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Tension, context and subtext in dialog

November 7, 08 //
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A friend once told me that every conversation that takes place in a screenplay should be an argument. It’s advice he heard from a writing teacher, and I think it’s basically sound. I’d replace the concept of an argument with the more general notion of tension. It doesn’t have to be direct confrontation, but there should be something at stake beyond the exchange of words.

The key to tension is subtext. In my limited experience rewriting for a director interested in on of my scripts, that is one thing he has emphasized: strip all your dialog of all explanation and description. After all, that’s what the director and actors will add visually and through the sound and the way that they deliver the lines. What should be left is only the subtext. And that subtext should be laid on a foundation of tension.

Here’s a scene from my latest script where I feel like I get it right:

EXT. ROADSIDE OVERLOOK

Coyle and Lilly sit at a picnic table with a view of the ocean. They share a sack lunch. It would be a lovely spot in season, but now there is gray skies and drizzle. They are hunched under their rain slickers. Lilly looks dejected.

LILLY

Your girlfriend going to pick you up?

COYLE

How do you know about that?

LILLY

Everybody knows.

COYLE

It’s not serious.

LILLY

I know what it is.

COYLE

Can we talk about something else?

LILLY

What else is there?

Coyle can’t answer. They eat.

COYLE

You want me to walk you home?

LILLY

Better not. Sally doesn’t like you.

COYLE

I won’t say what I think of her.

LILLY

She’s a good person.

COYLE

So you want to stay with her then?

Coyle stares at her, chewing. Lilly looks at the water.

COYLE

Because if that’s what you want, I’d like to know. I’m working hard trying to make things right.

Pause.

LILLY

She’s a good person. She’s not Mom. She’s not you.

Coyle looks at her long and hard. She risks a quick glance into his eyes. He nods.

LILLY

I better get going.

She crumples up her paper lunch bag. She picks up her board and wetsuit. She nods at her father and then begins walking along the highway toward town. The wind kicks up.

COYLE

I love you, Lilly.

The wind is strong and she either doesn’t hear or she doesn’t care to respond.

I feel that is a scene where the tension is palpable. Here is the context: Coyle is the father, Lilly is the daughter in foster care. Sally is her foster mom. Coyle’s trying to get her back. But he’s also sleeping around (the girlfriend mentioned at the beginning), carousing, drinking, getting dragged into an unsolved murder case and generally doing a lot of things that will make it harder to get Lilly back. Lilly knows this. Knowing the context of the scene makes a lot of the dialog more clear, but I also think that context shows up as tension and subtext in the actual exchange. You don’t need that context. As a beginning writer, I found that I was continuously adding too much context in the form of description and explanation. Now I struggle to strip things down to the bone. I think this particular script is loaded with good tension and subtext. We’ll see when I send it to contests if it does as well as my other scripts.

One other note about adding tension to dialog. You have to be careful. While it’s always a good idea to ratchet up the tension on the page, you also have to learn when to turn this sensor off. When you wake up obscenely early in the morning like I do, the world you’re building inside your head is blurred with the one in which you actually live. It’s never a good idea to add tension and subtext to your daily conversations. Sometimes I’ll be sitting with my wife or daughter and chatting and that little voice in my head will remind me that I should be adding tension to the conversation. And I’ll say something that pisses them off. Not a good idea.

Writing for the budget

November 4, 08 //
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When you first start writing scripts, one of the great liberating experiences is the ability to start a scene with something like this:

EXT. PARIS STREET – AFTERNOON

Smith steps to the curb and hails a cab...

And then, you can follow up with the next scene, with a quantum leap:

EXT. SEASIDE CAFE, HAVANA – MORNING

Pilar sits across from Valencia...

It gives you a sense of freedom as a writer to be able to jump from one location to another. After all, you just need to type the name of the place in your scene heading and you’re there. A leap from Anchorage to Albequerque is only a matter of characters on the keyboard. This is profound, because most of us spend a huge portion of our lives hunched over a keyboard in some dingy office or in the corner of a coffee shop. Maybe we hang out on the fifth floor of the library next to a stack of books nobody reads. To be able to leap around the globe via our narratives is one of the attractions of this pursuit.

But what I’m learning now is that such freedom can be a dangerous thing. Producers read scripts differently than we do as writers. When they see a location change, numbers start to click in their heads. A change in the setting, and the addition of numerous locations, can inflate the budget in less time than it takes you to complete a scene heading.

I’m rewriting a script now with budget and locations in mind. I’m eliminating action sequences and removing an entire series of scenes that take place two thousand miles away form the main center of action. I’m also collapsing characters, combining several similar roles into a single character to reduce the casting costs. A producer said that I could take the script in two directions: a big budget action film, or a character-driven drama. Their company specializes in the latter. I was presented with a challenge: rewrite the script to reduce the cost of making this film, and they’ll consider an option.

The pragmatic requirements of filmmaking are quite different from, say, novels where you’re only limited by your own imagination. When you set a scene in Cairo, that won’t require you to send the second unit to Africa to get b-roll of the pyramids. Or you don’t have to worry about the fact that a scene set in Havana becomes problematic if much of the cast and crew is made up Americans, who are forbidden to travel there by the knuckleheaded blowholes in Washington.

I’m also finding that it’s not always a matter of collapsing and contracting your script. Sometimes you’ll be called upon to increase a role, attracting a different caliber (and more expensive) level of talent. On this same project, I’m removing minor characters and increasing the visibility and prominence the four lead roles so that they can try to attract four major actors for these key parts instead of just one or two.

Writing for a budget is nothing I’ve ever had to consider doing before, writing as I have mostly fiction. My first two scripts featured international locations. My third script was set entirely within forty miles of where I live, my thinking being that this script might make a nice independent project someday, or at least attract interest from different types of production companies looking for smaller budget films.

Book learnin’

October 15, 08 //
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I’m a Web guy by trade and a writer by compulsion. But as an Internet professional, I often talk myself into believing that I can find out anything I need to know online and in moments. With the right tool, search query or resources, I can prepare to talk intelligently about a subject a short while before getting up in front of an audience. I can do the research for an important phone call on the fly or I can turn myself into an authority in the field of one of my clients with only an hour of Web research.

But experience and knowledge still counts for something. In fact, it counts for a lot of things. I just finished one of those floppy dead tree things called a book. It’s a book about writing for films, or rather, how to work as a film writer in the business. It deals with agents, managers, producers, meetings, meet-and-greets, pitching, contests, etc. I should have read it more than a year ago when I finished my first script. It would have saved me from sounding like a moron in any number of emails and phone calls. If you’re interested in the business of writing, and if you ever have any plans to talk to someone in the film industry about a script you have written, buy this book and take a couple of hours to read it.

The book Breakfast with Sharks is pretty damn good.

The book "Breakfast with Sharks" is pretty damn good.

I do have a certain disdain for the  “how-to write” books. Let me say that “Breakfast with Sharks” isn’t one of those. The how-tos are only marginally useful. They tend to give you an entire set of rules that are only applicable in very specific situations, and they can turn any aspiring writer into an imatative hack who churns out lifeless approximations of great film (or fiction) writing. It’s much better to learn by watching actual films with a critical eye, or reading real scripts and then forgetting all the rules and formulas. Indeed, the few times that “Breakfast” strays into giving guidance on style tend to be it’s weakest points. For example, writer Michael Lent cautions beginners to “avoid the giant talking heads,” warning against long speeches. I heard this chestunt even before I started writing scripts. But my first script, which did well in any number of contests and has been praised for its originality, broke this rule in the first five pages. In fact, it’s entire premise is about a guy whos thing is to deliver long speeches.  It’s called The Eulogoist. Monologue drives the whole script. Of course there’s also plenty of action, nakedness, twists, shoot-em-ups and a one-liner or two.

The only valuable section, I used to believe, of a screenwriting book, was that part in the back that showed you how to format your script: here’s a scene heading, this is a character, this is the dialog, this is the action, this is a phone call, etc, etc. My one book on the actual screenwriting process is dog-eared for that section. The rest is worthless.

But Breakfast with Sharks is sound writing career advice. It’s a textbook on how not to sound like a hick from Missouri when you’re talking with producers (even if you actually are a hick from Missouri). I’m taking my first trip to LA in a couple weeks to attend a film festival. I’ve also managed to arrange a couple meetings. I’m much less bewildered having read Lent’s book.

Do you read your stuff out loud?

July 19, 08 //
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I don’t know how many times over the years that I’ve recommended to writer friends and fiction writing students to read their work out loud. Not only will you catch every typo and grammar glitch, but you’ll be able to hear the ring and rattle of the words in your head.

Now that a tiny bit of screenplay success has me focusing all my writing efforts on scripts, you’d think I would have carried this bit of advice over to this other medium.

Right now I’m revising  a script with a healthy dose of feedback from producers, hoping that they’ll pull the trigger and decide to make this film. This script features a very, very long eulogy delivered in the first scene. The extended monologue up front breaks all the conventions of filmmaking, which is one reason I’ve had such good feedback. It’s a well written speech, if I do say so myself. And it doesn’t slow down the film at all.

You’d think I would have read this eulogy out loud before now. I first penned this scene almost two years ago. I’m on draft 7 according to the file name on my Word document, but it’s more likely draft 20 for this specific scene. And I’ve never read it out loud. Until now.

It’s early morning, and I affected my best cheesy Irish accent and read the scene. I’ve sliced it down again and again, and they seem to think it’s still too long. It’s half its original size. I read it out loud, and I cut it some more. That was the first time I’ve ever read an extended passage from one of my scripts. This in a medium that is mostly dialog.

Isn’t that ridiculous?  That should be your first step upon revision. Read the whole friggin thing. I wonder how often we ignore our own platitudes.

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