Creating Unforgettable Characters

by Linda Seger

PRODUCER

  Wait a minute!

  (thinking aloud) Dirt, earth . . . Homespun, I like it. Could start a new trend. O.K. . . . You got a deal. . . .

  The YOUNG WRITER is startled. He stops in his tracks and spins around.

  YOUNG WRITER

  (excited) You mean it?

  PRODUCER Sure, kid . . . But we gotta change the title!

  Now we have two equal characters, each contributing to the scene through attitude, conflict, backstory, and intention. With stronger characters, the dialogue has become stronger.

  If you were to continue working on this scene, there are several different directions you could take.

  You might decide that the scene has too much of an "edge" to it, that both characters are a bit too angry and adversarial. You might decide to give the edge to one character, but not to the other. Perhaps the writer is angry, but the producer refuses to get hooked by his anger.

  You might decide to add "business" to this scene, detailing the individual activity of each character. Think for a moment about some of the more unusual meetings you've had. What has gone on in those meetings, besides simply talking?

  I was once in a meeting where the executive had about fifty Mickey Mouse figures all over his desk. If you used this, you might have the producer dusting them throughout the meeting.

  I've been in meetings where an executive played darts most of the time. Or where the producer spent most of the time on the phone, while sizing me up across the desk.

  Perhaps there's something going on in the other room that adds to the business of the scene. Dara and I considered giving the producer a wife who is creating a large sculpture out on the deck using all sorts of machinery. Throughout the scene, the writer would be trying to identify sounds that remind him of machine guns, or drills, or a motor with a problem. This could lead to an attitude of fear or curiosity or simply an inability to concentrate on anything the producer is saying.

  Any of these suggestions for business could be used to reveal character, and to communicate subtext so the scene is not on-the-nose.

  You might decide to explore the atmosphere of the scene to create other directions for the dialogue to go. Is the room cold or hot? Is it dark or light? Is someone smoking? Is there a strange smell in the room? How is the room furnished? Are there books and scripts on every chair, so there's no place to sit?

  You might think about changing the race, gender, age, or weight of one of your characters. Any of these changes can also change the dialogue. I once had an appointment with a person (not a producer) who weighed about 400 pounds. He sat in a very large chair—and never moved. My surprise at his appearance made the first few moments very uncomfortable—and everything said at the beginning of the meeting was simply a babble.

  The expectations that one has of a meeting will affect the dialogue. If your character expected to see a producer who is fifty, and the producer is actually twenty-five, the unexpected situation can change the dialogue. If one of the characters is wearing an eye patch, or a neck brace, or has an eye tic, or is trying to hide a very small pimple on his chin—all of this can affect the dialogue.

  The language or vocabulary used will also change the dialogue. If a character has an accent, or uses very big words that the other character doesn't understand, or uses "in" vocabulary that is not clear—the type of communication between characters will change.

  The context of the scene can also have an impact on what is said during the scene. Perhaps the producer is going through a divorce, or the young writer has just come from a funeral of a close friend. These situations will affect the direction of the scene. Some other contexts might be: the scene is the beginning of a love affair, or the end of a long working relationship between producer and writer, or the producer had just hired another writer but felt he had to keep the appointment anyway.

  The producer and young writer scene has been written many times before. One of its most unusual settings occurs in Moss Hart's autobiography, Act One. This book has been adapted for a feature film by one of my clients, Treva Silverman ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show") and is to be produced by Laurence Mark (Working Girl) and Scott Rudin (Mrs. Soffel).

  The scene takes place in New York. Moss Hart, a new writer, has just finished his play, and has received word that the great theatrical producer, Jed Harris, wants to meet with him about his script. Notice how simple much of the dialogue seems—yet when combined with business and attitude, how much it communicates about these two men.

  INT. MADISON HOTEL—DAY

  It's 12 o'clock and Moss, eager and excited, is at the concierge desk.

  MOSS

  Moss Hart to see Jed Harris.

  CONCIERGE Go right up. Suite 1201. Mr. Harris is expecting you.

  MOSS

  (grins) Thank you.

  CUT TO:

  INT. MADISON HOTEL, 12TH FLOOR—DAY

  Moss gets out of the elevator, walks down the hall in great spirits. He gets to suite 1201, knocks softly at the door. It's halfway open. No answer. He knocks again, then presses bell.

  VOICE (muted; in the distance) Come in, come in.

  CUT TO:

  INT. SUITE 1201—DAY

  Moss hesitantly walks into the suite. He passes through a little foyer into the living room. It is immaculately clean, looks almost unlived in. Not a cigarette butt or newspaper around. Is this the right place?

  MOSS

  (calls softly) Excuse me . . . Moss Hart for Jed Harris.

  VOICE

  Yes. Come in.

  He follows the voice, hesitantly. He crosses from the living room to the bedroom.

  CUT TO:

  INT. BEDROOM—DAY

  One twin bed is slept in, the covers kicked off. The other bed is piled high with scripts. Two ashtrays are filled to the brim with half-smoked cigarettes. The shade is drawn, the room is in half darkness. Moss is totally confused, frightened he's made some mistake.

  MOSS

  Hello?

  VOICE (from bathroom) Come in. Come in.

  He approaches the bathroom and takes a few steps forward. Moss's expression: terrified, horrified, stunned.

  CUT TO.

  We see JED HARRIS from the back, standing by the sink, shaving. He is naked.

  JED HARRIS

  (casually)

  Good morning. I'm really sorry I couldn't see you till now.

  MOSS

  (totally nonplussed; shakily) That's ... all right.

  Moss looks around, trying to find where to focus.

  JED HARRIS Actually, I wanted to read your script earlier, but you know the way this season is going. . . .

  MOSS

  (addressing his shoe) Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

  JED HARRIS Last night there was that party for the Lunts. . . . Everybody seems to adore the Lunts. As far as I'm concerned, one Lunt is enough.

  Moss laughs, a dry, raspy gasp that stops as soon as it starts. Jed Harris starts to towel-dry his face.

  JED HARRIS But I went to the party because there was this little Italian actress. There'd been a lot of intriguing gossip about her that I wanted to check up on.

  A towel drops on the floor from the sink. Moss stares at it, not sure whether he should pick it up. He finally decides not to. Jed Harris, continuing his conversation, winks at Moss. Moss tries to remember what Jed Harris is talking about.

  JED HARRIS The gossip turned out to be truer than I'd even hoped.

  He laughs smugly at Moss. Moss tries a smile, but can't get it to happen. He succeeds in more of a facial tic.

  The scene, in many ways, is quite simple. Notice, however, how many levels are conveyed through the dialogue and the business of the scene. Moss's attitude includes anticipation, shock, embarrassment. There are hints of conflict over whether to enter or not, whether to pick up the towel or not, whether to speak or not.

  Jed conveys a nonchalance and delight over his evening's escapade with the Italian actress. Treva created this conversation because, as she said, "Moss Hart wrote h
is memoir in the 1950s, in a more innocent time. I needed to dispel any hints that Jed Harris appearing nude could be any sort of a homosexual overture."

  The scene in Moss Hart's book includes the same setting and circumstances—Jed Harris's nudity and Moss's embarrassment, but the focus is different. Hart recounts,

  There is no question in my mind but that Jed Harris is one of the finest conversationalists on the subject of the theatre. . . . Even in my disoriented state, I could tell that this was theatre talk of a kind I had never heard before, and as the haze of my embarrassment began to lift with each succeeding article of clothing that he put on, I began to listen intently. His criticism of Once in a Lifetime was sharp, penetrating, full of a quick apprehension of its potentialities as well as its pitfalls, and included an astonishingly profound understanding of satirical writing in general. His nimble tongue raced from Once in a Lifetime to Chekhov, to a production of Uncle Vanya that he was contemplating, to a scathing denunciation of his fellow producers, to a swift categorizing of certain American playwrights whose plays were not worth the paper they were written on, and back again to Once in a Lifetime— in a dazzling cascade of eagle-winged and mercurial words that left me a little breathless.1

  Converting this paragraph into dialogue for a script could easily have yielded a very talky scene. Treva says, "In order to begin to re-create this, I would need to include obscure, esoteric information that would be a total turnoff to audiences."

  I was the consultant on the project, and we decided to cut the scene since the film is really about Moss's relationship with George Kaufman, not with Jed Harris. However, the scene is a personal favorite of mine because of its clarity of emotions and quiet charm.

  TECHNIQUES FOR APPROACHING DIALOGUE

  Many writers love the sounds and rhythms and color of good dialogue.

  Playwright Robert Anderson says, "I fell in love with dialogue when my brother brought home a Noel Coward play in college. I picked it up and asked my mother what it was and she said it was a play. From then on I was fascinated. I've always been drawn to dialogue in novels. When reading novels, I would skip to the dialogue, which is a mistake, because in novels the story's not carried in the dialogue, it's in the narrative.

  "I don't think you should even start to be a playwright if you don't have a feel for dialogue. I think a playwright should have a gift for dramatic situation and for dramatic dialogue. "

  Writers prepare themselves for writing dialogue in a number of different ways. The first step for most of them is to spend a tremendous amount of time working out the story, before any dialogue is ever written.

  Robert Anderson continues, "I give a lot of thought to the dynamics of a story, the structure, the characters, what they're doing, the subtext, what's going on in each scene, the progression of each scene. I will spend months working on what this play's going to be about. I call it fishing. I sit at the desk every morning and throw my idea into the pond and I make notes and I never look at those notes again. And the next day I throw the same fish hook in and see what comes up. And after a while something begins to take shape and form. Then I see where the characters are, where they're going, what it's about, and then I put it all away, and write the first draft of the play in about two or three weeks. Red-hot heat, never reading a word till the draft is finished. So it's a combination of spontaneity within a shape.

  "I lay out the structure of the scene, six or seven months or however long I've been working on the notes. I know the characters pretty well. They can talk about anything they want as long as it accomplishes the purpose of the scene. Writing dialogue reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend, the playwright Sidney Kingsley. I knew that Sidney was writing a play so I asked him how he was doing. He said, 'I'm almost finished, I'll start writing the dialogue tomorrow.' So the dialogue comes after everything else has been mapped out."

  Dale Wasserman approaches dialogue by first analyzing the subject and intention of each scene: "Dialogue comes last with me. When I know where my story is going and when I know what the arguments and the intent of each scene are going to be, then I add the dialogue. By that time the dialogue and its content has become almost inevitable. Of course, the color and style of dialogue is not inevitable and one sweats over that a great deal. To give it the kind of simplicity and style that it needs can be very difficult."

  Many writers train their ear by listening carefully to people's speech in a variety of situations:

  John Millington Synge said that by listening to the scullery maids talk, he got his sense of the dialogue.

  Robin Cook says he loves to overhear people talk on airplanes, and he plays basketball in the park and listens to the kids teasing each other.

  Robert Benton will sometimes record dialogue to hear a rhythm. "In Places in the Heart, the character of Margaret Sparling was based on a friend of mine. I sat with her and I tape-recorded her for two days. We simply talked and talked until I had her language down."

  But real talk isn't the same as dialogue. So developing an ear for listening to dialogue is only one step. The next step is translating real talk into fictional dialogue.

  "I never use words that people actually speak," says Robert Anderson. "If you set up a tape recorder where people are talking and play it back, it's ridiculous. All dialogue is stylized, verisimilitude and not reality. One has an ear for bridging that gap. Many years ago, when I was writing for a radio show called 'The Theatre Guild on the Air,' I did an adaptation of A Farewell to Arms to star Humphrey Bogart. To my dismay, I found I could use very little of the famous Hemingway dialogue because it didn't carry the story forward or develop the character relationships. When the show was broadcast the critics said, 'The Hemingway dialogue carries the show.' I was flattered that I had been able to write Hemingwayesque dialogue . . . which carried the story forward."

  Robin Cook says, "Whenever I write any dialogue I read it aloud. I'm looking for similitude. I want it to sound like two people talking together. It's so obvious to me when I read a book in which the dialogue isn't realistic. One of the amazing parts of really good dialogue is that it gives you the impression of being in the vernacular without being in the vernacular."

  According to Shelley Lowenkopf, "Dialogue in a novel was never intended to be an exact representation of speech; it represents the attitude of the characters. You should be able to tell who is speaking by what he or she wants. So dialogue should be an outpouring of the secret part of the character. Part of constructing good dialogue is to think through and understand what a character wants to keep secret."

  Leonard Tourney adds: "Realistic dialogue is not real talk, it is an artifice. Dialogue should characterize, be very compressed. It gives the flavor of reality."

  There are exercises and processes that writers can do to help them write good dialogue.

  Treva Silverman begins by talking into a tape recorder and then listens to it the next day. "By that time I've forgotten 90 percent of what I've said, and I can listen to it as if I'm hearing it for the first time. The thing that I'm looking for at that point is some sort of hint of what the character sounds like. Once I get the voice, I can relax, but it's hell until that happens. It's much easier with the tape recorder, less intimidating. I'm not staring at a blank sheet of paper, I'm not staring at an empty screen."

  Robert Anderson says, "Many writers start writing dialogue first, rather than last. Neil Simon once told me he works that way. They say they discover the characters and the story line of the play as they go along. After trying this a number of times as a young man (after all, I loved dialogue, not story) I found I came a cropper too many times after forty pages. Dead end. I had discovered nothing. In writing the dialogue I can discover things I didn't know about myself, things I didn't know I knew, but I can't seem to discover story. I have to know my ending.

  "If you have the wrong situation the dialogue won't flow. Unless you have people in an interesting situation, interesting in terms of progression of the scene, it's deadly
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  "The playwright John Van Druten said sometimes he couldn't get a character to speak properly until he changed the name. I've sometimes said that. I've said a Laura will speak differently from a Hazel, and until you get the right name—it won't work.

  "I used to give my students dialogue exercises. With one exercise, I said somebody had found a ten-dollar bill in the street and he argues at the kitchen table over how that ten dollars is going to be spent. The movement of the scene is who's going to spend the ten dollars and how, but the entire subtext can illuminate the tensions in the whole family.

  "In my play You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running, there's a scene where two middle-aged people discuss whether they're going to buy twin beds or keep the old double bed. Ostensibly they're arguing about the beds but the entire marriage is revealed in that argument. The subtext is about what has happened to their life and their love and middle age."

  When Jules Feiffer taught a playwriting class at the Yale drama school, he helped students improve dialogue by "getting rid of self-indulgence and other conceits, deciding what the point of the scene is, and cutting out everything but the point. Cutting out those flourishes that particularly young writers like to put in to prove how brilliant they are."

  The key to writing good dialogue begins with learning to listen for rhythms and nuances.

  "The most important thing," Robert Anderson says, "is to develop a voice. It's not just in dialogue, but in attitude. If you have a voice, the dialogue is going to come out right."

  A CASE STUDY: JULES FEIFFER

  Many of us are familiar with Jules Feiffer's work through his weekly cartoons. His film (and later the play) of Carnal Knowledge has often been discussed in terms of its brilliant dialogue. He also adapted Popeye for the film, wrote Little Murders and Elliott Loves. His comments about dialogue are relevant to all fiction forms, with many of those on cartoon characters particularly relevant to the advertising field.

  In this interview, he talks about the difference of writing dialogue for each medium.

  "When I moved from cartoons to theatre and later to film I learned that the dialogue in each is very, very different. In theatre and in film, when you're dealing with relationships, you have to show the beginning, the middle, and the end stages, and not just the end, which is what I do in the comics. What people say to each other in cartoon form is very elliptical and very short. It has to be because of the circumstances of space. Particularly on the stage, you can afford more nuance, a lot more indirectness. Stage dialogue can be fuller and more expository—and more ego gratifying—than film dialogue. On film you can afford a lot more nonverbal communication—eye exchanges, physical movement, etc."