Daily Dialogue theme for next week: Moment of clarity
From a suggestion by DeafEars:
How about a “moment of clarity” — a scene where a character realizes and speaks a truth about himself?
I’ve found that scenes like that are hard to get right as a writer because there’s the danger of “telling” something rather than “showing” that the character has really acquired hard-earned knowledge and convincingly articulates it.
Anyway, the most famous example of this would probably be Terry Malloy’s scene in ON THE WATERFRONT with his brother — “I coulda been a contender…”
This is a good theme because DeafEars is right: How to convey something of an inner truth a character has realized and yet not be completely on the nose, unless the moment calls for it.
So next week, dialogue that reflects a character’s moment of clarity, some truth they’ve just realized, a revelation which has come to them, or something they’ve learned.
Please post your moment of clarity suggestions in comments by copy/pasting them from IMDB. And as usual, if you can find accompanying YouTube video clip, that would be especially groovy.
Thanks to all the other comments and suggestions. I’ll create a master list which we’ll carry forward and I’m sure we’ll get to a lot of your ideas.