Exposition

(SPOILERS: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Matrix)

I’ve been talking about dialogue lately, and now I’d like to discuss one particularly troublesome type of dialogue: Exposition. Exposition is the stuff the audience needs to know to understand the story but isn’t particularly interested in (and it’s usually but not always delivered in dialogue).

Because the audience isn’t interested in exposition it is, by definition, boring. Your job as writer is to find ways to make it palatable. Here are some techniques I use.

Timing

When you deliver your exposition is important. Never, ever start your script with exposition. Readers will toss it aside before they even get to the meat of the story. Instead, place the information somewhere the audience will appreciate it.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan) has a very expositional scene in Act I. Two FBI agents tell Indiana Jones and his boss about the clues they’ve uncovered about the Nazi’s search for the Ark, and then Indy explains the Ark’s history and a bit about the Staff of Ra. If we opened with this scene it would be a snooze-fest in the theater. Instead, it comes soon after a long sequence of rip-roaring action. At that point the audience could use a little break. So one way to handle exposition is to place it after a tense, exciting scene when the audience is happy to take a few moments to catch their breath.

The Matrix (written by Andy & Larry Wachowski) demonstrates another way to time exposition for maximum effect. We don’t get the explanation of what the Matrix is and the history of how the machines have taken over the world until Act II. Prior to this we’ve seen all kinds of weird things – people with super powers, Neo getting his mouth sewn shut and a pill which draws Neo into a strange world. By Act II we’re desperate for somebody to explain what’s going on and we happily sit through Morpheus’s lecture. If you make the audience want to know the expository information it won’t seem boring.

Who’s the expositor?

Setting up a scenario to deliver the exposition can also be a challenge. One rule of thumb is you want to avoid having your leads deliver exposition. Movie stars don’t want to say the boring stuff!

It’s become a cliché to have a character in a movie whose sole purpose is exposition. This is the role the characters of Q and M play in the James Bond movies. Frequently there’s a character whose job it is to brief our hero as to what’s going on, but if you’re going to do this, you want to make this character interesting in some way.

Another trick is to give the main character a buddy. This gives our hero someone to talk to which makes it a lot easier to get information out. You can also stick ignorant characters in the scene that need an explanation. Think of the FBI agents in the Raiders scene. Indy and his boss know all about the history of the Ark but the FBI agents don’t so there’s a reason for the exposition to come out.

(Indy even makes a joke about their ignorance when he says, “didn’t you guys ever go to Sunday school?” That’s another useful trick – if you’re worried something might seem a little unbelievable, have a character comment on how unlikely it is. Then, as long as it’s plausible, we accept it. In this case Kasdan might have been worried that the audience would think the FBI agents are unbelievably uninformed so he has Indy tease them about it.)

Reveal in conflict

One of the most painful kinds of expository dialogue is when characters tell each other things they already know. For example, imagine a husband saying to his wife, “I’m tired. Let’s go back to the mansion we’ve been living in for the last three years ever since you won the lottery with a ticket you bought with your coworkers.” In real life that husband would simply say, “I’m tired. Let’s go home.”

As I’ve said, you can get around this by putting in an ignorant character that needs to know the information. Or, you can often solve it by adding conflict to the scene. If characters are arguing, they will bring up things everyone knows to support their point. Consider the introduction of Joe and Jerry in Some Like It Hot (story by R. Thoeren and M. Logan, screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond). They’re debating what to do with their impending paychecks which allows Joe to point out that they owe money to a whole bunch of people – something he would never bring up otherwise because Jerry’s well aware of it.

Let’s look at another expository scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here’s a snippet of dialogue from when Indy goes to see Marion in Tibet.

MARION: You son-of-a-bitch! You know what you did to me, to my life?

INDY: I never meant to hurt you.

MARION: I was a child!

INDY: You knew what you were doing.

MARION: I was in love. It was wrong. You knew it.

INDY: Look, I did what I did. I don't expect you to be happy about it.

What we’re getting here is the back story of these two characters’ relationship. It’s revealed in conflict because otherwise they’d have no good reason to bring it up. Notice also how cleverly the dialogue is done. They’re speaking in shorthand since they both know what they’re talking about. They don’t spell out everything in detail, but there’s enough there for us to get the gist of what happened without it being too on-the-nose. The exposition is all in the subtext (see my last couple posts for more on subtext!)

Every script requires exposition. The key is to use these techniques to make it more palatable to the audience.

Dialogue Study: Almost Famous

(SPOILERS: Almost Famous)

Last time I discussed subtext and on-the-nose dialogue. Let’s study an example from a scene from Almost Famous (written by Cameron Crowe). If you haven’t seen it – stop reading and go rent it! It’s a great movie. In case it’s been a while since you’ve seen it let me recap what’s going on leading into the scene.

William is a high school senior and aspiring rock journalist who has gotten his first big assignment to cover the band Stillwater on tour. Penny is a groupie (she says band-aid) who is in a relationship with Stillwater’s lead guitarist, Russell. The band is about to head to New York where Russell’s wife is, and William has witnessed Russell arranging to send Penny with another band for the time being. In this scene Penny is trying to find out what William knows. Here’s the dialogue as it is in the movie:

PENNY: I can read you. I know what you're thinking.

WILLIAM: What's that?

P: You're worried about me and Russell.

W: Yeah, I gotta work on that.

P: You're so sweet. God, if there was more of you in him.

W: Don't tell me this stuff. I wanna like him.

P: Did you miss your test or something?

W: You have no idea.

P: Look, I know I'm not on the plane. I'm not going on some other band's bus. I could go with the Stillwater road crew but that would be pathetic... and the girls are all going with Humble Pie. So, if you could find out from Russell--Forget it. I'm flying to New York myself. I've got a bunch of partial tickets. I know his ex-wife... current-girlfriend thing is gonna be there.

W: I'm not sure that's a good idea.

P: What are you saying? Did Russell say something?

W: I don't know anything.

P: Well, I know he wants me there.

W: Wake up! Don't go to New York.

P: Why are you yelling at me?

W: I thought we were going to Morocco. There is no Morocco. There's never been a Morocco. There's not even a Penny Lane. I don't even know your real name.

P: If I ever met a man in the real world who looked at me the way you just looked at me--

W: When and where does this "real world" occur? I mean, I am really confused here. All these rules and all these sayings and nicknames.

P: Honey, you're too sweet for rock and roll.

W: Sweet? Where do you get off? Where do you get sweet? I am dark and mysterious and pissed off! And I could be very dangerous to all of you. I am not sweet! And you should know that about me. I am the Enemy!

P: Look, you should be happy for me. You don't know what he says to me in private. Maybe it is love, as much as it can be for somebody--

W: Who sold you to Humble Pie for 50 bucks and a case of beer? I was there. I was there! Oh, God. I'm sorry.

P: What kind of beer?

It’s Penny’s scene and her objective (her want) is to find out what William knows. That’s what’s driving the scene. William’s objective is to keep her from going to New York which he knows would be a disaster. If we tried to write the scene with only that information, we might write some bad, on-the-nose dialogue such as:

PENNY: Has Russell said anything about me coming to New York?

WILLIAM: He doesn’t want you to go.

P: Are you sure? I know his wife is going to be there but I know Russell really loves me.

W: I don't think you should go.

P: Yeah, but I can't trust you. You're kind of naive.

W: I'm not as naive as you think I am.

P: So how do you know he doesn't want me to go?

W: He traded you to Humble Pie for 50 bucks and a case of beer.

P: That bastard!

But Cameron Crowe adds in secondary objectives for each character that are obstacles for their main objectives and force them to approach their goals obliquely.

In Penny’s case her identity is all about being an unflappable rock goddess. She wants information, but she doesn’t want to admit that William might know something she doesn’t and she doesn’t want to show vulnerability.

William on the other hand has a crush on Penny. He doesn’t want her to go to New York, but he also doesn’t want to hurt her. So he’s trying to convince her without revealing what Russell did.

Here’s the actual dialogue again with comments from me in italics. I’ve also included the “intentions” that I would assign to many of the lines.

PENNY: I can read you. I know what you're thinking.

WILLIAM: What's that?

P: You're worried about me and Russell.

(Intention: To get him to talk about it. Penny’s trying to get William to volunteer information without having to ask any questions by making it his problem.)

W: Yeah, I gotta work on that.

(Intention: To avoid the topic)

P: You're so sweet. God, if there was more of you in him.

(Intention: To butter him up.)

W: Don't tell me this stuff. I wanna like him.

(Intention: To put down Russell.)

P: Did you miss your test or something?

(Intention: To blame him. Penny tries to attribute his mood to something besides Russell.)

W: You have no idea.

P: Look, I know I'm not on the plane. I'm not going on some other band's bus. I could go with the Stillwater road crew but that would be pathetic... and the girls are all going with Humble Pie. So, if you could find out from Russell—

(She starts out trying to prove she really knows what’s going on but then she slips and reveals her vulnerability – and stops herself when she realizes that’s what she’s done.)

P: Forget it. I'm flying to New York myself. I've got a bunch of partial tickets. I know his ex-wife... current-girlfriend thing is gonna be there.

(Intention: To end it. Penny’s trying to regain her illusion of control of the situation.)

W: I'm not sure that's a good idea.

(Intention: To warn her.)

P: What are you saying? Did Russell say something?

W: I don't know anything.

(Intention: To escape.)

P: Well, I know he wants me there.

(Intention: To prove it.)

W: Wake up! Don't go to New York.

(Intention: To warn her.)

P: Why are you yelling at me?

(Intention: To blame him.)

W: I thought we were going to Morocco. There is no Morocco. There's never been a Morocco. There's not even a Penny Lane. I don't even know your real name.

(Intention: To attack. Here William starts challenging the fantasy world Penny constantly constructs for herself which he blames for her inability to see how Russell uses her.)

P: If I ever met a man in the real world who looked at me the way you just looked at me—

(Penny is defending her fantasy world.)

W: When and where does this “real world” occur? I mean, I am really confused here. All these rules and all these sayings and nicknames.

P: Honey, you're too sweet for rock and roll.

(Intention: To dismiss him. Penny belittles his wisdom because she’s afraid of what he might tell her.)

W: Sweet? Where do you get off? Where do you get sweet? I am dark and mysterious and pissed off! And I could be very dangerous to all of you. I am not sweet! And you should know that about me. I am the Enemy!

(Intention: To demand respect. He wants her to trust his judgment of the situation.)

P: Look, you should be happy for me. You don't know what he says to me in private. Maybe it is love, as much as it can be for somebody—

(Intention: To prove Russell loves her. Penny is trying to convince William he’s wrong about Russell. And subconsciously she’s trying to convince herself. If William believes it, she can, too.)

W: Who sold you to Humble Pie for 50 bucks and a case of beer? I was there. I was there! Oh, God. I'm sorry.

(Intention: To prove it. William finally snaps and reveals his secret. When he sees how much it hurts her he immediately feels bad.)

P: What kind of beer?

(Intention: To make light of it. Penny doesn’t want to admit she’s hurt.)

The text of the scene starts out about New York travel plans and then veers into an argument about Penny’s tall tales and William’s innocence. But the subtext is all about Penny’s romantic relationships with Russell and William. To get that kind of layered dialogue you need rich, complex characters. Which Cameron Crowe has created in spades!

Dialogue

I just returned from giving a screenwriting seminar in Singapore with two fellow writers where we unfortunately ran out of time before we were able to delve into the topic of dialogue as deeply as I would have liked. So, though I hinted that I was going to cover polishing next, I’m going to put that off for a bit.

Writing good dialogue is difficult. Screenplay dialogue must sound natural, but it is not true-to-life. As an experiment sometime try recording an actual conversation and then transcribing it. Real life dialogue contains lots of hemming and hawing, false starts, half finished thoughts, clichés, digressions and repetition, which you mostly want to avoid in a screenplay. Movie dialogue is a kind of heightened reality where people speak cleverly and succinctly, though not formally.

You should think about dialogue as action. When a character says something they are trying to accomplish a goal. Actors call this a line’s intention. Intentions are phrased as active “to” verbs.

Consider the line of dialogue: “Well that’s a nice shirt.” Imagine how the character would deliver it with the intention “to seduce.” Now imagine how it would sound with the intention “to wound.” How about “to encourage” or “to dismiss”?

The difference between what a line says and its intention is called subtext. Subtext is what’s going on in the scene beneath the dialogue. When dialogue says what a character is thinking it's called on-the-nose. You want to avoid that. “I’m really angry that you came home late” is on-the-nose dialogue.

In real life people rarely say what they actually mean. The same thing should be true for your characters. Many scripts build to an emotional moment late in the script where the character finally reveals how they feel in a big confrontation. But up until that point they’ve kept their feelings hidden.

Actors use the term business to refer to something the character is doing in a scene that is not the action of the scene – for example, a mother chopping up a carrot while discussing colleges with her son. You can use the same idea to avoid on-the-nose dialogue. Give the characters something to talk about besides what’s really going on in the scene.

One exercise I sometimes do in my class is to have students write a page of dialogue between a husband and a wife who have just won $5000 in a raffle. The husband wants to buy a big screen TV and the wife wants to go on a vacation. I give each student a slip of paper with a separate backstory for the couple. In one case the wife suspects the husband is cheating on her. In another their youngest child has just gone off to college and the wife is feeling lonely. The discussion about the money is the text of the dialogue while the backstory becomes the subtext.

It’s hard to create rich subtext in a stand-alone scene because it relies on the audience knowing the characters and context for the scene. But in a feature you should be able to build more and more complex subtext to your scenes as the story builds up.

There’s an old saying in Hollywood that you should be able to black out the names of who’s speaking in a script and still be able to tell which piece of dialogue goes to which character. In other words, you want your characters to have unique “voices.”

Many things affect the way a character talks: their social class, intelligence, education, where they're from, their job, their level of confidence, their world perception. The more distinct your characters are, the more unique their voices will be.

Also consider how each of your characters uses language. Are they verbose or reticent? Do they use big vocabulary words? Slang? Are they more emotional or more analytical? Are they confident, forthright, deceitful, nervous, shy, mean, sarcastic, polite?

Let’s say you were writing about three friends who grew up together in a trailer park in Detroit and have turned to a life of crime. This is a challenge because these characters are going to be a lot alike in many ways. So let’s see how we can make them sound different.

Let’s say our first guy is the leader of the group. He’s confident. A man of few words. But when he speaks everyone listens. He speaks softly to command attention. And he’s always cool, always unflappable. He never reveals his emotions.

Our second guy is the trio’s clown. He’s always running off at the mouth, telling wild stories about his exploits that are mostly made up. He jokes around all the time and likes to pick on others, particularly the third guy.

Our third guy is smaller, weaker, less confident than the other two. He worships the first guy and is always seeking his approval. He’s not too bright and frequently misunderstands things. He’s usually hesitant to speak up because he’s afraid he’ll get laughed at. But when he’s scared he tends to talk nervously a mile a minute.

These three guys aren’t going to sound the same, are they? Try coming up with a voice for a fourth guy in the group that sounds different from the three I've laid out.

The thing is, when you sit down to write the dialogue of a scene you have to put a lot of the mechanics of technique aside and lose yourself in your characters. If you’ve thought through the way the characters speak ahead of time they are going to naturally start using different voices in your head. And if you’ve laid the groundwork for the subtext of the scene and given the characters verbal “business” you’ll naturally avoid on-the-nose dialogue.

The key to writing good dialogue is ultimately to create rich, distinct characters and put them in scenes of conflict. Then let your imagination go!

And also realize that your first draft dialogue probably won’t be all that good. That’s why we rewrite and polish (which I’ll cover soon, I promise).

Rewriting

You’ve probably heard the old cliché “writing is rewriting.” Screenwriting is no different. I’m often asked how many drafts I do of my scripts. It’s a tricky question with no exact answer. The fewest I’ve done to feel a script is “professional” and up to my personal standards is three. But I’ve also done over twenty. Seven or eight would be common.

Some writers rewrite as they go along, but I don’t. I prefer to keep moving forward on the first draft (and most subsequent drafts) until it’s done. I keep a piece of paper to make notes of changes I know I’m going to want in the next draft – for example if I have an idea in Act Three that I know I’ll need to go back and set up in Act One, I jot that down rather than jumping back to revise previous material and losing momentum. The exception would be if I realize I’ve gone horribly off track and there’s no point in moving forward from where I am. But since I outline extensively that rarely happens.

After I finish the first draft I will undoubtedly have a long list of desired changes. Some structural, some character based, a lot of things to plant, etc. So the first one to three rewrites are mostly just reshaping the material I have into something coherent.

At that point I’m probably ready to get some feedback.

Let me digress for a moment on feedback. It’s extremely valuable. Nobody knows your story as well as you do, but at the same time you lose perspective when you’re in the trenches week after week. When you think you’re getting close to a decent draft it’s time to get that outside perspective.

Pick your readers carefully. You want people who are smart and will be honest with you. It’s nice to hear how wonderful your screenplay is, but if it’s not actually wonderful yet those comments can do more harm than good. Ideally most of your readers have some experience in film because those people are going to be most useful at suggesting solutions to the problems. But it never hurts to throw in one or two “civilians” who can give you a pure audience perspective – if they’ll be honest with you.

When someone gives you notes make sure to tell them to be as brutal as they can. You want to hear about any problems now, not leave them for when you’re submitting to a producer or agent where your reputation is on the line. It’s time to grow a thick skin for the good of your work.

Listen to the notes. Don’t respond – except to ask for clarification if you don’t understand. Most important, don’t defend your work! It’s hard, but you aren’t going to be able to go around to the theaters when the movie comes out and explain what you were going for. The point of feedback is for the reader to do the talking. I write everything down without prejudice. That allows you to go back and analyze the notes later when your emotional reaction isn’t as sharp.

Just because you write everything down doesn’t mean you have to do everything they say. You know your story best. But if several people are having a problem with something you better address it. Also, your reader may give you a bad suggestion but the problem that prompted it may be valid. Try to figure out the source of the note.

Most importantly if you want to be a good writer you have to be willing to seriously revise your work. Very few people are too open to suggestions. The usual response is to feel wounded that somebody didn’t like something about your creation and try to defend what you did, even if just to yourself. Fight that urge! The goal is to make it better and that’s often a painful process. You will have to cut things you love.

Mostly that’s what rewriting is. Taking an objective look at what you have and trying to make it better. However, there are a few specific things you can do once you have a draft you feel good about.

One thing I like to do are character passes. I read through the entire script only looking at a single character’s dialogue and action. I’m looking for anything inconsistent or anything the character wouldn’t say the way I wrote it. It’s easier to get into a character’s voice if you’re only focusing on their dialogue. I do that for every major character.

The final thing is the polish pass. I’ll discuss polishing in greater detail in another post, but what you’re doing is tightening up the pacing. You cut any unnecessary dialogue and look for ways to more efficiently convey the action. You’re trying to take out everything that doesn’t advance story and character.

One last tip on getting feedback: at least once on every script I like to gather a group of friends in my living room to read it out loud. I mix in some actors, writers and maybe a director. Everyone takes a part, we read, and then the group gives me feedback. But the most useful part is hearing it out loud. You discover things that way that you just don’t notice reading to yourself.

Remember, you don’t have to write a great first draft… you just have to be great by the last draft.