by Robert McKee
To create a scene, an author must separate the links in this chain of behavior and give consideration to each. (How conscious or subconscious this “consideration” may be varies from writer to writer. Oscar Wilde once noted that an author spends a whole morning putting in a comma and a whole afternoon taking it out. But that’s Wilde. For some writers, commas just get in the way.) Finally, in however long it may take to pen one perfect speech, the writer pieces the links back together so they happen in the breath of time it takes an actor to act or a reader to read.
It is impossible to know exactly what a character will say in this fifth step until we answer these questions: What does the character want? What stops him from getting it? What will he choose to do in an effort to achieve it?
A scene lives, not in the activity of talking, but in the action the character takes by talking. So before we write dialogue, we must ask questions and find answers that guide us down the stream from desire to antagonism to choice to action, ending in expression—the dialogue that helps shape and turn the scene.
INTRODUCTION TO SEVEN CASE STUDIES
The five stages of character behavior blend in concert to create a progressive subtext that ultimately finds expression in dialogue. To demonstrate how this works, we’ll examine five dramatized scenes—two from teleplays, one each from a play, a novel, a screenplay—plus two passages of narratized dialogue in prose. Each author employs a distinctively different balance, type, and intensity of conflict. The quality of conflict determines the quality of action, and the quality of action determines the quality of talk. As a result, the behaviors of characters, the dynamic of beats, and, above all, the tonality of each scene’s dialogue play out in seven distinctively different ways over the next six chapters.
Balanced conflict: In the “Two Tonys” episode from THE SOPRANOS, series creator David Chase and cowriter Terence Winter turn their characters loose in a hard-fought duelogue of equals.
Comic conflict: The “Author, Author” episode from FRASIER, written by Don Seigel and Jerry Perzigian, exaggerates balanced conflict to its lunatic limits.
Asymmetric conflict: In A Raisin in the Sun, playwright Lorraine Hansberry sets one character’s aggressive verbal action against another’s quiet resistance.
Indirect conflict: In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s characters manipulate each other with words of covert antagonism.
Reflexive conflict: Chapter Seventeen compares the uses of narratized dialogue in two novels: In Fräulein Else, Arthur Schnitzler uses this technique to wage inner conflict within his protagonist, self against self; whereas in The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk’s protagonist confesses his inner wars directly to the reader.
Implied conflict: In LOST IN TRANSLATION, screenwriter Sofia Coppola suspends her characters in depths of inner tension, self versus self, played out in the shadows of conflicts from the past.
The following chapters demonstrate a working method for scene analysis that separates a scene into its components, pulls out their subtextual actions, labels them with gerunds, and then discovers how these actions express themselves in dialogue. The technique begins with breaking a scene into its beats.
Over the decades, writers have evolved three different meanings for the term “beat.” In the outlining stages of a screenplay, some filmmakers use the word to name a story’s key turning points: “In the story’s first beat they meet; in the second beat they fall in love.” Playwrights and screenwriters often place the term between parentheses in a column of dialogue, e.g., (beat), to signal a short pause. But for the purposes of exploring how a scene’s inner life inspires its dialogue, I use “beat” in its original sense: a unit of action/reaction. An action starts a beat; a corresponding reaction ends it.
When scenes feel lifeless or false, the cause is rarely found in the language of the dialogue. Rather, flaws fester in the subtext. For that reason, we break a scene into its beats in order to uncover the misshapen subtextual actions and reactions that cause these faults. A skillful analysis then guides the redesign of the scene’s beats and, with that, the re-creation of its dialogue.
No matter how many times a pattern of action/reaction repeats, it constitutes one, and only one, beat. A scene cannot progress unless its beats change, and beats cannot change until the characters change their tactics. Indeed, the most common early warning sign of an ailing scene is repetitious beats—characters using the same tactic to take essentially the same action, again and again, but using different words, speech after speech, to do it. These duplicating beats hide beneath a scene’s verbiage, and it often takes an insightful, beat-by-beat analysis to bring this flaw to light.
Before we move on, however, a note of caution: No one can teach you how to write. I can only define the shape and function of a scene, lay out its components, and demonstrate their inner workings. Although the principles of scene design illuminate creativity, they are not the creative process itself. The following six chapters are logical, after-the-fact analyses of finished work. My breakdowns do not presume to know the artist’s process or follow his or her actual writing experience.
Of this, however, I am certain: Writing rarely flows in a straight line. Creativity likes to zigzag—trial/error, elation/depression, this way and that, draft after draft after draft. Knowledge of story and scene design strengthens the work, provokes ideas, and guides rewrites, but an author must discover through her personal creative process exactly how to use her talent and expertise to move from inspiration to last draft.
13
BALANCED CONFLICT
THE SOPRANOS
THE SOPRANOS ran on HBO from January 1999 to June 2007. Its eighty-six episodes tell the story of Tony Soprano, a New Jersey Mafia don, portrayed by James Gandolfini. David Chase, the series creator, built this complex, multidimensional character around a core contradiction: On one hand, Tony commits violent, tyrannical, murderous acts; on the other, he falls victim to paralyzing nightmares and sudden, unexplained panic attacks.
Realizing that his panic disorder could cost him his life, Tony seeks the help of a psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). Over the next four seasons, their therapy sessions struggle through moral dilemmas, sexual tensions, and bouts of Tony’s raging temper, until Tony finally breaks off his therapy.
In Episode 1 of Season 5, he convinces himself that he’s deeply in love with Melfi and goes on a romantic quest. He has often flirted with her, but now he puts on his best courting behavior and asks her out for dinner twice. Twice she declines, but he persists until he finally confronts her in her office.
I will work through their confrontation with an eye to the scene’s four essential modes: 1) how the five steps of behavior (desire, antagonism, choice, action, expression) translate into the characters’ scene intentions and tactics, 2) how their beats of action/reaction shape progression, 3) how the values at stake arc their changing charges, and 4) how these foundational layers impel and inspire the scene’s character-specific dialogue.
I will take you through this inside-out analysis to remind you once again that character talk is the final result of everything that went before, a surface manifestation of the layers of life beneath the words. The stronger the inner scene, the more powerful the dialogue.
To begin: If we were to ask Tony what he wants (desire) and what’s stopping him from getting it (antagonism), he would tell us that he wants to win Jennifer Melfi’s love, but she resists because she doesn’t see the other Tony, the nice-guy Tony. Tony’s scene intention is to seduce Melfi, and his tactic (action) is to prove that he’s a nice guy.
If we were to ask Dr. Melfi the same questions, she would tell us that she wants to help Tony overcome his emotional problems (desire), but his impulse to take their relationship from professional to personal makes that impossible (antagonism). Melfi’s scene intention is to help Tony change for the better, and her tactic (action) is to confront him with the truth.
However, if we look past Tony’s romantic gestures, w
e sense that the ruling value of his life is power. His Romeo persona masks his subconscious lust, not for sex, but for ownership. He needs to dominate the only person who has ever wielded power over him—Dr. Melfi.
But Melfi packs double-fisted punches of truth and morality. She knows the truth of Tony’s immature, sociopathic nature. In the face of her high moral standards and courage (antagonism), Tony flinches and withers. So his dark self, hungry to regain the upper hand, silently urges him to get her into bed and give her the orgasmic thrill of a lifetime. With that, he thinks, her moral shell will crack and she will fall into his arms, enthralled and subservient. His subconscious desire (super-intention), therefore, is to subjugate Melfi.
Dr. Melfi tells Tony she wants to help him, therapeutically; and consciously, of course, she means what she says. But if we look beneath her prudent, professional personality, we sense the very opposite of discretion and objectivity. We see a high-risk adventurer.
Consider this: During her university years, Melfi could have taken any number of career paths, but she chose clinical psychiatry. Now, picture a psychiatrist’s day.
Imagine the enormous mental stamina and emotional courage it must take to burrow into the dark unknown of life-wrecked souls. Think of the damage done to the therapist as she listens with empathy to the wretched, tortured, heartbreaking confessions of neurotic after psychotic, hour by hour, day by day. Almost no one, it seems to me, would devote herself to that profession unless, deep inside, she found exploring the danger-filled jungles of other people’s minds fascinating, even exhilarating.
Dr. Melfi’s core dimension sends her risk-averse characterization up against her risk-enticed true character. To express her contradictory nature, the writers propel her through a series-long, dynamic, on-again, off-again relationship with Tony Soprano.
Soon after Dr. Melfi takes Tony Soprano as a patient, she discovers he’s a murderous Mafia don. At first, ending the relationship seems her only option, but in time she overcomes her disgust and continues treating him. Her probing questions about his parents often provoke his rage and a break in therapy. But once time quiets his rage, she always takes Tony back, even though she knows that someday he may turn his violence against her.
Near the end of Season 1, Tony tells her that rival mobsters plan to kill her because they fear he may have revealed Mafia secrets during therapy. Melfi goes into hiding while Tony hunts down and kills the assassins. Once the danger lifts, Melfi resumes Tony’s sessions.
Dr. Melfi’s pattern of on-again, off-again psychotherapy raises this question: Why would a psychiatrist put her life at risk to treat a manifestly impulsive, sociopathic criminal? One possible answer:
While her conscious concern for a secure doctor/patient relationship masks her true desire, subconsciously she actually wants the very contradiction of security; she longs for risk, life-and-death risk. Her super-intention seeks the heart-pounding rush that can only be found along the fuse burning of danger.
Three values arc over the course of the scene: together/apart in the doctor/patient relationship; self-deception/self-awareness in Tony’s mind; and the core value, jeopardy/security for Dr. Melfi’s life. As the scene opens, these values begin with the two characters together on speaking terms (positive), Tony blind to his moral identity (negative), and, most importantly, Dr. Melfi in life-and-death jeopardy as she confronts her dangerous patient (negative).
The scene matches two powerful personalities in a balanced conflict, told over thirteen beats. The first twelve beats match Tony’s actions against Dr. Melfi’s reactions, but the last beat reverses that pattern and sends Tony out the door.
A transcription of the scene as televised follows, printed in bold. First read the bold passages straight through, skipping over my analysis. As you do, listen to the dialogue in your mind, or better yet, act it out aloud and feel what it would be like emotionally to live through this conflict, first from Tony’s point of view, and then from Dr. Melfi’s.
Once you have a sense for how the scene arcs, reread it against my analysis of the beats, their subtext, and the shaping of the action.
INT. DR. MELFI’S OFFICE—EARLY EVENING
As PATIENTS from a group session file out, Tony enters like a lost little boy.
BEAT 1
Dr. Melfi looks up, surprised to see him.
MELFI
Anthony.
As Tony glances down, embarrassed, Dr. Melfi strides up to him.
MELFI
Hello.
TONY
(with a shy smile)
Hi.
ACTION: Tony turning on the charm.
REACTION: Melfi gearing up for trouble.
SUBTEXT: Twice that day Tony asked Dr. Melfi out for dinner, and twice she turned him down. Tony senses he’s out on a limb, so as he enters, he plays sensitive and shy, hoping to win her sympathy. Beneath her cheerful welcome, she puzzles over why he’s back yet again and readies herself for a third confrontation.
BEAT 2
TONY
(handing her an envelope)
A friend of mine had these and couldn’t use them. And I figure, well, maybe we could.
(explaining)
Tickets… Bermuda…
(doing a little dance)
… lodging at the Elbow Beach Hotel.
MELFI
(amazed)
I turn down a wonderful dinner invitation and you think I’ll go away with you?
ACTION: Tony propositioning her.
REACTION: Melfi calling him an idiot.
SUBTEXT: Tony bought the tickets himself. He not only lies about that, but far worse, his underlying action treats Dr. Melfi like a whore. Dinner for two might cost $200; a weekend at the five-star Elbow Beach Hotel would run into the thousands. Tony ups the ante, thinking she turned down his previous offers because they were too cheap.
Tony’s disrespect and delusions offend Dr. Melfi, but because she knows he’s prone to violence, she avoids direct confrontation by repaying his insult with a rhetorical question. This ancient verbal tactic asks a question but not to get an answer; it assumes the answer in the question. So if we were to rewrite Melfi’s dialogue on-the-nose, it might read: “What kind of man thinks I’ll sleep with him just because he takes me to Bermuda? An idiot.”
BEAT 3
TONY
Well, the guy couldn’t use ’em and, you know, he gave ’em to me and what’d you want me to do, throw ’em away?
Dr. Melfi stands in silence.
ACTION: Tony claiming his innocence.
REACTION: Melfi avoiding conflict.
SUBTEXT: Tony tries to shrug off her criticism by pretending his proposition wasn’t manipulative, just practical—he’s the innocent victim of a friend’s generosity.
Dr. Melfi knows he bought the tickets as a sexual bribe, but rather than call out his canard, she turns silence into a weapon. In the right context, refusing to speak can be more powerful than anything said.
BEAT 4
TONY
(continuing)
Come on, Doc. I’m breaking out the big guns here. You’re turning me into half a stalker.
MELFI
Listen, Anthony. I’m not going to go out with you, okay, and it’s not because you’re unattractive or I don’t think I would have a good time. It’s just something I’m not going to do. I would like you to respect my decision and just try to feel that I know what’s right for me. Okay?
Long pause.
ACTION: Tony playing for pity.
REACTION: Melfi blaming him.
SUBTEXT: By accusing her of demeaning him, he plays the victim again and adds guilt-tripping to his tactics, all in the hope that she’ll feel sorry for him.
Instead, she begins with the “It’s not you, it’s me” tactic, seeming to put the blame on herself. But the phrase “I know what’s right for me” alerts Tony. Despite her opening ploy, it implies that he is not right for her because there’s something wrong, something broken inside him.
BEAT 5
TONY
But it’s not just the psychiatric ethics stuff, is it?
MELFI
I want to preserve the option for you that you could always come back to our work, if you wish, and that we could pick up where we’ve left off.
ACTION: Tony looking for a way out.
REACTION: Melfi giving him a way out.
SUBTEXT: On the conscious level, however, Tony would rather not confront the truth about himself, so if she had said, “Yes, it’s a matter of medical ethics,” he would have been relieved and the scene would be over. Instead, she offers him the hard, painful work of self-awareness through therapy.
BEAT 6
TONY
I don’t think you get this. I want you!
MELFI
That’s very flattering to me.
TONY
I’m not interested in flattering you.
MELFI
I know you’re not.
ACTION: Tony laying it on the line.
REACTION: Melfi buying time.
SUBTEXT: Tony evades the big question to make a brutal pass, hoping that the offer of sex for sex’s sake will excite and distract her. It doesn’t, of course. Instead, she uses non-answer responses to buy time while deciding just how truthful she dares to be.