(Spoilers: The Apartment, Notorious)
Film is a visual medium. As screenwriters, once we’ve built the story structure, much of our attention often goes to dialogue. But we should be looking for more visual ways to tell our stories so that we can take full advantage of the filmic medium. One of those ways is to create meaningful objects – props that are imbued with meaning that helps tell the story.
Besides making your script more visual, there is another benefits of creating meaningful objects: they can provide opportunities for layering subtext into scenes. This often comes when one character knows information about the object that another does not. Today I want to look at two examples of masterful use of meaningful objects for telling stories.
The first is in The Apartment (written by Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond). In the story, C.C. Baxter owns an apartment that he loans out to executives at his company, including Mr. Sheldrake, as a place to carry on affairs. Baxter has a crush on elevator operator Fran Kubelik, who, unknown to Baxter, is Sheldrake’s mistress.
The object in question is a make-up compact. It is introduced when Sheldrake comes to visit Baxter in his new office – the result of a promotion that was Baxter’s reward for sharing the apartment with executives. Baxter returns the compact to Sheldrake, saying it was left at the apartment the night before. Baxter points out that the mirror is broken and says he didn’t do it. Sheldrake replies that it broke when his mistress threw it at him.
This set-up of the compact is elegantly done. First, there’s a reason to bring the compact up – Baxter returning it to Sheldrake. In bad screenplays, characters might produce the object and explain it for no apparent reason. When you are setting up a meaningful object, create a good reason for it to be brought into the story, even if that reason is unrelated to the object's purpose in the plot. Second, the crack in the mirror is a way to identify this particular compact in the future – and again there is a reason for this detail to be pointed out to the audience: Baxter fearing he’ll be blamed for breaking it.
Once the compact is introduced, it is then ignored for a few minutes of screen time. Soon we have a scene set at an office Christmas party where Baxter brings Kubelik to see his new office. While Baxter is getting them drinks, Kubelik learns from Sheldrake’s secretary that Kubelik is only the latest of Sheldrake’s conquests. This provides a layer of subtext to the scene once Baxter returns. He’s flirting with Kubelik, showing off a bowler hat he’s bought. She’s trying to be nice, but we know she’s heartbroken at the recent revelation.
Then the compact makes a reappearance. Kubelik brings it out to show Baxter what he looks like in his hat. When Baxter sees the crack, the audience knows that Baxter now knows Kubelik is Sheldrake’s mistress. Baxter doesn’t say anything, but the revelation adds a new layer of subtext to the scene. The dialogue in this scene is about Baxter’s promotion and new hat, but the subtext is about Kubelik and Baxter’s heartbreaks, the latter revealed entirely through the visual use of the compact.
Don’t miss the exceptional subtlety of this. Kubelik doesn’t know Baxter knows her secret. By using the meaningful object, the writers have allowed the audience to follow this revelation without the need for a separate scene to explain it in dialogue.
Imagine how the writers’ thought process may have gone: They knew they needed Baxter to learn about Kubelik and Sheldrake, but didn’t want it to be through dialogue. So they came up with the idea for the compact, which had the advantage of allowing the revelation to happen in a scene that includes Kubelik’s character, creating subtext. The writers then had to figure out how to plant the compact and had the idea to have Baxter return it to Sheldrake. Finally they had to figure out a way for the audience to recognize the compact and came up with the cracked mirror.
The second example I’d like to discuss is in Notorious (written by Ben Hecht), and the meaningful object is the key to a wine cellar. The story is about Alicia, the daughter of a Nazi turned U.S. government spy, who has married a Nazi living in Brazil named Sebastian in order to uncover a secret plan. Alicia’s U.S. handler is Devlin, and they’ve fallen in love. Alicia has learned that something is being kept in Sebastian’s wine cellar, but it’s locked and she doesn’t have the key. Alicia and Devlin plot to sneak into the wine cellar during a party at the house.
The key is introduced when Alicia slips it off Sebastian’s key ring while they get ready for the party. She’s almost caught – Sebastian comes in just as she gets the key off of the ring and takes both her hands, the key clutched in her right fist. Sebastian kisses her left palm and moves to kiss her right one. To avoid him discovering the key, Alicia throws her arms around him and drops the key behind his back, then kicks it safely under a table.
The reason for the key is inherent in our heroes’ plot to get into the wine cellar, but this introduction with a moment of suspense cements the key’s importance in our mind. The suspense continues during the party as Alicia and Devlin try to get to the wine cellar before the butler runs out of wine and has to go down for more. The complication is that Sebastian is jealous of Alicia and doesn’t like seeing her with Devlin.
Alicia and Devlin finally manage to slip down to the wine cellar and find the clue they’re looking for, but the wine runs out upstairs and Sebastian and the butler head down. As Devlin and Alicia leave the wine cellar and head out a back door, Devlin notices that Sebastian has seen them. Devlin grabs Alicia and kisses her. When Sebastian comes outside to confront them, Alicia claims Devlin tricked her outside and forced her to kiss him. Devlin is kicked out of the party and it seems our heroes have gotten away with their plot.
Here is where the key makes its reappearance – or rather doesn’t make its reappearance. Sebastian and the butler go to the wine cellar. Sebastian pulls out his key ring… and discovers the key is gone. We see on his face that he’s put two and two together and figured out our heroes’ trick. He turns to the butler and says they should just give the guests liquor and champagne. The information has been delivered visually, adding subtext to the mundane dialogue with the butler at the end of the scene, all because of the use of the key as a meaningful object.
If you have a scene with on-the-nose dialogue or you need to give a character information, consider creating a meaningful object. You’ll need to figure out how to introduce the object and imbue it with the necessary meaning. But once you do that, you can use the object to create powerful scenes layered with subtext.
Have your own favorite example of a meaningful object? Share it in the comments!
--
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Showing posts with label Dialogue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dialogue. Show all posts
Monday, February 22, 2016
Friday, February 13, 2015
Four Secrets for Better Exposition
(SPOILERS: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Terminator, The Matrix, Inception, Little Miss Sunshine)
One of the most difficult things to handle well in a screenplay is exposition. Exposition is the stuff the audience needs to know to understand the story but isn’t particularly interested in. Because the audience doesn’t inherently care about exposition it is, by definition, boring. Your job as writer is to find ways to make it palatable. Here are four ways to help exposition go down easier:
1. Timing
When you deliver your exposition is as important as how you deliver it. 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. Often it’s best to dribble the exposition out, slipping it into scenes that have other purposes. But sometimes, especially in stories with complex or fantastic settings or mythology, it can be better to have a scene that is solely for exposition.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan) has a very expository scene in Act One. Two FBI agents tell Indiana Jones and his boss at the university about the clues they’ve uncovered regarding the Nazi’s search for the Ark, and then Indy explains the Ark’s history and a bit about the Staff of Ra. It lays out almost everything the audience needs to know to understand the rest of the movie.
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 Two. Prior to this we’ve seen all kinds of weird things – people with super powers, Neo’s mouth vanishing, and a pill that draws Neo into a strange world. By Act Two 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.
2. The Character Who Doesn’t Know
It can be particularly painful to see one character tell another character something they already know. It’s obvious the dialogue is just there for the audience’s benefit. Putting someone into the scene who doesn’t know the information can solve the problem. This is why the FBI agents in the Raiders scene don’t know anything about the Ark or its religious history. That gives Indiana Jones a reason to explain it.
In Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt), the character of uncle Frank serves this purpose. He is newly arrived to the family, so he doesn’t know things like why the brother doesn’t speak or why Grandpa got kicked out of the retirement home. He can logically ask these questions. And when the reason is explained to Frank, the audience is let in on it as well.
This is why in movies featuring a team of some kind there is usually one new member. Ariadne serves this purpose in Inception (written by Christopher Nolan). She’s new to the team and new to the process of inception, so the veterans have to explain how everything works to her.
3. Reveal in conflict
If you have to have a character deliver information known to another character, try adding conflict. If characters are arguing, they will bring up things everyone knows to support their point. When Joe and Jerry are introduced 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. This 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.
Similarly, when we need to learn the reasons the whole family must go in the van to California in Little Miss Sunshine, they are delivered in an argument between Richard and Sheryl. The exposition about money problems, Sheryl’s inability to drive a stick shift, etc., are necessary for the story, but well known to both characters. But the dialogue doesn't sound false in this scene because the characters are mentioning these issues to support their point of view.
4. Wallpapering
Another trick to make exposition go down easier is known as wallpapering. This is when you set the scene in an interesting locale, or have something visually interesting in the background so the audience doesn’t notice how boring the scene actually is.
Inception does this. Many of the scenes where Cobb explains things to Ariadne are set in dream worlds. We see the environment shift – in one case the city folds up on itself. The cool visual effect hides the lack of drama and conflict in these scenes. Similarly, The Matrix delivers much of its exposition in a mock up matrix on Morpheus's ship that provides interesting visuals.
The Terminator (written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd) has an expository scene very similar to the ones in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Matrix. Reese explains the time travel premise and what the terminators are and the history of the future to Sarah Connor. This happens in a car fleeing an attack on Sarah Connor by the terminator. Throughout the scene, we’ll get a little bit of exposition, then a police car will catch up to them and we’ll get a little bit of car chase. Then Reese will lose the pursuer and it’s back to exposition. The car chase isn't particularly relevant to the story, it's wallpapering.
(It’s also worth noting that this Terminator scene comes about forty minutes into the movie when the audience is desperate for an explanation for what they’ve seen, and includes a character who needs to know the information. It's pulling out all the techniques to keep the exposition from being boring.)
Every script requires exposition. The key is to use these techniques to make it more palatable to the audience.
One of the most difficult things to handle well in a screenplay is exposition. Exposition is the stuff the audience needs to know to understand the story but isn’t particularly interested in. Because the audience doesn’t inherently care about exposition it is, by definition, boring. Your job as writer is to find ways to make it palatable. Here are four ways to help exposition go down easier:
1. Timing
When you deliver your exposition is as important as how you deliver it. 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. Often it’s best to dribble the exposition out, slipping it into scenes that have other purposes. But sometimes, especially in stories with complex or fantastic settings or mythology, it can be better to have a scene that is solely for exposition.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan) has a very expository scene in Act One. Two FBI agents tell Indiana Jones and his boss at the university about the clues they’ve uncovered regarding the Nazi’s search for the Ark, and then Indy explains the Ark’s history and a bit about the Staff of Ra. It lays out almost everything the audience needs to know to understand the rest of the movie.
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 Two. Prior to this we’ve seen all kinds of weird things – people with super powers, Neo’s mouth vanishing, and a pill that draws Neo into a strange world. By Act Two 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.
2. The Character Who Doesn’t Know
It can be particularly painful to see one character tell another character something they already know. It’s obvious the dialogue is just there for the audience’s benefit. Putting someone into the scene who doesn’t know the information can solve the problem. This is why the FBI agents in the Raiders scene don’t know anything about the Ark or its religious history. That gives Indiana Jones a reason to explain it.
In Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt), the character of uncle Frank serves this purpose. He is newly arrived to the family, so he doesn’t know things like why the brother doesn’t speak or why Grandpa got kicked out of the retirement home. He can logically ask these questions. And when the reason is explained to Frank, the audience is let in on it as well.
This is why in movies featuring a team of some kind there is usually one new member. Ariadne serves this purpose in Inception (written by Christopher Nolan). She’s new to the team and new to the process of inception, so the veterans have to explain how everything works to her.
3. Reveal in conflict
If you have to have a character deliver information known to another character, try adding conflict. If characters are arguing, they will bring up things everyone knows to support their point. When Joe and Jerry are introduced 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. This 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.
Similarly, when we need to learn the reasons the whole family must go in the van to California in Little Miss Sunshine, they are delivered in an argument between Richard and Sheryl. The exposition about money problems, Sheryl’s inability to drive a stick shift, etc., are necessary for the story, but well known to both characters. But the dialogue doesn't sound false in this scene because the characters are mentioning these issues to support their point of view.
4. Wallpapering
Another trick to make exposition go down easier is known as wallpapering. This is when you set the scene in an interesting locale, or have something visually interesting in the background so the audience doesn’t notice how boring the scene actually is.
Inception does this. Many of the scenes where Cobb explains things to Ariadne are set in dream worlds. We see the environment shift – in one case the city folds up on itself. The cool visual effect hides the lack of drama and conflict in these scenes. Similarly, The Matrix delivers much of its exposition in a mock up matrix on Morpheus's ship that provides interesting visuals.
The Terminator (written by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd) has an expository scene very similar to the ones in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Matrix. Reese explains the time travel premise and what the terminators are and the history of the future to Sarah Connor. This happens in a car fleeing an attack on Sarah Connor by the terminator. Throughout the scene, we’ll get a little bit of exposition, then a police car will catch up to them and we’ll get a little bit of car chase. Then Reese will lose the pursuer and it’s back to exposition. The car chase isn't particularly relevant to the story, it's wallpapering.
(It’s also worth noting that this Terminator scene comes about forty minutes into the movie when the audience is desperate for an explanation for what they’ve seen, and includes a character who needs to know the information. It's pulling out all the techniques to keep the exposition from being boring.)
Every script requires exposition. The key is to use these techniques to make it more palatable to the audience.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Five Tips for Writing Good Dialog
I was having trouble thinking about what to write about this week, so I asked for suggestions on Twitter. I got a bunch of good suggestions that I will address in the coming weeks (and feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments). But producer Ken Aguado, my co-author of The Hollywood Pitching Bible, suggested I discuss writing good dialog. It’s a great topic – and one that could fill several posts. Today I will offer five of my best dialog tips.
I’m going to break the tips up into two groups. The first are things you should think about before writing a scene. The second are things that you would apply in the rewrite phase. Why the distinction? In the first draft you need to turn off your inner critic and let your imagination run free. In the rewrite phase, you apply more critical skills to hone your dialogue.
Just because you are letting your imagination loose in the first draft, however, doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do to encourage good dialog. This first group of tips are things you should think about before starting in on the first draft of the scene:
1. Characters should have distinctive voices. There’s a saying that in a good script you should be able to black out the character names and still be able to identify who’s speaking. A character’s background and personality should affect how they use language. I write diary entries in my major characters’ voices until I can hear them in my head. Then I know I’m ready to write for them.
2. Strong goals mean strong dialog. Dialog should be action. To achieve this, characters should speak in order to achieve a goal, whether it’s to hide something, convince someone else to do something, hurt someone or comfort someone. Of course, there needs to be some obstacle to that goal or else the dialog will quickly become passive. In dialog-driven scenes this obstacle is often another character with an opposing goal, or a goal that is mutually exclusive from the main character’s goal.
If you have characters with distinctive voices and strong opposing goals when you start to write, two thirds of your dialog job is done.
3. Reveal exposition in conflict. Expository dialogue (dialogue that reveals crucial information for the audience) is the most difficult kind to write. In real life, the most dramatic reason people speak information is to support an argument. So if you need your characters to give crucial information, create a disagreement that will prompt them to bring that information out.
4. Good dialog has subtext. This means that underneath what is being said, there is an unspoken scene going on. In real life people seldom say exactly or entirely what’s on their mind. Dialog without subtext is called “on the nose” – and that’s almost always a bad thing. If the dialog in your scene seems too direct, give your character a reason not to reveal their goal. For example, maybe it would embarrass them, or maybe if the opposing character knew what the main character is trying to achieve they would be less cooperative. Maybe the main character just doesn’t want to make themselves vulnerable.
I learned from Matt Weiner, the brilliant creator of Mad Men, that subtext is all about preparation. In order for the audience to grasp the subtext of the scene, they must know the context in which the scene is taking place.
Tip number four is both a first draft and a rewriting tip. You should try to have subtext in your first draft, but very often you will still find yourself writing on-the-nose dialogue. In your revision, try to find a reason for the character to be less direct. Here’s another dialog rewriting tip:
5. Cut the boring parts. Movie dialog should have verisimilitude, meaning it should seem like real speech but not actual mimic real speech. In real life people ramble, digress, repeat themselves and eat up a lot of time with pleasantries. If we mimicked this on screen, a simple conversation might take up half your movie. So you want to cut all the boring parts.
Particularly watch out for pleasantries like greetings and farewells. Try to cut into the scene as late as possible and out as early as possible. And only include the part that’s relevant to the story – if a scene takes place in a restaurant, don’t show the characters ordering (unless that’s critical to the drama). If you have a scene of a character shopping we almost never need to see them at the cash register paying.
Let’s look at a brief bit of dialog from Shaun of the Dead. In this scene, Shaun has learned that a strange man has bitten his stepfather, Philip. Shaun knows this man was a zombie and that Philip will now become a zombie. He races to his mother’s house to save her. The only trouble is, Shaun arrives before Philip has turned. So in this scene, he’s struggling to tell his mother, Barbara, that he has to kill her husband. (Remember what Matt Weiner said about subtext needing context? Shaun and the audience know something the other characters don’t, and Shaun has a reason not to speak directly – he doesn’t want to cause his mother emotional pain.) We pick up where Shaun has gone into the kitchen to help his mother prepare tea.
Shaun: Mum?
Barbara: Mmmm?
Shaun: how much do you love Philip?
Barbara: Two sugars, is it?
Shaun: I haven't had sugar in my tea since 1982.
Barbara: Oh, yes. Will you cut me some bread, love?
Shaun: Mum, how much do you love Philip?
Barbara: Oh for goodness sake Shaun, must we go through all this again?
Shaun: I’m sorry but… what would you think if I told you that he has, over the years, been quite unkind to me?
Barbara: You weren't always the easiest person to live with.
Shaun: Mum, he chased me with a piece of wood!
Barbara: Well, you did call him a “you know what.”
Shaun: Did he tell you that?
Barbara: Yes he did.
Shaun: Motherfucker.
Barbara: Shaun!
Shaun: Sorry, Mother... Mum! Did you know that, on several occasions, he touched me?
(Barbara flashes Shaun a look.)
Shaun: That wasn't true. Made it up, shouldn't have done, sorry. You don't understand...
Barbara: No, you don't understand. Philip is my husband and has been for seventeen years. I know you haven’t always seen eye to eye but I would at least expect you to respect my feelings. You must be more adult about these things.
(Philip appears in the doorway.)
Philip: (Growling) Yeah. Come on, Shaun. There comes a time when... you just... gotta be a man.
(Shaun looks at the knife in his hand)
Notice how each character has a distinctive voice – Shaun’s is impatient and a bit pouty, almost childish. Barbara starts out sunny and only snaps when pushed. Also, notice how Barbara says “you-know-what” instead of swearing, while Shaun has no problem swearing. Plus, you get a sense of their relationship in the way they interact.
Shaun has a clear goal – to convince his mother they need to kill Philip, and a clear obstacle – his mother loves Philip. This also gives him good reason not to state his case directly. Moreover, Shaun knows that his mother is not likely to believe in zombies, meaning he has to broach the subject cautiously.
Barbara gives a lot of exposition about the family relationship in this snippet of dialog. Shaun would already know all this information. But it doesn’t seem false because Barbara is using it to justify and defend her position.
You may wonder about the inclusion of the dialog about tea and bread. Isn’t this the boring stuff I said to cut? In many scenes it would be, but here it reflects Barbara’s goal. She wants the family to sit down to a nice snack together. This actually provides an obstacle to Shaun – he has to get her to change the focus of her attention. (This business also justifies why Shaun has a knife at the end.) Every line in this section of the scene advances the plot. Everything else has been cut out.
I’m going to break the tips up into two groups. The first are things you should think about before writing a scene. The second are things that you would apply in the rewrite phase. Why the distinction? In the first draft you need to turn off your inner critic and let your imagination run free. In the rewrite phase, you apply more critical skills to hone your dialogue.
Just because you are letting your imagination loose in the first draft, however, doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do to encourage good dialog. This first group of tips are things you should think about before starting in on the first draft of the scene:
1. Characters should have distinctive voices. There’s a saying that in a good script you should be able to black out the character names and still be able to identify who’s speaking. A character’s background and personality should affect how they use language. I write diary entries in my major characters’ voices until I can hear them in my head. Then I know I’m ready to write for them.
2. Strong goals mean strong dialog. Dialog should be action. To achieve this, characters should speak in order to achieve a goal, whether it’s to hide something, convince someone else to do something, hurt someone or comfort someone. Of course, there needs to be some obstacle to that goal or else the dialog will quickly become passive. In dialog-driven scenes this obstacle is often another character with an opposing goal, or a goal that is mutually exclusive from the main character’s goal.
If you have characters with distinctive voices and strong opposing goals when you start to write, two thirds of your dialog job is done.
3. Reveal exposition in conflict. Expository dialogue (dialogue that reveals crucial information for the audience) is the most difficult kind to write. In real life, the most dramatic reason people speak information is to support an argument. So if you need your characters to give crucial information, create a disagreement that will prompt them to bring that information out.
4. Good dialog has subtext. This means that underneath what is being said, there is an unspoken scene going on. In real life people seldom say exactly or entirely what’s on their mind. Dialog without subtext is called “on the nose” – and that’s almost always a bad thing. If the dialog in your scene seems too direct, give your character a reason not to reveal their goal. For example, maybe it would embarrass them, or maybe if the opposing character knew what the main character is trying to achieve they would be less cooperative. Maybe the main character just doesn’t want to make themselves vulnerable.
I learned from Matt Weiner, the brilliant creator of Mad Men, that subtext is all about preparation. In order for the audience to grasp the subtext of the scene, they must know the context in which the scene is taking place.
Tip number four is both a first draft and a rewriting tip. You should try to have subtext in your first draft, but very often you will still find yourself writing on-the-nose dialogue. In your revision, try to find a reason for the character to be less direct. Here’s another dialog rewriting tip:
5. Cut the boring parts. Movie dialog should have verisimilitude, meaning it should seem like real speech but not actual mimic real speech. In real life people ramble, digress, repeat themselves and eat up a lot of time with pleasantries. If we mimicked this on screen, a simple conversation might take up half your movie. So you want to cut all the boring parts.
Particularly watch out for pleasantries like greetings and farewells. Try to cut into the scene as late as possible and out as early as possible. And only include the part that’s relevant to the story – if a scene takes place in a restaurant, don’t show the characters ordering (unless that’s critical to the drama). If you have a scene of a character shopping we almost never need to see them at the cash register paying.
Let’s look at a brief bit of dialog from Shaun of the Dead. In this scene, Shaun has learned that a strange man has bitten his stepfather, Philip. Shaun knows this man was a zombie and that Philip will now become a zombie. He races to his mother’s house to save her. The only trouble is, Shaun arrives before Philip has turned. So in this scene, he’s struggling to tell his mother, Barbara, that he has to kill her husband. (Remember what Matt Weiner said about subtext needing context? Shaun and the audience know something the other characters don’t, and Shaun has a reason not to speak directly – he doesn’t want to cause his mother emotional pain.) We pick up where Shaun has gone into the kitchen to help his mother prepare tea.
Shaun: Mum?
Barbara: Mmmm?
Shaun: how much do you love Philip?
Barbara: Two sugars, is it?
Shaun: I haven't had sugar in my tea since 1982.
Barbara: Oh, yes. Will you cut me some bread, love?
Shaun: Mum, how much do you love Philip?
Barbara: Oh for goodness sake Shaun, must we go through all this again?
Shaun: I’m sorry but… what would you think if I told you that he has, over the years, been quite unkind to me?
Barbara: You weren't always the easiest person to live with.
Shaun: Mum, he chased me with a piece of wood!
Barbara: Well, you did call him a “you know what.”
Shaun: Did he tell you that?
Barbara: Yes he did.
Shaun: Motherfucker.
Barbara: Shaun!
Shaun: Sorry, Mother... Mum! Did you know that, on several occasions, he touched me?
(Barbara flashes Shaun a look.)
Shaun: That wasn't true. Made it up, shouldn't have done, sorry. You don't understand...
Barbara: No, you don't understand. Philip is my husband and has been for seventeen years. I know you haven’t always seen eye to eye but I would at least expect you to respect my feelings. You must be more adult about these things.
(Philip appears in the doorway.)
Philip: (Growling) Yeah. Come on, Shaun. There comes a time when... you just... gotta be a man.
(Shaun looks at the knife in his hand)
Notice how each character has a distinctive voice – Shaun’s is impatient and a bit pouty, almost childish. Barbara starts out sunny and only snaps when pushed. Also, notice how Barbara says “you-know-what” instead of swearing, while Shaun has no problem swearing. Plus, you get a sense of their relationship in the way they interact.
Shaun has a clear goal – to convince his mother they need to kill Philip, and a clear obstacle – his mother loves Philip. This also gives him good reason not to state his case directly. Moreover, Shaun knows that his mother is not likely to believe in zombies, meaning he has to broach the subject cautiously.
Barbara gives a lot of exposition about the family relationship in this snippet of dialog. Shaun would already know all this information. But it doesn’t seem false because Barbara is using it to justify and defend her position.
You may wonder about the inclusion of the dialog about tea and bread. Isn’t this the boring stuff I said to cut? In many scenes it would be, but here it reflects Barbara’s goal. She wants the family to sit down to a nice snack together. This actually provides an obstacle to Shaun – he has to get her to change the focus of her attention. (This business also justifies why Shaun has a knife at the end.) Every line in this section of the scene advances the plot. Everything else has been cut out.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Learning to Write Better Dialogue
One of the more common questions I’m asked by students and aspiring writers is how they can write better dialogue. This is one of the things that really seems to split new writers. Some have a natural facility with dialogue, though they can often improve how they use it. Others struggle to write a single line that doesn’t seem wooden and forced.
Writing good dialogue encompasses many things. Good dialogue should be natural, reflect the character, advance the scene, be lean, and depending on the situation may need to be witty, provocative, funny or moving. Of these skills, the inability to write naturalistic dialogue seems to be the most challenging weakness to overcome.
I’m probably not the best person to advise on this because I’ve always been able to write naturalistic dialogue without much effort. I never remember “learning” how to do it and I don’t have any particular tricks for capturing realistic speech while I write. A former agent once said I wrote “smooth” dialogue, meaning it flows nicely and is easy to read (this was actually the set up to some criticism: he said that my ability to write smooth dialogue let me get away with some lazy writing).
But if you don’t have an instinctive ear for naturalistic dialogue, there are a couple techniques that seem to help develop that skill. The first is a variation on the character diary exercise I use to develop character voice. On the first day of my Screenwriting One class, I assign the students to write a diary entry in the voice of someone they know who talks in an unusual way. This turns the exercise into one of listening, rather than creating.
If you want to develop your dialogue writing skills, I would suggest picking someone who speaks very differently than you and writing a fictional diary entry in their voice every morning for a week. Listen to the vocabulary and slang they use. Listen to the rhythms of their speech – do they babble on and on, never finishing a sentence, or speak in short, staccato bursts? Then the next week pick someone else and repeat.
The second exercise is one I was given in my first screenwriting class. We were required to keep a notebook where we jotted down ideas, characters, incidents, and bits of dialogue that we encountered throughout the day. Every week we had to show it to the professor. He didn’t care what was in it, just that we were doing it.
Again, this is an exercise in listening. The cashier at my dorm commissary had a habit of saying, “no joke,” after every other statement. For example, “The stew is really popular today, no joke.” The first week of school I jotted that down in my notebook, and years later I used it for a character in a screenplay. Would I have remembered that if I hadn’t had the notebook assignment? Who knows, but listening and observing is a skill that takes practice.
Of course movie dialogue isn’t actually a realistic representation of normal speech. We cut out all of the “ums” and digressions, false starts, clichés and repetition in the average conversation. But we do want the pared down, heightened form of speech that is movie dialogue to have the rhythms of actual conversation. I believe that if you practice actively listening to the way people use language, you will find it much easier to achieve that.
When it’s time to write a scene, your preparation comes into play. You should have already thought about your characters’ voices – maybe using the character diaries to develop them, as I do. Now, identify what each character in the scene wants. If the characters have conflicting goals that will be best, but not every scene works this way. In any case, you should identify the obstacles the character faces getting what they want.
If you’ve properly thought through these elements the dialogue should be a lot easier to write. Good dialogue is action – it’s the character saying something to achieve their goals. They are doing something when they speak not just talking about something. They may be seducing, lying, threatening, or manipulating but they are active. Your job is to figure out what this particular character would say to achieve their goal, and how they would say it.
Ultimately you shouldn’t be thinking too hard about your dialogue as you write the scene. If you’ve prepared yourself, your characters and your scenes properly, the dialogue will flow without a lot of conscious effort. And then you make it even better when you rewrite!
(For improving dialogue during rewriting, see my post on character passes.)
Writing good dialogue encompasses many things. Good dialogue should be natural, reflect the character, advance the scene, be lean, and depending on the situation may need to be witty, provocative, funny or moving. Of these skills, the inability to write naturalistic dialogue seems to be the most challenging weakness to overcome.
I’m probably not the best person to advise on this because I’ve always been able to write naturalistic dialogue without much effort. I never remember “learning” how to do it and I don’t have any particular tricks for capturing realistic speech while I write. A former agent once said I wrote “smooth” dialogue, meaning it flows nicely and is easy to read (this was actually the set up to some criticism: he said that my ability to write smooth dialogue let me get away with some lazy writing).
But if you don’t have an instinctive ear for naturalistic dialogue, there are a couple techniques that seem to help develop that skill. The first is a variation on the character diary exercise I use to develop character voice. On the first day of my Screenwriting One class, I assign the students to write a diary entry in the voice of someone they know who talks in an unusual way. This turns the exercise into one of listening, rather than creating.
If you want to develop your dialogue writing skills, I would suggest picking someone who speaks very differently than you and writing a fictional diary entry in their voice every morning for a week. Listen to the vocabulary and slang they use. Listen to the rhythms of their speech – do they babble on and on, never finishing a sentence, or speak in short, staccato bursts? Then the next week pick someone else and repeat.
The second exercise is one I was given in my first screenwriting class. We were required to keep a notebook where we jotted down ideas, characters, incidents, and bits of dialogue that we encountered throughout the day. Every week we had to show it to the professor. He didn’t care what was in it, just that we were doing it.
Again, this is an exercise in listening. The cashier at my dorm commissary had a habit of saying, “no joke,” after every other statement. For example, “The stew is really popular today, no joke.” The first week of school I jotted that down in my notebook, and years later I used it for a character in a screenplay. Would I have remembered that if I hadn’t had the notebook assignment? Who knows, but listening and observing is a skill that takes practice.
Of course movie dialogue isn’t actually a realistic representation of normal speech. We cut out all of the “ums” and digressions, false starts, clichés and repetition in the average conversation. But we do want the pared down, heightened form of speech that is movie dialogue to have the rhythms of actual conversation. I believe that if you practice actively listening to the way people use language, you will find it much easier to achieve that.
When it’s time to write a scene, your preparation comes into play. You should have already thought about your characters’ voices – maybe using the character diaries to develop them, as I do. Now, identify what each character in the scene wants. If the characters have conflicting goals that will be best, but not every scene works this way. In any case, you should identify the obstacles the character faces getting what they want.
If you’ve properly thought through these elements the dialogue should be a lot easier to write. Good dialogue is action – it’s the character saying something to achieve their goals. They are doing something when they speak not just talking about something. They may be seducing, lying, threatening, or manipulating but they are active. Your job is to figure out what this particular character would say to achieve their goal, and how they would say it.
Ultimately you shouldn’t be thinking too hard about your dialogue as you write the scene. If you’ve prepared yourself, your characters and your scenes properly, the dialogue will flow without a lot of conscious effort. And then you make it even better when you rewrite!
(For improving dialogue during rewriting, see my post on character passes.)
Friday, August 10, 2012
The Character Passes
Last post I talked about the rewriting process I’m going through on my current spec. The task I’m engaged in now is what I call “The Character Passes.” This is one of the final stages of my rewrite process. The concept is pretty simple: I go through the script just looking at one character. I do this for each of the major characters.
Before I read each scene with the character I’m looking at (I skip the scenes they’re not in), I think about what this character’s goal is in the scene and where they are in their arc. I consider their actions and ask if this is what they’d really do. If the answer is no, the scene might require some significant revision.
But usually I’ve done a pretty good job keeping the characters’ actions consistent. If I’m finding a lot of scenes that need major changes, I’m probably not as far along as I thought I was and need to take another plot pass! Really the purpose of the character passes is dialogue.
Before I do a pass, I try to get the voice of that character in my head. One of the ways I do this is with my character diary exercise.* I usually do these as part of my pre-writing, but for these passes I’ll do a quick version of the exercise – basically writing a few paragraphs in the character’s voice just describing their day before I start the pass.
I also jot down some vocabulary the character uses – words related to their occupation, class, or culture. I find writing these down longhand helps ingrain them in my mind. And I jot down some sayings the character uses that reflect their philosophy on life. Remember how in Casablanca (screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch) Rick said "I stick my neck out for no man" and "Here's looking at you kid" several times? Those are the kinds of defining phrases I'm hoping for.
One of the characters in my current script is a business executive who uses lots of management buzzwords. So for her pass, I jotted down things like “outside the box,” "synergy," and “risk-reward.”
In the previous drafts I had that character use a lot of established business philosophy and actual quotes. But I decided I wanted to create something original for the film. So I made up my own business philosophy and constructed some buzzwords and motivational sayings that will be unique. I did this so my script would have original dialogue rather than clichés – though the clichés would have served my purpose in this case.
I also try to do this with the philosophical sayings. What I’ll often do is take a common saying and try to come up with something that says the equivalent in a different way. So if the character believes in “thinking outside the box,” I might give them a saying like, “We need to fly beyond the nest.”
As I go through the script, I try only to look at that character’s dialogue. Then, anything that doesn’t fit their voice jumps out. If an uneducated character uses a big vocabulary word, I’ll catch it and can adjust it to be more in their voice. And I’ll usually find many opportunities to adjust dialogue to be more original and unique.
Once I’ve done this for all my characters, the result is a script where each character speaks in a believable and revealing way.
Before I read each scene with the character I’m looking at (I skip the scenes they’re not in), I think about what this character’s goal is in the scene and where they are in their arc. I consider their actions and ask if this is what they’d really do. If the answer is no, the scene might require some significant revision.
But usually I’ve done a pretty good job keeping the characters’ actions consistent. If I’m finding a lot of scenes that need major changes, I’m probably not as far along as I thought I was and need to take another plot pass! Really the purpose of the character passes is dialogue.
Before I do a pass, I try to get the voice of that character in my head. One of the ways I do this is with my character diary exercise.* I usually do these as part of my pre-writing, but for these passes I’ll do a quick version of the exercise – basically writing a few paragraphs in the character’s voice just describing their day before I start the pass.
I also jot down some vocabulary the character uses – words related to their occupation, class, or culture. I find writing these down longhand helps ingrain them in my mind. And I jot down some sayings the character uses that reflect their philosophy on life. Remember how in Casablanca (screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch) Rick said "I stick my neck out for no man" and "Here's looking at you kid" several times? Those are the kinds of defining phrases I'm hoping for.
One of the characters in my current script is a business executive who uses lots of management buzzwords. So for her pass, I jotted down things like “outside the box,” "synergy," and “risk-reward.”
In the previous drafts I had that character use a lot of established business philosophy and actual quotes. But I decided I wanted to create something original for the film. So I made up my own business philosophy and constructed some buzzwords and motivational sayings that will be unique. I did this so my script would have original dialogue rather than clichés – though the clichés would have served my purpose in this case.
I also try to do this with the philosophical sayings. What I’ll often do is take a common saying and try to come up with something that says the equivalent in a different way. So if the character believes in “thinking outside the box,” I might give them a saying like, “We need to fly beyond the nest.”
As I go through the script, I try only to look at that character’s dialogue. Then, anything that doesn’t fit their voice jumps out. If an uneducated character uses a big vocabulary word, I’ll catch it and can adjust it to be more in their voice. And I’ll usually find many opportunities to adjust dialogue to be more original and unique.
Once I’ve done this for all my characters, the result is a script where each character speaks in a believable and revealing way.
*I was looking for the post I did on the character diary exercise so I could link to it, and realized I’ve never posted about it! I will rectify that in my next post.
--
By the way, this blog is now being run on the website You’ve Got Red on You. It’s a site devoted to horror and horror writing. If you’re interested in the genre, do yourself a favor and check it out.
By the way, this blog is now being run on the website You’ve Got Red on You. It’s a site devoted to horror and horror writing. If you’re interested in the genre, do yourself a favor and check it out.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Show, Don’t Tell
(SPOILERS: Casablanca, Little Miss Sunshine, The Godfather, Some Like It Hot)
There’s an old writing saying, “show, don’t tell.” Of course on film, something is always being shown to the audience. But the adage still applies, particularly when it comes to the character’s internal thoughts and feelings. We don’t want the character to tell us what’s going on with them psychologically, we want to see it. Telling the audience is exposition. Showing is drama.
So, how do we show something internal? The first tool we have is behavior. Actions speak louder than words. We’ll believe what a character does more than what they say.
Olive’s introduction in Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) is a good example of this. Olive could say in dialogue that she dreams of being a beauty queen. But instead, we open with her watching a videotape of a pageant. The winner is crowned. Then Olive rewinds the tape and pauses. She mimics the winner’s pose and expression. We know she wants to be one of these women.
Dialogue can be behavior, too. What a character says can show how they’re feeling without being on the nose. You need to create a situation, however, that motivates revealing dialogue.
For example, consider the scene in The Godfather (screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola) when Michael goes to Vegas to buy out Mo Green. Fredo has arranged a big party, with girls and a band, but Michael tells him to get rid of all that. When Mo Green shows up, Michael says he wants to buy him out. Mo gets angry, tells Michael off. Michael doesn’t rise to the argument, but brings up a report that Mo slapped Fredo around. Fredo quickly defends Mo, saying, “Mo didn’t mean anything by that.” Trying to make peace, Fredo appeals to Tom, but Tom defers to Michael. The scene ends with Mo storming off and Michael warning Fredo never to take sides against the family again.
Notice what we’re learning about the characters in this scene. We see that Michael has now become the leader of the Corleone family – not just literally, but in his behavior. Like the Don, he is calm and collected, speaking softly because he knows he has a big stick. He even uses his father's legendary line, "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." Contrast that with how Mo Green behaves, belligerent and threatening in the scene. Michael is all business. And it tells us who really has the power.
Meanwhile we also see that Fredo is weak and afraid of conflict. He constantly tries to placate everyone. He defends Mo even though Mo has treated him badly. The characters never verbalize their feelings or anxieties – they couldn’t given the situation – but those things are still apparent in what they say and the way they say it.
The writers of The Godfather have set up a scene that forces Michael, Fredo and Mo to reveal themselves in the way they respond to each other. You can expand this idea to show character arc by create similar situations at various points throughout the script and using the character’s varying reaction to demonstrate change.
For example, in the first act of Casablanca (screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch), Rick says more than once, “I stick my neck out for no man.” And he demonstrates this when Ugarte is arrested. Ugarte comes to Rick, looking for help, and Rick refuses.
Later in the movie, Rick has discovered that what happened in Paris didn’t go down quite the way he thought. He begins to question his neutral philosophy. How do we see this?
A pretty, young Bulgarian woman comes to Rick. It seems one way to escape Casablanca for women like her is to sleep with Renault. This woman asks Rick if she does this thing, will Renault honor the deal to get her and her husband visas. Rick learns her husband is playing roulette in the back room. As the roulette game is fixed, Rick arranges for the man to win – they now have enough money to buy visas without the woman needing to prostitute herself.
The staff of Rick’s is overjoyed at their boss’s noble act – precisely because he would not have done it at the beginning of the film. We saw this with Ugarte. Notice that the Bulgarian couple scene has nothing to do with the main plot of the movie. It is there simply to demonstrate Rick’s changing character. And because of this scene, Rick doesn’t have to explain how he’s feeling.
Some Like It Hot (story by R. Thoeren and M. Logan, screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond) creates situations to show Joe’s character arc. Early in the movie, Joe and Jerry go to a music booker looking for work. We discover Joe stood up the secretary the night before. And we watch Joe lie to her to get out of trouble. Then, he goes even further – dangling the implication of another date to get her to loan him her car.
Compare that to later in the movie when the gangsters show up in Florida and the guys realize they are going to have to run again. With their lives in danger, Joe decides he can’t just leave Sugar without a word. He calls and once again lies, but this time he tries to construct a lie to spare her feelings. And he leaves her a diamond bracelet – the only real asset Joe and Jerry have for their flight! Would Joe have done that at the beginning of the movie? Based on the scene with the secretary, not likely.
And toward the very end of the movie, Joe sees Sugar singing a sad song on stage. He goes up on stage, kisses her, and tells her no guy is worth it – exposing his disguise. We now know that Joe’s attitude toward women has completely changed, without him needing to talk about it.
I see many bad scripts where character information is delivered in unmotivated, on-the-nose dialogue. Then I see scripts where the dialogue is better motivated and more natural – but the character is still talking about their feelings. These scripts don’t stand out as bad, but they lack drama to involve us in the story. They are telling us things, not showing us things.
During my rewriting, I always take a pass through my scripts looking for these moments where the character is telling us about their thoughts and feelings. When I find them, I think about how I might dramatize the character’s feelings instead. And if I need to show that a character is changing, I construct a situation like the Bulgarian couple in Casablanca that will cause the character to react in a revelatory way.
The result is a story that is filmic and dramatic – in other words, a movie!
There’s an old writing saying, “show, don’t tell.” Of course on film, something is always being shown to the audience. But the adage still applies, particularly when it comes to the character’s internal thoughts and feelings. We don’t want the character to tell us what’s going on with them psychologically, we want to see it. Telling the audience is exposition. Showing is drama.
So, how do we show something internal? The first tool we have is behavior. Actions speak louder than words. We’ll believe what a character does more than what they say.
Olive’s introduction in Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) is a good example of this. Olive could say in dialogue that she dreams of being a beauty queen. But instead, we open with her watching a videotape of a pageant. The winner is crowned. Then Olive rewinds the tape and pauses. She mimics the winner’s pose and expression. We know she wants to be one of these women.
Dialogue can be behavior, too. What a character says can show how they’re feeling without being on the nose. You need to create a situation, however, that motivates revealing dialogue.
For example, consider the scene in The Godfather (screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola) when Michael goes to Vegas to buy out Mo Green. Fredo has arranged a big party, with girls and a band, but Michael tells him to get rid of all that. When Mo Green shows up, Michael says he wants to buy him out. Mo gets angry, tells Michael off. Michael doesn’t rise to the argument, but brings up a report that Mo slapped Fredo around. Fredo quickly defends Mo, saying, “Mo didn’t mean anything by that.” Trying to make peace, Fredo appeals to Tom, but Tom defers to Michael. The scene ends with Mo storming off and Michael warning Fredo never to take sides against the family again.
Notice what we’re learning about the characters in this scene. We see that Michael has now become the leader of the Corleone family – not just literally, but in his behavior. Like the Don, he is calm and collected, speaking softly because he knows he has a big stick. He even uses his father's legendary line, "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." Contrast that with how Mo Green behaves, belligerent and threatening in the scene. Michael is all business. And it tells us who really has the power.
Meanwhile we also see that Fredo is weak and afraid of conflict. He constantly tries to placate everyone. He defends Mo even though Mo has treated him badly. The characters never verbalize their feelings or anxieties – they couldn’t given the situation – but those things are still apparent in what they say and the way they say it.
The writers of The Godfather have set up a scene that forces Michael, Fredo and Mo to reveal themselves in the way they respond to each other. You can expand this idea to show character arc by create similar situations at various points throughout the script and using the character’s varying reaction to demonstrate change.
For example, in the first act of Casablanca (screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch), Rick says more than once, “I stick my neck out for no man.” And he demonstrates this when Ugarte is arrested. Ugarte comes to Rick, looking for help, and Rick refuses.
Later in the movie, Rick has discovered that what happened in Paris didn’t go down quite the way he thought. He begins to question his neutral philosophy. How do we see this?
A pretty, young Bulgarian woman comes to Rick. It seems one way to escape Casablanca for women like her is to sleep with Renault. This woman asks Rick if she does this thing, will Renault honor the deal to get her and her husband visas. Rick learns her husband is playing roulette in the back room. As the roulette game is fixed, Rick arranges for the man to win – they now have enough money to buy visas without the woman needing to prostitute herself.
The staff of Rick’s is overjoyed at their boss’s noble act – precisely because he would not have done it at the beginning of the film. We saw this with Ugarte. Notice that the Bulgarian couple scene has nothing to do with the main plot of the movie. It is there simply to demonstrate Rick’s changing character. And because of this scene, Rick doesn’t have to explain how he’s feeling.
Some Like It Hot (story by R. Thoeren and M. Logan, screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond) creates situations to show Joe’s character arc. Early in the movie, Joe and Jerry go to a music booker looking for work. We discover Joe stood up the secretary the night before. And we watch Joe lie to her to get out of trouble. Then, he goes even further – dangling the implication of another date to get her to loan him her car.
Compare that to later in the movie when the gangsters show up in Florida and the guys realize they are going to have to run again. With their lives in danger, Joe decides he can’t just leave Sugar without a word. He calls and once again lies, but this time he tries to construct a lie to spare her feelings. And he leaves her a diamond bracelet – the only real asset Joe and Jerry have for their flight! Would Joe have done that at the beginning of the movie? Based on the scene with the secretary, not likely.
And toward the very end of the movie, Joe sees Sugar singing a sad song on stage. He goes up on stage, kisses her, and tells her no guy is worth it – exposing his disguise. We now know that Joe’s attitude toward women has completely changed, without him needing to talk about it.
I see many bad scripts where character information is delivered in unmotivated, on-the-nose dialogue. Then I see scripts where the dialogue is better motivated and more natural – but the character is still talking about their feelings. These scripts don’t stand out as bad, but they lack drama to involve us in the story. They are telling us things, not showing us things.
During my rewriting, I always take a pass through my scripts looking for these moments where the character is telling us about their thoughts and feelings. When I find them, I think about how I might dramatize the character’s feelings instead. And if I need to show that a character is changing, I construct a situation like the Bulgarian couple in Casablanca that will cause the character to react in a revelatory way.
The result is a story that is filmic and dramatic – in other words, a movie!
Monday, July 26, 2010
To Intend
Recently I was reading one of my student’s feature scripts. I came to a three page scene with two characters out on a date. The dialogue of the scene was very natural. The scene had a purpose in the larger story – this was the point where the two characters’ relationship was deepening, and they were discussing their philosophy on a subject that would come into play later. The whole thing seemed quite realistic.
It just didn’t seem dramatic.
The problem was there was no conflict in the scene. I debated for a while how to give the note. The “bad teacher” suggestion would have been: “have the characters argue about something.” But then the conflict could end up feeling forced and irrelevant to the story, and it might work against the larger purpose of showing these characters falling in love.
This is actually a common problem in a romantic story. Happy people are kind of boring, frankly. But you need to show the characters falling in love. So what do you do?
A better approach would be to introduce some kind of outside conflict. An annoying waiter, perhaps, or a food allergy. Then let the philosophical discussion fall into the background. Since the script in question was a romantic comedy this might work okay.
But I think a more sophisticated approach would be to inject conflict on a subtextual level using the characters’ intentions.
You know that old cliché about actors asking, “what’s my motivation?” Today they usually ask about their intention. But it’s the same basic question: why am I doing this? And it’s valid.
Actors phrase their intentions as “to” verbs. You can use the same technique as a writer. If you find a scene that feels dramatically flat, try giving your characters stronger intentions. Some intentions that might fit in a dinner date scene would be:
- To seduce
- To test
- To get control
- To confess
- To hide (a secret)
- To prove my maturity
- To make him work for it
- To stall
- To impress
- To tease
You don’t have to pick intentions that are diametrically opposed to get conflict, and you don’t have to make the conflict overt to have drama. These people are on a date and you want them to end up liking each other. But you can pick intentions that are different enough that they will force the characters to deal with the gap in an interesting way.
Consider what kind of scene you might write if you picked the intentions “to seduce” for her and “to confess” for him. Or maybe “to get control” for him and “to test” for her. Voices never have to rise, nobody has to get angry…but the conversation no longer seems so casual.
Now let’s get a little more complicated by adding adjustments to the intention.
You can add an emotional modifier to the intention, such as “fear” or “excitement” or “confidence” or “disgust.” So now it can become “to seduce, with anxiety.” Note that I’m not talking about anxiety as a technique used to seduce, but rather an emotion the seducer is feeling. Imagine the difference between “to stall, with disgust” and “to stall, with lust.”
Now before we go too far here, I’m not sure it’s very helpful to start consciously sticking intentions and adjustments on every line of every scene. In fact, it might prevent you from letting the dialogue flow naturally out of your imagination and result in stilted conversations.
But it may be worth thinking about each character’s overall intention and emotion in a given scene before you start typing. And it can certainly be useful to explore these elements during rewriting when you have a scene that feels flat.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
American Beauty – Character Voices
(SPOILERS: American Beauty)
One of the strongest tools we have as writers is dialogue. And one of the many things good dialogue does is reveal character. This is done by establishing a strong “voice” for your characters. There’s a saying in screenwriting that in a well-written script you should be able to black out the names above all the dialogue and still be able to tell who’s speaking just by the way they talk.
Let’s look at how this is done in American Beauty (written by Alan Ball) with the three Burnham characters, Lester, Carolyn and Jane.
I would quickly summarize Lester’s voice as smarmy and phony; Carolyn’s as sarcastic and rhetorical; and Jane’s as surly and put upon.
We'll begin with Lester. Lester’s voice changes somewhat over the course of the movie. He starts whiny. He complains loudly about his life (to Brad in the office and Carolyn on the drive home) but ultimately lets people push him around.
He also says things that seem friendly but are clearly insincere, such as when Brad asks him if he has a minute and he replies, “For you Brad? I’ve got five.” Look at this short monologue to Jane from the first dinner scene (as always, Blogspot does not allow me to format this properly):
LESTER
Well, you want to know how things went at my job today? They've hired this efficiency expert, this really friendly guy named Brad, how perfect is that? And he's basically there to make it seem like they're justified in firing somebody, because they couldn't just come right out and say that, could they? No, no, that would be too... honest. And so they've asked us--
(off her look)
--you couldn't possibly care any less, could you?
Lester actually has two voices – one in voiceover and one in dialogue. If we consider that the voiceover is coming from beyond the grave and looking at the story in a kind of flashback, then this is actually an example of the changed voice. As a result, the voiceover is more direct and observant.
But there is some consistency in Lester’s early and later voices. He remains detached and cynical throughout. He only becomes heartfelt at the end of the movie when he talks to Angela after the aborted sexual encounter and in the voice over when he talks about the images that flashed through his mind just before he died. This dialogue gains added weight because it is not his normal way of speaking.
Now let’s look at Carolyn. Carolyn constantly speaks in sarcastic rhetorical statements. Consider this early exchange:
CAROLYN
Jane. Honey. Are you trying to look unattractive?
JANE
Yes.
CAROLYN
Well, congratulations. You've succeeded admirably.
CAROLYN (CONT'D)
Lester, could you make me a little later, please? Because I'm not quite late enough.
And look at the second dinner scene when she carries on a rhetorical and sarcastic conversation with herself. Here’s just one bit of it:
CAROLYN
No, no, don't give a second thought as to who's going to pay the mortgage. We'll just leave it all up to Carolyn. You mean, you're going to take care of everything now, Carolyn? Yes. I don't mind. I really don't. You mean, everything? You don't mind having the sole responsibility, your husband feels he can just quit his job--
There are plenty of great examples of this quality in Carolyn’s way of speaking, and it stays consistent through the movie because Carolyn never really changes.
Jane’s voice is more the typical surly teenager. She’s unhappy and supremely embarrassed by her parents. Her one word response to Carolyn in the exchange I used earlier is a great example. And look at Jane’s response to Lester in the first dinner scene when he complains that she doesn’t care about what he’s saying:
JANE
Well, what do you expect? You can't all of a sudden be my best friend, just because you had a bad day.
She gets up and heads toward the kitchen.
JANE (CONT'D)
I mean, hello. You've barely even spoken to me for months.
The use of teen slang of the period (“hello”) also differentiates Jane from her parents.
Ricky and his dad and Angela all have very distinctive ways of speaking as well. I won’t break down each one, but you might think about what makes their dialogue unique to them.
Many things affect a character’s voice. In this case we have three characters from the same family, meaning much of their demographic characteristics – class, ethnicity, etc. – are the same. What distinguishes their voices are primarily personality traits, with Jane having the added distinction of being a different age.
You want to think about all these things as you develop your characters and let their personality, attitude and background come out in the way they speak.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sci-fi Dialogue
If you write in the science fiction genre you are probably going to encounter more dialogue challenges than other genres. Science fiction has a lot of traps and if you aren’t aware of them you run the risk of writing something that comes across as silly.
One of the first things that will affect your dialogue is how far in the future your story is set. If your story is set in the present or the near future, people will likely speak pretty much as they do today. But if it’s set more than ten years in the future or in an alternate universe, you will face some of the same challenges as writing period dialogue.
Basically you will want to avoid modern slang, idiom and cultural references. You need to work from a more generic use of language without becoming too formal and without losing a sense of character.
Some writers create new slang for their future/alternate world. For example, Star Wars (written by George Lucas) abbreviated the word “android” to “Droid,” which emphasized how common robots were in that culture. Aliens (story by James Cameron and David Giler & Walter Hill, screenplay by James Cameron) introduced “stay frosty” as a future version of “be cool.” And the recent incarnation of the TV show Battlestar Galactica (created by Glen A. Larson and Ronald D. Moore) very effectively used the made-up word “frak” to replace a certain swear word that was forbidden on their cable channel.
This technique can help your fictional world feel more real. Remember how in Blade Runner (screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples), they used both the term “replicant” for the human like robots and the derogatory term “skin job.” That gave us a subtle sense of the way the robots were perceived by society in the imagined future of the movie.
Alien Languages
If your story involves aliens you will have to decide how to deal with their language. B-movie sci-fi has sometimes had humans land on a new planet only to discover all the aliens speaking English. This is a little ridiculous, of course.
If your aliens are invading Earth you can always just say they learned English from TV signals or something in anticipation of the invasion. Avatar (written by James Cameron) took a variation on this approach – when the story starts the humans had already taught the Navi English. The Navi did have their own language – which was occasionally used with subtitles – but this plot device meant most of the movie could take place without requiring the audience to read.
If you’re doing a space opera story with lots of alien races and cultures the easy way out is the “universal translator” technology like they used in Star Trek (created by Gene Roddenberry). On the other hand, embracing the challenge can add realism to your universe. If you take that path you will face the same issues as stories that use foreign languages. The difference is you may have to actually create this foreign language!
Star Wars used this approach and employed a wide range of tools to deal with it. Chewbacca speaks Wookie and we never understand what he’s saying. But Han Solo does and we grasp the meaning of Chewbacca’s howls from Han’s responses (though Chewbacca doesn’t speak English, he understands it). In the scene with Han Solo and Greedo or with Jabba the Hut in the sequels the filmmakers use subtitles. And they also include C-3PO as a robot who can translate thousands of languages. In Return of the Jedi (story by George Lucas, screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas) the characters (and the audience) simply don’t understand the Ewoks until C-3PO is available to translate. The result is a more linguistically believable fantasy universe.
Exposition
Probably the biggest challenge in most sci-fi is the technical exposition. Science fiction by definition deals with future technology that you’ll have to explain to the audience. How you deal with this depends a lot on whether you’re using a science fiction world as a backdrop for another type of story or whether technology is actually a critical part of your theme.
Star Wars is really an adventure movie set in the future while Alien (story by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, screenplay by Dan O’Bannon) is a horror movie set in space. In these kinds of movies you want to spend as little time as possible talking about the technology. In fact, when Lucas started explaining the force and light sabers and so on in the second trilogy it got a little painful. In the first movies they just existed and we accepted it.
However, you do still need to make sure the rules of the technology are clear. Otherwise, the audience will feel like anything is possible and that will kill a lot of the tension in your story.
Star Trek has teleportation technology. Little time is spent on the science behind it, but the rules are clearly established. People generally have to be fairly still and have a communicator for the operator to lock onto. The range of the teleporter is roughly the distance from a planet’s surface to a space ship. They can’t teleport someone between solar systems. The writers can then use these rules to create dramatic situations, such as in the most recent movie version where Scotty had to teleport people who were falling.
If your story is more pure sci-fi and deals with the impact of a certain technology on society you may want to spend more time on the ideas behind that technology. Minority Report (screenplay by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen) is a good example. It introduces the technology of precognition to explore themes of fate. This requires a more thorough explanation of the nature of the precognition technology.
The Matrix (written by Andy & Larry Wachowski) is another good example. The themes of the movie relate to reality and perception. The technology of the virtual world is a device to explore those themes. Thus discussions of the agents as virtual representations of computer programs are not just informational but thematic. And perceptual concepts like déjà vu are given a technological twist to add depth to the story.
Regardless of how much exposition you need, it’s key to deliver it in a palatable and dramatic fashion. See my post on exposition for more on this.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Accents and Cultural Speech Patterns
When writing dialogue we strive to create distinctive voices for characters and to capture the flavor of natural speech. In real life accents and cultural speech patterns are two things that really stand out. They can be useful in screenplay dialogue as well, but must be used with care.
People don’t speak in proper grammar and your dialogue should reflect that. Screenplays often use words like “gonna” to mimic the way people actually talk. And dialogue like…
“He done went down to the crick and got hisself eaten up by one of them crocodiles.”
…can really add flavor to your characters if done well. English teachers might faint reading that, but it certainly suggests a strong voice.
Accents can do the same. Of course any line that’s written in standard grammar can be delivered by an actor in a variety of accents. But we have the option of phonetically spelling out the accent to capture the effect on the page. Here’s an example of what I mean:
“Ahm gohn tell y’all about a little thing cahlled dignahty.”
The key here, though, is discretion. It’s much easier to listen to an accent than to read one spelled out phonetically. What can add charm at first can quickly grow tiresome – especially over a whole script. Consider the following exchange between two fictional New Englanders:
“Ahm pretty soah. Those new instructahs at the gym are slave drivahs.”
“Ayuh. But a wagah they leave befah the fahst nath’eastah.”
“Maybe you bettah take the oppahtunity to take a class befah then.”
“Exercisin’ is yaw cawse, not mine.”
Exhausting to read, isn’t it? Imagine that for 110 pages. Throwing in one phonetically accented word every couple lines would give us the idea without making our head hurt.
Better than accents is capturing the speech of a certain culture. It can give a real sense of place and class (note that people of different classes in the same place often speak quite differently.) This was used brilliantly in Fargo (written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen) to capture North Dakota. Here’s a brief exchange from that script:
YOUNGER MAN
Ya got the car?
JERRY
Yah, you bet. It's in the lot
there. Brand-new burnt umber
Ciera.
YOUNGER MAN
Yeah, okay. Well, siddown then.
I'm Carl Showalter and this is
my associate Gaear Grimsrud.
JERRY
Yah, how ya doin'. So, uh, we
all set on this thing, then?
YOUNGER MAN
Sure, Jerry, we're all set. Why
wouldn't we be?
JERRY
Yah, no, I'm sure you are. Shep
vouched for you and all. I got
every confidence in you fellas.
The Coens captured a bit of the accent by using the occasional “yah” and “fellas” but kept it very subtle. Then they captured the speech patterns of North Dakota with phrases like, “Yah, you bet” and “all set on this thing, then.”
Clueless (written by Amy Heckerling) does the same thing by including words and phrases like “totally,” “outie,” and “I’m like…” to capture the speech of Beverly Hills teens. Fried Green Tomatoes (screenplay by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski) uses phrases like, “bless her sweet little old heart” and “a heap of trouble” and “what in the name of Christmas” to capture a specific time and place in the South.
Done badly this kind of thing can feel cliché or stereotyped or gimmicky. If you’re not writing about a world you know personally you probably need to do some research. Ideally you go spend time with the kind of people whose voice you’re trying to capture. At the very least, dig up some audio or video recordings. Jot down colorful idioms and turns of phrase that you can sprinkle into your dialogue.
It’s important for screenwriters to remember that a screenplay is not a finished product; it is a guide for making a movie. The actors will add their skill to the dialogue, doing the accents needed. Hopefully they do them well – if not, nothing you write will save them.
When you’re writing your dialogue consider the reader. Use idiom and phrasing to give a sense of place and culture and sprinkle phonetic accents in with care to capture the flavor of speech. Then leave the rest to the actor.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Writing Period Dialogue
One of the challenges in writing period pieces is crafting believable dialogue. The key word here is “believable” – and paradoxically realistic period dialogue often is not believable. It’s more important that the dialogue sound right to the average audience than that it past muster with a historian or linguist.
If you’re over a certain age you probably remember the brouhaha over Kevin Costner’s bad British accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (story by Pen Densham, screenplay by Pen Densham & John Watson). But it was a strange criticism – people from that time period would have been speaking in some form of Old English. We wouldn’t understand a word they were saying. So why do we care that Costner’s accent was bad when he wasn’t even speaking the correct language?
We care because it just didn’t sound right. It was distracting. Now fortunately as writers we don’t have to worry about the actors’ accents. But we do have to worry about the construction of our dialogue.
There are actually two types of period dialogue to address. The first is dialogue from more recent history – say the last 300 years – where the language is basically the same as ours but different expressions, idioms, phrasing and slang were in vogue. The second is dialogue from times when people spoke what amounts to a foreign language even if it was a forerunner of English.
In both of these cases it’s first important to strip away modern slang words and terms. Obviously nobody’s going to say “LOL” in the 1990’s or in the 1690’s. But some terms are a little trickier. Would someone use the term “road rage” in 1975? What makes this hard is that we’re so used to talking in modern phrasing we do it without thinking.
For movies set in the last 300 years you may need to do a little research into the period. It’s particularly useful to read letters and things from the time to get a sense of how people used words. Though keep in mind that until only recently people tended to be much more formal in their writing than in their speech.
Dropping in archaic terms can help set the mood. It can even be fun, particularly in more recent time periods when we have fond memories of the slang. Consider these lines of dialogue from scenes set in the ‘80s from an early draft of Hot Tub Time Machine by Josh Heald:
“Genius! Man, not to get all fag on you, but I’m digging your fresh threads, bro.”
“You guys a couple of spazzes?”
And the movie 13 Going on 30 (written by Josh Goldsmith & Cathy Yuspa) drops slang like “dorkus,” “freakazoid” and “totally” into its ‘80s scenes.
You might load up the dialogue with period slang and phrasing for comedic effect, but in general it’s best to use that kind of thing sparingly for flavor. Try reading something more than 100 years old. It can be difficult to slog through. You want your audience to be able to understand your characters!
For time periods before modern English the best approach is similar to what you would do when writing dialogue in English that would actually be spoken in a foreign language (see my post on foreign language dialogue).
You’ll want to avoid most slang and idiom altogether and write in a slightly more formal voice. Avoiding contractions often helps things sound period (for example, using “do not” instead of “don’t”). Consider some of the dialogue from the second draft of the Gladiator screenplay (revised by John Logan based on the script by David Fanzoni):
From Gladiator: “The first thing I shall do is honor him with games worthy of his majesty.”
A modern character might say something more like, “the first thing I’m going to do is honor him with some cool games.” Now consider this one:
From Gladiator: “Should Caesar permit, I’ll go home. I’ve been away too long. I’ve forgotten my wife’s face and I barely know my son.”
A modern version might be “If Caesar lets me, I’ll go home. I’ve been away so long I barely remember what my wife and son look like.” But the more formal phrasing sounds right to us, even though these characters would actually be speaking in a completely different language.
Now things get really tricky. You don’t want all your characters to sound alike. You’ll want to make your upper class characters well spoken and your lower class characters crass. You can also vary things like how verbose characters are, how blunt, how obsequious, how honest. These kind of things require more attention in a period script than in a contemporary one.
When you’re thinking about character and conflict and making your scenes work it’s difficult to avoid the occasional modern phrase. So you’ll probably have to do at least one pass in the polish phase just to weed out things that sound off.
I also like to have a few friends read the script and instruct them to make a mark next to any line of dialogue that strikes them as off. Since we’re talking about a fairly subjective idea of what sounds right it’s useful to get multiple opinions.
Ultimately good period dialogue feels natural. We should be caught up in the story and characters, not in the way they speak.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Foreign Language Dialogue
Writing good dialogue is tough even in normal situations, but sooner or later you’re likely to encounter a story with an added challenge. In some of these cases there is no “official” way to handle the dialogue. In my next few posts I’ll discuss some of the options for these challenges so hopefully you can find a solution that fits your problem and comes across as professional. Today I’ll discuss foreign languages.
Obviously in the real world not everybody speaks the same language. And since your movie will be targeted to speakers of one particular language (for the purposes of this blog I’m going to assume English), when a character is speaking in another language you will have to figure out how to handle it.
If you’re entire movie takes place in another language the best approach is just to write in English. The audience will understand that the people in your story of the French revolution are speaking French and appreciate not having to read subtitles for the entire movie. The Reader (screenplay by David Hare) took this approach – the movie is entirely set in Germany about Germans but the dialogue is in English.
If you do this you will want to make the dialogue slightly more formal and avoid slang and idiom. It just sounds weird if someone from India says, “that’s awesome, dude.” Somehow we can accept the fallacy that English is a stand-in for another language but can’t accept slang. However, the dialogue still must sound conversational. Too formal and it will seem stilted.
This is obviously tricky and may take some trial and error. I like to have a few friends read the script and instruct them to make a mark next to any line of dialogue that strikes them as off.
In The Hunt for Red October (screenplay by Larry Ferguson and Donald Stewart) there were two submarines, one Russian and one American. The filmmakers famously started the dialogue on the Russian sub in Russian, then zoomed in on Sean Connery’s mouth and switched to English to indicate to the audience that though the dialogue on that sub would be in English from now on we were to understand the characters were still speaking Russian.
If you only have a few lines of dialogue in another language you have a variety of options.
If you don’t care if the audience understands the character one option is to just write the dialogue in the foreign language (if you are fluent or can get someone to write it out for you). I wouldn’t advise this for longer passages.
A second option is to indicate the speech in an action line, such as:
The policeman rants at him in German.
A third option is to indicate the dialogue is in another language, such as:
POLICEMAN
(In German)
Move that car!
However if the dialogue is actually conveying important story information this last approach is risky since the script is giving the reader information that the viewer wouldn’t have.
Subtitling used to be frowned on for a variety of reasons. One problem is that people talk faster than we can read so subtitles usually have to be condensed for any extended amount of dialogue. Another issue is that people read at different speeds and of course some people can’t read at all (though this was a bigger problem in the early days of film than it is today.)
Subtitles have become more acceptable now, and are actually the preferred way to handle most foreign language situations. Slumdog Millionaire (screenplay by Simon Beaufoy) and The Kite Runner (screenplay by David Benioff) had large sections in other languages with subtitles. The scripts I’ve seen for these films simply ignored this and wrote all the dialogue in English.
I would suggest it’s usually better to indicate which dialogue is in English and which is subtitled. There are a couple formats that are common for subtitling. For the occasional line it’s most common to indicate the subtitle in a parenthetical:
CONDUCTOR
(In Russian, subtitled)
Ticket please.
If it’s a whole scene or section of the script you can use action lines to indicate the subtitling. When you do this it’s fairly common to then bracket the subtitled dialogue. For example:
INT. APARTMENT
Pablo enters. Maria lounges on the couch.
(THE FOLLOWING SCENE IS IN SPANISH WITH SUBTITLES)
PABLO
[Why isn’t dinner read?]
MARIA
[I got delayed at the bank.]
PABLO
[You always have some excuse.]
(END SUBTITLES)
So you have many options to deal with the challenge of foreign languages in your script. Which one you choose will depend largely on the amount of dialogue that will be in the foreign language. Next post I’ll discuss some other unusual dialogue situations.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Polishing Exercise Part 2
Last time I posted a short scene and suggested you polish it. First, here's the original scene with my notes on what's wrong with it (and again, please forgive the inability to mimic true screenplay format in the blog):
INT. APARTMENT – NIGHT
The apartment is spacious and well appointed. A couch, love seat and recliner are arranged in a conversation area by a gas fireplace, above which a plasma TV is mounted. Modern art hangs on the walls and a piece of abstract sculpture sits on a coffee table surrounded by architectural magazines. Big picture windows look out over the New Orleans skyline. A table surrounded by four chairs is set for a fancy dinner, complete with tablecloth and two candles. A bottle of champagne rests in an ice bucket.
(Too much description. We can simplify this a lot. I’d pick out the modern art and the architectural magazines as the best details to use. And we probably want to say something about the table being ready for a date.)
The sound of food preparation comes from the kitchen. It stops when there’s a KNOCK at the door.
KEVIN enters, wiping his hands on a plain green apron. He is about 30 and dressed with casual style in khakis and an oxford shirt. His shoes and watch are expensive, signaling his good taste. Yet a certain ruggedness is apparent under the well scrubbed surface.
Kevin goes to the door and opens it. (We don’t need to say he goes to the door to open it.) On the other side is MARIA. She is also about 30, pretty and dressed to impress in a black cocktail dress, high heels, and a demure gold necklace. Her make-up has been applied with care and her hair is swept up to show off her swan like neck.
(More description than is needed for both of them. I’ll pick a couple of representative details to describe.)
KEVIN
Good evening.
MARIA
Hello.
KEVIN
Come in.
MARIA
Thank you.
(Four lines of dialogue that tell us absolutely nothing.)
Maria enters and looks around.
MARIA
Mm, smells delicious.
KEVIN
I think you'll like it. Have a seat. Would you like some champagne?
MARIA
Sure.
She goes to the table and sits. Kevin gets the champagne out of the ice bucket and pours each of them a glass.
(Question: What do we get out of showing Maria’s arrival? Let’s just start with him pouring the champagne.)
MARIA
Champagne. Fancy.
KEVIN
Well, this is our third date after all. I’m glad Mona introduced us.
MARIA
Yeah. How did you know her again?
KEVIN
We met in college.
(The exposition feels clunky. I can get the needed info out in a more elegant fashion.)
He puts the champagne back in the ice bucket.
(Don’t need this line.)
MARIA
(nervously) (Don’t need this parenthetical. The tone is obvious.)
About that. It’s very nice of you to cook for me, and I know what people say.
KEVIN
About what?
(We could cut this line out and still get the meaning, but I like breaking up Maria’s line to show she’s uncomfortable. You don’t want to lose the subtext as you trim your scene!)
She looks down, embarrassed. (Don’t need this. Let the actors do the acting.)
MARIA
Third dates. But I’d like to take this slow.
KEVIN
Have I done something to give you a bad impression of me?
MARIA
(quickly) (Don’t need this parenthetical.)
No, no. Of course not.
KEVIN
Because I wouldn’t want you to think I was trying to take advantage of you.
MARIA
I don’t think that. I’m just trying to... (beat) manage expectations.
Kevin looks hurt. (We get this from his dialogue.)
KEVIN
Maria, I wanted to cook for you because, if I may be a bit immodest, I’m a very good cook and I’m trying to impress you. That’s my only agenda for this evening.
Maria smiles, relieved. (We get this from her dialogue. These kinds of action lines just slow down the scene.)
MARIA
You don’t have to try to impress me.
Kevin holds up his glass.
KEVIN
Okay. Let’s make a toast. To an evening of no pressure on either one of us.
(The toast sentence is unnecessary.)
They clink glasses and drink.
KEVIN
I better check on the chicken.
Kevin stands up and starts for the kitchen. (We can cut stands up.)
Maria looks sick.
MARIA
Oh…
Kevin turns back. (Don't need.)
KEVIN
(concerned) (Don’t need this parenthetical. The tone is obvious.)
Is something wrong?
MARIA
Where's your bathroom?
KEVIN
Down the hall.
(This whole exchange could be trimmed.)
He points the way. Maria stands up and starts to head for the bathroom. She stumbles and catches herself on the couch. Kevin rushes to her aid.
(This action is overwritten.)
KEVIN
Whoa, maybe you better sit down.
He eases her down onto the couch. She mumbles something inaudible as her eyes close.
KEVIN
Maria?
She doesn’t respond. Kevin flips open his cell phone and dials a number.
KEVIN
(into phone)
She’s out. You have about five hours.
He closes the phone, stands up, smiles with satisfaction, and heads back into the kitchen.
(More overwritten action.)
Now, here's the scene as it would appear edited based on my notes:
INT. APARTMENT – NIGHT
The apartment is spacious and well appointed. Modern art hangs on the walls and a piece of abstract sculpture sits on a coffee table surrounded by architectural magazines.
KEVIN and MARIA sit at the dining table which is set for a fancy dinner.
Kevin is about 30 and dressed with casual style. His shoes and watch are expensive, signaling his good taste. Yet a certain ruggedness is apparent under the well scrubbed surface.
Maria is also about 30, pretty and dressed to impress in a black cocktail dress.
MARIA
Mona will be happy to hear things are going well between us.
KEVIN
She did a good job this time. You should have seen some of the women she set me up with back in college.
Kevin pours them each a glass of champagne.
MARIA
Champagne. Fancy.
KEVIN
Well, this is our third date after all.
MARIA
About that. It’s very nice of you to cook for me, and I know what people say.
KEVIN
About what?
MARIA
Third dates. But I’d like to take this slow.
KEVIN
Have I done something to give you a bad impression of me?
MARIA
No, no. Of course not.
KEVIN
Because I wouldn’t want you to think I was trying to take advantage of you.
MARIA
I don’t think that. I’m just trying to... (beat) manage expectations.
KEVIN
Maria, I wanted to cook for you because, if I may be a bit immodest, I’m a very good cook and I’m trying to impress you. That’s my only agenda for this evening.
MARIA
You don’t have to try to impress me.
Kevin holds up his glass.
KEVIN
Okay. To an evening of no pressure on either one of us.
They clink glasses and drink.
KEVIN
I better check on the chicken.
Kevin starts for the kitchen.
MARIA
Oh...I don't feel so good...
Maria suddenly looks sick. She dashes for the bathroom but stumbles and catches herself on the couch. Kevin rushes to her aid.
KEVIN
Whoa, maybe you better sit down.
He eases her down onto the couch. She mumbles something inaudible as her eyes close.
KEVIN
Maria?
She doesn’t respond. Kevin flips open his cell phone and dials a number.
KEVIN
(into phone)
She’s out. You have about five hours.
He closes the phone and heads back into the kitchen.
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