghurt-Nose. In the early
stages of your story, try and stick to actual names so the audience gets to
know who is who. After that, you can start to really play around once the
relationships begin to develop between characters. The same goes for locations
and important props / MacGuffins within the story world. Also, if you’re going
to name a character, be sure that they are
actually referred to by that name ideally within the first 10 pages of
their debut. No sense in being like, “Oh yeah, this is Bartholomew” after 45
minutes, unless you want it to feel like one of those awkward networking dinner
parties where everyone mumbles their own name.
4) Deliberately Write
Too Much Dialogue
Sacrilege! Heathen! Cast the one who spake against “Show,
Don’t Tell” into the Firey Exposition Pits from when they came! Relax, my dear
dialogue zealot friend. Whilst I wholeheartedly agree that film is a visual
medium, in that I use my eyes to watch it, at the same time, there’s a tangible
suspension of disbelief required when characters who really should be talking
to each other just... aren’t. Here’s
a fact about the real world – people talk a lot. Granted I might not go
spouting off my central heating problems to every stranger on the bus who’ll
listen, but the majority of time I spend with people I know, we’re talking
about stuff and not doing a whole lot else.
If you’re trying to make the next Drive, then, by all means, long staring silences are fine, but if
you strive for some semblance of realism, then absolutely go nuts with
dialogue. Write it how you would have a normal conversation, with tangents,
hesitations, overlaps, overly-long descriptions and, most importantly, a
natural flow. That is when you begin
to edit. Setting yourself the pre-emptive parameters of sticking mostly to
visuals before you undertake a script can skew the flow of conversation, as
characters only converse in robotic, monosyllabic clauses. By having the
natural flow already in place, over-writing before neatening the edges becomes like
the act of trimming a hedge, rather than somehow building one
from the ground up.
James Cottle, after
studying Scriptwriting for 4 years, is now an embittered real life freelance
writer, and seeks to unlearn everything he knows. But he needs your help...
Follow him on Twitter @Jxmxsc and share this blog to help spread his anarchic
plight for reform amongst the writing masses.
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