In a script, every word matters

I did stand-up for two years. Over 500 gigs. I don’t recommend it for everybody — especially if you’re not funny — but some of the best lessons I’ve learned in life, I stumbled upon while standing on stage attempting to make people laugh.

I was thinking about that recently when I read this NYT article about comic Myq Kaplan. An excerpt:

The night after Christmas, the comedian Myq Kaplan did something most people would find terrifying. He told around 20 minutes of new jokes to a packed audience.

“You’re supposed to lay down your coat for a lady: that was a thing,” he said, speaking rapidly at the Broadway Comedy Club in Midtown Manhattan. “If there was a puddle, and a lady was like, ‘I don’t want to walk across a puddle,’ well, let me put my jacket down, because the bottom of your shoe is more important than my whole jacket.”

— —

The most underestimated quality of successful stand-up comedians is how hard-working they are, which became clear as this joke evolved over two months. Stand-up is the rare form that usually requires test driving in public. Myq (pronounced Mike) Kaplan, a respected regular at the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village, has since tried variations of his chivalry joke at about 80 performances. Almost every time, he tapes it, studies the results and jots down new ideas.

— —

With jokes every word matters. So Mr. Kaplan’s first breakthrough was three days later onstage at the Comedy Studio in Boston, where on the spot he changed “bottom of your shoe” to “lady feet-bottoms.” He liked the sound. When he ran the entire joke by Josh Gondelman, a comic who often gives him feedback on new material, the verdict via e-mail was decisive: “Feet-bottoms is funny!”

“With jokes every word matters.” I think we can safely extrapolate from that this truism: “In a script, every word matters.”

* They matter in dialogue because the wrong word can come off as false, whereas the right words can sound authentic.

* They matter in dialogue because the wrong word can feel flat, whereas the right word can pop off the page.

* They matter in dialogue because the wrong word can come across as on-the-nose, whereas the right word can be filled with subtext.

I just screened Easy Rider again the other night, hadn’t seen it in years. As Wyatt [Peter Fonda] and Billy [Dennis Hopper] make their way out of New Orleans, their penultimate night together before the shocking violence which befalls them the next day, Wyatt reflects back on their road trip across America and says this:

“We blew it.”

Three incredibly simply words. Each word open to interpretation. The aggregation of words with even more expansive possible meanings. And arguably a central theme of the movie.

In a script, every word matters.

The same is true when conveying a scene’s setting or action within the scene:

* They matter in scene description because the wrong word can be lifeless, whereas the right word can sparkle with vitality.

* They matter in scene description because the wrong word can be overwrought, whereas the right word can be subtle.

* They matter in scene description because the wrong word can be plain, whereas the right word can be evocative.

Consider this scene description from Little Miss Sunshine, written by Michael Arndt, the famous dance sequence at the beauty pageant:

No one knows what to make of Olive rocking, her back turned.

However, when the first verse begins, Olive turns and strides 

up the stage — hands on hips, shoulders swinging — with an

absolute and spectacular physical self-confidence.

She rocks out, busting crazy moves this stage has never seen: 

shakes, shimmies, twirls, dips, undulations — a mélange of MTV 

rump-shakin’, Solid Gold Dancers re-runs, and out-of-left-field 

inventions of her own. Other moves are clearly drawn from 

Grandpa’s sixty-year career of strip-bat patronage.

She dances with a total command — an exuberant, even witty 

master of her body, the music, the moves, everything.

Most of all, she’s doing it for herself — for her own sense 

of fun — and the judges are instantly irrelevant.

The audience is stunned. No one moves. Mouths hang open.

Sheryl, Frank, and Dwayne gape. Richard is baffled.

Each word pitch perfect, active verbs, visual descriptors. I can virtually guarantee that Arndt rewrote these 7 paragraphs over a hundred times. It’s such a pivotal moment in the movie and it’s written so well, it feels like the kind of description that has been lovingly worked over again and again and again.

So when you write, and especially at the editing stage of your final draft, push yourself to make the script sing by looking at each word. Try this: Get a Marks-A-Lot pen and highlight every single verb, then come up with a better one.

If you need a touch point for this part of your writing, think of comic Myq Kaplan, slaving over his chivalry joke until he struck gold with “lady feet-bottoms.”

He knows it. You know it.

In a script, every word matters.

For more of the NYT article, go here.

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