As writers, it's easy to lose sight of the audience. We assume that, if we understand what is happening in the story and what we are trying to communicate with the story, then surely an audience will understand it as well. We know our story and our intent so well that we lose the perspective of someone who is experiencing our script for the first time.
Therefore, one of the most useful ways to hone your craft is to get feedback from others. You need people to act as your audience — people who can give you objective feedback about the effect your writing is having upon them. Is it clear? Is it coherent? Does it move them? Does it engage them? These are hard questions to answer on your own. You need a group setting: a classroom, a workshop, or a writers’ group.
Most of the exercises in this book are designed for this kind of environment. I encourage you to find trusted peers to help evaluate your work. This might be easier in a large city, but, thanks to the Internet, no one has to be excluded from forming his or her own support group of fellow writers. Once you have completed the group exercises in each chapter, you can do the solo exercises on your own as a regular writer's workout.
If you are truly on your own, then you must develop the ability to be your own audience. This means putting your completed work away for a few weeks and then reviewing it as if you were a virgin to the material. You can still go through the discussion questions, but you must split your perspective in half. Debate the discussion questions between two sides of yourself: the writer and the objective audience-member.
There Are Only Two Kinds of Writing Advice
From your point of view, there is not good advice or bad advice. There is not right advice and wrong advice. There is only:
• Helpful Advice
• Not Helpful Advice
Making this distinction forces you to take responsibility for figuring out what you need, right now, to make your work better and to help you along in this moment. It also keeps your work and your artistic ego from getting torn apart in the endless crosscurrents of opinions from teachers, professionals, and peers.
So… read books on writing. Attend lectures on writing. Take writing classes and workshops. Try out everything that anyone suggests. If you find a suggestion helpful, use it. If it's not helpful, ignore it for the moment — just keep working with the helpful stuff; keep writing. In six months, revisit the unhelpful advice. Reevaluate it. Maybe it's helpful now. Maybe you're at a different place in your writing. Maybe the advice that was completely useless and 100% not helpful six months ago is now suddenly, miraculously… brilliant. If that's the case, use it. If that's not the case, ignore it for six more months, then evaluate it again. Is it helpful yet? If so, use it; if not, put it aside for six more months. Repeat this process over and over again until you die. By the sheer force of evolution, the useful advice will end up in your work and the useless advice will stay out of your way.
Per my own instructions, try out everything in this book. But if any section is, in your opinion, not the thing you need to help you along in this particular moment, then ignore it. Go find the helpful stuff. Go find the useful stuff. Focus on that.
THE VOICE:
HOW PEOPLE TALK
HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.
—William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
LESSON ONE:
Capturing the Voice
A
s a scriptwriter, one of the first things you need to master is the ability to capture dialogue on the page. This is trickier than it sounds. Schools spend years drilling us in prose writing — writing that is meant to be read. Dialogue isn't meant to be read; it is meant to be heard. The scriptwriter has the difficult task of taking something that is meant to be heard, putting it on the page in such a way that it can be read, but ultimately making sure that once it comes off the page and into an actor's mouth, it will still sound like speech.
Scriptwriters do this by abandoning almost everything we ever learned about composition, grammar, and punctuation. In dialogue, people rarely pre-organize their thoughts. They don't necessarily use complete sentences or speak with proper grammar. People do not talk in prose. And because people do not talk in prose, scriptwriters do not write dialogue in prose. We do not stay bound to the traditional rules of composition. We reappropriate grammar. We create vocabulary. We employ rogue punctuation marks such as the ellipsis and the em dash. Your fourth grade teacher would be horrified, but your actors and your audience will thank you for it.
A few tips on dialogue punctuation:
• An ellipsis (…) suggests that a character's thought trails off.
• An em dash ( — ) suggests that a character stops a thought short, interrupts himself, or is interrupted by someone else.
• Periods create a pause or complete a thought. They work sort of like the word “stop” in a telegram. Forget what you learned in school. In dialogue, you don't need a complete sentence in order to use the period.
Here's an example:
MARK
So. Right. There's this girl — she's not the type I usually go out with. I usually go out with someone… skinnier. More fit, you know? But this girl — she's fat. I mean FAT. And the thing is, I think it's hot. Yeah. Smokin’.
LESSON 1: SCRIPT ANALYSIS EXERCISE
NOTE: In this exercise, beginning and intermediate writers should analyze published work by established writers. See the Appendix for a list of suggestions. Advanced writers have the option of bringing in their own work for analysis.
Have each member of the group bring in one page of dialogue from a play or screenplay. It's helpful to include a broad range of authors, genres, and writing styles.
For Discussion:
Review each page of dialogue with the group.
1. Describe the speaking style of each character.
2. How did the phrasing and punctuation of the dialogue contribute to your sense of each character's voice?
3. How does the style and rhythm of the dialogue contribute to the overall tone of the scene? Is this a comic scene? A romantic scene? A melodramatic scene? What in the rhythm of the dialogue contributes to this impression?
4. Do you notice a difference in the style of dialogue from author to author? Compare and contrast your impressions.
LESSON 1: BEGINNER EXERCISE
For this exercise, you will need a portable audio recorder. Interview two to three different people and ask them the same question. The question should be open-ended: one that can't be answered with a simple yes or no. (See below for a list of examples.) When selecting your interview subjects, try to find people as different from each other as possible: different ages, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds, nationalities, etc. It doesn't matter if your subjects know or remember all the details that the question asks — the point is to get them talking and to get them to answer the question as fully as possible in their own voice. Try to speak as little as possible while they answer.
Record each interview with an audio recorder. Then type up the interview word for word. As you type, try to capture the rhythm of the subject's speech in your punctuation.
Some suggestions for interview questions:
• What is your earliest memory?
• Describe the job of president of the United States.
• Tell me what happened in the most recent episode of your favorite television show.
• How did God create the world?
• Describe a dream that you had recently.
For Discussion:
1. Look over your transcriptions. Does anything surprise you? How does the transcription of the dialogue differ from traditional prose?
2. Have someone in the group (preferably someone with an acting background) read your transcription out loud. After the group member has read the transcription, play the original audio recording. In what ways did the reader sound different than the original speaker? Were there differences in the rhythm of the speech? Were there differences in emphasis or to
ne? If so, was there something in the way that the speech was transcribed onto the page that caused this difference?
3. What verbal habits or tics do you notice in the speaker's pattern of speech? For example: Is this a person who uses a particular phrase over and over? Is this a person who speaks in clipped, precise sentences? Is this a person who rambles from topic to topic without ever completing a thought? Is this a person who can never come up with the word he's looking for?
4. What tones do you hear in the speaker's dialogue? Has the question provoked an emotional response such as anger, passion, or enthusiasm? How does the speaker seem to feel about what he is saying?
5. Have members of the group try to describe the speaker based on what they hear in the interview. What do you imagine that this person is like? Where do you think he lives? Where does he work? Who are his friends? What does he do in his free time?
LESSON 1: INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED EXERCISE
The following three paragraphs are from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain. The book is a memoir of his years working as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. In this excerpt, Twain reflects on how his growing expertise of the river eventually killed his romance with it.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me…. I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.
But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face… Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind tomorrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that…
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a “break” that ripples above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?
The prose is beautifully written. But imagine if Twain did not have the luxury of sitting down at a typewriter and carefully composing his thoughts over several drafts. Imagine instead that Twain told this story out loud, in the moment, to someone standing in the room with him. Rewrite this excerpt as that monologue.
For Discussion:
Have someone in the group read the original essay out loud and then read her monologue version of it.
1. How did the monologue version differ from the prose version?
2. After all the monologues have been read, compare and contrast the choices made by the monologue authors. In what ways were all the monologues the same? What were the differences?
3. Have each writer discuss the process of adapting the essay. What was the thought process that went into the choices by the writer? In what ways did the writer decide to stay faithful to the original text? In what ways did the writer feel free to diverge from the original text? How and why did the writer make those decisions?
4. Were there any aspects of the original piece that were particularly difficult to capture in monologue form? If so, why?
LESSON 1: SOLO EXERCISE
Pick an excerpt from any piece of prose (e.g., an essay, newspaper article, or novel). Rewrite that excerpt as a monologue. The challenge is to stay as faithful as possible to the original tone, style, and content of the piece, but to re-create it as something spoken instead of read.
Now, rewrite that monologue. In the rewrite, keep the words of the monologue exactly the same, but change the punctuation. How much can you alter the tone and meaning of the monologue simply by changing the punctuation?
As an ongoing workout, experiment with different source material. What kinds of prose are easy to adapt into monologues? What kinds are not? As you get better at adapting, challenge yourself by picking difficult selections.
TOMMY: What do you mean, I'm funny?… You mean the way I talk? What?… Funny how? I mean, what's funny about it?
—Goodfellas (1990)
LESSON TWO:
Imitating a Voice
W
ho are the voices in your head? Who are the people with speech so familiar to you that you can hear them talking when you close your eyes? In your life, who talks so distinctively and with such clarity of personality that you could imitate his rants, raves, sputterings, mumblings, or musings on any topic? Is it your crazy Aunt Tillie? Is it your rambling college professor? Is it your overly earnest ex-boyfriend?
You don't have to limit yourself to people you know personally. Consider the familiar and distinctive speech patterns of actors such as Jack Nicholson or television characters such as Tony Soprano or Homer Simpson. Consider other public figures. I've listened to the same local radio station for the past fifteen years. The patter of the morning DJ is as familiar to me as my morning shower.
Often, art students are given the assignment to copy an existing painting. The act of imitating another piece of art forces the artist to go beyond her typical choices and expand her repertoire. She must learn to use the heavy brush strokes of Van Gogh or the tiny meticulous dabs of Seurat. She will experiment with Rothko's layers of colors or Picasso's disjointed perspectives. Each of these exercises expands her skill set — a skill set that she can draw on in her future work.
By listening to the voices around us, and then attempting to imitate them on the page, we writers get a similar benefit. By tuning in to other people's distinctive patterns of speech, we hone our own ear for dialogue. By recreating those patterns on the page, we force ourselves to understand the nuances of those voices and we stretch our dialogue-writing technique into new territory.
LESSON 2: SCRIPT ANALYSIS EXERCISE
NOTE: In this exercise, beginning and intermediate writers should analyze published work by established writers. See the Appendix for a list of suggestions. Advanced writers have the option of bringing in their own work for analysis.
Have the entire group see the same play, watch the same film, or read the same script. (See the Appendix for a list of suggestions.)
For Discussion:
1. Describe the speaking style for each character.
2. How did those styles differ from each other? How were they the same?
3. Which characters had the most memorable or unique voices? What made the voices memorable or unique?
4. Imagine you were writing an original scene for each character. As a writer, what would you do in the dialogue to capture each character's voice?
LESSON 2: BEGINNER EXERCISE
1. By yourself or with a group, come up with a list of famous voices. They might be actors, public figures, or famous characters from television, stage, or film. Whoever they are, they should a) be well known; and b) have done an extensive amount of speaking. In other words, it's not enough for the person to be famous. He should also have a famous voice. Here are a few examples from one of my lists:
• Kramer (from Seinfeld)
• Bill O'Reilly
• Barack Obama
• Lisa Simpson (from The Simpsons)
• Blanche DuBois
2. Each writer draws a name from the list of famous voices. The assignment is to write a monologue in which that character speaks on the following topic:
Describe your favorite color to someone who has been blind since birth.
Talk the Talk Page 2
