Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Delivering bad news
As we wrap up a week of speeches, I opened up the floor for a whole new slate of theme suggestions, and boy did you folks respond! Here was my response in that thread:
Here’s an example of a theme that I figure will not only have some entertainment value, we can also learn something from it: The suggestion by Saint716 for scenes where a patient receives word from a doctor they have some terminal / cancer condition.
There are some key emotional dynamics in play: (1) How the medical figure will couch the information, their psychological state of mind; (2) The immediate reaction of the patient; (3) Once they move past disbelief to having start embracing the fact it’s real, what is their reaction? Shock? Anger? Sadness? Terror?
If we are ever in a situation where we have to write a scene where a character is confronted by shocking news, medically based or otherwise, this could be a good week’s learning experience.
As I thought about it more, let’s widen that out a bit: Delivering bad news. Look for interesting scenes where there is that initial pressure on the person delivering the bad news, then the reaction of the person receiving it.
As usual, it’s really helpful if you copy/paste dialogue from IMDB Quotes.
And it’s super helpful if you can find a URL for an accompanying video clip from MovieClips or YouTube.
Okay, let’s see what we can come up with in the way of suggestions for notable dialogue featuring delivering bad news.