It’s also an example of The Writer’s Curse: we’re doomed to involuntarily “punch-up” nearly every show we see, or book that we read.
Back to telling the audience what it knows, if you must do so, give it a fresh angle. But in general, don’t repeat. Don’t waste your audience’s time, no matter what you’re writing.
NEVER Write Show-and-Tell Dialogue
We’ve all seen it done in novels, heard it in movies and TV: “That’s it — we’ve got to tell the Sheriff.” Or: “I’m going to the office.” And in the next scene, or the one following, the character is — guess what — telling the Sheriff — or at the office. Even if the telling doesn’t repeat what the audience already knows, don’t tell what a character is going to do, and then show him doing it. The reasons should be obvious, from loss of surprise to — loss of your audience.
Energy/Urgency
Nothing will keep your audience glued more effectively than high-energy writing. Active words. Concise, essential descriptions. And brief, idiomatic dialogue speeches. Delivered with urgency. With heat.
Ellen grabbed the phone is far more lively than Ellen lifted or picked up the phone.
Phil threw the car into gear has more pizzazz than Phil drove off.
Scenes that move, that advance the story. If it’s mostly action rather than talk, even if you’re writing something in a pastoral setting, it should have energy.
And of course, conflict. Drama. Or the promise of it through platforming.
Bland, pretty pictures are boring.
Further, nothing will cause your audience to dial out, stop reading, or switch channels, faster than a lack of energy, of urgency, of heat.
Particularly, in your characters and their dialogue.
As mentioned earlier in terms of your characters’ goals: if it doesn’t matter to them, it sure as hell won’t matter to your audience.
Awareness of these needs is among the best lessons I learned in writing for film and TV — one that especially applies to other forms, such as the novel. Much of the energy, the immediacy that is inherent in screenplays is due to the convention of writing stage directions and descriptive passages in present tense. The story is unfolding as you’re reading it — almost as if it’s in real time. Look at any screen-or-stageplay, and you’ll spot it right away. Here’s an example:
EXT. CENTRAL PARK — MORNING — ALEX
is in sweats, wearing knee-and-elbow pads, Rollerblading confidently past early-morning joggers, nannies with prams, looking as if he’s simply out for exercise. As he passes a connecting path, another, less expert skater falls in unsteadily beside him. It’s Laura; she struggles to maintain his pace.
LAURA
Do you mind — could we slow down?
Alex doesn’t slow.
Obviously, writing a novel that way, while do-able, would be jarring to the reader. Some novelists and short story writers do employ present tense, and while it apparently works for them, I find it distracting. For me, it’s akin to the movie director who’s into razzledazzle cutting and trick angles, which calls attention to himself — and in the bargain continually reminds me that I’m only watching a movie. When I read narrative prose written in that style (or, for that matter in any obvious style), I’m always aware of the writer. For the most part, I don’t believe that’s a good thing — especially if we’re trying to immerse our audiences, to cause them to lose themselves in our story.
And yet, after so many years of writing scripts, when I decided to try a novel, I was at first frustrated by the convention of composing it in past tense. It seemed to me that it sapped the energy of my sentences. For a brief time I considered using present tense, but rejected it for the reasons mentioned above. Once I got into it, became accustomed to the accepted form, the frustration disappeared. Mostly.
What did not disappear, thankfully, was that extra edge my scriptwriting experience had given me — a heightened awareness of the need to maintain energy and immediacy despite the customs of the medium.
Along the way I gained an even greater appreciation of my word processor’s grammar-check feature, which recognizes sentences written in the passive voice.
Once again, a few movies that illustrate the importance — and effectiveness — of high energy: take a look at His Girl Friday, Some Like it Hot (Scr. Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, based on Robert Thoeren and M. Logan’s scr. for the film Fanfares of Love — Dir. Billy Wilder); My Man Godfrey (Scr. Morrie Ryskind, Eric Hatch and Gregory La Cava, based on Hatch’s story, 1101 Park Avenue — Dir. Gregory La Cava); The Philadelphia Story (Scr. Donald Ogden Stewart and Waldo Salt, based on the play by Philip Barry — Dir. George Cukor). All are classic comedies, and they work in part because of the pace of the direction, because the marvelous actors deliver their lines with perfect timing, and at machine-gun pace. But they’re written to be delivered that way. There’s no fat. The old gangster pictures such as The Public Enemy (Scr. Kubec Glasmon, John Bright & Harvey Thew, based on Bright’s story, Beer and Blood — Dir. William A. Wellman), or White Heat (Scr. Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts, based on a story by Virginia Kellogg — Dir. Raoul Walsh), or arguably the adventure classic, Gunga Din (Scr. Fred Guiol, based on a story by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur and William Faulkner, from Rudyard Kipling’s poem — Dir. George Stevens), all have that rat-a-tat tempo. Then there’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Scr. Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Foster’s novel, The Gentleman From Montana — Dir. Frank Capra), and Meet John Doe (Scr. Robert Riskin, based on the story, The Life and Death of John Doe, by Robert Presnell and Richard Connell — Dir. Frank Capra) — or anything else Capra directed. These films provide virtually textbook paradigms of this type of high-energy writing, direction and acting. Among the major reasons that they are classics.
Frank Capra’s delicious memoir, The Name Above the Title (from which I learned more about directing than from any of the classes I took), contains a wonderful anecdote about energy and pace that is very relevant to all this.
During the 1940’s, the tyrannical Harry Cohn ran Columbia Pictures, where Capra was under contract. Notoriously cheap as well, Cohn ordered that Capra, along with all of the other directors, would be allowed to print no more than one take from each camera setup. This was naturally frustrating to the directors, some of whom liked to have as many as eight or nine versions of a scene to choose from in the editing room. Capra’s solution was not only brilliant, but markedly changed his style — and his movies — for the better. Capra, who was already one of the best, would call for a shot, the assistant cameraperson would slate it, Capra would call “Action,” and the actors would run their lines. But instead of calling “Cut!” at the end of the scene, Capra would keep the camera rolling, tell the actors to return — quickly — to their first positions, and run it again — but faster. And when they finished that one, he’d have them repeat it, faster. Capra would get three or four versions of the scene on his single allowable take. The energy was remarkable, and better yet, the hairdressers and makeup people had no chance to jump in and groom the actors to the high, phony gloss that characterized so many Hollywood movies of the era. The results were amazing, and happily they’re still there for all of us to see.
For me as a writer and filmmaker, those pictures — among others — have been my models. For their energy and a lot of other stuff. I’ve learned a lot from them. So will you.
Dialogue Attribution in Prose — An Opinion or Two...
In novels and short stories I’ve long been struck by what I regard as the rampant, mindless use of “he said,” “she said,” “said he,” etc. I know that many highly regarded and/or successful writers and teachers recommend such usage as a kind of epitome of simplicity. I agree, but not in the affirmative sense of “simple.”
Why, I wonder, would experienced, quality writers who otherwise (rightly) bust their humps to avoid using clichés, surrender to these without guilt? Or, viewed another way, when does a particular phrase cease being “economical,” and morph into
a cliché? And how many trees do you suppose they’ve cost?
To me, even worse is “she asked.” Since it so often follows a question mark, the reader knows it’s a question, right? So why repeat it?
And then there are “he blurted,” “she exclaimed,” “he queried,” etc. If you must attribute, rather than committing those atrocities, “he said” begins to look attractive. Almost.
Do I have a solution? Yeah. Work on attribution the way you work on the rest of your writing, with the care you give to your dialogue and your descriptions. Will it make a difference to your readers? Not likely. Will they even be aware of it? Probably not. Especially on a conscious level. But — will it make a difference to you as a writer? Emphatically, yes. It’ll force you to think. To challenge yourself about stuff from which most narrative writers take the day off. So that all of your writing will become fresher.
It is possible, for instance to write an entire novel without employing any of those phrases nor, actually, any direct, conventional he-said/she-said attribution — and yet maintain clarity for the reader. I know this because I did it. As I began writing The Sixteenth Man, I set that as one of my goals. And I pulled it off. There are probably other examples out there as well, but none that I’m aware of. The important point to me, as with the act of writing the novel, was to see if I could do it.
Oh, the games we play with ourselves...
And, in the process, I found that it contributed to finding my “voice.”
There are those who may tell you that as a novelist you “cannot write for the camera,” or admonish with similar conceits of literary Puritanism.
They’re wrong.
The reader is the camera. The reader is seeing the pictures. Imagining the scene.
Think for a moment about traditional, by-the-numbers dialogue attribution. “She said,” does very little to help the reader envision the moment. It says nothing about the body language of the speaker, or her inflection. Was her head cocked to one side? Did her hand, during the speech, touch her face, or did it touch the person to whom she spoke?
Admittedly, noting such detail isn’t always important, but when it helps the reader “see” the action, it seems to follow that it will also help the reader “hear” the words. And when the speaker is gesturing to emphasize a point, or is revealing, say, insecurity or anger or even an emotion that contradicts his or her words, that is worth communicating to the reader. Again, when a character’s response to another’s words isn’t spoken, but is rather a gesture, a look, that can be good storytelling.
I think of it as directing my actors — just as in my scriptwriting, describing when necessary those actions that augment their speeches — or — as in non-verbal responses — replace them entirely.
CODA
The Rorschach View
The Rorschach-Test Theory-of-The-World is a fundamental and vitally important part of the Writer’s Mindset, a way to view what we do as artists that — while arguably defensive/self-protective — is also a very realistic, pragmatic place to be coming from.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a “Rorschach Test” (also known as the “Ink Blot Test”) is an old psychological examination wherein a subject is shown an irregular two-dimensional shape, usually symmetrically formed by folding a wet inkblot against itself. The blot is supposed to be ambiguous, non-representational. The subject is then asked to describe what he or she sees — what the shape looks like. The psychiatrist or psychologist then uses the response — what meaning or image the individual has mentally projected onto the inkblot — to help make a judgment about what kind of head-problems this person has.
Well, the longer I’m around, the more convinced I become that the world out there, our world, is a gigantic Rorschach Test — that none of us are seeing the same thing.
Consider movies, for instance. I do not believe that any two people in an audience are seeing the same film. The same is true of how we regard paintings, automobiles, political candidates, sunsets, friends, lovers, children, you-name-them — how we process everything we see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Instead, we’re projecting ourselves — our hang-ups, biases, childhood-memories, mental limitations, attitudes — all of the myriad equipage we’ve been collecting, which daily we drag with us to the table of life — onto the screen we’re watching or the pages of the novel we’re reading (or writing). Or onto the person we’ve just met, and so on.
All of which is then reflected back into our eyes, and translated by our brain.
And altered by it.
Filtered through our own personal stuff. Not because we ourselves are necessarily head-cases, but because no two of us are identical, the reflection thrown back at each of us is different.
Which is why, as artists, we must trust our own view of the world, our own creative instincts, our own filters. Because the simple of it is that none of us — not you — not I — can possibly insure that everyone is going to read into our art what we intended, see it as we would like it to be seen.
Correction: It is unlikely that anyone else is going to get it exactly the way you’ve tried to put it down. The way you think it reads. Parts of it — maybe. All of it — almost never. Now, that is an extreme view, but it contains enough truth to be valid.
Am I saying, therefore, that we shouldn’t try to say what we want to say, the way we want to say it?
Of course not. The intent of this entire book has been to suggest ways to accomplish that. Techniques for effectively manipulating an audience’s emotions, grabbing readers and/or viewers by the throat and making them get what we want them to get. The essence of what I’m trying to say here is this: though I’ve tried to list as many as I can — there are very few surefire ways to make a particular point.
Which is why, finally, I’d like to repeat — and then expand upon — a thought that’s of the utmost importance. Believe in yourself — and in your material — in what you’re creating. Feel the passion — because if you don’t infuse it into your writing, your readers definitely won’t feel it.
Further, as writers, or any other kind of artist, we cannot, must not be supplicants. We cannot go around thrusting our work at others, asking, “What do you think? How do you like it?” In part because of the truism that your art is not going to appeal to everyone. But more than that, because the comments of others will nearly always be colored by their tastes and views and biases. And if you listen to too many uninformed or partially informed people, and change your art to suit them, you will fail.
I realize that that kind of confidence — that level of self-assurance — is rare for beginners. Hell, I know professional writers who never acquire it. Others have it, but without deserving it. But most of us, through the experience — the process — of writing — and writing — and writing — do get to that place.
There’s an adage that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Good writing is not done by consensus. Art — however minor it may be — is not created that way. Which does not rule out seeking the comments or suggestions of a competent teacher or editor or literary agent, or someone whose judgment you really trust to be without undue bias.
Absorbing their views, making changes based upon them, can help your work.
Sometimes.
But in the end, we are the ones — you — me — who must decide whether our writing, our art, is what we want it to be. We must, therefore, consistently ask ourselves the tough questions — many of which I’ve posed in this book.
All of us, no matter how experienced or professional we may be, are vulnerable to rejection and criticism of our work. It’s also difficult to avoid reading the put-downs as a rejection of us — of ourselves. But that way madness lies. On the other hand, I do not know a single successful professional writer, myself included, whose work has not been rejected more often than it has been praised — or bought. It’s the nature of the Beast.
Scary though it may be, we have got to put it out there, our writing (read: ourselves), believing that we
’ve said what we want to say — or have at least come as close as we’re able.
Take — or ignore — the inevitable knocks. But — do not let them shake your confidence, or worse, destroy you.
Difficult. Yes.
Harder for some than for others.
But know this — at bottom, once you get past the learning of fundamentals, the techniques, the guideposts, writing is — as with any art form — about emotions. Your emotions. The unique way you process the world around you.
It is ultimately through our emotions that we connect with our audience. Moreover, it is why, to function as any kind of artist, in any medium, you must open yourself to as wide a range of emotions as you can. If you don’t — if you aren’t willing or able to reach into yourself — sometimes into places you might not want to visit — and to invest that into your writing, you and your work won’t make that connection.
Nor, if you shield yourself from the lows — as in facing up to the inadequacies in your work, will you be able to enjoy the highs.
That is one of life’s most basic tradeoffs.
That is the “art” part. Beyond suggesting that we must get out of its way in order to let it happen, I don’t believe it’s teachable.
Again, this book is about technique. It’s intended not as a definitive or particularly authoritative treatment about how to write fiction, but rather to impart as much as possible of the valuable lessons I learned in the process of a career in television, film and theater. I’ve tried to remove some of the mystery from the gags, the checklist-type criteria that you might not already have in your mental file. Practical, nuts-and-bolts, non-theoretical ways to help objectify your view of your own writing, to better enable you to understand the mechanics of good, effective storytelling. So you can “fix” your work. So that you can approach it more professionally.
Fiction Writing Demystified Page 21