Once again, I return to you fresh from digging into the prodigious reserves of my online screenwriting lectures with something I thought you might find interesting: Thoughts about writing dialogue, but with a specific slant on the topic which is not generally covered. I’ll break up the lecture into five parts to Mon thru Fri this week at 1PM PST. Here is Part 1:

When I was a high school sophomore, I somehow managed to backhand my way onto the varsity tennis team. Imagine a bunch of gangly, pimple-challenged, testosterone-charged geeks in all-white togs – that was our tennis squad.

As was our custom, before and after practice and matches, we would engage in a lot of crude, lewd adolescent bravado which was reminiscent of the product which routinely issues forth from a bull’s posterior: Hyperbole meeting put-downs crossed with the occasional philosophical musing and the more-than-occasional four-letter epithet.

Except when Mac Paez spoke up.

Mac was this short, blocky senior who could cover a tennis court like no other. Combined with a wicked spin serve, he consistently won matches as our #2 singles player.

Unlike his teammates, who greeted silence as an opportunity to leap on ‘stage’ and prattle on with nonsense building upon nonsense, Mac’s inclination was to sit off to the side and… listen. He did a ton of listening. Not that any of us knew he was listening, being far too busy vying for the lead role in our adolescent game of Me-Me-Me-Me. It was only on those rare occasions when Mac chose to open his mouth, and utter a few choice words of wisdom – and I do mean wisdom – that we realized the degree to which Mac had been able to sift through all the jabbering and posturing, and make some sense of it all.

When Mac spoke, what he said was quiet, clear, and to the point. After he finished whatever it was he had on his mind, invariably there would be a silence, as profound as any silence among adolescent males can be, where we would all sit there nodding our heads, pondering his words, and wishing like hell we could have had the wherewithal to say what Mac had just said.

Now here I sit, over three decades later, and I confess I can not remember a single word Mac uttered. But I do remember this – his silence. His willingness to exist quietly amidst our ‘noise,’ feel absolutely no compulsion to vie for the spotlight, and only speak when he felt like there was something meaningful to say.

And so, I humbly offer to you this human talisman to help you write dialogue – Mac Paez. Who, if he was here, might say… embrace the silence… speak only what matters… tell the truth.

DIALOGUE, PART ONE

When you write dialogue, there are certain processes you must go through in order to bring your character’s words to life. First, you have to figure out your characters, deduce what their goals are, their personal histories, their wants and needs, their fears and desires, etc. Next, you need to consider idiomatic speech to give your characters distinctive vocal patterns, so that each one sounds different than the other. Then their personality and how that affects the way they speak (pace, rhythm), the words they use, how they use what they say to accomplish their goals, etc.

Then there are three biggies: Each of these will affect not only what dialogue you write, but how you write it.

THE CHARACTER IN RELATION TO THE EXTERNAL WORLD (PLOTLINE)

* What primary archetype is your character?

* How does your character connect to the overall (macro) plot?

* Does your character have a distinct and different character mask (function) in relation to the plot in this scene?

* How does your character influence the plot in this particular scene (micro)?

THE CHARACTER IN RELATION TO THE INTERNAL WORLD (THEMELINE)

* What connection does your character have to the story’s overall (macro) theme?

* What connection does your character have to any distinctive element of the theme, unique to a particular scene (micro)?

* How does your character’s transformation, if any, connect with the story’s Themeline?

Remember that in a screenplay, apart from narrative V.O,, the only way the reader can know what a character is thinking or feeling is through actions and dialogue. That’s it. Therefore, it is vitally important that the words you put in your character’s mouth tie into both the story’s Plotline and Themeline.

That is the best way to write effective dialogue. But that does not necessarily translate into scintillating dialogue. Once you have figured out what your character’s connection to the Plotline and Themeline is, you want to craft dialogue which conveys those narrative elements, but you want to do everything you can to make that dialogue off-the-nose, indirect, bury the truth in layers of words and communication. This is the Third Biggie, and what is known as subtext.

THE CHARACTER COMMUNICATES THROUGH SUBTEXT

A character may speak with the use of words; but most often, good dialogue communicates the truth through subtext. Why?

* It is a universal human trait to say what we mean below (“sub”) our words (“text”); therefore, writing dialogue as subtext makes dialogue feel more authentic.

* If drama requires conflict, then a way to create more drama is to write dialogue which says one thing (text), but carries some other symbolic or emotional point (subtext) – in this way, the dialogue is itself in a sort of conflict between presumed intentions and deeper motivations.

* Writing dialogue as subtext reinforces the dualistic nature of your story universe: The text of the dialogue (Plotline) and the subtext of the dialogue (Themeline).

The point of subtext is that what is not said can be and often is more important that what is said. Therefore, in its purest form, subtext appears in a character’s silence.

WHAT IS NOT SAID – SUBTEXT THROUGH SILENCE

Obviously, a screenwriter approaches dialogue mostly through what a character says: Their words will convey a character’s relationship to the Plotline, to the Themeline, and to subtext ‘messages.’ However, you should also look for opportunities for your character to ‘say’ something by not saying it.

Huh? Saying something by not saying it?

Yes, I mean precisely that. Sometimes a character’s silence can speak volumes. The words they don’t say combined with their actions can be a powerful form of communication. Remember, film is primarily a visual medium, so in many cases, actions will speak louder than words.

Subtext through silence is even more important today because we live in an increasingly noisy world. People yakking on cell phones, pagers buzzing, video games beeping, not to mention the aural assault Madison Avenue launches at us via TV, radio, web sites, even inside elevators. And contemporary movies? Don’t get me started! Decibel levels ratcheted, pulsating soundtracks, every nook and cranny of aural ‘space’ filled with music and sound effects compressed, refashioned, and regurgitated in piercing digital quality.

Noise. So much noise.

How to make your character’s dialogue stand out amidst all that noise? Sometimes the best way is through silence.

Tomorrow through Friday, we’ll analyze a key scene per day from the script for the movie Jerry Maguire, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, focusing on the the ‘presence’ of silence and the power of unspoken dialogue.