Comments on: “Say What?”–A Delicate Balancing Act

By: Kaye Dacus

Kaye Dacus — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:50:59 +0000

When I write longhand, occasionally, I’ll just put the character’s name before or after the dialogue if the story is really flowing. Because I know when I go to type it into the computer, I’ll revise it with an action tag or reaction or something.

For a long time, I was having trouble just letting myself be a draft writer, but it’s coming a little easier to me these days, especially with dialogue. If I’m composing on the computer, somtimes I’ll just put a blank line where I need an emotion or reaction, then hook a comment onto it with a note saying something like fluttery or heart pound or other heart-y feeling needed so that I don’t have to waste the time to figure out a unique way of putting it while I’m in draft mode but the comment will remind me when I go back for revisions later what I was thinking.

By: Jess

Jess — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:49:48 +0000

I don’t think I actually knew what “visceral” meant until I read this.
Sad. But thank you.

By: Amy Jane (Untangling Tales)

Amy Jane (Untangling Tales) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:46:43 +0000

I think it’s Elizabeth George in her book Write Away who talked about THA techniques. As in, Talking Head Avoidance.

I forget her point but I loved the label, because I could identify whole scenes and pockets of action (that I later loved) that grew entirely out of my desire to avoid talking heads.

I imagine this is analogous to a conversation in a movie over a sword fight or while dancing. The action itself provides nothing new (or very little) but b/c we had something interesting to watch while we were listening, we got through the scene and collected the new information.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:50:40 +0000

I tend to go overboard on the running internal commentary on the first draft, or I leave it out entirely. Hey, that’s what first drafts are for, right?

By: PatriciaW

PatriciaW — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:56:35 +0000

I’ve read books where I’ve found myself skipping over dialogue to get to the next narrative passage. Because there something was going to happen as opposed to a retelling of past events or inocuous conversation that adds nothing.

Or, where I put the book down for a second because so much is happening via dialogue that the pace gets too intense. Then, I’ll re-read the dialogue to ground myself before continuing.

By: Caleb

Caleb — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:44:13 +0000

With screenplays, you are still responsible for supplying a setting, but typically it’s a much more general setting since getting too specific costs more money. You’ll just give a very basic geography so the reader knows where everything is hypothetically. Once it’s time to actually film, the set might be very, very different from what you had imagined, but it still serves it’s purpose. This might also vary from genre to genre. If you’re writing a pirate epic, obviously they’re going to have to build everything from scratch anyway, so you might as well be as specific as you want. If you’re writing an indie drama, it’s easier to be vague and see what pre-built places you can find later that would work.

The narrative you’re talking about is a commodity screenwriters don’t exactly get. You can have the occasional voice-over, but there’s no room to get into the psychology of explaining what characters are thinking about during every conversation they have. You can’t jump into a character’s head constantly to see what a specific touch or movement meant to them.

95% of the information has to be in the dialogue. If you write into a script that “Mary gives a look of displeasure” who knows how that actress is going to interpret that once she’s in front of the camera. With so much information being put into spoken word, the real challenge is figuring out how to make it sound natural or at least interesting.

Personally, I enjoy a good voice-over because of the book-like feel it gives, but it’s something you have to be careful not to overuse.