When writing dialogue, I’ve attended workshops and read books where authors discuss how it’s important to know whether a character has an accent or not, but I don’t see much more than that. Ironically, it was in my years studying acting when I learned the most about dialogue mechanics. As part of my formal education, we were taught how to break down dialogue as a means for discovering character. By reverse engineering this analysis, I use character to help me determine my dialogue mechanics.
We’ve all heard that each character needs to have a unique and compelling voice, but what are the individual mechanical tools we can use to create those voices? Here are a few to consider while building your character’s dialogue:
Diction (Word Choice): Does the character use big words or small words? Were they educated and can use “$5” words or is their experience with language limited? Do they swear? Do they use made up words or overly poetic words/phrases?
Length of sentences: When the character speaks, does she use fragment sentences or complete sentences? Does he use run on or compound sentences? Do they use a lot of extra, unneeded words or do they try to be as succinct as possible?
Length of speeches: This is an extension of length of sentences. When a character’s line of dialogue goes on for an extended (more than three sentences) period of time, just how long does it go on for? Do they like to monologue? While this can vary a bit throughout the text, how long a character speaks will reflect how they see themselves.
Sentence Structure (Syntax): While most native English speakers are taught to use the traditional subject-verb-object sentence construction, this is not universal across the world. Is their native language different than the one they currently speak? If so, then the way they structure their sentences may not be quite as linear. The most famous example of a character whose dialogue reflected a creative use of syntax is Yoda. (“Judge me by my size, do you?” – verb, object, subject).
Imagery: What kind of imagery does the character use? Does he have a poetic soul and tend to relate everything to some romantic or dramatic context? Is she a cynic whose metaphors and similes tie everything she sees with death or destruction? Or perhaps the character has no imagination or works in a very structured field, like computer programming or accounting, and therefore uses no imagery at all.
Delivery: How does a character speak the messages inside her head? Is she eloquent and can say exactly what she wants to say at all times? Or does her delivery depend on who she speaks to? Perhaps when she speaks to her boss, she uses complete sentences and confident imagery, but the moment her lifelong crush shows up, she stutters, uses no imagery and constantly uses words incorrectly.
Accent: While I mentioned this before, it’s worth mentioning again – Does the character have an accent? I’ve met so many American writers who automatically default to using American standard – not because they aren’t creative but because they just didn’t think about doing something else. We live in a multicultural world, and how language works is changing based on that international influence.
Another item I encourage my students (especially my screenwriters) to think about when it comes to character dialogue is catch phrases. If you were going to place your character’s face on a t-shirt and include one line of their dialogue that reflects their character, what would it be? This line can be said by the character him/herself or it can be said by another character. Either way, that one-liner helps define the personality of the character.
I love looking at the 2012 film The Avengers for this since, as an action film, it is packed full of them. Here are a few catch phrases that can easily define our favorite super hero characters:
Iron Man:
“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist”
“Maybe we can’t protect the earth, but you can be damn sure we’ll avenge it.”
...Pretty much every line he says
Captain America:
“It seems to be powered by some sort of electricity.”
“Call it Cap”
The Hulk:
“Puny God”
“Hulk… smash.”
“Well then son… You’ve got a condition”
Black Widow:
“Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that, I’m Russian.”
“I’ve been compromised.”
With each character, these small, quotable lines give us a sense of who they are or how they see the world, regardless of whether they said the line or someone else said it to/ about them.
From all the Avengers characters, my favorite dialogue comes from Loki. The ostracized younger son who grew tired of living in his older brother’s shadow, Loki’s dialogue reflects his character in a unique way and reflected not only who he was but how his position changed throughout the film:
Diction: Loki sees himself as a poetic hero in many ways, and you can see this in his choice of words. He loves to use the words that flow from the tongue: dripping, virtuous, tortured. Growing up in a royal family, he received a strong education, and this poetic choice of words reflects this. It is interesting to note, however, that you will almost never catch Loki using curse words regardless of how evil he might think himself. We can imagine that he sees those “vulgar” words as beneath him.
Length of Sentences: Once again, Loki’s dialogue is more like poetry than anything. As such, his sentences are always flowery but never too long. When he gets really ramped up, he will use a few compound sentences, but for the most part, he uses short sentences that sound like they are longer than they are due to their poetic nature.
Length of Speeches: Loki is a monologuer, and this is used to great effect throughout the film. He feels the most power when he can speak for long periods of time. From his first appearance in the film, Loki neutralizes the SHIELD agents and then begins his “glad tidings” monologue in which he explains his theory that freedom is a lie. In each scene where Loki appears, the audience can expect a monologue or at least an attempt at a monologue.
Sentence Structure/Syntax: Loki’s syntax reflects both his alien heritage and his poetic speaking style. He often strays from the strict subject-verb-object structure in order to deliver his lines with a bit more polish. He also loves to ask questions – most of them rhetorical – as part of his poetical style. i.e.“What have I to fear?”
Imagery: Loki loves his poetic imagery, but what’s fascinating is how he changes from peaceful images to more violent ones when he tries to be threatening. When he is calm, he frames the idea of taking away people’s freedom as a form of “peace,” but when he gets angry, his imagery turns violent, focusing on “blood” and “ruin.”
Delivery: One of my favorite things about Loki is how his dialogue patterns change throughout the film. Whenever he needed to be the punchline of a joke, Whedon would contrast his usually long, verbose speech patterns with a shorter or even a fragment sentence (i.e. “I’m listening” and “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll have that drink now.”). Even better, however, is how his speeches grow progressively shorter as he loses power. At the beginning of the film, he delivers his long speeches without interruption, but as the Avengers grow together as a team, his speeches get cut down shorter and shorter (i.e. when Coulson shoots him or when the Hulk thrashes him like a rag doll).
Accent: Loki’s accent is a throwback to what we would assume an ancient, civilized culture would sound like. It’s two parts upper class British and one part poetry. Thor’s accent is very similar, although his delivery is a bit rougher.
Catch phrases: “An ant has no quarrel with a boot.” “I am burdened with glorious purpose.” “It is the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation.” “Freedom is life’s great lie. Once you accept that, you will know peace.”
By just looking at Loki’s dialogue, we get a strong sense of his character. This wasn’t done on accident. Writer/Director Joss Whedon knew how to manipulate the dialogue in order to reflect Loki’s character. This made Loki a three-dimensional character that we real
ly loved to hate.
When it comes time to really build the personality of your character, there are many ways to do this. Some people like to develop character bibles while others love to create vision boards. I’ve seen writers keep entire journals dedicated to one character, and I’ve seen Pinterest boards used to fully realize a persona. Regardless of which method works for you, it’s important to take the time to understand your character’s goals, needs, personality and dialogue mechanics before moving into writing your character’s story.
It’s also extremely important to understand how the personality of your character determines the methods he or she will use in order to win their goal. We will get into that in much more detail throughout the rest of this book.
Part 2
The Major Dramatic Curve
Plot is people.
Human emotions and desires
founded on the realities of life,
working at cross purposes,
getting hotter and fiercer
as they strike against each other
until finally there’s an explosion
—that’s Plot.
— Leigh Brackett
Chapter 4
The Major Dramatic Curve?
So now that we have a firm grasp of what a character is, how to shape a character’s personality and, most important, how to identify the character’s goal, it’s time to get onto the good stuff: how to craft everything that you have created into an effective Character Arc.
At its most simplistic level, a Character Arc is the process of development a character goes through over the course of a narrative. He or she starts out the story as one person and then, as a result of going through a number of obstacles, trials, disappointments, and turmoil, he or she changes/morphs/evolves into another. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennett changes from being full of pride and filled with outlandish delight, not caring what anyone else thinks of her, to being slightly humbled and open minded, ashamed of her past arrogance. In The Goonies, Mikey starts off the film as weak and asthmatic, wanting to follow the rules and scolding his friends for not adhering to his parents’ restrictions. By the end of the film, he has stopped believing the adults have all the answers or that the younger kids need to rely on someone other than themselves to achieve their dreams. He throws away his inhaler and becomes a leader in his gang. The character’s change is responsible for our engagement in these stories. It’s what we pay for when we buy the book or movie ticket.
But there are stories where the protagonist doesn’t really change his personality as a result of his journey. Part of the chilling impact of the movie There Will Be Blood is seeing Daniel Plainview tackle anything in his way in order to accomplish his goal but not changing as a result. He goes through everything from getting baptized to committing murder and disowning his son, but none of these events has an effect on his emotions. It is this lack of change that makes for a terrifying portrayal of the man. Does that make his story have any less of a character arc?
To answer this question, let’s look to the world of games. These playable narratives, especially older ones, rarely show a change in the protagonist, but they still connect with players in a way that other stories might not. The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo’s most popular game series of all times. From the very earliest versions of the game, players loved to get into the shoes of Link as he fought his way through Hyrule in his attempt to rescue the Princess Zelda from Ganon. Link’s personality doesn’t change – partially because of what the technology was capable of when the series first began, but also because he didn’t need to change. He had a strong and playable goal, and we cheered with him as he overcame each obstacle and moved closer to his goal. When he won his goal (saved Zelda), we also won– not only because we were the player who pushed the buttons to make it happen, but also because we were so engaged in his story that we experienced the cathartic release only narratives can provide.
As long as a character’s goal develops over time (in other words, the tactics and obstacles evolve over the course of the story), then Character Arc doesn’t have to be defined by personality change. In this case, the key to having a solid character arc is to make sure the entire struggle of the character’s attempt to win his or her goal is covered within the narrative, in its entirety, in a unique and compelling way. Keep in mind, though, when I say we need to see his or her “entire” struggle, this doesn’t mean we need to see every event from the moment the character was born to the moment the character dies. We just need the meat of the story, and that doesn’t necessarily include a personality change (although the authors of many successful stories have chosen to show some kind of personality change).
As we discussed in Chapter Two, the primary function of a protagonist is to allow the reader or viewer to become a part of the world into which they are being introduced. This means the character’s story needs to be set up in such a way that allows a door to open for them, permitting them to step out of their mundane world into a life of intrigue and drama (or comedy, action, fantasy, insanity, etc.). They need to step into the world at a period in the character’s development where they can relate to what’s happening. Then, they need to see how the character’s life changes forever, dragging them along the adventure. They need to ride the roller coaster of emotion as the protagonist attempts to win his or her goal, and then celebrate with them when they win or mourn with them when they lose. If the readers/viewers aren’t present for all of these steps, they can’t experience the catharsis that motivated them to participate in the story to begin with.
So how can we, as writers, provide this kind of experience for our readers or viewers? How can we make sure the character’s struggle and change are successfully integrated into our stories, regardless of whether we are writing a flash fiction piece, novel, film, game, play, web series or anything else under the sun? The answer is simple: we use the Major Dramatic Curve.
The Major Dramatic Curve
The Major Dramatic Curve is based on the work of 19th century German theater analyst Gustav Freytag. He wrote a study on the five-act structure used by many playwrights penning the theatrical productions of his day. In this study, he labeled each of the five acts with a different dramatic function (that is, their underlying purpose for existing within the play): exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and revelation/catastrophe (depending on if the play was a comedy or a tragedy).
Freytag’s breakdown of dramatic functions was pictorially represented in a triangular shape meant to visualize the overall arc of the story. This pictorial representation came to be known as Freytag’s triangle.
Theater is a character driven medium, and so Freytag’s analysis of how to break down the various acts of a play naturally transitioned over time into an analysis of how to break down character in any narrative genre. Similarly, the triangle morphed into a pictorial representation of a character’s arc. This new triangle is what we know today as The Major Dramatic Curve.
The Major Dramatic Curve has seven important elements. Each element occurs on a very specific and fixed point on the Curve. Each of these elements relate directly to a period in the development of the character:
1) The Resting Period
2) The Inciting Incident
3) The Rising Action
4) The Crisis Point
5) The Climax
6) The Falling Action
7) The New Resting Period (also known as the Resolution)
It is important when writing a narrative (film, especially, but this is also true for theater, television, comics, games, web series, short stories and novels) for the writer to include all of the basic components of the Major Dramatic Curve in his/her portrayal of their protagonist. The readers or viewers participate in a narrative because they want some form of cathartic release, and they can’t get it if they don’t go on this entire journey with the protagonist.
It is also nice when the entire Curve is presented for the antagonist, but this is not essent
ial. Since the antagonist is the primary force keeping the protagonist from winning his or her goal, we become just as invested in their characters as we do the protagonist. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone, we get to see Voldemort’s entire journey, even if some of it is revealed in backstory. We know who he was before his fall. We know his overall goal is to defeat Harry Potter. We know he began fighting for this goal the moment his killing curse rebounded, destroying himself instead of “the boy who lived.” Over the course of the series, we also get to see Voldemort regaining strength, experiencing moments of doubt and, ultimately, his downfall. The entire Curve is present for him, even though he isn’t the protagonist. This gives him as much literary power in the series as Harry Potter himself, even though The Dark Lord isn’t present in every book. Seeing his entire Curve gives him a power that subconsciously terrifies the reader.
For all secondary characters, such as love interests or bonding characters, it is very rare for an entire curve to be seen onscreen or on the page. However, the writer should be aware of each character’s curve even if it doesn’t make it on to the page/screen. In The Wizard of Oz, we didn’t see the Scarecrow get stuck up on the post where Dorothy found him, but we know it was a major motivator for his desire to get a brain (his goal). In Chicago, we don’t quite see why Velma Kelly is fighting for fame, but we get her resting period (life on the road with her sister and husband) told to us through song. In Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, we don’t know what event motivated Penny to save the building to use as a homeless shelter, but it’s very clear this is her goal.
Crafting the Character Arc Page 4
