Dispatch from The Quest: Scott Reynolds

Last week as we did here on GITS, the Quest writers focused on the subject of Dialogue. Today’s dispatch: Scott Reynolds with some thoughts about the value of reading dialogue aloud:

Film may be a visual medium, but have you seen any silent movies lately? Of course not. That would suck. Unless it’s a post-2010 Adam Sandler movie. Then silence might be a godsend.

I know the old saw about how a picture is worth a thousand words, and film is 24 pictures per second. But my completely unscientific and biased study of personal anecdotes tells me that dialogue is what people connect with. When people quote lines from their favorite movies to each other (ad nauseam, usually) it’s lines of dialogue that stuck with them. We only have to go back to 2010’s Best Picture winner to see how important dialogue is to a movie. It wasn’t called the King’s Scene Description, was it?

No seriously, I’m asking. I never saw it.

As a comedian, I put a lot of weight on dialogue. Maybe too much sometimes. When I do stand-up comedy, I don’t mime my jokes. And while some good object work and action can help balance an improv scene and give it more reality, it’s the words that carry the day. So when we started looking at dialogue this week, I was pretty stoked. “Finally!” I said to my roommate’s dog, Lola. “Something I’m already good at!”

Lola assumed I asked her if she wanted to go outside and wouldn’t shut up about it until I took her.

Not to say that I’m some kind of master of dialogue, mind you. But I do have a couple of tricks up my sleeve that always help me out.

Dialogue is meant to be heard, not read. I know. I’m some kind of super-genius, right? But as obvious as that is, I can’t tell you how many writers I know that never hear their dialogue out loud. The end result is usually stilted, unnatural, and…writery.

Any time I finish a scene (or a sketch or a joke) I read it out loud. If I trip over it at all, if it sounds even a little weird, I change it.

I advocate reading anything you write out loud to hear it, even if it’s not dialogue. Most people subvocalize when they read, meaning they “say” each word in their heads as they read them. So in a sense, all of your words are being “heard”. You should hear them first so there’s no surprises.

Better than reading it out loud yourself though is getting a table read. In a table read you assign each part of your script to be read by someone else. Ideally yet another person will read the scene description, leaving you to just listen and take notes. Guaranteed you will come out of one table read with more notes and ideas than reading it ten times on your own.

Some things to look for during a table read:

* If the readers stop to laugh (if you’re writing a comedy) or otherwise react in a way you hope for, you did good. Note where that happened and do more of that.

* If the readers trip over phrases, think about rewriting them. Tripping over an individual word here and there will happen, because that’s what happens when you read and talk. But whole phrases, if they come out wrong and awkward, that’s probably on you. Fix it.

* Readers will naturally shorten or alter a phrase here and there. Note it. It might be because their way is more natural speech.

* Listen for how they interpret your punctuations, capitals, and parentheticals. Is it what you expected? Can you rewrite things to make emotions, or cadence, or intent more clear? Even normal people will “act” a little bit when they get into it. Are the dialogue and scene description working together to get the acting you want?

And in general, just listen. This is a valuable opportunity to experience your script in the way other people will: as an observer. Except that when you get ideas, you get to go back to your computer and implement them.

So ply your writing group or even your friends with some beer and pizza and have them table read as many scenes as you can get them to. And in the meantime, read that dialogue out loud to yourself. You’ll be surprised how different it sounds versus when you wrote them down.

The other thing I do that helps me write “natural” dialogue is listen to strangers talk. There’s plenty of days where I jump on the subway, put in my earbuds, but don’t play any music. This way I can listen to conversations without people knowing. I don’t care about the content of the conversation, per se, just the way people are talking. The bits and pieces of what they say. It all goes in the vault to be used later.

Sometimes I’ll write chunks of conversation as I hear them. Sometimes I’ll get an idea for a scene from doing this. Do it on the subway, in the park, at the bar, at Barnes & Noble, anywhere where you can find people that you wouldn’t normally talk to is great. Take it all in. Listen to the idioms and the slang and the cadence and the wonderful things that people come up with to say on the fly, in the heat of a conversation. That’s where the gems are.

So yeah. Creep on people’s conversations in the name of research. Tell ’em Scott sent you. Myers. Not me. I don’t want to be implicated.

Reading dialogue aloud. Table reading. All valuable, all important. There are your words on the page. There are your words in your ears. Two different things.

Here’s a tip. After you finish a draft and you want to do a pass on dialogue, aggregate all the dialogue for each character. That is all of Character A’s dialogue back to back to back, Character B’s dialogue back to back to back, and so on. Then read aloud each character’s dialogue in toto. Ask yourself these questions:

* Does each character have a distinctive feel?

* Does each character’s voice reflect their personality?

* Does each character’s voice reflect their specific cultural history?

* Can you make each side feel more authentic through the use of idioms, slang, and contractions?

And this is even before you get to two equally, if not more important considerations: How does each side fulfill a purpose? How is each side entertaining?

But the single most important thing you can do: Immerse yourself in your characters. At some point, they will start to talk to you.

Tomorrow: Another dispatch from The Quest.

About Scott: Brooklyn based writer and comedian who bailed on software to focus on writing words that humans could read. Twitter: @scottadhoc.

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