All my life the people around me have been dancing a strange two-step with radio, TV and the movies. I have friends who never listen to the radio, because they consider talk radio declasse or they like picking their own music. I have another set of friends that never watches television, for the usual set of reasons: too mindless, too predictable, bland writing, fuzzy sentiments. Many people I know share the same feelings about movies, particularly commercial ones, which tend to be written and rewritten so often they become a mishmash of homogenized ideas. I accept all of that as the general truth.
It is tempting to say to the fiction writer, "Avoid radio! Turn off the television! Reject 'Hollywood' movies!" It's pretty easy for me to see what's wrong with all three of these vehicles. But, quite frankly, I do "connect" with all three. I listen to radio, I watch television and I go to movies. To say that I get nothing from them, no sense of the way language does and doesn't work, would be a lie. I love good writing, and despite what you may have heard, there's a lot of it going on in these media. What this chapter does is ask you to rethink the way you use them. Instead of listening to the radio, I want you to see it. Don't watch television, listen to it. Don't just go to the movies, read them. You'll find lots of the bad, some of the good and a few places to start turning the lessons into good fiction.
EYES CLOSED
When there's a decent AM radio station on in the background, I enjoy almost everything about a long drive. I like the cup of coffee in the crappy cup in the drink holder. I like the pace of the interstate. I like the whine and pop of the AM dial, better than the filtered hiss of FM. The less music, the better. I go AM because I listen for talk. I like the stray phrases I catch—the cloying sentiment of the religious channels, the indignant chiding of the talk-show hosts, even the heavily compressed scripts of the commercials, where words are squeezed into spaces too tight for their own good.
I like to think of this as training I received from my mother, who, as a child of the '40s, learned to love stories as much through listening to the radio as through reading books. And while there's very little dramatic or comedic radio on the air these days (and what little there is, is overly clever and completely content with vamping the real stuff), I listen for the same things I listen for in a restaurant, at the park or on a subway car. Paul Harvey is neither Amos nor Andy, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger is not the Phantom, but they have personality, character, their own personas, and they're transmitted by words as much as by the airwaves. As always, I listen for words.
If you've read this far, you know I have faith in listening. So it makes sense that I'd like radio. Listening is the way we read the world. You can "view" the world if you want, but for the writer, listening teaches as much or more. The act of listening itself is as close to reading as you can get without actually picking up a book. Unlike viewing— watching a movie or gazing at the television—listening is not entirely passive. You have to listen hard; you have to fight to interpret. As a writer, you have to separate and see the language, ignoring much in the process. So close your eyes. Listen.
In old radio programs, sound effects filled the silences. Doors slammed. Keys rattled. Cars started. Windows broke. Music rose and fell toward the end of each act. Still, dialogue propelled the story, linked it to the week before and drew the audience in, bent on making them want more. Its intent was never to sound "realistic." My mother once told me about listening to the radio in the 1940s: "My father and I stared at anything at all. The bookshelf. The window. It hardly mattered. We listened so hard that we could see the stories unfolding."
Do yourself a favor and go to the library and borrow a tape of an old radio program, a serial drama preferably, such as "The Phantom." Train yourself to see the action, even if it's only hinted at and never explained. The formula is strangely like fiction. We can't explain, or describe, every action in short stories. A woman gets up to leave, and we say, "She got up and left." Nothing unfair about that description; nothing complete about it either. This is a good lesson to apply to dialogue too. You can't include everything.
At times, old radio dialogue tries hard to do just that, to include everything. What's compelling about the best dialogue you hear on old radio shows is how it keeps us within the story, shows us what grew out of last week and points out where the story is moving toward now. While any one line may sound realistic, that is, it may sound like the diction and syntax of the time, taken as a pattern, much of the dialogue is simply devoted to dealing with the limitations of the show—the medium itself, radio, and the time allotted. It is anything but realistic. Say our radio show begins in the lobby of a hotel.
"Baron Wilberstaff! Here in London! I thought I saw the last of you on Mount Komo!"
What's indicated there? A name. A context. A tension. Bang! The elements of story are in place. Rarely does the fiction writer need to move this quickly. Even more rarely should he.
You have to recognize that. And listening to old radio, you are sure to notice these patterns, to think of them perhaps as clumsy and manipulative. Who would listen to that now? What were these people thinking of? First off, recognize what makes this stuff work. Timing, drama, suspense. People listened because they cared. Characters grew from week to week, from night to night, as did story lines. Recognize too how difficult and limiting the form is. On radio when someone brandishes a gun, there is no sound that can be reproduced. The dialogue must carry the day: "Hank! What are you doing with that gun?" "I've had it, I tell you!"
Finally, recognize that this is a commercially driven endeavor. The writers are dealing with two audiences: the national audience and the sponsors, who demand that listeners keep listening. If the dialogue sounds clumsy, you can begin to see why. These writers were limited by time in a way that fiction writers almost never are. Time is the ultimate tool for the fiction writer. In fiction, a short dialogue can be spun out over pages, by modulating it. A long dialogue can be compressed into a few key lines, or the consciousness of the narration can discuss the tension behind the dialogue even as it happens. Radio has to put everything out front. Compare these two examples.
Fictional Treatment
Jenny broke the vase. The key had been hidden there for weeks, and now there it was on the ground between us like a little brass mushroom. Neither of us moved to touch it. Outside Magliori was taking an ax to the old chicken. I could hear his feet kicking though the dust as he chopped.
"Sorry," she said. "Sorry." And she turned back to the window as if nothing had been revealed.
The fictional treatment works better, because so much less is laid on the line with every word. The details of the world set the tone in the fictional piece. In the radio treatment, they merely inch the plot line along.
So why listen to it? Inside the greater pattern of the whole script are the smaller patterns of drama, and they are entirely driven by the characters' words. Listen carefully and you'll pick up on the subtle elements of diction and syntax particular to a given culture and era. Listen carefully and you'll find the potent line buried in the deepest melodrama. These words are material. But concentrate on seeing the story and you are using the dialogue the way a reader can in a well-written story. You are crafting a vision from words—spoken words here, on the radio—-just the way a reader will craft her vision of your fictional world with words—written words, your words. See the story. That's what your reader is doing too. You have to pick and choose. Listen to train yourself to know when enough is enough. listen for the way the actor's tone of voice is dictated by the writer's choice of words.
You have to select, not imitate. You don't want your dialogue to sound like it came off an old radio show. (Well, I suppose there are stories in which that is exactly what you want, but then my advice is still the same: Listen to a lot of them. Don't sell them short.) And for the same reasons, I think you don't want your fiction to sound like television writing. As a teacher, I see this happening all the time. As a writer, as a citizen of the world, I try to fight against it as much as and as best I
can. Does that mean you can't watch television and learn?
LISTENING TO TV
You watch television. You know you do. It's late, it's after work or school or it's the middle of the night and there you are grabbing the remote, flipping around, then settling, for some reason, into a rerun of Get Smart. You slide back in the couch, adjust your pillow. You don't even glance at the clock. You settle in for a while. Or perhaps you're highbrow, you pick your shows wisely, and there you are, watching that stilted adaptation of "Brideshead Revisited" for the third time. Either way, that's you, in front of the television. I'm not saying you're necessarily some five-hour-a-day statistic either. But, come on, TV happens.
Now get over yourself. Television can be crap, you heard right, but television is not always full-bore bad. As a teacher I see too many stories that ape the shape and structure of poor television, but my point isn't that you should or shouldn't be watching television, it's that you do watch it, or you have watched it or you will and that you have to be aware of what it can do. What I tell my fiction writers is when you watch, be sure you're watching out. Listen.
Ask yourself some questions about what you're watching: What do you hate about lousy television shows? Easy resolutions? Plot inconsistencies? The joke-a-minute pace? The canned laughter? All good bones of contention if you ask me. So watch the last five minutes of a bad show, say The Brady Bunch. Most of the problems of the show are taken care of by some lousy synopsis of conflict and statement of a common lesson, usually delivered by one of the parents. This sort of shallow dialogue is self-serving, and I'm going to warn you against it at every turn. This stuff sounds bad because there's no reason for it. In the context of our lives, we rarely have to summarize where we stand at a given moment, even a moment of tension.
"Wow. Tax time is right around the corner and I've let my addiction to antianxiety medicine allow me to become blase about my fiscal obligations to the government."
Nor do we tend to offer clear, concise resolutions for people, not even fellow Bradys, without some time for reflection.
"Sometimes when we grab the bull by the horns, we take care of two birds with one stone. When you toss aside that Ativan, Bobby, I'm sure those 1040EZforms won't seem quite so daunting. Come on, let me give you a hand. We'd better hurry! This might be the final year for the earned income tax credit!"
But you can't hate the television show simply for doing what it has to. Consider what the writers are up against. There's a commercial coming; the credits are about to roll. Time is the issue! Look at another show, one that holds the same basic shape of The Brady Bunch, a family dealing with certain key turmoils (and there are dozens of them). Pick a well-written show, Roseanne, for instance. Even there, the moments of synopsis are present, if cleverly hidden in the last five minutes of every show. Dan hitches his belt and sighs. Or Rosie sits at the kitchen table with a magazine. At some point, a switch is hit and, for just a moment, they are telling us what they have learned, or what has changed, or where they will go from here.
This is the most dangerous moment for a fiction writer to echo. Think about it. On the television show, the setting makes little difference. The placement of the resolution within plot is predictable.
It's a simple reminder of a theme, of the lesson of the show. That's part of selling the show. In fiction, the "lesson" need not be stated; in truth, it ought not to be. The resolution is part of the art of the story. It touches every moment in the story that precedes it.
Yet, in television, the lesson must be stated. Look at resolutions in television. The moment itself is hardly important. Listen for it. I'm telling you it happens in every show, from Matlock to Friends, from I Dream of Jeannie to Twin Peaks. The statement is so explicit it's clear the character's words are being used by the writer as a reminder to the audience and for nothing else. We accept this as part of the form. That's television. What makes shows such as Roseanne better than most is that true resolution is rarely delivered by anyone, let alone dished up every episode like a hefty plate of the Brady's pork chops and applesauce.
It seems that in television, everything must be stated. The dialogue must be used at some point as a tool of the writer, the sponsor, the network, whoever. Blindfold yourself and listen to television. You won't need to peek. Action rarely takes the place of words. Gesture is given over to the actors, seen as a mere part of interpretation. Meaning must become explicit in the time allotted. The writer must make everything digestible, use his words in a measured, formulated sense. The fiction writer is free of these sorts of aesthetic handicaps.
What you learn from listening to television is the ability to experience things self-consciously. Once you've studied literary dialogue for a long time, the lack of pretense in television may seem somehow refreshing. Still you have to set rules for yourself. Understand what you don't have to do (you don't need easy resolutions!) and you will be able to see what you must do (complexity is your friend). Some rules, from listening to television.
Don't rush. No need to make your dialogue do the work of closure. For you, the fiction writer, the commercial isn't coming up. There are few long speeches in commercial television. No monologues in any real sense of the word. That's because television breaks meaning into small bites, easily digested, to make the message clearer. When you sit there, blindfolded, you'll be amazed at how quickly people talk and how little real silence there is. This should translate in your fiction to don't rush.
Leave some space. Resist the urge to put it all in words. On television, the characters often say things that just happened ("Who was that on the phone?" "That rock almost killed you! One step closer to the edge and wham!").
Resist exposition. Television writers have viewers dropping in at many different moments of the show. One of the things the creators must do is allow each line of dialogue to have some capacity as a piece of setup, or as exposition. Exposition has a place in stories of course, but it ought not to leak into the dialogue time and again.
Brady-ized Dialogue
I often see moments in early drafts of stories where dialogue is used to stretch scenes. There's really no need for this. There are too many things—sounds, thoughts, distant trains—that ought to fill up the lulls within a story. When you start to use words in that way, you are merely filling the emptiness with empty moments. I think a lot of this trouble comes from television, which by nature and necessity has few moments of real silence. Movies are different (and we'll touch on this later), but in television the camera is rarely off the character, and even more rare are moments when that character is allowed to be silent or still. Most programs are an endless string of chatter. When this effect slips into a written dialogue, I say the dialogue has been Brady-ized— reminiscent of a conversation from the old Brady Bunch show.
As a teacher I see a lot of Brady-ized dialogue. I can drum it up pretty quickly, because I see the characteristics even in fairly brief exchanges. The key here is that each line has a purpose in the propulsion of plot, conflict and theme. There's generally little attention to timing, music or mystery, three great keys to character within short fiction. While reading the following example, write down the calculated effect of each exchange. I won't set up the scene with any more than a location.
"Man," he wondered aloud, "when is Sharon getting home?"
'What's that, Bill?" said Lily, looking up from her knitting.
"I was just wondering when Sharon is going to get back," he said.
"Don't worry so much, Bill," she said. "You'll know soon enough."
"You're right, Lily. It's just a checkup after all."
"Right."
"It's just. . ."
"Just what?"
"Well, I'm worried that she won't tell the doctor the whole story."
"You mean . . ."
"Yes, I mean our . . . history."
"Oh, Bill, you don't think she would hold back?"
"Not intentionally. Sharon is an honest person. I'm just worried that she might leave something out."
"Well," Lily said, as she looked out the window, "now you've got me worried."
"You and me both," Mike said.
You might be asking yourself, Does he think that's good television dialogue? The answer is no. I think that's Brady-ized dialogue in that each character pulls the other along. Every line of dialogue invites, virtually demands, the next. There is no rhythm or pace or surprise. It's guilty of some of the same flaws that bad television writing falls prey to, for whatever reason, good or bad, the sort of stuff that creeps into the worst daytime television writing and the weakest television movies. Think of the list of rules gleaned from listening to television. This dialogue breaks them all: It rushes the tension forward, it leaves no room for silence, it is heavily expository. Every line in the exchange is a servant to plot and nothing more. There isn't a drop of character or place. It's chock full of reminders and rehashes. While you can sense a story all around it (maybe not a good one, but a story nonetheless), this is a dialogue that doesn't serve the heart of the story— unless that heart is a vault of dim-witted, ironic posturing. Check out the way I chart this mess.
There's not much I can do if you like that. That is not how people sound. That is the way television sometimes sounds. If it sounds like
that to you more than once a week, turn it off! (There, I did give you a hard-and-fast rule after all.) Also, don't chart your own character's dialogue. There are a lot of books on screenwriting and television writing that claim every line of dialogue should have a purpose. That is lockstep thinking. Plain and simple, in any medium, good dialogue sounds like people talking. They may be intensely witty; they may be evil; they may be a widowed architect with three sons who marries a widow with three daughters, all of them with "hair of gold, like their mother." But they should sound like people talking. So don't chart. It makes you too aware of purpose, of direction, and forces an element of calculation into the words of your characters. Your calculation, not theirs.
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