Writing Dialogue

for Scripts
 ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY

Creating Compelling Characters for Film, TV, Theatre and Radio,

Rib Davis
Novel Writing, Romesh Gunesekera and A. L. Kennedy
Writing for TV and Radio, Sue Teddern and Nick Warburton
Writing Dialogue
for Scripts
4th Edition

Rib Davis

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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 CONTENTS

Thanks vi
Note on the text vii
Introduction viii

1 How do we talk? 1

2 The characters’ agendas 27

3 Naturalistic dialogue 47

4 Don’t make it work too hard! 59

5 Beyond the literal 87

6 Heightened naturalism 109

7 Tone, pace and conflict 123

8 Highly stylized dialogue 143

9 The character tells the story 157

10 Comic dialogue 181

11 Documentary dialogue 201

12 Reworking the dialogue 215

13 Last words 221

Index 223
 THANKS

I would like to thank my daughter, television script editor Harriet

for a number of invaluable pointers; the many students on the MA
courses in television scriptwriting at both De Montfort and City
Universities as well as on Write Theatre courses, for their responses
to my teaching in this area; my publishers for their very useful
feedback – and for their patience – and finally, for all her support,
my partner Lourdes.
 NOTE ON THE TEXT

With this edition I have once again taken the opportunity to

refer to many scripts that have emerged over the last few years
as illuminating examples of various aspects of scripted dialogue.
As ever, they are extremely varied, from American Hustle to The
Grand Budapest Hotel, from Peep Show to Breaking Bad, from
Earthquakes in London to London Road. We can learn from the
dialogue of all of them, along with that of classics such as Secrets
and Lies or Fawlty Towers.
The art of scriptwriting, for whatever medium, does not stand
still. Thus in this edition I have particularly drawn attention to
recent trends, such as the vogue for multi-narrative scripts, and the
rise of verbatim theatre.
As in previous editions I would like to make one comment about
authorship, with reference to film. I have decided to continue the
practice adopted since the second edition of this book and for
my sister publication in this series, recently revised as Creating
Compelling Characters for Film, TV, Theatre and Radio, in which
for film (as for other script media) I credited the writer rather than
the director. This is not some attempt to erase the director; it is
simply an acknowledgement that these books are essentially about
writing, not directing, so it is the work of the writer that is under
discussion and therefore it is the writer who should be identified.
 INTRODUCTION

Most dramatic scripts consist mainly of dialogue. Of course, there

are also stage directions – a line, a paragraph, or at the very most
a page or two – and an eccentric writer might even digress to talk
about the meaning of the text, but generally a script will consist
predominantly of dialogue. This applies whatever medium the
script is intended for, whether theatre, radio, film or television.
In film or television there may be whole sequences – perhaps held
together by music – in which there is no dialogue at all, while in
the theatre, too, there may be sections dominated by visual action;
but generally it is the dialogue that cements a script, that holds
it together. This book takes a microscope to that cement, and
then uses the findings to provide not only some insights into how
dialogue works, but also a better understanding of how to go about
writing it.
Here we set out, then, to study the writing of dialogue as it exists
across the script media. There are of course differences of approach
and usage from one medium to another, but the types of dialogue
used in each medium have much more in common with each other
than they have differences.
Yet dialogue in scripts is utterly entwined with the other
elements of the work – the characterization, the plot, the action,
the structure, the visual effects, the music … How is it possible to
extricate the dialogue from all this and talk about it separately? It
can be done, but with some difficulty. In his book Aspects of the
Novel, E. M. Forster notes the problem when trying to disentangle
‘story’ from other elements of novel-writing; yet he does conclude
that somehow one might pull out what he calls this ‘tapeworm’
of story, even if other things tend to cling on to it. My experience
is very similar. It is possible to talk about dialogue, even if along
the way one has to continually refer to all the other bits and
pieces that one finds still attached to it. After all, without a plot,
 INTRODUCTION ix

characterization and the rest, dialogue alone is of very little use to

us. It always has to be placed in its context.
There is a great deal of advice for the scriptwriter in this book.
After the opening chapters, which look at how conversation works
in ‘real life’, that advice is closely linked to examples from real
scripts. These extracts are analyzed in some detail, as there is much
for the scriptwriter to learn from the example set by others. Most
of the extracts chosen are from scripts of the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries, but there are also a few quotations from earlier
times, since in some respects the modern writer can learn as much
from Shakespeare and Jonson as from Stoppard and Tarantino. In
addition I have used extracts from a number of my own scripts –
not because I believe that they are in the same league as the work
of the writers mentioned above, but simply because I do have a
very clear idea of what I was intending to achieve in my own work.
In one well-known 200-page book on screenwriting, just half
a page is devoted to dialogue. The author presents four purposes
of dialogue, pointing out that many writers find dialogue the most
difficult part of their work, but then adding that good dialogue will
come with experience. While this attitude seems inadequate to the
point of being cavalier, it is true that to some extent the writing of
dialogue may be ‘caught rather than taught’. Writers who have ‘a
good ear for dialogue’ – those who pick up the inflections of the
speech of others with apparently effortless ease – obviously have a
head start. However, just as a musician who may not have perfect
pitch may nevertheless be trained to identify and notate harmonies,
rhythms and melodies – and then may also be trained in how to
use them in composition – so may the writer be assisted in learning
how to listen to dialogue and how to write it. We can learn what
to consciously listen out for in everyday speech – all the subtle ways
in which it functions – and we can learn too how to use dialogue
in scripts most effectively.
Ultimately, of course, a writer learns most by the hard road of
experience, trial and error (particularly error), but this book should
at least point out some of the pot-holes and cul-de-sacs – and
perhaps a few bypasses – in advance, and should help to make the
journey a little less painful.
x
 1
How do we talk?

Writing and speaking

When we are scripting dialogue we are, of course, scripting speech.
That speech is nearly always fictional – it will hardly ever comprise
the exact words that anyone has actually said on any specific
occasion (although there are exceptions, which are examined in
a later chapter). Yet whatever the style of scripted dialogue used
– and there are many – it will always relate in some way to how
people talk in ‘real life’. The writer, then, needs to have a very clear
understanding of how speech and conversation work. So, although
most of this book concentrates upon aspects of the scripting of
dialogue, in this chapter the focus is on the raw material: the ways
in which we speak in real life.
We tend to take speech for granted. We want to say things, so we
say them; we need to listen to people’s replies, so we do. Generally,
we don’t think too much about it. Unlike written language, with its
rules about clauses and punctuation, speech is not generally taught
but rather is acquired unconsciously, and as a result we tend to
underestimate just how complex and varied it actually is. For many
of us, it is only when we try to reproduce speech – as dialogue in a
script – that we realize it is not quite as straightforward as we had
assumed. Of course, there may be very good reasons for a scriptwriter
not to reproduce in its entirety language as we commonly speak it –
and we will come on to many of these reasons later – but that does
not detract from the fact that it is important to be aware of how
conversation actually functions before setting out to script dialogue.
2 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Spoken language is very different from written language. Even

written language that is relatively informal in tone (such as that
used in this book) is still a very long way from language as we use
it in everyday conversation. So what, exactly, is the difference?
The basic point is that conversational language, unlike written
language, is a mess – albeit a mess that we are all entirely used to
dealing with. Chatting together, for example, we will often leave
sentences unfinished, or realize half-way through that there is a
better way of putting something, so after a false start we begin
again:

We came along the – it was on the A27 and we caught up with

them near Brighton …

We are improvising, and revising our thoughts – or at least our way

of expressing them – as we go along.

‘Running repairs’ to speech

This improvising doesn’t seem strange at all, but perfectly natural.
Indeed, the individual who speaks without any hesitations or
revisions whatsoever will probably speak slowly and may well have
a tendency to be pedantic; they might be seen as rather tedious, or
at best as lacking in spontaneity. Conversation normally does have
a strong element of spontaneity, of improvising, of changing things
as we go along; written language, on the other hand (putting aside
the interesting phenomena of blogging, texting, and to a lesser
extent emailing), has usually had these elements ironed out in the
drafting and redrafting. With the exception of a formal speech,
such as in the House of Commons or at a business dinner (where
incidentally the speech normally starts life as something written
anyway, so it is in fact written language being spoken), there is
usually no drafting or redrafting of spoken language.
To go back to the example given above, we are being told about
the car trip verbally, not through written language, so it might
continue in this way:

… caught up with them near Brighton, yeah, near Brighton.

 How do we talk? 3

Terrible traffic, and pouring with rain. And it was getting dark
by now, too. Could hardly make out which was their car.

Here we have one sentence without a main verb, another sentence

without a subject, and a repetition which adds nothing new
at all – yet when spoken, it all sounds normal. On the page,
however, it looks odd, since we are used to language on the page
being neater, more controlled, more correct. The problem is that
although dialogue is spoken, dialogue in scripts is at the same
time written language – written language designed to sound like
spoken language. In the process of putting the words down on to
the page we may find ourselves tempted to tidy them up, to make
them appear less awkward on paper. In other words, we may feel
the urge to make written dialogue look more like the rest of written
language. Thus, if the verbal report on the journey were part of a
script, instead of the above we might write:

The traffic was terrible and it was pouring with rain … We could
hardly make out which was their car.

There is nothing wrong with this as a piece of dialogue. Many

people on many occasions might well express themselves in this
way; others on other occasions, though, would speak in the
first, less ‘correct’ way; others again might speak in a manner
somewhere between the two or, in stylistic terms, more extreme
than either of them.

Interruptions and simultaneous speech

In conversation, the improvisation of speech often leads to sentences
being unfinished or restarted; to verbs, subjects or other parts of
speech being missed out; and to words or ideas being unnecessarily
repeated. Additionally there is all the messiness which arises from
the fact that there is more than one person taking part. Talking
together, we continually interrupt and speak across each other. We
may have been taught that these things are not polite, but in fact
we do them all the time, and very often they do not feel impolite at
all. If when you speak you are listened to in silence until you have
4 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

finished speaking, the effect can be a very awkward one – you can
feel almost as though you were being interviewed, or it can seem
that the listener is not interested, or doesn’t understand, or perhaps
is even irritated or bored. So very often the listener will interrupt
with ‘Yes …’, ‘Of course …’, or ‘Exactly the same happened to
me …’ to show at the very least that they are still listening, and
hopefully also that they recognize the truth of what is being said.
The listener may interrupt with ‘No, I don’t think so …’ if he or
she disagrees, but even this interruption is not usually taken to be
rude. Frequently one of these interjections will just be a second
or two of simultaneous speech, with the first speaker continuing,
while at other points in the conversation the interruption will lead
to the new speaker taking over so that the speeches of the two
individuals overlap for a few words. Very often we will anticipate
when another person is coming to the end of what they want
to say and, rather than wait for the very end, we will come in a
second or two early (after all, otherwise the other person might
just carry on speaking!). Usually this does not seem at all impolite;
it is a perfectly normal element of everyday talk. When we write
dialogue, however, this is another element which we might find
ourselves perhaps unconsciously tidying up. Of course, a writer
may have good reasons for doing just that (and more will be said
about this in later chapters), but here we need to recognize that
the raw material – everyday conversation – is more messy than we
had probably appreciated. It is certainly much messier than written
dialogue, and a major reason for this is the interaction between
speakers.
Of course, while much simultaneous speech is not impolite some
of it certainly is. The rudeness of Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of
It is not just a matter of what he says (his very first words in the
series are, ‘No, he’s useless. He’s absolutely useless. He’s as useless
as a marzipan dildo’), but also when he says it – he continually
makes his comments across the speeches of others, when he is both
on and off the phone. But he is not alone – in this series multiple
simultaneous conversations are the norm.
One of the themes of David Mamet’s extraordinary play Oleanna
is the difficulty experienced in genuinely communicating. The play
begins with a phone call:

john (on phone) And what about the land. (Pause) The land.
 How do we talk? 5

And what about the land? (Pause) What about it? (Pause) No.
I don’t understand. Well, yes, I’m I’m … no, I’m sure it’s signif
… I’m sure it’s significant. (Pause) Because it’s significant to
mmmmmm … did you call Jerry? (Pause) Because … no, no, no,
no, no. What did they say …? Did you speak to the real estate
… where is she …? Well, well, all right. Where are her notes?
Where are the notes we took with her. (Pause) I thought you
were? No. No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, I just thought that
I saw you, when we were there … what …? I thought I saw you
with a pencil. WHY NOW? is what I’m say … well, that’s why I
say ‘call Jerry.’ Well, I can’t right now, be … no, I didn’t schedule
any … Grace: I didn’t … I’m well aware … Look: Look. Did you
call Jerry? Will you call Jerry … ? Because I can’t now. I’ll be
there, I’m sure I’ll be there in fifteen, in twenty. I intend to. No,
we aren’t going to lose the, we aren’t going to lose the house.
Look: Look, I’m not minimizing it. The ‘easement’. Did she
say ‘easement’? (Pause) What did she say; is it a ‘term of art’,
are we bound by it … I’m sorry … (Pause) are: we: yes. Bound
by … Look: (He checks his watch.) before the other side goes
home, all right? ‘a term of art.’ Because: that’s right. (Pause) The
yard for the boy. Well, that’s the whole … Look: I’m going to
meet you there … (He checks his watch.) Is the realtor there?
All right, tell her to show you the basement again. Look at this
because … Bec … I’m leaving in, I’m leaving in ten or fifteen
… Yes. No, no, I’ll meet you at the new … That’s a good. If he
thinks it’s nec … you tell Jerry to meet … All right? We aren’t
going to lose the deposit. All right? I’m sure it’s going to be …
(Pause) I hope so. (Pause) I love you, too. (Pause) I love you,
too. As soon as … I will.

(He hangs up.)

Phone calls are often poorly presented in scripts, with the person
‘at this end’ artificially repeating the unheard speeches for the
benefit of the audience. But not here. Despite only hearing one
side of the conversation we gain the gist of the meaning – and feel
the tension of the situation – at the same time as being aware of
all the general messiness of this verbal interaction. There are the
repetitions, the half-made sentences and even half-made words, the
misunderstandings and rephrasings, the false starts and hesitations
6 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

and, above all, the overlappings and interruptions. This is dialogue

that is full of running repairs.
In the Mamet example, all the mess of conversation is written
into the dialogue itself. At one point in the play Our Country’s
Good, Timberlake Wertenbaker comes up with a different solution.
In Scene Six, which involves no fewer than ten speaking characters,
rather than attempt to commit to paper all the overlaps and simul-
taneities of speech which would occur, Wertenbaker presents the
main dialogue only – but invites improvisations from the cast with
the following stage direction:

It is late at night, the men have been drinking, tempers are

high. They interrupt each other, overlap, make jokes under and
over the conversation but all engage in it with the passion for
discourse and thought of eighteenth-century man.

More commonly, however, the messiness of dialogue is written

into the script, so that a number of writers have developed
particular styles of presentation for interruptions and overlapping
speech. Caryl Churchill, for example, uses the slash, /, to indicate
the point at which the next speech starts; an asterisk, *, is used to
match up the point where one speech overlaps with another, when
the two speeches are not consecutive on the page; and finally,
when one speech continues right across another, she simply leaves
the first adrift with no punctuation at all where the other begins,
and then continues it without an upper-case start. All these are
present in the following extract from her play Top Girls. A group
of prominent women from various periods of history are in a
restaurant together, looking at the menu, while the waitress stands
next to them:

isabella Yes, I forgot all my Latin. But my father was the

mainspring of my life and when he died I was so grieved. I’ll
have the chicken, please, / and the soup.
nijo Of course you were grieved. My father was saying his
prayers and he dozed off in the sun. So I touched his knee
to rouse him. ‘I wonder what will happen,’ he said, and
then he was dead before he finished the sentence. / If he died
saying
marlene What a shock.
 How do we talk? 7

nijo his prayers he would have gone straight to heaven. /

Waldorf salad.
joan Death is the return of all creatures to God.
nijo I shouldn’t have woken him.
joan Damnation only means ignorance of the truth. I was
always attracted by the teaching of John the Scot, though he
was inclined to confuse / God and the world.
isabella Grief always overwhelmed me at the time.
marlene What I fancy is a rare steak. Gret?
isabella I am of course a member of the / Church of
England.*
gret Potatoes.
marlene I haven’t been to church for years. / I like Christmas
carols.
isabella Good works matter more than church attendance.
marlene Make that two steaks and a lot of potatoes. Rare.
But I don’t do good works either.

Here, then, we have an excellent example of scripted interruptions

and simultaneous speech without a hint of anyone being impolite.
These overlappings are perfectly normal – and in many ways even
positive – elements of our everyday conversations. (Incidentally,
the quotations in this book are presented in forms of layout
which resemble the printed version of each script respectively.
These forms do vary somewhat from one script to another, so the
variations have been reflected in this text.)
At the start of Earthquakes in London Mike Bartlett gives
similar instruction to those of Caryl Churchill above, but adds two
more, stating that a speech with no written dialogue indicates a
character deliberately remaining silent and a blank space between
speeches in the dialogue indicates a silence equal to the length of
the space. The former of these is becoming increasingly common
in script media generally, while the latter is far less common, and
really restricted to some play scripts.
8 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Helping out
Sometimes our interruptions are not made in order to agree or
disagree, nor are they made to change the subject: they are to finish
off someone else’s speech. Some individuals are particularly prone
to this, always trying to anticipate the ending of a sentence and
leaping in just before the speaker has had time to finish. This can
be an extremely irritating character trait – one which can of course
be reproduced in scripted dialogue, often to humorous effect:

sam So, Mr Parks, we are going to have to block the –

parks Drains.
sam Air vent. For the time being, while we reconstruct that
part of the wall. Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t use
the –
parks The toilet.
sam The toilet. No, no you can use the toilet. It doesn’t mean
you can’t use the fan –
parks Fan, yes.
sam The fan, which works –
parks When you pull the cord.
sam Which works quite efficiently. When you pull the cord, of
course.
parks Yes.

The character who wants to demonstrate that he or she has

understood a speech by jumping in with the last word may not,
in fact, understand very much at all. Similar humorous patterns
may be set by an individual who habitually repeats the last word
or phrase spoken. Couples who have lived together for a long
time often slip into these sorts of habits of speech, either repeating
the other’s line (sometimes in an apparent show of subservience)
or finishing the other’s phrase (sometimes out of impatience or a
desire to show control). There is a wonderful example of this in
one of the pseudo-interviews with an old couple in the film When
Harry Met Sally (writer, Nora Ephron).
Each of these aspects of dialogue, whether comic or not, is
very far from formal, written speech: again, it is the interaction of
characters which is most important.
 How do we talk? 9

Verbal shorthand
Very often, when people speaking together know each other
well, or when the speaker is aware that the listener has a
particular knowledge of the topic under discussion, a type of
verbal shorthand is used. The most obvious example is technical
or professional jargon. At an airport information desk, one
employee might ask a colleague if she knows the ETA of BD148;
overhearing this, we might well know that ETA means Expected
Time of Arrival but would be much less likely to know that
BD148 refers to a flight by British Midland (though we would
probably assume that BD stood for some airline or other). Every
workplace has its jargon and abbreviations, with limited and
varied access for outsiders.
Scriptwriters have always delighted in playing with jargon,
frequently satirizing the pretentiousness of the language and
pointing up the hollowness behind all the impressive-sounding
words. An outstanding modern example is Caryl Churchill’s
Serious Money, set in the money markets of London; but Ben
Jonson, too, was exploring how greed and emptiness can be
wonderfully disguised by jargon-laden language in The Alchemist.
In the following extract, Subtle and his assistant Face are in the
process of fooling Mammon to believe that through a marvellous
knowledge of alchemy they are able to turn base metals into gold,
though Mammon’s friend Surly is not convinced:

subtle Look well to the register

And let your heat, still, lessen by degrees,
To the aludels.
face Yes, sir.
subtle Did you look
O’ the bolt’s head yet?
face Which, on D, sir?
subtle Ay.
What’s the complexion?
face Whitish.
subtle Infuse vinegar,
To draw his volatile substance, and his tincture:
And let the water in glass E be filtered,
10 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

And put into the gripe’s egg. Lute him well;

And leave him closed in balneo.
face I will, sir.
(Exit face)
surly What a brave language here is? Next to canting?

We do not know why the heat should be lessened, or what aludels

are, or volatile substance, tincture, gripe’s egg, luting or balneo.
Neither would the vast majority of Jonson’s original audience
(although just as Caryl Churchill uses the authentic language of
the City, so Jonson’s terms are all taken from books on alchemy
current at the time). We are not meant to understand jargon when
it is presented in this way; its purpose is to obscure meaning, and
it does that very well! Of course, if there is no respite from such
jargon in a whole script, then it might become tiresome; its use
must not obstruct the audience’s appreciation of characterization,
plot or other aspects of the production.
While we tend to reserve the term ‘jargon’ for words arising in
a context of specialization – at work, for example, or in sport – we
often use types of verbal shorthand in everyday social contexts, too:

jack How much were they asking?

phil Hundred and twenty thousand. Yeah well exactly.
jack And what did Judy say when –
phil (overlapping) Well not at that price. And outside London –
jack She’s always said –
phil (cutting in) Exactly.
jack So are you going to keep looking?
phil I suppose so.

This piece of conversation depends heavily on the shared knowledge

and shared assumptions of the two speakers. They both know
that Judy, the partner of Phil, doesn’t really want to move out of
London, and certainly not to somewhere more expensive. They
only need to remind each other of these things, not to state them
fully. Thus the ‘Yeah well exactly,’ which Phil adds to his first line
is a response to the expression on Jack’s face, as well as the shared
knowledge of the expected reaction of Judy. As before, we see
here a conversation that looks odd on the page but which reflects
language as we actually speak it.
 How do we talk? 11

Conversational ping-pong
Another way in which we may be tempted to turn the messiness
of dialogue into something neater is by writing what might
be termed ‘conversational ping-pong’. In this form of fictional
dialogue, every topic is clearly introduced (the serve). There is
then a series of speeches, each a logical response to the previous
one (the rally); a new topic is only opened when the previous
point has been finished with (the ball has gone out of play and
there is a new serve). Conversational ping-pong is probably the
most common form of poor dialogue produced by inexperienced
scriptwriters.
So what is wrong with it? In small doses, nothing, but very
often we don’t talk in this way. In normal conversation more than
one topic is frequently being dealt with at the same time (which in
table-tennis terms would mean two balls in play simultaneously!);
any sort of predictable statement-and-response or question-and-
answer pattern is broken up by all the factors already referred
to, as well as a number of others. These include: dealing with
misunderstandings which may arise, or not dealing with them and
having the misunderstandings develop further; the occurrence of
silences within conversation; a speaker going off at a tangent; or
one speaker verbally responding, not to the words of another, but
to some physical action. There is also the particular agenda and
state of mind brought to the scene by each participant (more of
this in the following chapter), which is likely to produce something
even more complicated. In short, then, conversation is complex,
and can rarely be reflected accurately by dialogue of the continual
ping-pong variety.
It should also be pointed out that the pattern and style of
any conversation is not just a product of the circumstances of
that moment and that particular interaction, but is fundamen-
tally affected by the background and individual character traits
of each person present: dialogue is inextricably bound up with
characterization.
12 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

‘Oh I say’ and ‘Ee by gum’

While all English speakers obviously speak the same language,
every single one of us speaks it differently. Some characteristics of
speech are specific to the individual, but others are the result of
their place of origin, class, education and occupation – to which
we might add ethnicity and other factors. An individual’s speech
patterns will to some extent betray each of these elements, as well
as some more personal attributes.
I began one play, A Few Kind Words, with the following speech:

Allus bin willin’ te mek an effort, all o’ my life, when it wor

needed. Which is more un can be said fer some folk. But yer got
to. Yo mek your birr of an effort, tha meks tha’n an’ that’s ha yer
goo on. Well it wor in mah day. Can’t see uz ’ow it can change.

This, clearly, is not ‘standard English’, and it certainly demands

to be spoken in an accent which is not ‘received pronunciation’.
The character speaking, Tommy, is a retired miner from Ilkeston,
Derbyshire. I chose to write his part phonetically (though the BBC
then unsuccessfully attempted to have me write it out again more
conventionally) because I could foresee the difficulties that might
arise for an actor if this character’s speeches were presented with
standard spelling:

Always been willing to make an effort, all of my life, when it

were needed …

The idea of having an actor try to turn this conventionally spelt

language into that particular type of Derbyshire speech did not
appeal to me. But it is not just a matter of the accent which marks
out this language; there is also the vocabulary – ‘tha meks tha’n’
– which makes it Derbyshire speech of a certain sort. A little later
Tommy refers to ‘wock’:

… thee’d no pride in wock, didn’t know what real wock wor.

The dialect may already have given us a good idea of where

Tommy comes from (as well as his class, education and possible
 How do we talk? 13

occupation), but to listeners from that part of the Midlands

the word ‘wock’ will sound a note of particular authenticity. A
middle-aged person there at that time would say something like
‘wairk’; a younger person from the same place might say ‘werk’
(with a longer vowel sound than the southern ‘work’); but only an
old person would persist with ‘wock’. If one is going to write in
dialect, it has to be done properly!
There may be other occasions, when dealing with better-known
dialects such as cockney, on which it is sufficient in terms of accent
simply to put in a stage direction – for example, In strong cockney
accent – and then to make sure that the vocabulary and phrase-
ology are, in fact, cockney. Putting apostrophes for every ‘’asn’t’
and ‘wha’’ can in fact become tedious, though in the case of a very
strong but less well-known dialect such as that of an old Ilkeston
man I believe that the phonetic spelling was justified. (However, as
the agent Julian Friedmann has pointed out to me, writing phonet­
ically in dialect is not advisable for the writer who is not already
established: initially it can be very off-putting for a script-reader or
prospective director.)
Whatever the difficulties of presentation on the page, then,
there are clearly recognizable differences in speech arising from
the background of each individual. Good written dialogue will
certainly reflect these differences. What must be avoided, however
(except in certain forms of comic writing, and even this has its
limits), is the clichéd version of these differences, in which all
upper-class characters pepper their speech with phrases such
as ‘Oh I say!’, and anyone from north of Watford throws in a
frequent ‘Ee by gum!’ for good measure. We must be aware of
many more subtle mixes, such as the language used by the upper-
class Lancastrian – neither Eton nor Coronation Street – or the
speech of the well-educated middle-class woman who now lives
on a working-class estate and has taken on some (but only some)
of the speech characteristics of her adopted milieu (not that she
would feel comfortable now using the word ‘milieu’). Perhaps
she speaks in one way with her local friends and in another with
certain members of her family. She may also speak rather differ-
ently when in male or in female company.
14 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The gender gap

Many of us will be vaguely aware of differences in conversational
style between men and women – a contrast which is probably
stronger when the company is all-female or all-male. Of course,
whichever gender we belong to, we cannot have had first-hand
experience of a conversation between members exclusively of the
opposite sex. We may suspect how such conversations might go,
but we cannot be sure. Some academic research, however, helps
us out here, and indeed quite a lot of research has been conducted
on the differences between male and female types of speech1,
examining both style and content. Again, while stereotypes are to
be avoided (once more with the possible exception of their use in
comedy), the consensus does seem to be that in general – and with
many exceptions – there is a tendency for women to use language
more as a tool of co-operation, less competitively than men. They
may use it more to support each other and less as a means of
control than men (women will tend to make more supportive inter-
ruptions than men); and more to genuinely ‘connect’ and less to
impress with status than men (this is a paraphrase of a summary
by Janet Holmes2). Of course, we will all know of many occasions
when women have not conformed to these generalizations (starting
with the first British female Prime Minister), and there are many
of both genders who appear consistently to have contradicted the
research – but it is nevertheless useful to bear the generalizations
in mind. If there were not some truth in them, then surely all those
comedies based upon the differences between men and women (and
particularly their styles of socializing) would cease to be so funny.

Social codes
Our conversations all take place within certain social conven-
tions, and these have a major bearing upon how any piece of
dialogue develops. The conventions are not entirely rigid – they
vary according to class, background and situation – but there are
certain generalizations which can be made. For example, in a group
conversation in a pub, say, or at a dinner party, anecdotes will
often be told in accordance with the unwritten rule that everyone
 How do we talk? 15

should be given the opportunity to tell a story on a particular topic

– holiday disasters, giving up smoking or whatever; we take it in
turns. Keeping to this rule is normal; in a script, however, a point
may be made by the breaking of such a rule. Perhaps a character
is not given the chance to contribute an anecdote, or perhaps he or
she can’t think of anything to say. This is an example of conveying
something not through the meaning of the words, but through the
form of the dialogue.
Similarly, there are conventions which generally apply to the
tone of any given conversation, or at least to parts of a conver-
sation. If people are speaking in a jokey way, then a sudden
change of tone to the extremely serious might well be considered
an irritation or embarrassment. The reverse – someone throwing
a joke into an intense conversation about, say, death or politics –
could be even more of a gaffe. Again, we have dialogue conveying
something through the breaking of codes rather than through the
meanings of words. In the television comedy series Friends, much
of the humour associated with the character of Phoebe arises out of
just such breaking of conventions – she never seems to quite under-
stand the rules, so her odd interjections (trying to catch the tone
but not quite succeeding) are both charming and funny. Similarly,
in the series The Royle Family, Mam continually arrives in conver-
sations from utterly unexpected directions; often she seems to
come from a world of her own. In other scripts, when a character
breaks the conventions of conversation it might show arrogance,
or rebelliousness: how we handle codes through dialogue is central
to characterization.
One excellent example of a character whose dialogue contin-
ually clashes with the social codes of those around her is the
detective Saga Norén in The Bridge (writer, Hans Rosenfeldt).
How she speaks is entirely a reflection of her character; indeed,
the whole of the first series ultimately revolves around whether
or not she is capable of telling a lie. She is always direct, always
straightforward. There is virtually no subtext. This ought to be a
recipe for dull dialogue but it isn’t. This is partly because many of
her speeches are (unintentionally) funny. When she wants sex, even
from someone she has only just met, she simply asks ‘Do you want
sex?’ with a blank expression, and it takes our breath away. But
more importantly, the dialogue works because of the context. If
everyone in the piece spoke as she does it might indeed be dull, but
16 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

she is the only one, and in that context there is a continual fasci-
nation in her trying to decode what those around her say, and in
those around her coming to terms with how she expresses herself.
There is a similar linguistic disjunction in The Imitation Game,
in which Alan Turing finds difficulty understanding what others
mean because they hardly ever express themselves directly, whereas
he does, to a painful degree. As Turing comments, language is
in fact a code – just as much as the other codes which come to
fascinate him.

Culture clash
The differences in speech between Tommy in the extract from A Few
Kind Words given above, and the speech of the other characters in
the play (particularly that of his own well-educated daughter, who
has moved further south) reflect major social differences between
them; indeed, these are a very important thematic element of the
play. Yet the differences may be even greater than this when they
are between characters who come from cultures as distinct as, for
example, British African-Caribbean and British Asian, or between
English speakers who were born and live in other countries –
whether Singapore or New Zealand, the USA or India.
Each of these English-speaking cultures has its own vocabulary,
grammar and style of speech. But it goes beyond this. For example,
I have considerable experience of socializing with Latin Americans
who speak English as a second language, and have learned that
their rules of conversation are rather different from ours. When
a new person – a Latin American, say – is brought along to an
English group, that person is introduced to the others but may
then be left to sink or swim – he or she has to some extent to battle
to make space in the conversation, to make a contribution. This
is not seen as rude by the English: the new person is left to accli-
matize to the group, and to pay them too much attention might be
seen as pressurizing, or perhaps patronizing. To a Latin American,
however, being treated in this way seems extremely impolite. Their
social conventions (perhaps mirroring their wider cultural values,
which also differ from ours) dictate that when a new person is
introduced to a group, then much of the talk is directed to that
 How do we talk? 17

person; throughout the conversation strenuous efforts are made to

ensure that the new person is included.
The scriptwriter must take note of these culture clashes in social
conventions. Where a Latin American in an English group might
feel upset at being almost ignored (not understanding the codes), an
English person in a Latin American group may gain an inflated idea
of their own importance, not realizing that the lavish attention they
are receiving is a matter of social convention and does not neces-
sarily reflect tremendous interest in them as an individual. This is
one cultural clash in use of language of which I am aware, but there
are certainly many more of which I am not aware between these
two cultures, and of course there are countless more between all
the other English-speaking cultures and subcultures.
As has already been noted, the development of any conversation
is heavily dependent on social codes, and these we generally take
for granted, as we tend to operate within groups from our own
culture and subculture. The danger for the scriptwriter lies in
making the assumption that people from other cultures or subcul-
tures operate within the same rules. We may notice the different
accent, vocabulary, phraseology, and even the different ways of
constructing sentences, but we must also make ourselves aware of
the social codes which are in operation, if our scripted dialogue for
characters from cultures and subcultures other than our own is to
be convincing.

Our fingerprints of speech

We have looked at similarities in use of speech arising from
similarities of background, yet if we think of the person who is
most similar to ourselves – perhaps a relative or a best friend
– and mentally try to recreate that person’s style of speech, we
will realize that despite everything we have in common with that
person, their style of speech is still not the same as our own. This
is the case despite our being of the same gender, and despite all the
similarities that there may be in our background or occupation.
One individual may have a tendency to speak in short, clipped
phrases; another may ramble on in sentences which seem to go on
for ever and where the sense occasionally gets lost. One may have
18 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

a habit of hardly ever finishing a sentence, as each new idea is more

interesting than the one she is currently expressing. One may be
hesitant, almost stuttering and full of ‘ums’ and ‘ers’; another may
always seem to speak with complete fluency. One may delight in
being playful and humorous with language; another may only ever
be literal. One may slip into elaborate storytelling at every oppor-
tunity; another may use language primarily as a tool with which to
analyze every concept. One may use the ambiguity of language to
distort ideas and manipulate people; another may only ever speak
plainly and directly. One may continually interrupt; another may
hardly ever do so. The list is almost endless.
And then there are the pet words and phrases. We all have prefer-
ences for particular words, sometimes to the point of exasperating
those we are closest to. Our preferences are not always so obvious,
however. I have realized (through my writing and re-drafting)
that I tend to use the word ‘just’ a great deal – although not to
the extent, I hope, that anyone else has ever noticed it! When it
comes to pet phrases, some of us use the same phrase again and
again even within one speech. ‘As I say’ and ‘of course’ continually
occur, while ‘you know’, either alone or as part of a longer phrase,
is equally popular. I was with a cab driver recently who finished
almost every sentence with ‘… you know what I’m saying’, and
he still managed to work in ‘Know what I mean’ an impressive
number of times as well! One friend of mine continually punctuates
her speeches with, ‘Well this is it’, while another often repeats the
less common ‘It’s like everything else …’. Many of these phrases
are slipped in, along with ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ and repetitions, simply to
give the speaker time to think, to sort out what to say next. They
may fulfil other functions as well, such as emphasizing a point or
making sure that the listener does agree.
The choice of precisely which words or phrases we habitually
repeat – and how often we resort to them – may be partly mere
habit, but it does say something about each of us. Many script-
writers have latched on to this (and novelists too, incidentally
– notably Dickens). In Michael Frayn’s Alphabetical Order, for
example, Leslie is continually saying ‘Sorry’, while John’s verbal
tic is ‘as it were’. In Leslie’s case, ‘Sorry’ keeps arising as she is
aware that she frequently says things that people do not want to
hear, but which are generally correct nevertheless; at times the
word expresses her embarrassment at her own directness, while
 How do we talk? 19

at other times she does not seem sorry at all – rather, it seems to
mean, ‘Sorry, but I’ve just got to say it anyway and you’ve got to
put up with it.’ The one word encapsulates a major element of the
character, including traits which are both irritating and admirable.
John, on the other hand, endlessly uses variants of ‘as it were’
because he is never happy with his own way of expressing himself
(he writes leader columns for a provincial newspaper, without
conspicuous success); the phrase suggests, too, a more general
uncertainty about his own opinions, and even about whom he feels
himself to be. In the second act of the play the other characters
increasingly use these phrases back at Leslie and John. There is
an open acknowledgement of the use of these pet phrases, and
with it a clearer acknowledgement of exactly what makes these
characters tick.

Words for the moment

We have seen that there are certain characteristics – such as class,
education, area of origin and occupation – which we may have in
common with others, and which may affect our speech in fairly
predictable ways; and that, in addition, there are other individual
characteristics which will find their way into our speech patterns,
differentiating one person’s speech from that of the next. But
clearly, how any of us uses language has a further major ingredient
– the circumstances of any particular occasion.
Each of us uses language in radically different ways depending
upon the situation. The vocabulary, the phraseology, in fact every
element of our speech varies enormously depending on the setting
in which we speak. It is obvious that the same person will talk in
quite different ways at a business meeting, at a football match,
alone with a lover, at a child’s birthday party or when drinking
late at night with a close friend. We all have a range of ‘registers’
of speech (though we don’t all have the same range). The writer of
dialogue must differentiate the manner of speech of one character
from that of another, but at the same time must not be afraid of
using the whole range of registers employed by any one character.
It is too easy for a scriptwriter to pigeonhole the speech of a
character in an over-simplified way. In the best scriptwriting, the
20 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

major characters (and some of the others too) will be given the
opportunity to show the range of registers they use.
And then there is the small matter of emotions. When furious,
for example, we may become positively incoherent, or start to use
rhythm and repetition in a more marked way than at any other
times:

I hate your mum, I hate her house and I hate her ruddy dog!

Sometimes, of course, we make mistakes: we use the wrong

register. A bad swear-word, one which you might use with your
drinking partner, slips out in front of Grandma; or you find
yourself talking to your lover in the sort of language you might
use to an office junior – or to a boss. And these mistakes – the
inappropriate word or the type of sentence which is out of place
– also say something about the speaker at that moment, perhaps
reflecting tensions or preoccupations, or revealing more general
limitations or a lack of sensitivity on the part of an individual
who does not even realize that he or she is using an inappropriate
register.
So, the way in which we use language varies immensely from
person to person, from situation to situation. Were we to know
enough about ourselves and others, perhaps we would be able to
say precisely why it is that each of our speeches takes the form that
it does. But I am not suggesting that a scriptwriter should have to
consciously analyze the psyche and every other aspect of each one
of their fictional characters and, on the basis of that, supply them
with appropriate language for each new occasion. No, the writer
should use their most effective tool: the ear. The writer must make
him- or herself specially aware of all the differences that exist
between speech patterns, and should be constantly listening out for
all the subtle variations between one person’s speech and another’s,
between language used on one occasion and that used on another.
Then the writer is in a position to introduce all these elements into
the writing of dialogue.
 How do we talk? 21

Word-for-word transcription
All the examples given so far have been invented, either specifically
for this book or for a script. Now we will look at some examples
of people’s actual speech, transcribed from tape recordings. First,
here is Norma, a Scots woman talking about rationing and her
childhood in general. Her parents ran a shop. Here, she is being
formally interviewed:

norma You only got so much each week, I don’t remember

what, but … We had bread units, and so much sugar each
week. I remember the blue bags of sugar that we used to
have to make up in the shop, and as a child I did this quite
a lot. From a huge sack of sugar we’d make up the pound
bags and fold them in a special way – do you remember
that, no?
interviewer (overlapping) No.
norma And that was all during the war.
interviewer Do you think those sorts of things had an effect
on you?
(Pause)
norma I suppose they did inevitably, but I’m not conscious
of that. I had a very innocent childhood, with no pressure
whatsoever. You know, it was all just fun really. I suppose
having parents with a shop – you know, I could go into the
box and have a Mars Bar when I felt like it –
interviewer (interrupting) Even during the war?
norma Yes. That’s wicked really, isn’t it.
interviewer (simultaneous with above) Whooa!
norma I don’t say it was necessarily a Mars Bar but … erm …
interviewer (speech simultaneous with above, but inaudible)
norma No, I don’t remember it being difficult at all. It was
fun. It must have been terrible to be a parent but I didn’t
feel any pressure at all.

The next example is of Dick, a North Bucks butcher. Again, it is a

formal interview (though the interviewer is a different person). Like
Norma, Dick comes from a shopkeeping family. Here he is talking
about his father and grandfather.
22 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

dick One Saturday morning, our Sam wanted half a scone.

You know what a scone is, don’t you? And erm, they give
him – give him a penny or something like that out the till,
that was about that, so anyhow he come back. So he said,
‘Dad,’ he said, ‘He wou’n’t serve me with a scone.’ His
Dad says, ‘What?’ Says, ‘Wou’n’t serve me with one.’ He
says, ‘Roight!’ – straightaway, and he wrote him a letter
(you understand, I’d barely know about this, but o’ course
we knew), course you see ’e’d – ooh my God! – didn’t half
carry on! ‘Dear Mr so-and-so, I shall not want any more
bread, as I’m starting making me own, and scones, which
I’m going to break into. You got up in the world since you
first come to Bradwell, when you used to ask me to bet your
horse for you, ’cause you couldn’t afford it didn’t yer? Yours
truly, Sam Tarry.’ Yours truly, you know, not faithfully.
Truly. (laughs) So that was that. Now then …
interviewer So he started making his own bread. Did he
keep to that –
dick Ooh, he, he used to, he make that – I’m telling you,
well, it’s the truth, used to make – he done it for about six
months, and how long do you think it was interval between
one batch of bread and the next? How long do you think
it was? Well I won’t ask yer. It was a month. Yeah. He
used to get the yeast, he used to get the flour – home-made
bread this is I’m talking – home-dried lard, which means
the leaf out of a pig which had been rendered down and
then allowed to set you see, and he’d put, he’d put, let’s see
what – some potatoes in it, boiled ’taters, and … a little bit
of, now what is it now, powder summat … ooh by God boy
you’d love some o’ that. Phoo! Well, no comparis’ – see it’d
got some guts in it, hadn’t it?
interviewer But how did it manage to keep fresh for a
month?
dick That was put in that pantry, on a board, and then put
down, one on top o’ the other, an’ a big cloth over the top,
do you follow me, in the pantry, in the shop. Well you see
it was the salt content wa’n’t it? He put a bit more salt in to
allow for it, do you follow me. Ooh that was, look, fresh as
a daisy. I should like some on it now. Oh yes. So that ain’t a
bad tale, is it?
 How do we talk? 23

Here, then, we have two sets of speeches. They have a number

of factors in common. In neither case are they part of a normal
conversation; they are more like monologues with occasional
prompting. Since both people are being interviewed about their
lives, they are both speaking in the same relatively formal situation.
And finally, the speakers have in common an element of their
backgrounds, in that they both come from families engaged in
retailing. There, however, the similarities end. The differences
between the two individuals are not restricted to the content of
what each of them has to say; it is above all their style of speech
which displays the dissimilarities.
Norma tends to speak in complete, grammatically correct
sentences, though with the occasional hesitation and the odd
unnecessary phrase thrown in. Transcribing this from the tape, I
almost missed out the ‘you know’, partly because the phrase was
uttered very fast – much faster than the rest of her speech – but
also because my brain simply cancelled it out; from the continual
practice that we have all had, my brain was telling me to focus as
usual on the sense of what was being said, and in this respect the
‘you know’ was irrelevant. And this, of course, is what we do all
the time: we dismiss the little added phrases, very often not even
realizing that they are there. But they are there, and the writer must
be aware of them.
Dick’s style of speech is very different indeed. He is much more
willing to restart sentences, to use filler words and phrases and to
throw in the odd pet phrase as well. For example, ‘Do you follow
me?’ occurs many times later in the interview. He adds to his
thoughts as he goes along, throwing in new phrases and ideas as
they occur to him in the middle of saying something else, and is
less concerned than Norma with speaking in complete sentences.
He will often leave words out, too:

His Dad says, ‘What?’ Says, ‘Wou’n’t serve me with one.’

Here he leaves out ‘Sam’ before ‘Says’, and also the ‘He’ before
‘Wou’n’t’: meaning is more important than grammar, and Dick is
quite happy to leave out the subject of the sentence rather than
slow the story up with extra words. His concern is to dramatize,
to bring his thoughts to life, so he happily mixes the present tense
with the past tense to tell his story – which is very much a story – as
24 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

the present tense helps to make the events of the past feel so much
more immediate:

He says, ‘Roight!’ – straight away, and he wrote him a letter …

At one point he tells the interviewer:

Well, no comparis’ – see it’d got some guts in it, hadn’t it?

Here he can’t be bothered to finish the word ‘comparison’, as

he interrupts himself with a stronger way of expressing what he
wants to say. This is language where the thoughts seem to come
out virtually unprocessed, and it is language which the scriptwriter
would do well to try to imitate.
Dick’s use of English is much further from ‘standard’ than is
Norma’s. Dick will say ‘something like that out the till’ rather than
‘out of the till’, or ‘I should like some on it’ rather than ‘I should
like some of it’, and he will use words like ‘summat’. (Note that
he comes from Buckinghamshire – careful listening reminds us
that use of this and many other such words and phrases, such as
‘My duck’, is not restricted to Northerners.) By contrast, Norma’s
vocabulary – at least in this extract – is entirely standard, and
despite her Scots origins even her accent is closer to ‘received
pronunciation’ than is that of Home Counties-born Dick. Thus in
transcribing I felt no need to write any of Norma’s words phonet­
ically, while for the other transcription I couldn’t resist writing
‘Roight’ (and I could well have put ‘clorth’ for ‘cloth’ as well). This
says more about their relative class backgrounds than about their
geographical origins; their parents may have been retailers, but
they were not from the same stratum of society.
Judging from the page, one might be tempted to conclude that
Dick is not particularly intelligent, but such a conclusion would be
entirely wrong. His is not an educated style of speech, but neither
is he confused in what he is saying; he is certainly intelligent. The
problem is that we are used to written speech which has been
tidied up; very often editors tidy up the language even in books
compiled from taped oral history! Similarly, for many years script-
writers would create fictional characters who spoke in ways that
were similar to Dick’s speech only when they wanted to portray
simpletons. More recently that has changed, as writers have more
 How do we talk? 25

accurately reflected how we speak and the ways in which our

speech shows what we are.
As pointed out earlier, of course a writer does not have to have
made a detailed analysis of a character before setting out to script
their speeches (though actually, many writers do find just such an
exercise useful in really pinning down exactly who – or what – that
character is, even if they do not necessarily complete the exercise
before starting to write). Rather, in some cases a character’s speech
might be based upon a particular individual known to the writer, or
a careful mix of a number of individuals known to the writer, so very
little actual analysis of the use of language by the character might
be necessary. However, for this straightforward, non-analytical
approach to succeed, the writer must have developed the habit of
noticing, studying and remembering various speech patterns, so
that they can then be called up at will as the need arises.
Habitual styles of speech – even those of characters from fairly
similar backgrounds – differ as greatly as do Norma’s from Dick’s.
We must never tire of listening for the variations.

Notes
1 These include Smith, P. (1985) Language, the Sexes and Society,
Oxford: Blackwell and Tannen, D. (1991) You Just Don’t Understand,
London: Virago.
2 Holmes, J. ‘The Role of Compliments in Female–Male Interaction’ in
Maybin and Mercer (eds) (1996) Using English, from Conversation to
Canon, London: Routledge.
26
 2
The characters’ agendas

What we want
In Chapter 1 we looked at many of the aspects of how normal
conversation works. In this chapter we will look at one further
aspect – the agendas which each one of us brings to each conver-
sation, and we will examine the effects that these agendas have.
Whenever we begin speaking with someone, we have a personal
agenda. This is some sort of idea of what we want from the conver-
sation. We might want to communicate something specific, or to
find out something. There might be only one item on the agenda
and it may be relatively trivial, such as, ‘I must tell Shirley that the
High Street’s been blocked off.’ In this case the agenda (or at least
the initial agenda, since an agenda may alter as the conversation
evolves) can be dealt with very easily: ‘Oh Shirley, did you know
the High Street’s been blocked off?’ – and that’s it. On another
occasion an agenda might consist of a number of items, none of
which is trivial. For example, a man meeting his partner after a
long separation might have an agenda consisting of the following,
not necessarily in this order: (a) making it clear to her how much
he has missed her; (b) telling her how well he has used the time
while she has been away; (c) the need to sort out major financial
problems. Immediately, it may be seen that there are different
types of items on this agenda: (a) is concerned with emotions; (b)
is also at least partly about emotions, as he is trying to make her
feel more positively towards him by impressing her with his use of
time; (c) is mainly dealing with practicalities, but this item too has
28 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

a bearing on the relationship (how many couples have broken up

over conflicts involving money?).
It is becoming apparent already that none of these agenda items
is watertight – they tend to seep into each other, so that even
while you are dealing with one item you find yourself dealing with
another. Thus, while this man is telling his partner how much he
has achieved – decorating the house, say – while she has been away,
he may also take the opportunity of saying how he was thinking
of her all the time as he was doing it, and how he was looking
forward to seeing her face when she saw it. Or – a slightly less
harmonious combination – he might at the same time introduce the
matter of how much all the redecoration has cost, priming her for
a later, fuller discussion of finances.

The agenda and the script

So, how does all this relate to effective scriptwriting? The first
point to make is that most writers are aware that characters have
some sort of agenda for each conversation (though they may
confuse it with their own agenda, which we will discuss later); but
the ineffective scriptwriter will over-compartmentalize, so that a
conversation clearly deals with one topic, then another. This is a
close relative of conversational ping-pong, discussed in Chapter 1.
Sometimes, of course, that is what happens in life, but very often
conversation is not like that – we are opportunistic, slipping from
one item of our agenda to another as the opportunity arises.
Sometimes we know exactly what we want to talk about in
a conversation – we have a conscious agenda. This is obviously
the case in, for example, business meetings (though neither side’s
agenda may correspond entirely to the agreed written agenda –
each side in a business meeting may well also have a conscious
‘hidden agenda’). On other occasions, we may have little or no idea
of what we want to say or what we want to achieve; thus when out
for a drink with a friend we might not be conscious of any agenda
beyond ‘having a good night out’. But none of this acknowledges
the crucial role of the semi-conscious and unconscious agenda.
Let us revert to our original example, ‘I must tell Shirley about
the High Street being blocked off.’ This item may be dealt with in
 The characters’ agendas 29

many different ways, depending upon what other semi-conscious

or unconscious agendas also exist:

You know, Shirley, I’m not too keen on the Co-op any more, but
anyway I thought you might like to know that the High Street’s
been blocked off.

Here the speaker also has another item on her agenda – wanting
to impress by mentioning that she is now above shopping at
the Co-op in the High Street (wanting to impress may well be a
permanent agenda item for this individual!). Or the topic might be
dealt with quite differently:

Shirl, did you know the High Street’s been blocked off? But I got
to the Co-op anyway, the back way. Well it’s stupid to spend all
that money at Waitrose isn’t it.

Here again, the speaker is not merely imparting information;

another agenda item is her desire to make clear to her friend that
she is not being extravagant.
Very often, then, there is a slant on one agenda item – the slant
being, in fact, another agenda item. Rather than being presented
baldly, a topic is dealt with in such a way as to serve some other
purpose at the same time; to deal with some other agenda. At its
strongest this can have the effect of giving a piece of dialogue what
is sometimes called an ‘edge’, a feeling of not entirely explained
tension. This can arise when a character is openly presenting an
opinion on one item agenda, but at the same time is indirectly
presenting a contradictory opinion on another, connected, agenda
item. So there might be, say, a conversation in which one character
is praising another for all that she has achieved as a business
woman, but at the same time cannot conceal feeling bitterly angry
and jealous of her for that very same achievement. The conflict
between these two agenda items produces an edge.
Sometimes the edge can arise out of comments which at face
value mean one thing but in fact clearly mean another, though
this second meaning is deniable. An example of this occurs in an
episode of Frasier, when Ros’ sister comes to visit. This sister is full
of barbed yet deniable comments, which Ros refers to as ‘code’.
When her sister describes Frasier as ‘distinguished’ Ros decodes
30 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

this as ‘old’. It is not so much the insults which give the edge as
their infuriating deniability.
For a writer, it is useful to think of each character’s agenda in
any scene not only in terms of what they want – in terms of what
they want to achieve at this moment – but also in terms of what
they want from the other character(s). It is this – the wanting from
– that is likely to be most productive dramatically. And remember,
what they might want from another character might not be
conscious at all. We might understand it before they do.

Who has control?

So far we have looked only at the agenda of any one individual
in conversation. In fact, of course, there is always more than one
agenda in dialogue, as there is always more than one individual
taking part. Sometimes we will politely take it in turns to go
through our agendas. After talking about ourselves, we might then
ask, ‘And how about you?’, thus passing the initiative over to the
other person. On other occasions exactly the same happens but
with a less obvious cue: one character simply leaves the space for
the other one to take over. Very often, however, the movement from
one individual’s agenda item to another’s is nowhere near as clear
as this. Examine the following two examples:

Example one
pete Are you going to the disco tonight?
alan Dunno.
pete Julie’ll be there.
alan Julie?
pete You know, the bubbly one, with the legs.
alan Oh Julie.
pete Yeah, Julie.
(slight pause)
alan I got beaten at snooker again last night.
pete Yeah?
alan It’s that Brian – he cheats.
pete Oh. You can’t cheat at snooker. How can you cheat at
snooker?
 The characters’ agendas 31

alan It’s the adding up.

pete How do you mean?
alan Well, he can do it and I can’t.
pete Ah.

Example two
pete Are you going to the disco?
alan Dunno.
I got beaten at snooker again last night.
pete Yeah?
alan It’s that Brian. He cheats.
pete Oh.
Julie’ll be there. At the disco.
alan Julie?
pete You know, the bubbly one, with the legs.
alan Oh Julie.
pete Yeah, Julie.
(slight pause)
pete You can’t cheat at snooker. How can you cheat at snooker?
alan It’s the adding up.
pete How do you mean?
alan Well, he can do it and I can’t.
pete Ah.

The two examples are obviously extremely similar: each character

speaks almost identical lines in each example, and in each they
also have their own clear agendas – Pete wants to tell Alan about
the disco and see how he reacts to the mention of Julie, while
Alan wants to moan about Brian and the snooker. The difference,
technically, is simply the order of the speeches, but that difference
also says something about how these two characters relate to each
other. In the first example, one topic is dealt with and finished
with (at least for the moment) before we move on to the other
character’s agenda. In the second example the two topics are dealt
with at the same time. The characters certainly listen to each other
and are not rude – they reply to each other – but each of them
turns the conversation back to their own agenda. At the end of
the second example, though, there is a swap, as it is Pete who
32 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

brings the conversation back to the snooker; he has adopted Alan’s

agenda.
Both the above examples are fairly successful pieces of dialogue.
What the scriptwriter needs to recognize is that depending on the
particular characters and situation, both types occur in real life and
should be represented in scripts. A complete script written entirely
in the form of Example 1 might seem too consistently direct and
blunt, while one written entirely in the form of Example 2 could
well become tiresome.
Of course, a scriptwriter may not always sit down before every
scene and ask, ‘What does each character want in this scene?’ or,
even better ‘What does each character want from the others in this
scene?’ before writing it (though it is not a bad idea to do so), but
he or she does have to be acutely aware of the particular histories
and tensions that already exist between characters – their ongoing,
semi-conscious agendas – as well as any characters’ concerns that
are specific to that scene. In this way, every piece of dialogue is
informed with the characters’ attitudes, with the possibility of
‘edge’. Any failure to do this will result in dialogue that is bland
and ultimately uninteresting.
Pinter takes to extremes the conflict over control of the agendas,
while sometimes Stoppard has his characters hardly attend to each
other’s lines at all, so intent are they on following through what is
important to themselves. The following extract is from Stoppard’s
Albert’s Bridge:

mother Ring for Kate, would you, Albert?

albert (going) Yes, mother.
mother That reminds me.
father You’ll start where I started. On the shop floor.
albert (approach) Well, actually, Father –
mother I don’t want to sound Victorian, but one can’t just
turn a blind eye.
albert What?
father Yes, I never went in for books and philosophy and
look at me now.
mother I suppose that’s the penance one pays for having
servants nowadays.
albert What?
father I started Metal Alloys and Allied Metals – built it up
 The characters’ agendas 33

from a biscuit tin furnace in the back garden, small melting

jobs in the cycle-repair shop.
mother I’ve suspected it for some time and now one can’t
ignore it. Even with her corset.
albert Who?
father You can come in on Monday and I’ll hand you over
to the plant foreman.
albert I’ve already got a job. Actually.
father You haven’t got a job till I give you one.
albert I’m going to paint Clufton Bay Bridge, starting
Monday.
mother What colour?
albert Silver.
father Just a minute –
kate (off) You rang, madam?

More will be said about this passage later, but here we need only
note how little these characters listen to each other, and thus how
they relate – or fail to relate – to each other. Father is concerned
only to lay down the law about his son’s job, and Mother wishes
only to voice her concerns about the likely pregnancy of Kate,
the maid. Albert – who is in fact affected by both these topics far
more directly than either of his parents – is put in the position of
having to respond and trying to make sense of it all. It is his lack
of control of the agendas that adds much to the humour of the
scene, particularly as we know that he already has a job, and that
he is almost certainly responsible for Kate’s condition. An added
touch of humour is provided by Mother’s ‘What colour?’: she has
listened to Father’s statement but has not attended to the tone – the
humour arises out of the triviality of her question set against the
seriousness of the topic.

‘What do you want from that line?’

I was once present at a rehearsal at which an excellent director
was leading a detailed examination of the script. Before every line
the director would turn to the relevant actor and ask, ‘What do
you want to achieve with this?’, meaning, ‘What do you think
34 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

the character you are playing wants to get as a result of saying

(or sometimes doing) this?’ Sometimes the answers were easy, but
on other occasions the actors found it very difficult to say what
the character was trying to achieve – what his or her agenda was
– beyond, say, the straightforward requesting or sharing of infor-
mation, or expression of emotion. Yet our motivations for saying
things are often very complex, and there is a compelling theory
which states that we want to ‘get something out of’ everything
we say – that there are no utterances that are simply themselves.1
What we can be certain of is that during any conversation, each of
us has a whole set of agenda items. Some of them are specific to
that conversation, and others are semi-permanent, such as perhaps
wishing to raise our own status relative to that of others. It is the
simultaneous operation of a number of these agenda items which
lends much of the fascination to dialogue.
We should pay a little further attention to the issue of status. In
his fascinating book Impro, Improvisation and the Theatre,2 Keith
Johnstone explores the proposition that much of our speech – and
action – attempts to raise our status relative to that of those around
us. This is not always done in an obvious way – ‘My son’s going to
Oxford. I should think yours will get on well at the Tech.’ – but rather
is often subtle, with people trying to establish their status as being just
slightly above that of their neighbour. This way not only is vulgarity
avoided, but it is also easy to deny that any attempt at raising status
is taking place. Frequently, indeed, people are competing for status
while attempting to appear supportive and friendly:

sophie It was terrible. I thought I was going to get stuck

under the boat!
anne That’s really scary, isn’t it, when you capsize.
sophie It certainly is!
tara At least the first time.
anne I remember once when we went over I actually was
stuck under the boat – only for a while of course. And it
was in October.
tara The water must have been freezing.
anne It was.
tara I was hit by the boom once. I was actually unconscious.
It’s just incredibly lucky that I wasn’t sailing single-handed
or –
 The characters’ agendas 35

anne (laughing) But it’s a bit stupid letting yourself get hit by
the boom, isn’t it?

Here we have three women, all apparently being friendly and

supportive of each other, yet in fact competing with each other
for status. Sophie begins by raising her status (a little) by being
involved in an interesting incident, and one that felt dangerous.
Anne begins by sympathizing, while Tara greatly reduces Sophie’s
status by stating that yes, capsizing can be ‘scary’, but at the same
time making it clear that the fear lessens progressively each time
one capsizes – for her, capsizing is really quite routine. Anne then
recounts a more seriously dangerous capsizing than Sophie’s, thus
raising her own status at Sophie’s expense. Sophie now drops out
of the race – and, for the moment, the dialogue – as she realizes
she cannot compete with these two. Tara then sympathizes with
Anne – re-establishing her credentials of friendship – before
recounting her own experience, which was even more dangerous.
At this point, though, rather than accept defeat, Anne laughs – the
laugh is intended to emphasize that she is not seriously criticizing,
thus disguising the status-lowering intention – undermining the
basis of Tara’s claim to high status: her experience may have been
more dangerous but she had also been more stupid, so perhaps this
stupidity cancels out altogether any status claim from this incident.
The terms of status acquisition in this particular piece of dialogue
are being questioned.
Some characters may hardly ever indulge in raising or lowering
status, while others seem interested in doing little else, but there
are few people indeed who are never involved in these games. The
scriptwriter must be aware of these manoeuvres used to raise or
lower status. It hardly needs to be said that the speakers themselves
are often either unconscious or only semi-conscious of exactly
what is going on, but the scriptwriter needs to be as conscious as
possible. As with other aspects of scripting, the writer needs to
develop the habit of taking note of exactly how these manoeuvres
take place in everyday life; they will then be incorporated into
scripting almost effortlessly.
36 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Status changes
Let us continue the above dialogue a little further. It could go like
this:

tara (laughing) I had a hell of a bump on my head, I can tell

you!
(Slight pause)
sophie You know that money I inherited.
anne Nnn.
sophie Well I’m thinking of buying a yacht.
anne A yacht?!
sophie Only a small one. About thirty foot.
anne Doesn’t sound that small to me. But … would you know
how to sail it?
sophie There are training courses. I’d go on one of those. I
don’t suppose it’s all that difficult, but you ought to learn
properly, if you’re going to be serious about it, don’t you
think?
anne Well yes, I suppose you’re right.
tara So are you completely set on this?
sophie Not totally.
tara Only – don’t get me wrong – I mean I’ve been on
yachts a number of times, and it’s great, but it’s not quite
as exciting as dinghy sailing. It’s a bit more sedate really.
Well it’s bound to be, isn’t it. You’re not leaping around the
whole –
sophie (overlapping) But I don’t think I want to be leaping
around the whole time.
tara Fine. Well, maybe … maybe a yacht’s the thing for you
then.

In this passage, the dialogue produces a clear change in status. This

is important. Status is not static; it is always relative to that of the
others present, and fluctuates depending upon what is being said
or done. Thus a junior college lecturer might generally adopt high
status relative to his or her students, but low status relative to many
colleagues; he or she might be high status when taking a nephew to
a classical concert, but low status when dragged along by that same
 The characters’ agendas 37

nephew to a football match (the lecturer knowing nothing about

football). An audience recognizes and enjoys observing status
changes, and status reverses are even better.
So, what exactly happens in the passage above? First, following
on from the previous passage, Tara joins in the laughter, but her
first line, ‘I had a hell of a bump on my head, I can tell you!’ only
hints at accepting the stupidity of which she has been accused.
At the same time it emphasizes again – though now in the jokey
manner established by Anne – the seriousness of the incident: she
is not going to have her status reduced very far.
Then Sophie, who has been silent for a little while, brings up the
subject of her proposed purchase of a yacht. This, of course, raises
her status immediately, a yacht being much more impressive than
a dinghy. Anne accepts this raising of Sophie’s status (and thus the
relative lowering of her own), although she does question whether
Sophie would actually know how to sail it. Even this, though,
Sophie turns to her own advantage, emphasizing her own profes-
sional approach, which further raises her status. Tara, however,
does not surrender her status so easily. She attempts to lower the
status of yachting itself, and thus that of Sophie, by questioning
how exciting it can possibly be. Sophie refuses to relinquish her
new high status: by stating that she does not wish to be ‘leaping
around the whole time’ she implies that dinghy sailing is an inferior
activity. Tara pretends to accept this, but the tone of her final
speech at the same time makes clear that while yachting might be
the thing for Sophie, it certainly would not be for her. A sort of
status stalemate has been reached.
Or let’s take another example.

archie and ben, both in their 50s.

archie I’ve bought this sports car, did I tell you.
ben No.
archie It’s crappy and old, but you know, it’s really exciting.
Shirley says I should’ve got a Volvo -
ben A Volvo sports?
archie No a Volvo like yours. Which would have been much
more sensible, from a security point of view –
ben It would.
archie So I know it’s really stupid.
ben Not so stupid really.
38 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

archie No it’s stupid I know. Like a virility symbol or

something.
ben Do you feel you need that?
archie Not really no. I didn’t mean it was a virility symbol,
just –
ben It could seem…
archie Yes it could seem.
(Pause)
ben I really like getting older, you know?
archie Yeah?
ben I was saying to Alice, you can finally be yourself when
you’re older. You don’t have to pretend anything anymore.
archie … No.

Here Archie employs the false self-deprecating strategy; he intends

to raise his status by having bought a sports car but pretends
that the choice was stupid, while in the process in fact drawing
attention to Ben’s choice of car being rather safe and boring.
Archie takes this one stage further, pre-empting any implication
that the sports car might have been purchased as a virility symbol
by implying it himself, and thus taking the wind out of the sails of
any criticism along those lines. However, Ben is not to be so easily
out-witted. After at first being supportive (‘Not so stupid really’)
he insists on dealing with Ben’s pre-emptive self-criticism literally,
pushing Archie into an uncomfortable flat denial. Ben then sets
about establishing his own higher status; without pointing out that
Archie’s purchase may have been an attempt to regain his youth, he
talks about his pleasure in getting older and not having to ‘pretend’
any more. The unstated connections are left for Archie (and us) to
make, and are entirely deniable.
Of course, it could well be said that I am putting forward a very
cynical view of the world – or at least of an important element of
how dialogue functions. Certainly I am aware that some people
refuse to play status games, at least consciously, unless they feel they
are absolutely forced into it; and there are some who actually view
any attempt to raise status – however subtle – as something negative
about that individual (if they were thinking in status terms, then,
trying to raise status would automatically result in a lowering of it).
Nevertheless, if we observe closely what people are trying to achieve
moment-to-moment in dialogue, status is often at the heart of it.
 The characters’ agendas 39

Lowering status
Different individuals have different attitudes towards status, some
ruthlessly using it and others doing so much less aggressively.
Sometimes we learn, too, that attempting to use status – or even
unintentionally allowing it to come into a conversation – can have
negative results. For example, a nuclear physicist may have a
friendly, chatty relationship with his or her hairdresser – until the
hairdresser finds out what the customer does for a living. Now
the hairdresser feels ignorant and inhibited in such company,
and clams up completely for fear of looking foolish. The nuclear
physicist changes to another hairdresser, and this time refuses
to be drawn on his or her profession, or perhaps pretends to be
something different altogether – a taxi driver or whatever. The
relationship with this new hairdresser is allowed to continue to be
friendly and chatty, though there is now a different awkwardness
– of the nuclear physicist always having to be careful in order not
to be discovered.
Or let us take another example. A wealthy female psychiatrist has a
daughter who attends a state school where most of the children come
from a very different background. The girl is having some problems,
so the psychiatrist, her mother, visits the (male) headteacher:

headteacher (opening the door) Come in, Mrs Waring.

waring (coming in) Thank you. Actually, it’s …
headteacher I’m sorry?
waring No, nothing.
headteacher Well, sorry to have kept you waiting so long.
waring It’s all right – thanks for taking the time to see me.
headteacher A pleasure. Now, what can I do for you?
waring Well it’s about my daughter, obviously …
headteacher Yes.
secretary (poking her head round the door) I’m sorry to
bother you, but the Mercedes outside – is it yours?
waring Well I –
secretary Only it’s blocking the school coach.
waring (to headteacher) It’s a bit of a rust bucket actually.
secretary It’s –
waring Yes, right. Won’t be a moment.
40 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

At the start of this exchange, Waring almost corrects the

headteacher by telling him that she is in fact Doctor rather than
Mrs Waring, but she stops herself. Then, ‘Thanks for taking the
time to see me’ very slightly lowers her own status. She might,
after all, have adopted a very different tone in response to having
been kept waiting for some time. When they are interrupted by
the Secretary mentioning the Mercedes, Waring then tries to lower
the status of that too, but this time she is unsuccessful, succeeding
only in saying something rather silly and unconvincing – ‘It’s a
bit of a rust bucket actually.’ This – unlike Archie in the previous
example – is a genuine example of attempting to reduce one’s own
status. But why might Waring wish to lower her own status in this
way? The most likely answer is that she has experienced in the
past some negative reactions to the high status that accompanies
both her occupation and her wealth. Some people feel threatened
by high status, particularly high status in a woman, and this
can make them try very hard to compete (which can at best be
embarrassing), or can lead them to feel directly antagonistic – ‘She
needn’t think that by wandering in here with her Mercedes and
her swanky job she’ll be treated any differently from anyone else!’
Waring wants the co-operation of the headteacher, and as far as
possible she doesn’t want status to get in the way of that, so she
chooses to reduce her own status and, in the process, to raise that
of the headteacher.
As we have discussed in this chapter, status can change within
scenes. There can also be long-term status changes, ones which
can take place over the course of a whole script. These may be of
beggar-to-Prince or Prince-to-beggar proportions, and it is not only
fairy-tales that delight in such status changes. There is a wonderful
moment in the film Pretty Woman (writer, J. F. Lawton), when the
prostitute, Vivian, returns to the decidedly upmarket clothes store
she had visited just the day before. Then, she had been refused
service by two snobbish shop assistants who clearly considered it
below their status, and that of their shop, to have this woman even
on the premises. The second time, however, Vivian is dressed with
real elegance (and at obvious expense), and the same two assistants
– not recognizing her – are about to be positively fawning when she
tells them about the massive scale of their mistake the previous day,
and makes it clear that she will not be buying anything from them.
They are duly appalled and we are duly delighted.
 The characters’ agendas 41

Or we might turn to the film Goodfellas (writers, Martin

Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi from Pileggi’s novel), in which we
witness the gradual rise in status of Henry – and the corresponding
change in the language by which he is addressed – before his inevi-
table fall. These are status alterations on a big scale, but very often
dialogue charts status changes across the length of a script in the
more subtle ways of the earlier examples.

Letting the action run

The question posed by that director – ‘What do you [the character]
want from that line?’ – is a good one for a scriptwriter, too, to ask
at frequent points in the process of drafting and redrafting a script.
‘What was her agenda item here? Might she stay on that point a
little longer? Might her resentment from the earlier incident show
through here?’ This sort of detailed questioning of motivation for
every line is invaluable; I would suggest, however, that it should
take place not at the moment of first draft, but later on. For that
first draft the writer must, in a sense, allow each scene to ‘write
itself’. Scriptwriters will often say things like ‘the characters just
ran away with the story’, ‘the characters took over’, or ‘I didn’t
mean it to go in that direction but I found it did anyway’. This is
what I mean by letting the dialogue in each scene – each scene, and
thus ultimately the whole script – ‘write itself’. The phrase is of
course absurd, as the writer does the writing, not the characters;
but for a scene to really work it should be as if, at the very moment
of writing the first draft, the characters are speaking those lines at
that instant. You, the writer – hearing the characters’ inflections in
your head, letting their lines spark off each other spontaneously,
allowing the dialogue to take on a life of its own – are merely
transcribing what you hear. In order for this to be successful,
however, the writer must first think very carefully about a scene’s
particular setting and also about each of the characters – their
motivations, their backgrounds, their relationships to each other,
their particular agendas and what they want from each other
(entirely one-sided scenes are rarely successful). Then, when you
are ready, you start, and it is as if they were there waiting for you:
you switch them on and then just try to keep up with them as they
42 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

subtly hint at this agenda item and that – as they try to get what
they want through each line of the conversation.
Remember, though, that your characters may surprise you.
Through the interaction of their personalities, motivations and
agendas, they may suddenly take your dialogue into quite uncharted
territory – territory that you would never have predicted, and
which you certainly never planned. This might profoundly disturb
even the basis of your plot. It’s a good sign! If the dialogue is
strong, if the characters are truly interacting through it (or truly
‘quasi-interacting’, as in the Stoppard above), then the conflict –
or the fusion – will always lead to new territory. The scriptwriter
must learn to embrace this and to welcome, rather than inhibit, the
apparently dangerous. Only by allowing the dialogue to move in
whatever direction the interaction takes it can the writer allow real
vitality into a scene.
After all, a scene can always be (and almost always should be)
redrafted. It is then, in cool, analytical mode, that the writer has
to make decisions on whether or not to follow up some of the new
leads which have emerged in the scene just written. Quite apart
from making any adjustments to plans for the rest of the script, the
writer may at this point add some lines, alter others, change the
position of yet others and – most important of all – delete those
which are not paying their way. But if in the first instance the writer
has not allowed the dialogue to ‘write itself’ – has not allowed a
genuine element of spontaneity – then it will probably never really
rise above the pedestrian, and as a result may well fail to hold the
audience.

Constant reworking
It is often assumed that revising a script is something that happens
when a first draft has been completed. That is, of course, true, but
it is not the whole truth. The scriptwriter must also rework scenes
while the script is still in the process of being written, rereading and
revising the last scenes that he or she has written before continuing
with the new ones. A writer who simply makes a scene-by-scene
plan for a script and sticks to it rigidly will have no need to make
running revisions, but such a procedure is unlikely to result in work
 The characters’ agendas 43

of real merit, and certainly does not accommodate the somewhat

unpredictable outcome of setting up a scene and then letting it
‘write itself’. However thoroughly thought-out in advance a plan
may be, the ‘I’ve-written-my-plan-and-I’m-sticking-to-it’ approach
will have a tendency to lead to static characterization, unsubtle
relationships, a certain blandness and, as a result, ultimately
rather dull dialogue. This is because the writer is scared to give the
characters any freedom: they are being straitjacketed by the writer’s
agenda – quite a different animal from the agendas of any of the
characters.
At the outset of writing a scene, the scriptwriter should of course
have certain aims in mind in terms of development of relationships,
character, plot, etc.; in the setting of the scene and decisions as to
when characters enter or leave, the scene should be set up to allow
these aims to be accomplished. However, if these considerations
are seen as paramount, so that the first priority for the dialogue
is that it should be engineered for these purposes, then the result
is inevitably a lack of life, a woodenness. The other approach –
relying first upon a clear understanding of character, motivation,
specific situation and individual agendas, and then allowing the
dialogue – and through it all the other aspects – to develop (letting
the characters’ agendas change throughout the scene, too) calls for
a certain bravery; an embracing of the difficult, the contradictory,
the subtle. It also requires constant reworking in order that the
writer may keep up with his or her own creativity. The rewards,
though, are well worth the effort.
We should perhaps note here that, while each character has an
agenda, those agendas do not need to be explicitly stated anywhere
in the dialogue. Take, for example, the following exchange:

janice Ah … I know what it is. It’s because you resent Dad –

that’s what this is all really about, isn’t it?
noel Did I say that?
janice You didn’t need to. You resent Dad living here, and
you can’t keep yourself from showing it.

This piece of dialogue may function perfectly well, probably

working best if the audience is to learn from it that Janice has
suddenly realized that Noel resents her father living in the house.
If, on the other hand, these speeches are included merely to inform
44 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

the otherwise ignorant audience that Noel’s words and actions

have been affected by his resentment of the presence of Janice’s
father, then the speeches are probably at best superfluous, at worst
damaging to the script. The audience should be left to work out
characters’ agendas for themselves, rather than being spoon-fed
them (in fact, spoon-feeding an audience in any way is to be
avoided). An audience enjoys the experience of working things
out – a process that draws them further into the production – and
may well feel patronized by being told what they would rather
have deduced. Furthermore, having agenda items spelt out in the
dialogue can produce a laziness in the writing: why go to all the
trouble of subtly showing a motivation when you can simply get
a character to tell us about it? In this sense, as in many others,
showing is greatly preferable to telling. (The writer can of course
‘show’ all sorts of things through dialogue as well as action,
without anyone ‘telling’ anyone what is going on at all.)
This principle applies as much to comedy as to any other
genre. Much of the dialogue in the TV series Becker seems to me
excellent, but in one episode there is a scene in which the owner
of the café says she has been studying rats and is now going to be
studying human behaviour. We are then shown a customer, Bob,
eating in a decidedly rat-like way. This is quite funny and should
be enough. Instead, though, Becker comments that rats and people
may not be as different as you might think. The result is a decrease
in the humour. This is ‘just in case you missed it’ dialogue, which
is never successful.
There is a little spoon-feeding in the dialogue at one point in
Mike Bartlett’s play Earthquakes in London, too. ‘It’s 1968. It’s the
summer. We’re young. We can do what we want,’ says Grace. This
is just a little too blunt, directly telling us what Grace feels rather
than letting us discover it. Then even in a script such as this, which
jumps from one period to another, forcing in the date in this way
betrays too much of the writer’s hand.
On the reworking of dialogue more is said in Chapter 12, but
here just one point should be noted. Almost all writers these days
work on computers, which makes altering text very much easier
than it was in the days of the typewriter. When scriptwriters come
to redrafting the whole text, producing a second and then a third
draft, they are usually very careful to keep a copy of each draft
on a separate file. However, in the actual process of writing that
 The characters’ agendas 45

first draft (and any completely new material in later drafts), the
writer should take just as much care to keep separate files of first
versions of individual scenes – those first versions which have been
written by allowing the dialogue to ‘write itself’, before any initial
alterations. As I know to my cost, it really is infuriating to find that
– having changed your mind and then changed it back again about
how a section of dialogue should develop – you kept no copy of
that very first version and now you are having to try to reconstruct
it from memory. Recreating spontaneity is not easy: it is, after all,
a contradiction in terms.

Notes
1 Max Stafford Clarke presents this approach very persuasively in
Letters to George: The Account of a Rehearsal, London, Nick Hern.
2 Keith Johnstone (1979) Impro, Improvisation and the Theatre,
London, Methuen.
46
 3
Naturalistic dialogue

Beginnings and endings

Let us assume for one more chapter that the dialogue a scriptwriter
is trying to get down on the page is a replica of language just as
we speak it. It has already been noted that very often this is not in
fact what the writer is trying to do, but it is nevertheless a useful
starting point for us.
First, we have to deal with a little confusion over the correct term
to use for this type of dialogue – the attempt to reproduce language
as we speak it. There are two terms used for this, ‘realism’ and
‘naturalism’, both of which carry with them overtones from literary
or artistic history; ‘realism’ also brings with it both ‘realist’ and
‘realistic’, which tends only to confuse matters further. A member
of an audience might, for example, describe a piece of dialogue
as ‘not realistic’, but this could mean either that the person did
not think the dialogue was convincing – it was not convincingly
realistic – or that they did not think the dialogue was written in the
style of realism, i.e. that it was not attempting to imitate language
as it is normally spoken. Because of this, I find ‘naturalism’ the less
confusing term – despite the fact that it is also used to identify a
certain (mainly French) school of nineteenth-century writing – and
so it is the one I prefer when referring to this style of dialogue.
We have already noted in Chapter 1 many elements of natural-
istic dialogue. These include a consciousness of the class, gender,
geographical origins, upbringing and other aspects of each speaker, as
well as the particular register employed for the specific setting.
48 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

We looked at how each individual will tend towards a particular

phraseology, use of certain vocabulary and even, in some cases,
distinctive sentence construction. Then, naturalistic dialogue has
to conform to the general messiness of spoken language – the
unfinished or ungrammatical sentences, hesitations, repetitions,
interruptions, simultaneous speeches and verbal shorthands, much
of it resulting from interaction between individuals. In Chapter 2
we went on to look in detail at how dialogue is fundamentally
affected by the agendas – conscious, semi-conscious and uncon-
scious – of each character. So, is there nothing more to be said?
When the scriptwriter feels confident about the use of all of this,
does he or she then simply set about reproducing it, as a ‘slice of
life’? No, it is not quite so simple.
The first point to make concerns the beginning and ending of any
piece of dialogue. In real life, a conversation might begin as follows:

(Ringing of door bell.)

pauline Coming!
pauline opens the front door.
pauline Oh! Jane, how’re you doing?
jane I’m fine.
pauline Well come in, come in.
jane You’re not busy are you? ’Cause I can always …
pauline (overlapping with above) No, I just I wasn’t
expecting – No, no, course I’m not.
jane Only I wouldn’t want to –
pauline No, it’s fine. Like a cup of tea?
jane … Yeah, I’d love one.
pauline (going into kitchen) Lucky I’ve just brewed one.
(slight pause)
jane It’s lovely weather out there.
pauline (from kitchen) Yeah, it looks it.
jane Warm, but there’s still that chilly wind.
pauline (from kitchen)Yeah.
(slight pause)
pauline (coming back from kitchen, carrying mugs of tea)
You don’t take sugar, do you?
jane Just one, please.
pauline Oh, right, just a mo.
pauline goes back into kitchen.
 Naturalistic dialogue 49

pauline (from kitchen) So, how are you?

jane Oh, I’m fine.
pauline (coming back in) The kids?
jane Fine.
Do you mind if I use your loo?
pauline You know where it is.
jane Yeah.
jane goes upstairs. pauline sits and drinks her tea for a
couple of minutes, browsing through a magazine.
jane comes back downstairs.
jane Well, you’re looking well.
pauline Thanks.
Well, we haven’t seen each other for a long time, not since
the wedding.
jane Yes. The wedding.

There are a number of points to be made about this piece of

dialogue. The first is that it is utterly tedious. Yet it corresponds
pretty accurately to dialogue as we speak it. Why, then, does it fail
as part of a script? The answer is (at least in part) that the writer
has joined the dialogue – joined the scene – too early. Of course,
this is just the sort of opening to a conversation which might take
place, before moving on to (perhaps!) more interesting matters; but
there is no obligation upon the writer to start here – he or she can
join a scene wherever seems appropriate, certainly missing any such
tedious openings. The same applies to endings: many conversations
in real life end with a stream of expressions like ‘bye then’, ‘see
you soon’ and ‘look after yourself’, but in art we can either cut
this down to a minimum or simply cut it out altogether, leaving the
scene before the characters leave each other. (There are exceptions
to every rule, however. The remarkable television series The Royle
Family – writers, Caroline Aherne, Craig Cash and Henry Normal
– seems to include every last banality of entrance and exit, not to
mention long periods of gawping at television, interrupted only by
cups of tea and visits to the toilet. But it should be noted, first, that
this apparently extreme naturalism conceals art – particularly the
art of some wonderful one-liners which appear totally unforced
– and, secondly, that this series is to a large extent about the
humour-through-banality of these characters.)
It is not only beginnings and endings, though, which can be
50 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

uninteresting from a dramatic point of view. In real conversation

there may well be all sorts of other everyday material which adds
nothing and merely slows down what in dramatic terms we would
call ‘the action’. Of course, if some of the trivia – ‘Would you like
a cup of tea?’ – can be turned to advantage, all very well. In A Few
Kind Words, referred to earlier, a Derbyshire ex-miner is visiting his
daughter and son-in-law; the old man is asked how many sugars
he would like in his tea and replies, ‘Four please. Allus had a sweet
tooth. Oh, not in them little cups, one in that.’ Here the trivia has
been used to make a point about their differing lifestyles: he initially
assumes that he is being offered tea in a mug, as he would drink it at
home. Very often, though, it is wiser simply to cut all such material.
To return to the dull piece of dialogue above, then: it should
probably have begun a few lines before the introduction of the
topic of the wedding, assuming that this topic was going to develop
into something of interest. That would at least have spared us the
wait while Jane visits the toilet. (Toilet scenes seem to be quite
in vogue at present, but this one – or, rather, the lack of it, as we
do not go there with her and nothing happens in her absence – is
pointless.) Certainly, in ‘real life’ Pauline might well sit doing
nothing for a couple of minutes awaiting the return of her friend,
but that is a very long time for an audience to be doing the same!
Clearly, for our purposes this verisimilitude is not enough.
So scripted dialogue should be concise, relative to dialogue in
‘real life’. This applies to all the script media, but particularly to
film (even more than television), where we expect the visuals to do
a great deal more of the work. Often in film, the scenes tend to be
extremely short – there may be only one or two speeches to a scene
(and some scenes, of course, have no speeches at all), so concision
of dialogue is absolutely vital. There Will Be Blood has a long
and tremendously effective opening sequence in which there is no
dialogue at all. Even in radio scripts, dominated by dialogue though
they usually are, dialogue must never be woolly or long-winded.
This leads us to the concept of selective naturalism. Selective
naturalism is the style of writing which attempts to faithfully imitate
dialogue as we normally speak it, but, unnoticed, manages to omit
all those passages – not only beginnings and endings but also all
sorts of other uninteresting sections – which would add nothing to
the production. For it is not enough merely to imitate life: scripts
are not straight, one-for-one imitations of slabs of life. In selective
 Naturalistic dialogue 51

naturalism they are crafted, moulded to appear as if they were.

Even in soap operas, crammed as they are with tea-pourings and
the like, there has been sufficient editing of naturalism for the story
to keep its onward movement.

The appearance of naturalism

Let us look at a fine piece of writing in the style of selective
naturalism – the opening of Arnold Wesker’s stage play, I’m
Talking About Jerusalem:

September 1946.
Norfolk. A house in the middle of the fields. We see the large
kitchen of the house, the garden, and the end of an old barn.
(dave and ada simmonds are just moving in. Boxes and cases
are strewn around. dave and two removal men are manoeu-
vring a large wardrobe, 1930 type, from a lorry offstage. ada
is unpacking one of the cases. sarah kahn, her mother, is
buttering her bread on a table, and from a portable radio comes
a stirring part of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. ronnie kahn,
Ada’s brother, is standing on a box conducting both the music
and the movement of people back and forth. dave – unlike ada
and ronnie – speaks with a slight cockney accent.)

ronnie Gently now. Don’t rush it. You’re winning.

dave Instead of standing there and giving orders why don’t
you give a bloody hand?
ronnie You don’t need any more hands. I’m organising you,
I’m inspiring you.
dave Jesus Christ it’s heavy, it’s heavy. Drop it a minute.
ronnie Lower it gently – mind the edges, it’s a work of art.
dave I’ll work of art you. And turn that radio off – I can cope
with Beethoven but not both of you.
ronnie (turns off radio) What are you grumbling for? I’ve
been shlapping things to and fro up till now, haven’t I?
Only as it’s the last piece I thought I’d exercise my talents
as a foreman. Don’t I make a good foreman? (calling) Hey,
Mother, don’t I make a good foreman?
52 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

sarah (coming from kitchen) What’ve you lost?

ronnie Listen to her! What’ve you lost! She’s just like her
daughter, she can’t hear a thing straight. Watch this. Hey,
Ada! The sea’s not far away you know.
ada You can’t have any because I haven’t put the kettle on yet.
ronnie Lunatic family.
dave Come on. We’ll never get done. Ready?
(They bend to lift the wardrobe. sara returns to kitchen.)
ronnie Heave – slowly – don’t strain – heave.
1st r.m. Where’s it going?
dave Through the kitchen and upstairs.

The first thing to hit us is that the dialogue here is full of life. We are
dropped straight into the middle of the scene, a busy scene – into
the middle of dialogue, the middle of the action. The dialogue feels
generally unforced and pleasingly messy, capturing domesticity
without being in the least bit dull. Even in these few lines we
begin to see the differences in character between Ronnie and Dave
but, importantly, it is the actions – their contributions to the
moving of the furniture and their responses to it – that give us this
opportunity. The dialogue is about doing – there is a genuine need
for it; it is not people sitting around talking for the sake of it. Only
the joke about Ada’s poor hearing feels a little forced – it works too
well, and perhaps we sense the author’s hand. We will return to this
extract in Chapter 4, but for now we should note it as an example
of a certain approach to naturalism, very much of a piece with that
of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and other scripts of that period.
Now let us look at another script which might also be considered
to be written in the style of selective naturalism – Mike Leigh’s film
Secrets and Lies:

A little later. cynthia, hortense, roxanne, paul and jane are

sitting round the table. maurice is busy at the barbecue, whilst
monica bustles about, serving everybody.

roxanne So you work with my Mum, yeah?

hortense Yeah.
roxanne Not on the machines?
hortense (laughing slightly) No.
 Naturalistic dialogue 53

cynthia You comin’ round tomorrow night, Paul?

roxanne Mum!
paul Well it’s –
cynthia Eh?
roxanne We’re goin’ out!
(monica starts collecting everyone’s finished corn-cobs.)
monica (To hortense) Just take this.
cynthia Well, you’ll come round before’and, won’t you,
’ave a drink? It’s ’er twenty-first.
roxanne It’s no big deal!
cynthia Well, I ain’t given you your present yet!
monica Thank you, Jane.
(maurice puts down a dish on the table.)
maurice Chicken drumsticks …
cynthia D’you want some salad, sweet’eart?
hortense Yes, please.
cynthia I’ll get you some. (She goes over to a separate serving
table.)
monica Are you doing something special tomorrow night, you
two?
roxanne No, down the pub as usual.
monica Oh?
jane (To maurice) Do you use fingers?
maurice Use what you like! Use your feet if you want!
(jane giggles.)
monica You’ve a knife and fork there, Jane.
jane ’T’s a bit late, now.

Here, too, we have a scene full of life, and we have been dropped
into the middle of it. (Of course the opening stage direction, ‘A
little later’, is aimed at the director, actors and crew – we must
be able to see that the meal has progressed since the previous
scene.) By comparison, even the extract from I’m Talking About
Jerusalem – excellent though it is – seems a little stilted. Leigh
works through improvisation, only producing a script after many
weeks of working with his actors, and developing particularly both
characterization and relationships. This complexity and apparent
spontaneity shows through: each line arises naturally from the
relationships and dynamics of the particular situation, yet there
is an effortlessness about it – none of the lines seems forced. Each
54 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

individual has their own agenda, while every line reminds us of

a character trait (even the ambiguity of Monica’s ‘Oh?’, with its
shaded disapproval, or Paul’s ‘Well, it’s – ’, Paul being one of the
least verbally communicative characters in film literature). Here is
no trace of the authorial hand. The effect of the dialogue in this
film is cumulative; points are not rammed home to us but rather
our understanding of characters is allowed to grow as the film
progresses. A line such as Monica’s ‘You’ve a knife and fork there,
Jane’ is restrained, yet in context contributes to our understanding
of Monica’s obsession with correctness and appearances.
Mike Leigh is not alone in using elements of improvisation in his
scripts. For the film Gosford Park, the director Robert Altman did
not start from improvisation, but – with the full approval of the
writer, Julian Fellowes – encouraged his cast to improvise around
the already brilliant script. The result is stunning.
Now let us look at an extract from the television series The Bill
(in its previous incarnation as a series, before it became a soap
opera). We join the episode at the end of a chase after a young
woman. PC Barry Stringer has been doing all the hard work,
running after her while the other officers are in cars:

13. EXT. STATION FORECOURT. DAY. 9.08AM

FROM OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS THE PANDA CAR AND

AREA CAR ARRIVE. THEY BOTH STOP, THOUGH THE
AREA CAR SWERVES TO BLOCK THE ALLEY EXIT. ALL
FOUR OFFICERS GET OUT (STAMP AND DATTA FROM
THE AREA CAR, QUINNAN AND FORD FROM THE
PANDA CAR). AS THEY DO SO THE WOMAN COMES
RUNNING FROM THE WASTEGROUND. SHE VIRTUALLY
RUNS STRAIGHT INTO STAMP’S ARMS.

stamp (TO FORD AND QUINNAN, WHILE HOLDING

ONTO THE WOMAN) What kept you? (to woman)
You’re nicked. What’s your name?

NOW ALL AT THE SAME TIME FORD IS TALKING TO

QUINNAN, STAMP IS CAUTIONING THE WOMAN
AND DATTA IS SPEAKING INTO HER RADIO. WE FIND
OURSELVES CLOSEST TO FORD AND QUINNAN. BEHIND
ALL THIS WE SEE STRINGER ARRIVE, BREATHLESS.
 Naturalistic dialogue 55

ford What goes in must come out, eh?

quinnan Yeah, well I didn’t say where, did I?
datta (SIMULTANEOUS WITH THE ABOVE) (INTO
RADIO) Sierra Oscar from 181, receiving?
peters (THROUGH RADIO) Go ahead, Norika.
stamp (SIMULTANEOUS WITH THE ABOVE) I am
arresting you on suspicion of theft. You don’t have to say
anything but anything you do say may be given in evidence –
stringer Hold on! She’s my body!
stamp Too late me old son.
quinnan You been out jogging Barry?
stringer She’s my body!
THE WOMAN, WILLIAMS, LOOKING FRIGHTENED,
TURNS TO STAMP.
williams What’s he mean?
SINCE STRINGER’S INTERVENTION, DATTA HAS BEEN
SPEAKING TO PETERS.
datta (INTO RADIO, SIMULTANEOUS WITH THE
ABOVE) We’ve caught her, Sarge, outside Dorney Road
Station.
peters (THROUGH RADIO) Great stuff! And the goods?
NOW, AFTER WILLIAMS’ ‘EH?’ AND BEFORE STAMP
CAN ANSWER, DATTA CALLS OVER –
datta Where’s her bag?
EVERYONE STOPS
stamp Where’s your bag, love?
williams What bag?
stringer She chucked it out behind some bushes.
datta (SMILING MISCHIEVOUSLY, INTO RADIO)
Stringer’s just going to recover the stolen goods, Sarge.
STRINGER IS FURIOUS.

Superficially, this has some resemblances to the extract from

Secrets and Lies. Here again we have a carefully orchestrated
piece of dialogue, a number of conversations taking place together,
synchronized with action. As in the preceding extract, not only
the director but also the writer has to be aware of what we – the
audience – will and will not be able to hear. (Leigh, the writer/
director, gives no stage direction to indicate which characters
are nearest to the audience, but in filming simply has the camera
56 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

positioned at one end of the patio and leaves it there, giving a rare
effect of all the conversations having equal prominence.) However,
whereas meaning is always transparent – at least superficially – in
Mike Leigh, in The Bill there is frequent use of police jargon (for
example, ‘My body …’, ‘Sierra Oscar from 181 …’). This is there
partly because it is, on occasions, what the police would say;
but it is also there to add a certain flavour. Very often it is not
particularly important whether the audience actually understands
the jargon: its purpose is to be jargon, to impress upon the
audience that they are being given a glimpse of a separate, enclosed
world with its own language. Often in this sort of series there will
also be an element of ‘clever-cleverness’ in the dialogue, again not
because this is how police officers necessarily talk to each other,
but because this is how we enjoy thinking that they talk to each
other. The dialogue is written to live up to our expectations. Just as
the normal day-to-day activities of police officers (all those forms
to fill in …) are much less exciting than any single episode of The
Bill, so in real life their dialogue is often very dull; in the television
series it invariably has a little added spice. In Secrets and Lies the
dialogue really does reflect much of ordinary conversation – we
are given the opportunity to focus on the verbal limitations of a
number of the characters – while in The Bill nothing is allowed
to stay ordinary for very long. This is a police series which prides
itself upon being true to life (and in many respects, such as the
accuracy of police procedures, it is indeed impressively accurate);
yet certainly, in its dialogue, it presents what is in fact an illusion
of gritty naturalism.
In each of the examples given above there are lines which appear
not to contribute very much at all – the trivia of our verbal inter-
action – yet none of the scenes comes to a halt under the weight of
normality. This is partly because each of these scenes relies heavily
upon action. Things happen. While of course there is a place in
drama for speech set outside a context of action, it is sometimes
hard to keep a momentum in dialogue which is only about itself,
which is only about the subject of the conversation. But in each
of these scenes there is a strong element of business – the physical
moving of furniture into the house, the cooking, serving, eating and
clearing away of the barbecue, the arrival one after the other of a
host of police officers and a suspect.
 Naturalistic dialogue 57

Humour and the ordinary

In each of the given extracts, humour is used to lighten the
proceedings. Datta mischievously adds insult to injury by sending
the already exhausted Stringer – who has just lost his ‘body’ – to
retrieve the stolen goods; Dave is forced to respond to Ronnie’s
conducting of both the Beethoven and the moving of the furniture;
we are gently amused by the bluntness of Cynthia and Roxanne,
the stifling correctness of Monica and the pleasantries of Maurice.
Some of this humour is direct, some subtle; all of it adds to our
enjoyment of the scenes, and humour is particularly useful in
adding flavour to everyday exchanges which might otherwise be
somewhat bland.
Here, then, we have three examples of selective naturalism –
three out of thousands of possible examples of what might be
called ‘filleted reality’. Not only are we not given the whole scene
– beginnings and endings, or both, have been cut off – but the
dialogue itself has been distilled while giving the impression of
being precisely the opposite. The phrases and actions of normality
are all there, but never in the quantity, at the length or with the
sheer tedium of much of real life. Everything, in fact, serves a
purpose. It is when that purpose becomes too apparent that danger
arises, as we shall see in the following chapter.
58
 4
Don’t make it work
too hard!

The story without a narrator

Most of the words of a script consist of dialogue, and usually there
is no narrator. How, then, is information imparted? In a novel or a
short story the narrator will often fill in the background, perhaps
telling us about the past life of characters, describing physical
appearances or presenting the setting of the story – the town, the
institution, the workplace or wherever. All this information helps
us to visualize and understand the characters, their speeches and
their actions. The narrator will sometimes be a character, but more
often will be an impersonal, third-person, omniscient being, able to
tell us people’s most private secret thoughts and perhaps even their
unconscious motivations. He or she can tell us everything we could
possibly need to know – and in fact may even tell us some things
we would rather not know. The narrator is our guide, the mediator
between the fictional world of the characters and our own world.
So how on earth can storytelling – and drama is a form of
storytelling – survive without such a tremendously useful entity
as a narrator? For in most drama there is no such guide, no such
mediator: there is no teller of the story. One answer to the problem
is, simply, to use a narrator after all – this use in scripts is the
subject of Chapter 9 – but without one, how are its functions
fulfilled? With only dialogue, action and visuals (and in radio
drama not even that), how is the story told?
60 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The worst solution to this problem is one adopted by many

inexperienced scriptwriters: to cram the dialogue full of all sorts
of information. The writer – who has perhaps been used to having
recourse to a narrator when writing short stories or novels – is
close to panic in the absence of this prop; he or she assumes that
drama should aspire to the condition of narrative (by which is
meant here the short story or novel). This is the basic mistake: in
fact, no compensation for the absence of a narrator is necessary,
since narrative and drama are two distinct forms with their own
strengths – neither need imitate the other. But our writer does not
realize this, and instead uses dialogue to have characters telling each
other all sorts of things which might sit quite comfortably with a
narrator, but which stuffed into speech only produce artificiality.

There is no narrator in life

The novel has changed a great deal over the last hundred years or
so. Now there are novels with one, two, three or more narrators,
with hardly a narrator at all, or with narrators who cannot be
trusted. Nevertheless, much of our reading is from an earlier
time, when single narrators were usually omniscient, leading you
carefully through the jungle of events within the covers. A narrator
in, say, a Jane Austen novel might not tell us everything – she does
give us the opportunity to work some things out for ourselves –
and might load many of her comments with irony, but much of
the pleasure of reading such a narrative comes from the quality of
her (the narrator’s) interpretation of characters’ speeches, feelings
and actions. Despite the profound effects of modernism and post-
modernism in our own times, there is still much literature written in
this tradition. This is fine, but as scriptwriters we should recognize
that our business really is quite different (a fact which also explains
the relative rarity of the totally satisfying stage or screen adaptation
of a novel). We present a world without a mediator, a world in
which the audience has to make what sense it can of all that is said
or done, much as people do outside the theatre. There is, after all,
no narrator in life. And this approach brings with it many advan-
tages. The audience has to work harder, and that in itself produces
a certain involvement: they want to know the answers to a mass of
 Don’t make it work too hard! 61

questions, and have to pay attention to get those answers – no-one

is simply going to give them away. Of course, this can be taken
too far: the script might provide so little information as to make
it impossible for the audience to come to any conclusions at all,
which can become merely annoying – the audience may begin to
feel too much the plaything of the author. The basic point remains,
however: drama handles life in a different way from narrative, and
the dialogue within drama should not try to compensate for the
lack of a narrator.
In the film French Kiss (writer, Adam Brooks) the change in
attitude of Kate (Meg Ryan) towards France is central to the
meaning of the script. She starts by hating it and ends by adoring
it, and this is an indicator of her love not only for her new French
partner but also for what he represents: family, the land, a settled
future. Yet this information – her change in attitude – is never
directly expressed in dialogue. That is not to say that the change is
handled with great subtlety: she begins by singing ‘I hate Paris in
the Springtime’ and ends by having ‘I love Paris’ emblazoned on
her t-shirt; the contrast is hardly made difficult to spot! But this
change is never commented upon in generalized terms either by
herself or by other characters: it is always presented in specifics.
Her loathing for French cheese changes to attempts at enjoyment;
she starts to appreciate the beauty of the French countryside; and
– perhaps most important of all in symbolic terms – she takes in
the Eiffel Tower, which initially is continually hidden from her. Had
this been a novel, the narrator might have stated the fact that her
attitude to France had altered (though a subtle narrator actually
might not); in the film the audience is left to deduce it; it is not
‘dumped’ into the dialogue.
To take another example, there is an episode of Becker which
ends with a wordless scene. Becker arrives home to find a model
railway-set in his living room. He knows – as do we – that it was
left by his father. This inadequate and yet moving attempt at a
reconciliation between father and son (as a boy, Becker had never
received the train set he had wanted, as his father had walked out
on him) is conveyed through Becker’s discovery of the set and his
sitting down, using it and thinking. There are no spoken words;
words would have weakened the moment.
Parade’s End, the five-part television drama by Tom Stoppard
based on the novels of Ford Madox Ford, is another excellent
62 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

example. Here, motivation is almost entirely unexplained, and very

often includes elements of contradiction. Thus Sylvia spends much
of her time railing against her husband Tietjens – ‘I often want
to kill him just to see if there’s any blood in him’ – but her friend
nevertheless remarks, ‘Why, you’re soppy about him.’ We are left
to work out where the truth might lie; the dialogue doesn’t tell us.
It seems that Sylvia cannot quite cope with a man (Tietjens) who
believes ‘the world ended in the eighteenth century’, later telling
him, after her affair, ‘You forgave without mercy’; but again the
meanings are far from direct. At first glance it seems that Tietjens
is the one who is utterly repressed, but in fact Sylvia too doesn’t
seem to understand herself. We find ourselves riveted to the screen
trying to make sense of events, with the dialogue only giving little
pointers. We are made to work.
An unusual example of dialogue occurs in The Wire (lead writer,
David Simon). The dialogue in this series is generally superb, but
there is one point where power relationships are perhaps spelt out
a little too clearly in the dialogue. This is where D’Angelo explains
to his underlings how to play chess. The scene works well in a
number of ways. First, simply having D’Angelo knowing about
chess marks him out as a person of some intelligence. Then, his
explaining it underlines his superiority to those he is working
with (other local members of the gang), who have been using the
chess pieces to play checkers. And the language of course gives the
impression of being entirely authentic. The problem arises in the
chess pieces and their powers being too clearly a metaphor for how
the gang operates in its battle with the police. D’Angelo explains
the role of the King: ‘This the kingpin, all right? Now he the man.
You get the other dude’s King, you got the game. But they trying to
get your King too, so you gotta protect it. Now the King he move
one space any direction he damn choose, ’cause he’s the King.’ His
colleague remarks that the piece reminds him of D’Angelo’s cousin
Avon Barksdale. When D’Angelo explains the role of the Queen,
his other underling draws the comparison with Barksdale’s second
in command, Stringer Bell. Later D’Angelo emphasizes, ‘The King
stay the King.’ The scene is memorable, and yet is perhaps just a
little too direct, the parallels spelled out just a little too clearly.
Something a little similar takes place near the start of Blue
Jasmine (writer, Woody Allen). On a plane journey Jasmine
has talked endlessly about herself and her problems to a fellow
 Don’t make it work too hard! 63

passenger who is having trouble even focusing on the stream of

words. The monologue continues as they make their way on the
travellator. It continues into the baggage hall. The fellow passenger
scuttles off as Jasmine calls after her. The point has been made. But
then the scene continues, showing the fellow passenger telling her
husband that ‘she couldn’t stop babbling about her life.’ We know
this; we’ve seen it. The line unfortunately takes away any chance
we might have of coming to our own conclusion about what a
tedious companion Jasmine must be.
In The Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort at one point declares to
his adoring employees at his company Stratton Oakmont, ‘Stratton
Oakmont! Is! America!’ We know what he means – the company
for him embodies the opportunities that America offers, and
certainly the line is credible for this character at this point, stoking
up the self-belief of the workers. The line also works in a slightly
wider context, as very shortly afterwards these same employees
are berating that very same America – in the form of its financial
law enforcers – for interrupting their own version of the American
Dream. They want it both ways (as, perhaps, does the film). But
still there is something a little forced in the line. It is trying to get
the dialogue to work just a little too hard. If the viewers are to
conclude that there is something quintessentially American about
the whole concept of Stratton Oakmont, then perhaps they should
be allowed to do so on their own. The line feels too much like a
firm nudge, just in case the viewers missed it.

‘Is that your green-eyed blonde younger

sister crossing the busy dual carriageway
over there?’
A poor scriptwriter, however, does not appreciate any of these
subtleties. Nor does he or she realize that much of the information
that may be forced into the dialogue is in fact utterly unnecessary.
In a radio play, for example, we do not need one character to
describe to another the physical appearance of a third character
(or worse, of each other!); such observations might be appropriate
for a narrator in a story, but in a drama it is almost certainly
dead weight, only holding up the action. At its worst, this type
of dialogue can lead to characters telling each other what they
64 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

already know, just for the benefit of the audience. The subtitle
above – ‘Is that your green-eyed blonde sister crossing the busy
dual carriageway over there?’ – would of course be ridiculous as
a piece of dialogue, but it is not actually much more extreme than
many such nuggets embedded in scripts received by film companies,
television companies and theatres every day. (It has to be said that
radio tends to invite even more of this type of error than do the
other media, as many writers wrongly assume that in radio, not
only must we compensate for the lack of narrator, but also for the
lack of visuals.)
Characters must only tell each other what they feel they need
to tell each other; they must never tell each other what the writer
feels that he or she needs to tell the audience. Any information
to be imparted must be presented in such a way as to meet this
first criterion. Failure in this respect means that a confusion has
arisen between the agendas of the characters and the agenda of
the author.
However, I should add just one rider to this in the case of
radio. On either the small or big screen or on stage, a character
does not cease to be there if he or she is not speaking. Indeed, a
silent character can be the main focus of our attention. On radio,
however, that is virtually what happens; radio creates a picture
in our heads, and that picture changes as the scene moves along.
So, near the start of each new scene, each character should speak,
so that we can include them in the mental picture (if they do not
speak, their presence must at least be referred to – although this
is a less powerful signal than speech). Furthermore, each character
should then say a line or two at fairly regular intervals – about
once per page – or else they will drop out of the mental picture.
Then, if they do speak – after, say, three pages of being silent – the
effect is surreal, as though the character had suddenly shoved his
or her head through the wall to say something. To this extent, then,
the writer does have an agenda which has to be imposed on the
characters somewhat artificially, and carrying this off by always
giving the impression that each character needs to speak each line
is a particular skill of the radio scriptwriter.
 Don’t make it work too hard! 65

Some terrible dialogue

However, our unskilled scriptwriter still does not appreciate any of
this. Not only does this writer inject all sorts of inappropriate infor-
mation into the dialogue, but he or she also hankers after another
function of the traditional narrator. In a novel or short story the
narrator will not only set the scene, but will also interpret events
at the moment of their happening, inviting us to come to particular
conclusions about whatever is said or done. The inexperienced
writer will try to force dialogue into performing a comparable role.
Something like the following might result:

alice and cath are both seated in alice’s living room.

alice So your boss is completely obsessed with punctuality.
cath (emphatically) Completely.
alice And he tells you off when you’re even a minute late.
cath Even a second.
alice He hasn’t been in the job long, has he.
cath No.
alice About three months.
cath That’s right.
alice So did you prefer your old boss?
cath Loads. He was always so kind.
alice Oh I remember. He sent you those flowers when you
were in hospital, didn’t he.
cath Yes. And I was only there two days.
alice Oh and he was always good about your time off in lieu,
wasn’t he.
cath (angry) Which Mr Hambley never is. He always puts
pressure on me – makes me feel as if I’m not really entitled
to it.
alice But you are.
cath Of course I am. (slight pause)
cath Your boss is okay though, isn’t she.
alice Barbara? Yeah, she’s great.
cath She really takes on board what you’ve got to say,
doesn’t she.
alice Exactly. (slight pause)
cath (calming down) You know, it’s so long since we’ve
66 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

talked together … I really like it. We’ve really got a close

relationship. It’s almost as if I could read your thoughts
sometimes.
alice Me too.

This is pretty terrible stuff. The two characters are each telling each
other information which the other already knows, with the thinnest
of pretexts, merely to inform the audience; and then Cath invites
the audience to come to a conclusion about their relationship. Of
course, in a more subtle script, Cath’s final speech could be viewed
differently – we might see that they do not in fact have a close
relationship, although Cath believes that they do. Alternatively,
perhaps Cath could be trying to give an impression of closeness to
Alice while not believing it herself, and Alice might or might not be
taken in by this. In the context of this awful dialogue, however, we
are tempted to take everything at face value, as there are no other
signs of subtlety.

Avoid spoon-feeding
So, how might such a piece of dialogue have been better scripted?
There are of course a multitude of ways in which it could be
rewritten, depending upon what the writer wanted to achieve.
Some of the information could be omitted altogether, while other
pieces might remain, but only because the characters are given
credible motivation for mentioning them. Here is one alternative
version:

cath and alice are both seated in alice’s living room.

cath I’m just going to have to leave. Find another job.
alice What?
cath (emphatically) Well he’s mad. He’s completely obsessed
with punctuality. It’s driving me round the bend.
alice Have you told him?
cath I mean, if I’m just a minute late –
alice (overlapping) But have you told him, that he’s being –
cath (overlapping) I think he’s trying to establish his authority
or something. No of course I haven’t told him – he’s my boss.
 Don’t make it work too hard! 67

alice I’d tell Barbara.

cath But he’s not Barbara. I mean Brian was always so kind –
flowers and whatever –
alice Maybe he’ll calm down.
cath Or maybe he won’t. Even time off in lieu – he makes me
feel as if I’m not really entitled to it.
alice (gently) Well you do …
A look from cath, but alice carries on.
alice You did used to take quite a lot of time –
cath No more than I was entitled to! You’re meant to be able
to take time off – it’s in lieu – you know?
alice Yeah, yeah. slight pause
cath (irritable) Anyway, I’d better be off.
A nod from alice.

This is a considerable improvement. Alice is no longer feeding Cath

with all sorts of information that Cath already knows; instead,
Cath has been provided with a motivation for telling us about the
situation – it is so bad that she is thinking of leaving her job. In
addition, the conversation no longer resembles pingpong: Alice’s
early interjections are all but ignored by Cath, who only replies
when she has got her initial anger and frustration off her chest.
In the first version everything was explained: the flowers were
sent to the hospital although she was only there for three days,
and Barbara is a good boss because she listens to everything her
juniors tell her. In this version, though, there is some shorthand
– the flowers are mentioned with the assumption that Alice will
remember the details, and no further details are provided for the
audience. (There may or may not be another reference elsewhere
in the script which, together with this, might make things clearer.)
This rids the exchange of artificiality, and, besides, the audience
does not in fact need to know all these details. Similarly the
mention of Alice’s boss, Barbara, now relies on them both knowing
her qualities – the audience is not spoon-fed.
In the first version, the two of them agreed about everything;
now there is a little needle between them, culminating in Alice’s
hesitant, ‘Well you do … You did used to take quite a lot of
time – ’ and Cath’s annoyed response. This shade of conflict adds
interest in itself, but also lends a whole new ambiguity to the
scene. No longer can we assume the correctness of Cath’s version
68 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

of events: perhaps she does take time off without justification, so

perhaps too she is continually late, and her boss’s reprimands are
justified. This ambiguity – our not knowing one way or the other
– keeps us pulled into the action: we want to find out the truth.
It also makes the relationship between the two characters more
involving. Continual agreement (like continual disagreement) can
be tiresome; most relationships involve subtle shades of agreement
and conflict, so this piece of dialogue both reflects reality more
accurately and is more likely to hold our attention as a piece of
drama. Again, we want to find out the truth – in this case the truth
of the precise nature of their relationship – so we want to see more
of it, to see how it develops. Similarly, in this second version we
are fortunately spared Cath’s summing up of their relationship – we
are left to come to some provisional conclusions ourselves, which
is much more interesting than being told. Of course, there is no
reason why a character (with credible motivation) should not sum
up the nature of a relationship or of a conversation, but, as noted
above, it should not be presented in such a way as merely to invite
straightforward acceptance by the audience.
Let us have one more stab at this scene. We have already made
the dialogue more messy; we have added shades of conflict and
ambiguity; we have avoided feeding the audience with information;
and we have not told the audience what to think. We will now
add a little business. (Of course, we could move the scene from
the domestic setting altogether, but even without doing this we can
certainly add further interest, perhaps by moving it from living
room to kitchen, where there is rather more to do.)

cath and alice in alice’s kitchen. Alice is making bread,

kneading the dough.

cath I’m just going to have to leave. Find another job.

alice What?
cath Well he’s mad –
alice Pass us the flour, could you.
cath – completely obsessed with punctuality. It’s driving me
round the bend.
alice Have you told him?
cath I mean, if I’m just a minute late –
alice (overlapping) But have you told him, that he’s being –
 Don’t make it work too hard! 69

cath (overlapping) I think he’s trying to establish his authority

or something. No of course I haven’t told him – he’s my
boss.
alice I’d tell Barbara.
cath Yeah well he’s not Barbara, is he. Why do you bother to
make bread, Alice? It’s just as good from the supermarket.
alice Thanks very much.
cath And it’s probably cheaper. It’s certainly less messy.
(no reply)
cath I mean Brian was always so kind – flowers and
whatever –
alice Maybe this new fella’ll calm down.
cath Or maybe he won’t. Even time off in lieu – he makes me
feel as if I’m not really entitled to it.
alice stops kneading for a moment.
alice Well you do …
A look from cath, but alice carries on speaking and resumes
kneading.
alice You did used to take quite a lot of time –
cath No more than I was entitled to! You’re meant to be able
to take time off – it’s in lieu – you know?
alice Yeah, yeah.
(lengthy pause)
cath So … will that really rise?
alice Should do, yeah.
(slight pause)
cath Anyway, I’d better be off.
A nod from alice.

Displacing our emotions

In the above, the action of making bread is not merely a bit of
business to add some interest to the scene: rather, the business
feeds back into the meaning of the scene itself. Cath is annoyed
with Alice, initially for her comment ‘I’d tell Barbara’, which
seems to fail to acknowledge that Barbara is a much easier boss to
talk to than her own new boss. However, rather than expressing
this directly to Alice, she does so indirectly, instead criticizing
70 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

her bread-making. This is very common: we often displace our

emotions; if we cannot cope with dealing with them head-on
(perhaps because it would create too destructive a confrontation)
we transfer them to someone or something else. In this case, Cath’s
comments about Alice’s bread-making are substituting for any
comments Cath might otherwise have made about Alice’s attitude
to her (Cath’s) problem. Of course, the scriptwriter does not have
to enter into a psychological analysis of precisely what is occurring
on all such occasions; rather, he or she must develop a feel for this
sort of behaviour and incorporate it into dialogue as a matter of
course. There are dangers, though. If handled too heavily – if in this
case the bread were called upon to act clearly as a symbol – it can
appear laboured and artificial. A light touch is generally preferable.
Towards the end of this version, after the lengthy pause to allow
herself to become more calm, Cath returns to the subject of the
bread – ‘So … will that really rise?’ Perhaps she feels here that her
previous anger has been disproportionate. She uses the bread now
as a means of being conciliatory. The tone is ambiguous, though –
the question ‘So … will that really rise?’ might be mildly admiring
of Alice’s skill (it is an acknowledgement that Alice knows how
to make bread, and Cath doesn’t), but at the same time retains a
slight edge of doubt, of not trusting her judgement. These are the
subtleties – never to be analyzed by the audience, only to be felt –
which the scriptwriter must aim for.
One further point. The meaning of the bread is contested. It does
not simply stand for one thing; how it is to be interpreted is under-
stood very differently by the two characters. This is a powerful use
of an object.

Let’s look at another example.

andy Angela knows.

bill Does she?
andy Yeah.
(pause)
bill I’m sorry.
andy I think it’s changed her opinion of me.
bill I really didn’t mean to.
andy I was in the canteen with her yesterday and she didn’t
make eye contact with me. At all. The whole meal.
 Don’t make it work too hard! 71

bill I’m really sorry.

andy I know you are. I know. I’m wondering who she might
tell.
bill Nobody. I shouldn’t think she’ll tell anyone.
andy You did. She will.
bill I’ll tell her not to.
andy I’m assuming you did that already.
(pause)
bill How do you know she knows?
andy Because of how she is with me.
bill So she might not … ?
andy Well I know she knows now don’t I.
(pause)
bill … It wasn’t … I didn’t mean to hurt …
andy What did you mean? What did you intend?
bill Nothing.
andy Nothing? You … you ruin things, but you didn’t intend
anything?
bill I don’t know.
andy You know.

This is already good dialogue. It is intriguing. The characters

make assumptions about each other, they talk in a sort of code.
There is ambiguity; there is conflict. There is even a piece of
credible nonsense, Bill asking, ‘How do you know she knows?’
when he has already tacitly admitted to having told her (told
her what? – we don’t know, although the characters clearly do).
So we are held by this dialogue. But where is it happening, and
what might they be doing? How might these elements add to the
scene?
Let’s have another go at it.

andy’s living room. He and bill are putting up a shelf.

andy Angela knows.
bill Does she?
andy Yeah.
(andy drills.)
bill I’m sorry.
andy I think it’s changed her opinion of me.
bill I really didn’t mean to.
72 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

andy I was in the canteen with her yesterday and she didn’t
make eye contact with me. At all. The whole meal.
bill I’m really sorry.
andy Hold it in position can you.
I know you are. I know.
I’m wondering who she might tell.
bill Nobody. I shouldn’t think she’ll tell anyone.
andy You did.
She will.
You moved it. Can you hold it still? In the same place?
bill I’ll tell her not to.
andy I’m assuming you did that already.
(pause)
I’ve never asked you. Do you think you got your job on
merit?
bill How do you know she knows?
andy Because of how she is with me.
bill So she might not … ?
andy Well I know she knows now don’t I.
(pause)
bill … It wasn’t … I didn’t mean to hurt …
andy What did you mean? What did you intend?
bill Nothing.
andy Nothing? You … you ruin things, but you didn’t intend
anything?
bill I don’t know.
andy You know.
They’re not going to match up. The holes. They’re not going
to match up.

First let us look at that added knife from Andy: ‘I’ve never asked
you. Do you think you got your job on merit?’ This is apparently
unconnected with the rest of the dialogue and elicits no reply, but
it will have been noted by Bill (as well as by us). It is as though
Andy is saying that Bill has not only been useless in letting Angela
know this secret, but has always been useless – he didn’t even get
his job fairly. But the connection is implied rather than stated –
it’s up to us to try to make sense of it. And we suspect that Andy
may come to regret having said it; the payoff has been set up for
later.
 Don’t make it work too hard! 73

There is an exercise I sometimes do with my students, which I

call ‘letting go’. This is about letting at least one of your characters
be truly unpleasant. Many of us have a reluctance to allow either
dialogue or actions to be genuinely, deeply hurtful (mere insults are
rarely hurtful). Perhaps we feel that somehow that would reflect on
us, the writers, showing us to be unpleasant individuals, when in
fact we need to accept that we can all be thoroughly vile in some
circumstances. These lines of Andy are a start on the road to being
almost unforgivably wounding, undermining the other’s sense of
self, the other’s identity. And we must allow the dialogue to go there.
You will also have noticed that Andy and Bill working together
with only with limited success in this version becomes a way of
Andy expressing his resentment towards Bill. The last lines – the
holes not matching up – seem to be about Bill and Andy not being
in tandem anymore and at the same time to be an expression of the
whole relationship with Angela no longer working either. In a very
general way, nothing is ‘going to match up’. The action of putting
up the shelf is not used at all to explain what is going on between
these characters; rather, it adds an extra layer of meaning.
We must not try too hard at this. It can easily feel forced. But
where it works it can make a scene truly resonate.

Stage directions for actors

You may have noticed one more alteration that was made in the
final version of the Cath and Barbara scene: all the stage directions
for actors were deleted. There are two types of stage directions –
those for director and crew, and those for the actors. The general
advice concerning the latter is, use them as sparingly as possible.
The writer must not try to do everything. While he or she writes
the lines, it is the actor’s job to deliver them, and it is part of the
director’s job to steer that delivery. The writer who tries to take
over these jobs is making a serious mistake. First, both actor and
director will begin to feel insulted by being told how to deliver
each line; and second, if they were to follow such instructions
(and they almost certainly wouldn’t anyway!) then the production
would be denied two extra layers of creativity, from actors and
director.
74 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

If a scene is well written, actors will be able to feel how to deliver

the lines. Both the text and the subtext – the meanings running
beneath the actual words – will lead the actors and directors to
present the dialogue in a certain way. But this way is not fixed, and
it is a mistake for a writer to try to fix it. Think of the multitude
of interpretations given to, say, Hamlet, and you will realize that
to try to pin down the performers is an error. There is not one
‘right’ interpretation, but rather many different ways of looking at
the material. Yet many inexperienced writers pepper their scripts
with directions to the actors – ‘quietly’, ‘with feeling’, ‘absolutely
furious’, ‘wanting to express the full force of his emotion, yet
restraining himself, though we can feel his bitterness nevertheless’.
The occasional stage direction to an actor is perfectly acceptable,
but directions on every other line seems to imply a lack of confi-
dence on the part of the scriptwriter, as though he or she is not sure
that the lines stand up on their own. In general, stage directions to
actors should be used only when the meaning is contrary to what
the line would normally suggest, for example:

paul (with affection) Get out!

Successful scriptwriters vary in their approach to stage directions

for actors, but if you turn to the extracts from The English Patient
(pp. 90–1), Top Girls (pp. 6–7), The Bill (pp. 54–5), A Few Kind
Words (pp. 234–5) and Restoration (p. 146) you will find no stage
directions for actors at all in two of them. The extract from The
Grand Budapest Hotel (pp. 167–9) has more directions for actors
than most scripts. In the extract from The Bill, there are a host
of directions to the actors – but with only one exception, these
are technical, not about the way the lines should be delivered in
terms of feeling (the one exception is the underlining in the line
‘She’s my body’). Similarly in the extract from A Few Kind Words
there is only one instruction stating how a line should be delivered,
while in The English Patient there are just two (plus others dealing
with gesture). As you can see, then, in whatever medium, stage
directions to actors are generally used sparingly. Incidentally, this
has a further added benefit: the fewer stage directions are given, the
more those which are given will be likely to be followed.
 Don’t make it work too hard! 75

Actions speak louder …

As the title of this chapter suggests, good dialogue – though it does
of course accomplish a great deal – should not be made to work too
hard (as in the first version of the Alice and Cath scene, above). In
particular, it should not be made to work hard in ways for which it
is inappropriate. The audience, on the other hand, should be made
to work, and sometimes quite hard. Frequently, one can simply
transfer the burden of work from the dialogue to the audience.
Such a transference is almost always beneficial.
Two small examples from the work of Arthur Miller come to
mind. At the start of the second act of Death of A Salesman, Willy
Loman is having his coffee cup refilled by Linda, his wife. We have
already witnessed profound problems within the family, as well as
Willy’s overpowering consciousness of failure. The first spoken line
of the Act is Willy’s: ‘Wonderful coffee. Meal in itself.’ This modest
little line sums up Willy’s change of attitude at that moment. Once
more he is positive, optimistic (although he does not say that he is
feeling wonderful – rather, that the coffee is wonderful). Yet even
in this unassuming line there is a certain overstatement – can a
coffee really be a meal in itself? – which reminds us not to trust
his feelings entirely; he believes what he wants to believe. Clearly,
the audience is not intended to analyze this innocuous line, this
response to a bit of domestic business; yet the effect is there never-
theless, and expressed through this substitution more eloquently
than any direct statement.
At the start of the second act of Miller’s The Crucible, John
Proctor is alone. We already know that he has been unfaithful to
his wife, and that he regrets it. The act begins with him taking
a sample of the rabbit stew his wife has made; he is not entirely
satisfied. He adds some salt. At this point there are no lines of
dialogue referring to this at all, but a piece of domestic business
has taken on a quality of symbolism, and in a quiet, understated
way. It is his wife whom he finds lacking in flavour, and although
he does regret his infidelity he still wishes she had, as it were, more
salt. Once again, stated in this way it may sound absurd, but the
symbolism does have its effect, whether at a conscious or an uncon-
scious level. Of course, it is not the function of this book to attempt
a detailed analysis of how symbolism works; it is its relationship
76 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

with dialogue that is important. So the point for us is that at no

point does Proctor state, ‘I wish you were more exciting!’ Rather,
when he starts to eat, he comments to Linda that the dish is well
seasoned; she is pleased, telling him that she has taken great care
with the meal. The dialogue here is used to develop the symbolism,
but not to express the meaning directly; his dissatisfaction, his
attempt to compensate for it and disguise it, her wish to please him
and her incapacity to do so are all expressed through the rabbit
stew. Direct statement injected into the dialogue would have been
much less effective.
There is a point in one episode of The Thick of It (lead writer,
Armando Iannucci) when Hugh, the government minister, hides in
a cupboard. Certainly he has made a massive blunder (allowing the
views of one woman – and in fact an actress – to be portrayed as
those of a representative focus group); there is much that he could
have said in apology, or to make amends. But such is his cowardice
– and such is his fear of Malcolm Tucker in particular – that instead
of dealing with the problem with words he hides in a cupboard.
Dialogue could hardly have been as expressive, or as funny.
Betty in Mad Men is invited to resume her career as a model, but
it soon comes to nothing. At the same time her neighbour is each
day releasing his pigeons, which then dutifully fly home. Betty’s
frustration at being once again a housewife and nothing more is
not expressed in dialogue. Rather, the episode ends with her calmly
shooting the pigeons.
In another episode of Mad Men Betty allows a heating control
salesman into her and Don’s house, against her better judgement,
and indeed comes close to leading him to the bedroom. She tells
Don about it (though not about starting to lead him upstairs)
and he is furious, as she must have known he would be. So, as
her friend asks, why did she tell him? We are given no answer.
An answer could have been given. It might have been ‘I didn’t do
anything wrong’ or – perhaps more likely – ‘I wanted to make him
jealous, to remind him of my worth.’ Whatever is the truth, we are
not given it in dialogue. Instead we have to work it out, which is
much more effective.
In Athol Fugard’s moving play ‘Master Harold’ … and the boys,
set in the South Africa of 1950, split down the middle by apartheid,
much of the dialogue focuses on very visible business: dancing. The
three characters, Sam, Willie and the young white man Hally, all
 Don’t make it work too hard! 77

dance, and it is this activity which allows the scriptwriter to let

his characters express all that they want to about how their world
functions. Towards the end of the play Sam makes a passionate
but simple speech about dancing. He tells the others that they are
all bumping into each other, that we all bump into each other, that
nations keep bumping into each other, and despite all the pain
inflicted we don’t seem to be able to stop doing it – but it’s got to
stop. We have to stop always dancing like beginners. A piece of
dialogue which might easily have seemed preachy or artificial is
given both plausibility and resonance by being so firmly attached
to business – in this case, his attempts at teaching the others to
dance. The meanings in the dialogue are not transferred to dance,
but neither are they merely demonstrated by the dance: instead,
they actually are the dance.

Dialogue and events

As noted above, when dialogue is made to work too hard,
sometimes it is because it is being asked to take the place of a
narrator. However, it can also happen for other reasons. The script-
writer must never forget that, however important the dialogue,
things must also actually take place. Dialogue must not be made to
substitute for events. The mistake can be made in one of two ways:
events are either omitted altogether, or they consistently take place
offstage and have to be reported onstage.
There is always an offstage (or ‘out of vision’) world. Whatever
a script presents, there are always events which are referred to –
or which the audience simply assumes to have happened – but
which are not actually shown. (In fact, a number of writers have
toyed with this, notably – though in very different ways – Michael
Frayn in Noises Off, in which the backstage of a theatre perfor-
mance becomes the onstage, and Tom Stoppard in Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead, in which the central characters are
two minor characters from Hamlet, so that all the major events of
that play happen offstage.) Whatever is not shown must be told;
there is always a choice between telling and showing (or omitting
altogether); a balance has to be struck, and one of the consequences
of failing to strike that balance correctly is to overload the dialogue.
78 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Telling and showing

Showing is almost always more vivid, more memorable than
telling. By ‘showing’ I do not mean, of course, that no dialogue
is used, but rather that we witness an event itself – including the
dialogue – rather than being told about it through the dialogue.
At the start of The Tempest, for example, we are shown the storm
at sea – dialogue and action. The sailors are already yelling above
the noise of the storm; asked where the Master is, the Boatswain
yells ‘Do you not hear him?’, meaning that they are being mastered
by the wind. We are thrown immediately into action, and into
dialogue in the context of action. The sailors are trying to keep the
ship afloat while at the same time having to deal with those Lords
aboard who are getting in their way:

On a ship at sea. A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning

heard.
Enter a ship-master and a boatswain, severally.
master Boatswain!
boatswain Here,
master What cheer?
master Good, speak to the mariners: fall to’t, yarely, or we
run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir. [Exit] Enter mariners.
boatswain Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts!
yare, yare! Take in the topsail; tend to the master’s whistle.
– Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!
Enter alonso, sebastian, antonio, ferdinand, gonzalo
and others.
alonso Good Boatswain, have care. Where’s the master?
Play the men.
boatswain I pray now, keep below.
antonio Where is the Master, Boson?
boatswain Do you not hear him? You mar our labour.
Keep your cabins: you do assist the storm.
gonzalo Nay, good, be patient.
boatswain When the sea is Hence! What care these roarers
for the name of king? To cabin: silence! trouble us not.
gonzalo Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.
boatswain None that I love more than myself. You are a
 Don’t make it work too hard! 79

counsellor; if you command these elements to silence, and

work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope
more; use your authority; if you cannot, give thanks that
you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your
cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. Cheerly,
good hearts! Out of our way, I say.

And so the scene continues, culminating in the wrecking of the

ship. It could, of course, have been told instead of being shown;
after the event, one of the survivors could simply have related what
had happened to someone else. However, this would have had
none of the immediacy of actually being there, seeing and hearing
the things as they take place. The second scene of The Tempest,
though, is a complete contrast. It begins with a conversation of
great length between Prospero and his daughter Miranda, in which
Prospero tells her all the events of twelve years previously which
led to their being on the ship which was wrecked. There are those
who believe this scene to be too static and ponderous, even tedious
– that it involves too much telling; what does seem certain is that
Shakespeare only felt able to load this piece of dialogue with so
massive a burden of telling because it followed a scene of such
vivid showing.
To take one more example from Shakespeare, in The Winter’s
Tale an event which might have been expected to be one of the
high points of the play – the Fifth Act reconciliation of Leontes
and Camillo – is told rather than shown. The rift between these
two has been at the heart of the play, yet the reconciliation
happens offstage; we hear about it through dialogue which is
crammed full of the retelling of information – one Gentleman
telling another what the two Kings said to each other on finally
being reunited. This may well lead the audience to feel disap-
pointed, or even deprived. Why did the writer cheat us of being
shown this scene? He has asked dialogue to do too much of the
work. So why, then, did Shakespeare do this? There appears to
be two reasons. The first is that we already know, the two Kings
are to be reconciled, and we know how this has come about – so
to witness the reconciliation itself might only be an anti-climax
anyway, adding little new. The second, stronger reason appears
to be that had Shakespeare not conveyed the reunion through
‘telling’ in the dialogue, this might indeed have seemed the climax
80 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

of the play, while in fact the playwright wants to reserve this for
the following scene, a surprise – the return of Hermione, seemingly
from the dead, in the final scene of the play. Using the dialogue
in the previous scene, then, to tell about the reconciliation rather
than showing it has the effect of downgrading its impact, leaving
the way clear for the real climax.
As these examples show, there is certainly a place for using
dialogue to tell rather than to show, but the positioning of such
dialogue in the script as a whole needs to be considered. There are
notable exceptions (such as the storytelling at the heart of Conor
McPherson’s The Weir – but then this is a play about the telling of
stories), but in general too much telling and not enough showing
can lead members of the audience to feel that they are too far from
the action that really matters.

Telling, showing and form

The relationship between telling and showing – and thus what is
demanded of the dialogue – can be affected by decisions about the
overall form of the script. Through film, television and much of
modern theatre we have become accustomed to moving with ease
from one setting to another. Indeed, there will often be sequences
with little or no dialogue using five, ten or even twenty settings.
In Shakespeare’s time, too, it was commonplace for a script to
demand that we move from the palace straight to the wood, to
a cottage and then perhaps to a ship or a fairies’ grotto. Between
Elizabethan times and the twentieth century, however, there grew
up a strong tradition of stage plays using only one, two or three
inflexible sets, culminating in the great plays of Chekhov and Ibsen.
(These are very much closer to observing the Aristotelian unities of
time, place and action.) The tradition has continued on into our
time, co-existing with other, freer forms. In this type of theatre we,
the audience, see action not in one different place after another as
the need arises, but rather witness the action manipulated to come
to whatever fixed setting (and set) has been decided upon by the
playwright. Typically in this sort of play, there is a living room or
perhaps a bedsit (or, in earlier times, a drawing room or sitting
room) through which a succession of characters pass; the action
has to be carefully contrived so that most of the important events
 Don’t make it work too hard! 81

take place here. Inevitably, though, it proves impossible to make

everything happen before our eyes when the playwright has chosen
to use a form which imposes such limitations. This has an effect on
the dialogue, as it means that, unavoidably, a higher proportion of
the speeches report events that have happened offstage rather than
dealing with events as they happen: there will almost certainly be
more telling and less showing.
In the hands of a less than highly skilful playwright, this may
produce dialogue that is rather dull (though in other hands,
recounting events – telling a story, in effect – can be very funny
or arresting, particularly when the story is not to be taken at face
value); it also can place stress upon motivation for the dialogue.
After all, when something is happening at that moment it is simply
happening, but recounting something that has already happened
elsewhere demands a particular motivation – whoever is telling it
needs to have a convincing reason to pass it on; it must not sound
as if it exists primarily for the sake of the audience. Thus, there is
a relationship between the form chosen and the demands put upon
the dialogue: the freer the form, the easier it is to show rather than
tell; and the easier it is to show, the less likely it is that the dialogue
will be asked to work too hard.

The script in which nothing happens

The relationship between showing and telling only really applies, of
course, when there are events to show or tell in the first place. It is
remarkable, however, how many scripts are written – and received
by companies – in which virtually nothing seems to happen at all.
The dialogue is not made to do some of the work: it is made to do
almost all of the work. Yet in responding to characters in scripts
just as in real life, we learn most about them through what they do.
Words, as they say, are cheap. People may say all sorts of things, yet
do things which in fact fly in the face of their own words. Of course,
the words teach us something – perhaps that this person is weak,
or a hypocrite – but ultimately only because of the way in which
they form a contrast with the actions. Words alone are not enough.
Typically, the sort of script in which nothing happens begins with
characters outlining a situation (probably one with which the writer
82 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

is personally familiar). This may take up a scene or two, but then

what is the writer to do? The answer, in this sort of script, is to widen
the canvas. It is as though the writer were a painter, whose characters
describe a particular scenario in some detail so that the audience can
see it very clearly; but having finished that canvas, the scriptwriter is
then at a loss – all he or she can do is reach for a bigger frame and
have the characters describe that wider context too. And after that?
Widen it yet again, or perhaps have the characters take a magnifying
glass to the picture and tell us about the minutiae. The problem is
that this writer is using the wrong metaphor, thinking of drama as
a picture when it should be thought of as moving pictures. Things
must happen. In fact, every scene must move the action on. To fail
to observe this rule is to put intolerable strain upon the dialogue.
If nothing happens, and all we are left with is the dialogue (and, of
course, the visuals), then that dialogue has to be quite stunningly
poetic, or fascinating, or hilarious. It must be exceptional.
There are, in fact, examples of precisely that. In Alan Bennett’s
Talking Heads, all we are given is the talking heads of the title,
but the characterization and storytelling are so brilliant that we
need nothing more. In Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, there is
very little development; it is little more than a great big picture of
a village – but what a picture! The fact is, though, that few of us
have the abilities of an Alan Bennett or a Dylan Thomas, and to
write successful scripts in which almost nothing happens requires
nothing less. Mere mortals are far safer with other approaches.

Presenting the evidence

There is one further point to be made about dialogue and the
relationship between telling and showing. An audience is rather
like a jury. It is presented with a great deal of evidence about a
case and comes to conclusions based on that evidence. Of course,
some pieces of evidence may be missing – adding mystery – and
much of the evidence may be ambiguous, or even open to utterly
contradictory interpretations; the audience-jury must make do with
whatever is supplied. But, just as in court there are some sorts of
evidence which are not admissible – hearsay, in particular – so in
drama the audience will become frustrated if there is too much
 Don’t make it work too hard! 83

hearsay – too much telling – and ultimately will not trust this
evidence. We need to be shown things, not merely to be told about
them, if we are to believe them.
I will now give you an example from a radio script of my own.
Betrayers deals with attitudes of British – or more specifically English
– people towards foreigners, and how these attitudes are related to
our treatment of asylum-seekers. Beatrice, a Latin American, is
married to Mike, an Englishman. They seem to function well as a
couple, but we come to realize that their relationship is based upon
his patronizing of her and her acceptance of being patronized. This
all becomes clear when Beatrice’s brother, Esteban, arrives. Esteban
becomes furious at what his sister has come to accept as normal,
turning on both of them:

esteban But all it was, for you, was colonialization.

Colonialization!
mike Oh good God –
beatrice You’re not being –
esteban That’s all it was. That’s all it is! The kind Englishman
saves the poor defenceless girl from the ‘third world’ from
ever having to go back to that … that squalor. That’s how
you see it isn’t it? She becomes your little colony. And in
return all that you ask is that she must be grateful forever.
And you are, aren’t you Beatrice.

A little later he continues in similar vein:

esteban You have rescued this … this ‘exotic’ woman. That’s

what you have done. And you display her at your dinner
parties, and we are all meant to admire you for it, just like
Beatrice does. For your generosity.

The problem with the first draft of this play was that we were
almost entirely told about this patronizing; we were shown only
the tiniest glimpses of it. Almost all the evidence for its existence
lay in these speeches of Esteban. Here was dialogue certainly being
made to work too hard. The audience may well have become
impatient: why should they believe all this when they were not
shown it? They were only being given Esteban’s dialogue about it –
which is the courtroom equivalent of hearsay evidence.
84 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Of course, there may be times when we will want dialogue to

present hearsay precisely because it is unreliable. We want to use
the second-hand nature of this type of speech to introduce an
element of doubt. For example, we are not shown two characters
kissing, but rather one character tells another that he saw it
happen. Here the dialogue replaces the action for us, but we do
not know whether or not to believe the speaker. This can be very
effective. Indeed, we may have a number of different characters
telling us conflicting versions of events – we are never shown the
event itself – and we are left to try to sort out which, if any, is
telling the truth. However, this use of dialogue to tell, in a situation
where the truth of an event or interpretation is at issue, is quite
distinct from the use of dialogue to tell something which we simply
want the audience to accept as true: it is in this latter case that the
dialogue is being made to work too hard.
I conclude this chapter quoting from an exercise I set for
students on the Television Scriptwriting MA course at De Montfort
University. I asked them to write some terrible dialogue, which
we would then go on to transform, stage by stage, into something
more digestible – rather as in the earlier example of Cath and Alice.
One of the students, Laura Hirst, duly produced the following
quite appalling piece of writing:

Int. john and sandra smith’s house. Day.

john smith enters through the front door. sandra smith is in

the kitchen.
john Hi Sandra Smith.
sandra Hi John Smith, how are you?
john I’m fine, even though tomorrow we find out whether we
can have children or not, which is making me quite stressed.
sandra I don’t care if I can or can’t.
john Well you’re such a laidback, yet secretly emotional and
sensitive person Sandra so you would say that.
sandra Yes you are right, I am secretly worried about it but
I’m putting on a cold front just in case it is bad news.
john What time do we have to be there?
sandra 10 o’clock, though with me being secretly emotional
about it I may find some excuse to not be there. It isn’t
often that I face up to my problems.
 Don’t make it work too hard! 85

john Ok … I am angry with you, especially because you had

that abortion ten years ago when you got pregnant with my
brother’s child. We wouldn’t be in this situation.

This is bad to the point of being both absurd and funny, but, if
you can face it, you might like to try to pinpoint precisely why it
is so dreadful. Outside of the world of script exercises there are of
course few pieces of dialogue quite as consistently wince-inducing
as this, but an analysis of errors (using the examination of the Cath
and Alice dialogue as a starting point) may nevertheless help to
underscore some of the worst pitfalls to be avoided.
86
 5
Beyond the literal

Taking things at face value

We have already touched upon a variety of ways in which speech,
both in real life and in scripts, is often not literal. We do not always
use speech simply to say what we mean. In this chapter we focus
on the ways in which dialogue is frequently used either to obscure
or to completely distort meanings.
In poor dialogue, the audience is invited to take everything at
face value. For example, in the first version of the Cath and Alice
conversation in the previous chapter, what we hear is what we
get. The statements are bald, with virtually no ‘side’ or ‘subtext’;
information and feelings are communicated without us at any
point being invited to think that there might be subtle motivations,
unstated thoughts, or ambiguity of meaning. Yet in real life, we
hardly ever express ourselves in this way.

Subtle ambiguities
Good dialogue thrives on subtle ambiguities. Ambiguities invite the
audience in, to try to clarify what exactly is going on, what exactly
is meant, what exactly is felt. At the start of Caryl Churchill’s
haunting play Far Away, for example, the dialogue seems very
straightforward – certainly the language itself is uncomplicated
– and the meanings clear. They are anything but. The girl Joan
88 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

is telling Harper, her aunt, that she saw some strange things the
previous night. She had climbed out of her bedroom window
and watched events from up a tree. But every time Harper gives
a reasonable explanation of what Joan had seen, Joan appears
to accept it and then quietly reveals another piece of information
that shows Harper’s explanation so far to have been untrue. This
happens a number of times, with Harper’s final explanation being
that what Joan had actually seen was a party:

harper Just a little party.

joan Yes, because there wasn’t just that one person.
harper No, there’d be a few of his friends.
joan There was a lorry.
harper Yes, I expect there was.
joan When I put my ear against the side of the lorry I heard
crying inside.
harper How could you do that from up in the tree?
joan I got down from the tree. I went to the lorry after I
looked in the window of the shed.
harper There might be things that are not your business when
you’re a visitor in someone else’s house.
joan Yes, I’d rather not have seen. I’m sorry.
harper Nobody saw you?
joan They were thinking about themselves.
harper I think it’s lucky nobody saw you.
joan If it’s a party, why was there so much blood?
harper There isn’t any blood.
joan Yes.
harper Where?
joan On the ground.
harper In the dark? How would you see that in the dark?
joan I slipped in it. (She holds up her bare foot.)
I mostly wiped it off.
harper That’s where the dog got run over this afternoon.
joan Wouldn’t it have dried up?
harper Not if the ground was muddy.
joan What sort of dog?
harper A big dog, a big mongrel.
joan That’s awful, you must be very sad, had you had him
long?
 Beyond the literal 89

harper No, he was young, he ran out, he was never very

obedient, a lorry was backing up.
joan What was his name?
harper Flash.
joan What colour was he?
harper Black with a bit of white.
joan Why were the children in the shed?
harper What children?
joan Don’t you know what children?
harper How could you see there were children?
joan There was a light on. That’s how I could see the blood
inside the shed. I could see the faces and which ones had
blood on.

The writer could simply have had Joan declare to Harper what
she had seen, in one unbroken account. This way, though, we
learn about the events almost as Joan sees them, little by little,
trying to piece together what they mean. More importantly, this
way a major ambiguity emerges in the character of Joan. Is she
simply a naïve little girl, telling what she has seen, one thing at
a time, and asking for explanations? Or does she really know –
or at least somehow intuitively sense – what has been going on?
And if so, is the way in which she releases information in fact a
way of enticing Harper into committing herself to more and more
lies? Does Joan at some point believe that a dog was run over,
or even that there was a dog at all? Initially, as she asks about
the animal, it seems that she does believe the story, and even
sympathizes; but then, when she tells her aunt that she saw the
children’s faces with blood on them, it is clear that she knew all
along that there was no dog. Or is it clear? Perhaps, even as the
lies accumulate, she has still been trying as hard as she could to
believe everything she has been told. The ambiguity of meaning
draws us in.
Now let us examine a very different example, from Anthony
Minghella’s wonderful screenplay for the film The English Patient
(based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje). The scenes we will look
at take place during a pre-war Christmas party in North Africa:
we have already seen Almásy picking at a piece of cake, removing
the marzipan icing; Katharine is married to Clifton (also referred
to as Geoffrey).
90 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

But before reading the scenes, perhaps it would be useful

to think simply in terms of action. In essence, the scenes’ actions
are:

1 Katharine and Almásy make love in a storeroom in an

ambassadorial palace, while the party continues;
2 Katharine’s husband Clifton, having heard that Katharine is
not feeling well, is looking for her. He comes across Almásy
in a corridor;
3 Clifton finds Katharine in a side room, alone, and expresses
his concern for her.

So, these are the actions in the scenes. How might we script them?
This is Minghella’s realization:

Int. Storeroom. Ambassador’s residence. Day.

A small storeroom inside the Palace – brooms, mops,
cleaning equipment. Outside, the party is visible as opaque
shadows through the bevelled glass of the ornate window.
The sound of carols sung by the enlisted men gives way
to a version of ‘Silent Night’ on a solitary bagpipe. Inside,
almásy and katharine make love in the darkness. It’s
as if the world has stopped and there’s only their passion,
overwhelming reason and logic and rules.

Int. Corridors. Ambassador’s residence. Day.

A corridor. almásy appears and almost immediately collides
with the man dressed as Santa Claus.
clifton
Have you seen Katharine?
almásy
(taken aback)
What?
clifton
(pulling down his beard)
It’s Clifton under here.
almásy
Oh no, I haven’t, sorry.
 Beyond the literal 91

Int. Side room in Ambassador’s residence. Day.

geoffrey continues scouring the warren of tiny rooms that
run off the central courtyard. He finds katharine sitting
in one, smoking, surrounded by oppressive and elaborate
tiling. clifton wonders briefly how almásy had missed
katharine.
clifton
Darling, I just heard. You poor sausage. Are you all right?
katharine
I’m fine. I’m just hot.
clifton
Lady H said she thought you might be pregnant.
katharine
I’m not pregnant. I’m just hot. Too hot. Aren’t you?
clifton
I’m sweltering, actually.
(taking off his hat and beard)
Come on, I’ll take you home.
katharine
(close to tears)
Can’t we really go home? I can’t breathe. Aren’t you dying for
green, anything green, or rain. It’s Christmas and it’s all – oh,
I don’t know – if you asked me I’d go home tomorrow. If you
wanted.
clifton
Darling, you know we can’t go home, there might be a war.
katharine
(poking at his costume)
Oh, Geoffrey, you do so love a disguise.
clifton
I do so love you.
(he kisses her head)
What do you smell of?
katharine
(horrified)
What?
clifton
Marzipan! I think you’ve got marzipan in your hair! No
wonder you’re homesick.
92 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Here, the dialogue achieves much more than merely facilitating

a straightforward understanding of events. The extract begins
with a scene using no dialogue at all. What we see and hear –
given here by the stage directions – tells us all that we need to
know. We do not need either Almásy or Katharine to comment
on the circumstances in which they are making love, as we see
that they are squashed into a storeroom; neither of them has to
say that there is something squalid about this, but equally neither
of them has to comment on their desperation to do this, or on
their overwhelming passion. The stage directions tell us about
this, as readers, but as viewers we can see it in their actions. Nor
is any dialogue used to remind us of the dangers. We see the
party ‘as opaque shadows through the bevelled glass’: this is a
sufficient – and powerful – reminder of the danger of behaving
as they are, where they are. Then, added to this is the sound
of carols giving way to ‘Silent Night’ on a bagpipe. Here we
have the innocence of carols combined with colonialism and
tradition – the bagpipe – which in this context are associated
with conventional expectations in general and with Katharine’s
husband in particular. All the messages that we could want are
contained, then, in the action, the sounds, the visuals. We are
witnessing an outrageous and potentially scandalous act in an
ultra-conventional setting. Dialogue here would have reduced the
effectiveness of the scene.

Beyond dramatic irony

In the short scene in the corridor we certainly have dramatic
irony (this being when the audience is aware of relevant facts,
while one or more of the characters is crucially unaware of them):
we know what Almásy and Katharine have been doing, while
Clifton does not; and, of course, we know that Almásy does
know where Katharine is, despite his denial. Almásy is taken
aback by Clifton’s question partly because it comes from a Santa
Claus – this could be anyone asking him; it is almost as if the
question were coming from nowhere at all. But there is an added
ambiguity. The exact wording of Clifton’s line, ‘Have you seen
Katharine?’ means, for Clifton, ‘Do you know where Katharine
 Beyond the literal 93

is?’, but his actual words must immediately remind Almásy that
he has seen Katharine – much more fully than Clifton means –
just a few seconds previously. So here we have dialogue that is
not ambiguous in its intended meaning but which is received
ambiguously by both the other character (Almásy) and by the
audience.
In the following scene, Clifton finds Katharine and we are told
in the stage directions that he ‘wonders briefly how almásy had
missed katharine’. Of course, this stage direction is available only
to readers; as audience we catch this momentary wondering on his
face. Nothing is put into words. The audience is made to do a little
work (‘What is he thinking? Does he suspect anything?’), which
involves them far more than any dialogue would. Then when he
speaks, that very first word ‘Darling’ rams home both to Katharine
and to us the nature of the situation, though Clifton would be
entirely unaware of the poignancy of that word for Katharine (and
for us) at that moment. The lack of dialogue in the love-making
scene is now contrasted with Clifton’s slightly bumbling verbal
ineptitude. ‘You poor sausage’ carries with it just that innocent,
non-sensual, dated, upper-middle-class conventionality which
immediately emphasizes the huge gulf in personality between this
man and Almásy.
The subtle ambiguities continue. Katharine emphasizes that she
is hot rather than ill; we know that her being flushed at this point
is not merely a result of the weather. Clifton then comments, ‘Lady
H said she thought you might be pregnant.’ This too carries various
meanings and associations. There is the literal one – Lady H’s
opinion – and then there is Clifton’s unstated hope that Lady H
might be right; Katharine, meanwhile, has the again unstated,
fervent wish that she is not pregnant by Clifton, and is also
instantly reminded (as are we) that she may indeed be pregnant –
though as a direct result of the immediately preceding events. The
great skill here is in giving Clifton lines which are entirely credible,
absolutely in accordance with his character and the situation, at
the same time as throwing up all these nuances of meaning and
association for the other character and for the audience.
When Clifton suggests taking Katharine home – meaning their
house locally – she immediately re-interprets this as home –
England; ‘close to tears’ she implores him to take her there, saying
how desperately homesick she is. Clifton, of course, is meant to
94 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

take this at face value. Katharine may not be entirely conscious

of her own motivation: this, after all, is the same woman who has
been in the passionate embrace of her lover just a few moments
earlier. So what are we, the audience, to make of her speech? True,
she may well be missing England, and she may wish she could be
whisked back there – but surely not because she misses England,
but rather in order to escape the position she now finds herself in.
It is precisely because she wants Almásy so much that she feels this
sudden desperate need to be as far from temptation as possible, as
far as possible from the dilemma, the betrayal, from her own desire
and what it might lead to. Yet none of this is directly expressed in
words: the audience has to work to piece together the full meaning,
since the dialogue is operating at a level beyond the literal.

Never clearly stating the issues

This is the high point of non-literal meaning in the scene, but there
are further examples in the remaining few lines. Clifton prosaically
remarks that they cannot return home, as war might be declared
very soon; Katherine pokes at his Santa Claus costume, with ‘Oh
Geoffrey, you do so love a disguise.’ Certainly Clifton is wearing
a disguise, but Katharine seems to be saying that Clifton really
does not want to go back to England anyway, and the reason he
gives is only a convenient excuse. The line may mean more than
this, too. Does Clifton suspect something between Katharine and
Almásy? Does he suspect something, yet not want to see it? (And
does Katharine realize this?) Does he fail to respond positively
to her suggestion that they should go back to England because
this might force him to acknowledge the real reason for it? These
questions are never fully resolved – and are never clearly stated
in the dialogue – yet the ambiguity of this scene and a number of
others certainly raises the questions in the mind of the audience,
questions which linger long after the film has ended.
Of course, it is Katharine who is really wearing a disguise – that
of the faithful wife, a meaning which Clifton seems to unwittingly
underline: ‘… you do so love a disguise.’ ‘I do so love you.’ In
loving her, he is loving a disguise. The fact that neither character
may be conscious of this last meaning in ‘I do so love you’ does
 Beyond the literal 95

not diminish the fact that the dialogue carries the meaning anyway,
almost despite the characters. Here, then, we have a non-literal
meaning that seems to be communicated direct from scriptwriter
to audience without the awareness of either of the characters, yet
at the same time expressed through their lines, which are entirely
convincing and do not for a moment seem forced.
This ‘non-stating’ in the dialogue is not just a matter of
cleverness; nor, in this particular context, does it merely involve the
audience further by making us work; nor is it simply a matter of
reflecting more accurately how people relate to each other. Rather,
the ambiguity hugely increases the tension in what is already a
tremendously tense situation. For the characters – and for us – to
finally know something, without any doubts, releases the tension.
In art as in life, knowing the truth, however terrible, gnaws less at
the soul than being in constant doubt. And a script that genuinely
gnaws at the soul is a strong script, gripping the attention of the
audience. In a script aimed at maintaining tension, elements of doubt
– of ambiguity – can be extremely valuable. The dialogue must not
attempt to clarify characters’ motivations and knowledge but rather
to hint at them. We must be left to try to fathom out the rest.
The scene ends with more straightforward dramatic irony.
Clifton kisses Katharine’s head and asks what she smells of. She
is horrified, and so (identifying with Katharine) are we: he might
guess that it is Almásy she actually smells of. But then he realizes
what it is: ‘Marzipan! I think you’ve got marzipan in your hair!
No wonder you’re homesick.’ Katharine is relieved – it is not the
smell of Almásy after all – but it is only the audience who fully
understand: ironically the marzipan, which Clifton associates with
the very English Christmas cake, is in fact the smell of Almásy; we
have seen him picking marzipan off a piece of cake and it is this
which has found its way into Katharine’s hair (probably without
her being conscious of it). Once again, the dialogue is made to
carry ambiguities of which the characters are only partly aware.
In this example from The English Patient, then, we have a
multitude of non-literal meanings in the dialogue. Some of the
lines are clearly intending to deceive, while others are much more
ambiguous, carrying a number of valid meanings simultaneously
and at times allowing characters to deceive even themselves. The
dialogue is never made to work too hard (in the case of the first
scene quoted, it is not made to work at all!) and yet accomplishes
96 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

a great deal. It is concise without ever seeming abrupt. Not a word

is wasted, yet it entirely avoids any impression of artificiality. This
is naturalism, yet pared to the bone; and the more spare it is, the
more meanings it seems to carry.

Dialogue of self-delusion
Dialogue where a character is self-deceiving can be particularly
effective, and this is frequently seen in comedy (although it can be
tremendously powerful in other genres too, as demonstrated by Willy
Loman in Death of a Salesman). Whether it is David Brent in The
Office allowing himself to believe that he is a managerial genius or
Jeremy in Peep Show convincing himself that he really does have the
skills to be a life coach, in their speeches it is not so much the need
to decode subtle subtext that holds us, but rather it is the humour of
the distance between what they genuinely believe about themselves
and what is so patently obvious to us. It is all about the gap.
An excellent example of this occurs in American Hustle. At one
point con-artist Irving’s wife Rosalyn has made a colossal mistake
in telling her boyfriend Pete, a leading mafia figure, that Irving’s
colleague is in fact with the IRS. This almost gets Irving killed.
But when faced with her mistake she simply deludes herself, telling
Irving: ‘I knew it. I have always said, Irving, that you are very,
very hard to motivate. And I knew that Pete was going to go over
there and knock some sense into your head. I’ve been reading this
book, Irving. It’s by Wayne Dyer, about the power of intention.’
The degree of self-delusion is too great for Irving to even attempt
to challenge. But then Rosalyn is a mistress of self-delusion. At
another point in the film Irving gives her a microwave oven, and
tells her not to put metal in it. She puts metal in it. It explodes.
This time – when the fire has been put out – she tells Irving that
she has read somewhere that microwaves take all of the nutrition
out of the food. She goes on, ‘Bring something into our house that’s
going to take all the nutrition out of our food and then light our
house on fire? Thank God for me.’ After all, she can’t have been
wrong. In the world she creates for herself, the fire is the fault of
the microwave. Rosalyn too is a con-artist, but an unwitting one,
and the person she is conning most is herself.
 Beyond the literal 97

There is something similar in Blue Jasmine, though without the

comic effect. Former socialite Jasmine tries to persuade the world
of the truth of a fantasy about herself, and tries to persuade herself
of the truth of it too, though with less success. ‘I’m a new person,’
she says at one point. The film ends with her sitting on a park
bench, penniless and friendless, talking not so much to herself as to
an imaginary companion. She can hardly distinguish reality from
fantasy. But along the way – although she is a very selfish, insen-
sitive woman – she has somehow elicited our sympathy, because
what she says creates so much trouble for herself. Having lost all
her money and been forced to live with her working-class sister,
she refuses to change her manners or language, continually calling
for a Martini with a twist of lemon and using words like ‘misap-
prehension’ and ‘aptitude’ to try to press home that she is still
different from the people she now has to spend time with. They
do not react well to her airs. More importantly, she fantasizes
to Dwight, the rich diplomat who comes close to marrying her.
She invents a story about how she was named, says her previous
husband had been a surgeon (he was a crooked businessman),
says he died of a heart attack (he hung himself in prison), says she
has no children (she has a son) and describes herself as an interior
designer (she has no job). What all of these lies create, through the
dramatic irony of us knowing the truth but Dwight not knowing,
is tension. We know it must all come out at some point; we know
how it has to end. So we are silently imploring Jasmine to stop –
almost as much for our sake as for hers, to relieve the tension. But
that tension holds us.

Halls of mirrors of meanings

While much of our conversation has elements of ambiguity,
sometimes it is more straightforwardly duplicitous. Mere lies,
though, are of little interest in themselves. Far more arresting is the
lie told with wit, the lie which at the same time in some ways may
tell the truth. With this in mind, let us examine an extract from
what is a quite different type of text – Oscar Wilde’s late Victorian
comic classic, The Importance of Being Earnest. The tone of witty
untruths is established at the very start of the play:
98 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Morning-room in algernon’s flat in Half-Moon Street. The

room is luxuriously and artistically furnished. The sound of a
piano is heard in the adjoining room.
(lane is arranging afternoon tea on the table and, after the
music has ceased, algernon enters.)

algernon Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?

lane I didn’t think it polite to listen, sir.

Here we have moved immediately into the non-literal. Lane’s line is

both true and not true. In one sense Lane could not fail to listen: we,
the audience, could hear the piano being played, so he must have too.
But then that is hearing as opposed to listening. Perhaps Lane did
not actively listen. So his hearing/listening statement is both true and
untrue. What of the reason he gives, that he felt it would have been
impolite to listen? This is surely absurd, as playing the piano is hardly
private, so it must follow that what he says is untrue. At the same
time, however, the line is only an exaggerated version of what was
expected of servants in those times: perhaps he did tell himself that
he ought not to listen, just as he would have refrained from listening
to a private conversation. But it is more ambiguous even than this:
Algernon’s playing, as he goes on to admit, is not accurate (‘anyone
can play accurately – but I play with wonderful expression’), so Lane
is pretending that he did not listen to it in order to avoid having to
make a comment about it. And this pretence is absolutely in line with
what is expected of a servant – that a servant should not eavesdrop
on what is private – and thus places him beyond reproach. But is the
pretence expected to be believed, and does Algernon in fact believe
it? Here is further ambiguity. Probably the pretence is not expected
to be believed and is not believed, but allows Algernon himself to
comment on his own lack of pianistic accuracy – a much more
acceptable procedure for him than having the servant comment on
it. Yet the conversation continues as if the pretence is believed, as
only then may the dignity of each be maintained. The two characters,
then, willingly enter into this little charade.
The dialogue in this tiny extract is certainly self-consciously
clever in a manner that is entirely absent from The English Patient,
yet both dialogues share a richness of ambiguity. Of course, the
audience, on hearing these lines, does not set about an analysis
– any more than the playwright is likely to have done – but the
 Beyond the literal 99

richness of the ambiguities, and in this case their comic effects, are
felt none the less strongly for that.
Wilde litters his dialogue with the unexpected. Surprises make
us laugh:

jack My brother.
miss prism More shameful debts and extravagance?
chasuble Still leading his life of pleasure?
jack (shaking his head) Dead!
chasuble Your brother Ernest dead?
jack Quite dead.
miss prism What a lesson for him! I trust he will profit by it.

Certainly, Miss Prism’s final comment is funny partly because

it is so unexpected: it has an element of the absurd. Yet at the
same time it is only an extension of her general attitude of severe
disapproval of self-indulgence and the belief that we should all
learn and profit from our experiences. It is as if her wish for Ernest
to be punished for his wrong-doings, and for him to become a more
moral character as a result, blinds her to the little inconvenience
that he has actually died. Here once again we are in the world of
the non-literal: she means her words to be taken literally, but we
can’t accept them in that way!
Let us look at a more extended example in similar vein:

lady bracknell (pencil and note-book in hand) I feel bound

to tell you that you are not down on my list of eligible
young men, although I have the same list as the dear
Duchess of Bolton has. We work together, in fact. However,
I am quite ready to enter your name, should your answers be
what a really affectionate mother requires. Do you smoke?
jack Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
lady bracknell I am glad to hear it. A man should always
have an occupation of some kind. There are too many idle
men in London as it is. How old are you?
jack Twenty-nine.
lady bracknell A very good age to be married at. I have
always been of the opinion that a man who desires to get
married should know everything or nothing. Which do you
know?
100 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

jack (after some hesitation) I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.

lady bracknell I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of
anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is
like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound.
Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no
effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger
to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in
Grosvenor Square.

Here we have dialogue which deliciously mixes the true with the
absurd. Again, there is much of the unexpected, a number of
statements being florid embellishments of precisely the opposite
of what one might reasonably anticipate. Lady Bracknell lauds
ignorance rather than education and praises smoking as though it
were a serious occupation. Yet merely to have a character present
the reverse of that which is normally expressed would be tedious:
what makes this scene arresting – and amusing – is that these
statements do have their roots in real life, real experience. They are
a mixture of gross exaggeration and truths which are expressed
with a shocking honesty.
Lady Bracknell’s first speech in this extract may be a parody of
upper-class attitudes of the time, but we can almost believe that
she would work together with some other dowager. Her use of
the word ‘affectionate’ is particularly choice, since it contains an
element of ambiguity. Surely no truly affectionate mother would
be so calculating, but on the other hand, perhaps this is how such
people genuinely show affection. (We will recognize this ambiguity
– and be all the more amused by it – if, as is invariably the case with
this play, the part is played straight. In this way, the actress implies
that there is no question but that Lady Bracknell believes every
word she says, so leaving the audience to do much of the work.)
The lines about smoking, too, seem absurd, but at the same time
amuse us because they remind us of how pointless, unchallenging
and trifling the lives of many of the upper classes are.
The final paragraph of this extract is a little more complex. Lady
Bracknell’s opinions may at first appear ridiculous, though they are
based on an attitude that does exist. But when she goes on to say
that fortunately in England, education is completely ineffectual,
she is making a point which is much closer to reality (though the
 Beyond the literal 101

attitude – the ‘fortunately’ – is what is different) – since she is surely

absolutely right that if education really were effective it would,
or at least ought to, ‘prove a serious danger to the upper classes’.
Here, then, is dialogue which mixes wildly exaggerated attitudes
with truths that are approached from an unorthodox direction. It
is this mix which keeps us on our toes, by playing with our expec-
tations. The Importance of Being Earnest, like the previous, quite
different example, thus succeeds in using dialogue to reflect the
complexities of character and relationships, rather than producing
simplifications of them.

Consistency of style
It might be objected that this type of dialogue is artificial. Of course
it is artificial. It is not intended to be anything else – though to be
most effective it should be delivered as though it were the most
normal mode of speech in the world. Wilde is not pretending that
this is how people really speak to each other, but nevertheless his
dialogue does bear some relation to the effete upper-class speech
of the period. The writer is indulging his love of word-play at the
same time as parodying the style of speech, as well as the attitudes,
of this class of people. But we don’t listen to it as though we were
listening to the dialogue of The English Patient, or indeed any
number of other scripts which deal in heightened naturalism – if
we do, we will soon become very irritated. We listen to it for what
it is, with its own limitations but with its own delights.
This leads us on to a major consideration for the writer of
dialogue: consistency of style. Any script represents a certain world,
in which certain sorts of things happen. These worlds vary from
writer to writer, and in many cases from script to script within the
output of each writer. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example,
inhabits a magical, innocent world, where there may be misunder-
standings but there is little real malice. Othello, on the other hand,
inhabits a world of worldly cynicism and deceit, where no fairies
may be expected to come to the aid of anyone. Indeed, if fairies
were suddenly to appear to Othello and make clear to him the evil
of Iago and the error of his ways, we would find it totally uncon-
vincing: the world that has been established here has no room for
102 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

fairies. Similarly, in a number of Dennis Potter’s television series,

the characters, otherwise quite naturalistically portrayed, suddenly
burst into mimed song-and-dance routines. This works splendidly,
as it is consistently applied; but if just one such routine were to be
dropped into, say, a gritty television play by Trevor Griffiths, we
simply would not accept it.
So, consistency of action is required. Consistency is also required
of dialogue. As we have already seen, dialogue is not simply
realistic or unrealistic, like real life or unlike real life; rather, any
script is written in a particular style, a particular blend, and that
blend has to be consistent within that particular script.

Dialogue as a world view

A style of dialogue represents, in effect, a world view. To shift from
one style to another within the same piece can be not only disorien-
tating; it can lead the audience to feel that the writer has lost faith
in that world view. The audience itself then loses faith in the writer,
the characters and the whole production. There has to be an overall
consistency of tone in the dialogue. That does not mean, of course,
that there cannot be light and shade – the four weddings needed
the funeral as well – but there must be an overall tone: hardly ever
can a script be all things to everyone.
A consistency of tone in dialogue has less to do with lightness
or seriousness than it has to do with the position of the script in
relation to naturalism. After all, there are many serious scripts
which are also funny, and many essentially comic pieces which
have their serious moments; very often these contrasts enhance
the effectiveness of the rest of the script. But if a script is written
with the dialogue at a certain distance from naturalism, or as
presenting itself as simply naturalistic, then a departure from
this tone will be difficult to carry off. In a Dario Fo political
farce, for example, we know that the dialogue is funny and
biting; it is satirical in tone. A section of straight, naturalistic
dialogue inserted into it, however well it might accord with the
meaning of the play (the section might be about some aspect of
corruption, say), would nevertheless feel inappropriate. Not only
would we probably not be able to accept it, but it might also mar
 Beyond the literal 103

our enjoyment of the rest of the production as well. The tone of

dialogue in a script is something a writer may well not decide
upon before starting to write, but it will soon emerge as the script
takes shape, and as it does so it must be recognized and respected.
Taking liberties with the tone of dialogue within a script is a
dangerous business.
Consistent distance from naturalism is particularly important in
writing comedy. Comedy is generally to some degree non-naturalistic
– mainly through the simple use of exaggeration of charac-
terization, incident and dialogue – but the precise distance from
naturalism has to be established by the writer. In the television
series W1A satirizing the BBC, all these elements are a considerable
distance from naturalism: for example with Siobhan seriously
suggesting a rebranding of the BBC, losing the letters B, B and C.
The dialogue plays wonderfully with speech patterns, moving well
beyond naturalism in the extremes of vacuous pretentiousness of
Siobhan or the utter inanity of Will. ‘Okay, here’s the thing, here’s
the thing, this is what it is – ’ Siobhan will often say, as a preamble
to clearly not knowing what the thing is at all, while Will is mostly
limited to ‘Oh, yeah, hi, yeah, hi,’ with the occasional ‘cool’
thrown in. All the central characters have their catchphrases, from
Ian Fletcher’s ‘That’s all good then’ when it very clearly isn’t, to
Tracey Pritchard’s ‘I’m not being funny, but …’ when of course she
always is being funny. The writer has not distributed fill-in phrases
at random; each of these recurring lines expresses something about
the character. Some might think the catchphrases are taken a little
too far; certainly they are taken beyond naturalism.
Let us complete this chapter by looking at an extract from the
celebrated film Pulp Fiction (writers, Quentin Tarantino and Roger
Avary). In this script the writers’ control of tone is wonderful,
though it is that very control of tone which mixes the hilarious
with the horrific that is particularly shocking; it seems to imply
an almost complete lack of moral framework. It is not so much
the violence that shocks as the attitudes towards it, or – if such
a concept can exist – the lack of attitudes towards it. We will
see something comparable but rather different when we turn to
Goodfellas (actually a highly moral film). Pulp Fiction also makes
tremendously effective use of time. It is almost commonplace now
for a film to start at a certain point in the action, jump backwards,
catch up with itself and then move on to the end; Pulp Fiction,
104 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

though, manages to finish in the middle, in terms of time, while

at least one of the main characters – whom we have already seen
killed – is still very much alive. In a variety of ways, then, the
script is innovative. This applies to Tarantino’s dialogue just as
much as to every other element of his film-making. From his youth,
Tarantino soaked himself in film, and certainly there are clear influ-
ences in his work of earlier gangster movies, but never before had
there been dialogue quite like that which he and Avary create in
Pulp Fiction. In the following extract Vincent and Jules are chatting
away, driving down the streets of Hollywood:

vincent
… But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
jules
What?
vincent
It’s the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over
there that we got here, but it’s just, there it’s a little different.
jules
Example?
vincent
Well, you can walk into a movie theatre and buy a beer. And
I don’t mean just, like, in no paper cup. I’m talking about a
glass of beer. And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s.
And, you know what they call a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese
in Paris?
jules
They don’t call it a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese?
vincent
No, man, they got the metric system there, they wouldn’t
know what the fuck a Quarter-Pounder is.
jules
What’d they call it?
vincent
They call it a Royale with Cheese.
jules
(repeating)
Royale with Cheese.
vincent
Yeah, that’s right.
 Beyond the literal 105

jules
What’d they call a Big Mac?
vincent
Well, Big Mac’s a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac.
jules
Le Big Mac. What do they call a Whopper?
vincent
I dunno, I didn’t go into a Burger King. But you know what
they put on French fries in Holland instead of ketchup?
jules
What?
vincent
Mayonnaise.
jules
Goddam!
vincent
I seen ’em do it, man. They fuckin’ drown ’em in that shit.
jules
Yuck!

This, of course, is all pretty daft. Despite the casual expletives

it is also quite charming and amusing. But its full significance
only becomes apparent as the sequence continues. The dialogue
immediately following this, as they get out of the car and walk
towards an apartment building, is conducted in the same relaxed,
almost throwaway manner, such that we have to do a double-take
to realize that they are in fact agreeing that for this sort of job, with
three or four men upstairs, they really ought to have been issued with
shotguns. As they make their way through the courtyard and then on
up through the apartment building, the chat reverts to lighter matters
again – how their boss met his girlfriend, what she does for a living
and what the boss does to people he suspects might be getting too
close to her. They finally reach their destination, but, realizing that
they are a few minutes early, they stand outside the door continuing
their chit-chat – which they are actually taking quite seriously; this
conversation is of real interest to them, and whatever they are about
to do occupies their minds very little. But while waiting in the corridor
they do lower their voices a little, almost as if they were in some sort
of waiting room and are not wanting to disturb anyone. Finally they
enter the room, and soon they have shot all the men in there.
106 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The extract quoted above, then, takes on a completely new

meaning in retrospect. What at first appears to be merely the idle
chatter of two engaging young men has to be completely reassessed
– these men are talking in this manner while they are on their way
to perform an execution. Even during the one interlude where they
actually address the matter in hand – the adequacy or otherwise of
their firearms for the job – there is no real tension in the dialogue,
merely a little mild irritation with their superiors, just as any office
worker might express a mild annoyance about the inefficiency of
some other administrators. Right up to the very point of entering
the room the dialogue continues in the same vein.
This is dialogue that is about what it appears to be about –
trivia, though taken fairly seriously – for the characters speaking,
but is about much more for the audience. It tells us a great deal
about Jules and Vincent: their attitude towards their work and
their priorities. Vincent registers shock – ‘Goddam … Yuck’ – at
the idea of mayonnaise on French fries, but clearly feels no such
strong emotions at the prospect of gunning a few people down.
The dialogue is a great deal more effective in displaying how
these characters tick than any speeches which directly address the
subject.
During the scene of the shootings in the apartment rooms, the
dialogue returns for a while – almost surrealistically – to the subject
of burgers and their French names, but what had been an innocent
passing of the time of day now becomes a subject of something
like interrogation for the occupants. It is like a nightmare based
upon reality (reality was the previous treatment of this topic; now
we have the nightmare); the dialogue here is a frightening display
of Jules’s arbitrary wielding of power. He treats this utterly irrel-
evant subject as one which is as good as any other to humiliate
his victims. Now, dialogue which earlier had seemed pointless but
amusing takes on a completely different and terrifying complexion
in this reworking.
So what might we gain from all this? First we learn the
tremendous power of dialogue that is about something quite
other than the subject which ought to be uppermost in the minds
of the characters (in a very different context, Pinter also uses this
technique to great effect). The dialogue displays state of mind and
attitude, however unwittingly on the part of the characters. Second,
we learn the effectiveness of returning to previous subjects – no
 Beyond the literal 107

matter how irrelevant they may seem – and reworking them in

a new context (which, by coincidence or not, is also a favourite
technique of Pinter’s). In musical terms this is rather like taking a
melody and transforming it into another, quite different melody, as
composers from Bach to Richard Strauss to Andrew Lloyd Webber
have done. There is always something strangely arresting about
returning to a melody but finding that it has been turned into some
completely new entity; at an unconscious level it is as if we were
being shown what any one thing in life may lead to, what it may
be transformed into. The experience may be frightening or not; it
is certainly engaging. It is not easy to make this work in dialogue,
but it is possible.
One word of caution: this dialogue style has many imitators,
and there are others who, if not exactly imitators, have anyway
been working along similar lines. In Amateur, for example, Hal
Hartley presents us with a number of scenes in which the dialogue
acts very much as it does in Pulp Fiction; at one point we are with
two hit men who have just committed a murder. One is hungry and
says he’s going to get a couple of take aways. The other tells him
to remember to get a receipt. This request to get a receipt could
certainly be a line from Pulp Fiction: they may be hit men but
they are also workers; they are doing their job and the take away
is a legitimate expense, so they should remember the receipt. But
in the context of the murder they have just committed this line is
shocking, displaying as in Pulp Fiction the attitudes and priorities
of the characters. Amateur was certainly not in any way a copy of
Pulp Fiction (the two were released in the same year), but it could
be in danger of seeming so. There is peril for us scriptwriters in
writing a style of dialogue which is too clearly identified with a
particular writer; the work of Tarantino is extremely distinctive, so
poor imitations are usually easy to spot. Rather than imitate, we
should try to learn the lessons and then apply them in our own,
personal way.
108
 6
Heightened naturalism

The convention established by the script

We have already examined naturalism in dialogue, and in Chapter 5
noted the need for consistency of style. Now we move on to look
at some of the ways in which naturalism may be heightened,
and combine this with a closer look at consistency of style in the
context of that heightened naturalism.
So, what is heightened naturalism? There are some styles of
dialogue which are very obviously not naturalistic. Often, indeed,
they draw attention to this. Just to limit ourselves to the theatre
for the moment, the list would include writers as varied as Brecht,
Beckett, Pinter, Dylan Thomas, Edward Bond, Tony Harrison and
Derek Walcott, while from a much earlier period we might call up
such names as Shakespeare, Jonson or Webster. These are all writers
from whom we can learn: they each create highly stylized dialogue,
which we will examine in a later chapter. But in this chapter we are
looking at a different style of writing, used by writers such as George
Bernard Shaw, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Tom Stoppard,
David Hare, Athol Fugard, Caryl Churchill, David Mamet, Sam
Shepard and April de Angelis. These are writers who have inherited
the essentially naturalistic mantle of Chekhov and Ibsen, but have
not always been content to leave dialogue as being closely imitative
of speech in ‘real life’: they have taken it beyond naturalism.
However, unlike those others named above, they do not positively
draw attention to their artifice. Their writing is in a style I shall call
heightened naturalism, and we can learn from them, too. Of course,
110 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

the distinction between these two types of writers is itself an artificial

one, and many scriptwriters do not sit happily in either category. Let
us take two speeches from Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London,
for example. Peter turns up unexpectedly at his teacher’s house. He
tells her, ‘Nah you can’t be a pedophile cos you’re a woman and the
hood’s not cos I want to cut you it’s cos it’s raining, come on miss it’s
fucking biblical out here pardon my mouth used to talk didn’t we?
I liked it when we talked but you only came into school two days a
week and not even that now.’ A little later he confides, ‘My problem
is I don’t have any friends. Atomisation. It’s very common in society
today. Increasingly people use internet dating to make a connection
and find companionship but I’m only fourteen so I prefer porn. I am
allowed whisky actually. It is legal. In the home. If you’re fourteen.
So.’ The second speech in particular is not quite naturalistic, and
seems even less so in the light of the language – and the thoughts
behind the language – of the first speech. We don’t then expect this
boy to use a word like ‘atomisation’ or to start a sentenced with the
word ‘Increasingly’. Even if he is trying to display his learning it is
still not credible if we thinking purely naturalistically. The effect is
mildly comic partly as a result of it being unexpected; it shows the
boy’s intelligence and understanding of his own position through a
heightening of the dialogue.
Many writers have moved back and forth across the line of
non-naturalism through their careers. Stoppard at times seems
firmly in the naturalistic camp, in The Real Thing for example,
while at others he is a clear inheritor of the tradition of Beckett
(Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bear an obvious family
resemblance to Beckett’s Estragon and Vladimir in Waiting for
Godot); a great deal of Pinter’s early work falls clearly into the
non-naturalistic category, while much of his later work is closer to
heightened naturalism. In some of her scripts, such as Blue Heart,
Caryl Churchill is extravagantly non-naturalistic, while a play such
as Serious Money inhabits the world of heightened naturalism.
Yet, however many writers straddle the categories, I do think the
general division is useful for scriptwriters to bear in mind. On
the one hand there are the scripts which invite the audience to
recognize the hand of the writer, the art of the production; while on
the other hand there are the scripts in which the hand of the writer
is kept fairly consistently concealed, but in which the naturalism of
dialogue is in some way heightened.
 Heightened naturalism 111

As scriptwriters we have a choice. We do not simply write

whatever dialogue comes to mind: we can choose the style in
which that dialogue is to be written. For the dialogue to work
well, that choice needs to be an informed and conscious one.
What is important is not, ultimately, whether the dialogue in a
script is written naturalistically or not, but rather that it should
be convincing: this means that within the convention of dialogue
that the script has itself established, it must feel natural. The
intoxicating dialogue of David Mamet’s magnificent Glengarry
Glen Ross, for example, can really be found nowhere else, but we
accept it not so much because we think it is real as because it is
consistent. Here we have a writer who imitates every tiny nuance
of speech – every ungrammatical sentence, every false start, inter-
ruption, repetition – and then heightens this naturalism to a point
of almost ghastly poetry. But it is at one with itself, so we accept it.
Yet consistency of style in itself allows a writer to produce some
inconsistency of style! A Tom Stoppard or an Arthur Miller, a
Trevor Griffiths or an Alan Bleasdale – they all appear to present
naturalistic dialogue, yet in fact each of them presents his own
particular brand of dialogue. (Their styles may overlap, yet we
would surely immediately distinguish, say, a page of Stoppard from
a page of Bleasdale.) Each writer gains our trust by their consistency
of style, and is then in a position gently to move us a little closer
to poetry, and to take us with them. For example, near the end of
Griffiths’ Comedians, Price – one of the trainee comics – turns his
ire fully on Waters, his supposed teacher. But the speech is not just
an outpouring of anger or bitterness, nor merely an accusation
that Waters has sold out: it is also a sort of impassioned poetry.
And we accept it; it is only pushing a little further the style that
Griffiths has already taught us to accept. Or in the Requiem at the
end of Miller’s Death of a Salesman we can witness Charley, that
most prosaic of onlookers, speaking words of rare beauty. In part,
as in the previous example, we can accept this given the strength
of feeling on the occasion (as pointed out in Chapter 1, strength of
feeling often leads to highly rhythmic and sometimes poetic use of
language in normal life), but it is not just this: we accept it as an
extension of the language already present in the script.
The dialogue of the film There Will Be Blood (writer, Paul
Thomas Anderson, based on Oil! by Upton Sinclair) is a wonderful
example of heightened naturalism. Daniel’s speeches are for
112 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

the most part transactional, as even when dealing directly with

emotions he is still making deals. Making deals is all that he can
do. And yet despite that, and despite his fractious relationship
with religion and the church – he eventually forces the preacher
Eli to declare that he is a false prophet and that there is no God
– there is an element of the preacher in Daniel’s own language.
There are the repeated phrases, the emphases; when persuading
a village to accept his proposal he does not only warn the people
that ‘the crooks and gamblers are near’ but also that ‘the wolf is
scratching at the door.’ At the end of the film he tells Eli, ‘If you
have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and I have a straw and
my straw reaches ACCCRROSSSSSSS the room starts to drink
your milkshake. I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE. I DRINK IT UP.’
This is not merely a way of talking about how he has accessed the
oil under another man’s land; it is also a way of Daniel telling Eli
how he is consuming him; as he kills him he tells him ‘I told you I
would eat you up!’ The character of Daniel is larger than life; his
speeches, too, are beyond mere naturalism.
In Terry Johnson’s play Hitchcock Blonde Hitchcock interviews
a blonde actress (unidentified). He offers her dessert, and states that
he will not require sexual services of her, and she thanks him, but
still the topic hangs in the air.

hitch By articulating the subject I have rendered you

uncertain. You do not know if you are discussing this or
if we are merely discussing it. I offer dessert and you fear
acceptance may be construed as surrender when, in fact,
acceptance will involve only baked custard and a spoon.
blonde And my mouth.
hitch Presumably.
blonde Or your lap.
hitch Indeed.
blonde I would like to be your next leading lady. I would
like to be ‘And Introducing As …’ I am sitting here knowing
that what I say in the next ten seconds, what I do in the
next half hour, may transform my life into a dreamed-of
place where I’m recognized endlessly while endlessly
shopping, and the blessed respite of the blue of a pool
and a calling for cocktails and the sort of pleasure that
simply … sustains. Or I could go home again tonight and,
 Heightened naturalism 113

well, I don’t know. I could be beaten half to death. Or I

could kill the man who beats me. Or I could run away and
find compassion in some trailer park with a man who sees
in me all the things that he cannot have and we will learn
the depths of despising one another. And he will die of
stomach cancer and I will grow fat drinking beer. Or. You
could tell me I have a quality you can’t quite explain and
that no other could replicate and I am the one who must
be gazed upon for you to tell your story. The eyes of the
voyage, her eyes, must be my eyes. And I must be looked at
and followed and murdered most probably but there will
be a heaven on the opening night and I will ascend. And
you expect me to know if I should eat a baked custard. You
expect me to know if I would kneel or leave. How could I
possibly know until you asked? Because, how would I know
if there was anything between us akin to trust, or good
faith. You put me, sir, in an impossible position.
hitch When I was a small boy I would occasionally eat a
baked custard in the following manner.
He puts his mouth over the entire custard and sucks. The
custard disappears.
(his mouth full) Delicious.

Is this speech from the blonde what she really might say in an
interview? Would she even speak at this length at this point? The
answer to both is, almost certainly not. What we are hearing is
not what she would say to Hitchcock; rather it is an expression
of her hopes, fears and doubts at that moment, but presented as
dialogue. And Hitchcock is allowed to hear it, since he already
knows what her hopes, fears and doubts are. The speech does not
necessarily represent her conscious thoughts either; hopes, fears
and doubts may be represented in dialogue of this sort even if they
are not conscious. It is more an expression of her state of mind at
that moment. Similarly, would Hitchcock eat a baked custard in
this way during such an interview? Hitchcock was of course both
powerful and eccentric, so it is a possibility, but surely the action
– and his ‘Delicious’ – operate at another level, where she is the
baked custard. This is well beyond straightforward naturalism.
The following is an extract from a television script of my own,
No Further Cause for Concern. Danny is one of a number of
114 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

prisoners holding Green, a Prison Officer, hostage. Danny and the

others are compiling a list of demands to present to the Governor:

danny All right, correspondence. Now read that back.

alec Enquiry. Brutality, visits, association, exercise,
work-shops, correspondence.
danny And food while we’re at it.
green You want Butlins don’t you.
danny No we don’t want soddin’ Butlins, but being in prison
is the punishment –
green I know that.
danny We’re not sent here to be punished, we’re sent here
as punishment. Loss of liberty, that’s the punishment. Loss
of walking down the street, loss of going for a pint, loss
of being able to screw, having to put up with doing it with
other poor sods like him (wally) to stop yourself from
going mad. Loss of your time. It’s not your time now, it’s
theirs. All right so the great British public couldn’t give a
shit what happens to us, makes ’em feel better if they know
we’re being clobbered, shows how much more they’re worth
than we are, all right, but that’s not what the law says.
Giving up your freedom, that’s the punishment, not being
treated like bloody animals.
green And that’s what you think we do.
danny Think?
green We just carry out orders. And we’re as pleasant as you
lot’ll let us be.
danny And you was ordered to beat up Phil Kitchen.
green I didn’t, and you know it.
danny Your lot did.
green But not me. Isn’t it what you always complain about,
being accused of things other people have done? All being
tarred with the same brush?
danny Oh, sod the lot of you!

Here again we have a highly charged atmosphere, which allows

us to accept all the more readily the eloquence of Danny. And the
scriptwriter must aim for eloquence at times, must at times aim
for beauty. There are risks, however. In this speech (‘We’re not
sent here …’) I have never been entirely sure whether I had led the
 Heightened naturalism 115

audience to suspend their disbelief sufficiently, or whether – despite

the response of Green, the Prison Officer, presenting the other side
of the argument – the dialogue here comes across as too preachy,
and in a language not quite credible for this character. Of course,
these risks may be run without any heightening of the naturalism
at all. We can have a character preaching to the audience (and,
generally, losing their sympathy) without straying from the most
humdrum realism – this happens in many plays but also, in a
different form, in many soap operas – and matching character
to speech pattern can also be problematic in any style. However,
there do appear to be particularly strong risks when the naturalism
is heightened – when we know we are stretching the stylistic
conventions of dialogue which we have already established in any
given script.

A scriptwriter’s world
In the context of consistency of style of dialogue, it seems appro-
priate here to say a word about the limits of that style for any one
scriptwriter. Some writers feel entirely comfortable moving from
one type of social world to another, but for many the particular
voice that we associate with their dialogue is only in part a matter
of style itself – it is more a matter of the clearly delineated world
which they tend to inhabit. Ayckbourn is most comfortable with
the middle classes, for example, while John Godber is most at home
with the rough-and-tumble end of working-class life. Stoppard is
almost always at his best when presenting the intelligentsia (indeed,
the dialogue given to the one working-class character to appear in
his play The Real Thing is almost embarrassing).
What are the dangers of a scriptwriter limiting the spread of
types of characters? One risk is simply that the world presented
may feel too small – as audience, we may want to break out of
the confines imposed upon us. If we watch a production full of
the well-off middle classes nattering about second cars and second
homes we may soon start to itch to have a labourer burst in, and
vice-versa. But it is not only that the world presented may seem too
narrow; a further danger is that too many of the characters may
begin to sound very much like each other.
116 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

There are two extremes here, both of which are to be avoided.

One extreme is to fill a script with people who sound (and probably
look and act) as different from each other as possible. In this type
of script, every character speaks in an obviously distinctive way,
each with distinct regional (or, even better, national) accents, and
clear marks of class, education, occupation, etc. However inter-
esting the contrasts between the characters may be, though, this
approach smacks too much of, ‘Once upon a time there was an
Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman …’ It is the scriptwriter’s
version of social engineering, and feels artificial – although it does
at least have the benefit of allowing the writer relatively easily to
produce dialogue in which the speech of each character is clearly
differentiated from that of the next.
The other extreme is to create a set of characters all of whom
come from the same class and probably from the same area, and
have the same types of jobs. Here the writer is more likely to
be able to present an image of how a community or sub-group
functions, and the contrasts between the attitudes of characters,
although less obvious than at the other extreme, might well benefit
from being more subtle. The great danger with this approach,
however, has already been noted: the characters may use language
in ways which are too similar to each other.
So the writer has a choice. Writing within a smaller range, while
at first sight easier, is in fact very difficult in terms of dialogue:
it is harder to differentiate the language of characters when they
come from similar backgrounds. Having your script peopled with
characters from a wide range of backgrounds, on the other hand,
can not only look artificial but also bring other difficulties, as the
writer must have a genuine knowledge of how all these types of
individuals might speak.
So, how far should we limit ourselves in the scope of the
‘dialogue world’ that we create in a script? My own opinion is that
we should stretch ourselves as far as we feel confident – and no
further! This means that we should listen as carefully as possible
to the speech of all those with whom we come into contact, to
try to make use of it, but we should never try to imitate a style of
speech with which we are not genuinely familiar (unless in obvious
parody – and even this is risky). Some writers have had the good
fortune to mix in very varied circles and thus to have learned first-
hand the speech patterns of various social groupings – by class,
 Heightened naturalism 117

geography, gender, occupation, etc. as outlined in Chapter 1 – but

most have not had this breadth of experience. Ultimately, better
the Wesker or the Wilde who sticks to the world they know than
the scriptwriter who ventures all over the dialogue universe but
convinces no-one.
We should try to avoid scattering people from varied backgrounds
through a script just for the sake of different types of voices and
speech patterns. The background (and thus style of speech) of
each character should be chosen for different reasons, to do not
only with plot but also with each character’s role in the meaning
of the piece. Characters may be created and developed around the
contrasts with each other as characters, but never merely to make
the life of the scriptwriter easier in terms of differentiating dialogue.
(The only exception to this is in parts which are very minor indeed,
where there is little rounded characterization and one may as well
vary the speech patterns.)
A particularly vivid world is that of Peaky Blinders (writer,
Steven Knight), the stunning television series. There are the
distinctive costumes, the highly unusual soundtrack and the very
specific geographical setting, in the English industrial midlands,
but most of all there is the fact that the series is set in a particular
moment in history, just after the First World War. This infuses the
whole series – not just the events (the post-traumatic stress, the
threat from Irish nationalists) but also the dialogue itself. To take
just a few examples, when the gang leader Tommy bamboozles
his little brother John into getting married to a traveller and
John tries to back out immediately before the wedding, Tommy
expresses what might happen in terms of the war, telling him that
if he refuses to marry it is ‘going to make the Somme look like
a fucking tea party.’ And a little later he tells him, ‘Now it’s up
to you John, war or peace.’ Then when there is the showdown
between the Peaky Blinders and their racecourse rivals led by Billy
Kimber, Tommy’s sister Ada tries to call a halt to the impending
bloodbath by declaring, ‘Most of you were in France. So you all
know what happens next.’ And then when John’s aunt tries to keep
her long-lost son Michael from taking part in a potentially violent
gang confrontation, again the situation is expressed in terms of the
war. John tells her, ‘Aunt Pol, when I was Michael’s age I’d killed a
hundred men and seen a thousand die. If you want to scare that kid
away forever, carry on how you’re doing. If you want him to stay,
118 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

let him come.’ It is the references in language used by the characters

that reinforce the world of this series.

Naturalism in non-naturalism
There are times when a scriptwriter may choose to alter the effect of
dialogue not so much by the words themselves, as by how he or she
chooses to present them. So a section of dialogue which is in essence
naturalistic may be heightened by being presented in a non-natural-
istic way. The words may be ‘normal’, but the context is not.
Let me give some very different examples of this. The first
technique is a common one; the particular example comes from
the film French Kiss. The two central characters are deep in conver-
sation, walking through Paris; they reach a park bench where they
continue talking. We see them first walking in the street, and then
– obviously a minute or two later – seated on the park bench, yet
there is no break in the conversation at all. Here we are not shown
two snippets of a conversation, but rather are presented with one
continuous piece of dialogue despite the fact that there is a jump
of time and place in the middle of it. On the one hand the writer
has wanted to avoid a break in the flow of speech and thought,
and yet on the other he has wanted to imply that the conversation
took place over a lengthy stretch of time. So he has it both ways,
and in effect stretches reality a little. We are not meant to notice
the impossibility of what we see and hear: it is a sleight of hand
(Shakespeare frequently employs similar sleights of hand, particu-
larly through use of two simultaneous and ultimately contradictory
time-schemes). This is a non-naturalism that has no wish to be seen
as such, so the effect is really one of heightened naturalism rather
than of conspicuous artifice.
The second example makes no attempt at concealing its art. In
the film Ocean’s Eleven (writers, Ted Griffin and Steven Soderbergh)
there is a sequence held together by a continuous piece of dialogue,
in which one of the thieves asks another whether they can possibly
succeed in all the tasks necessary to rob the casino. At the same
time, across the conversation, what we actually see is those tasks
being tackled: it is not clear at that moment whether we are seeing
the reality – jumping into the future – or one of the character’s
 Heightened naturalism 119

vision of what might be possible. Either way, while the dialogue

(and incidentally, the action itself) is naturalistic, its presentation is
not. Similarly, towards the end of the film, we only see the robbery
itself after the event has taken place. This is not a conventional
‘flashback’, just as the earlier example was not a ‘flash forward’, in
the sense of being sustained scenes; rather, they are illustrations of
the storytelling within the dialogue at each point. The playing with
time and place is all in the context of the naturalism of the speeches.
A third example comes from Alan Ayckbourn, whose work has
changed in many ways over the years. In his earlier plays such as
Bedroom Farce or The Norman Conquests, Ayckbourn set out
to explore individuals’ social and particularly sexual weaknesses,
and although his primary aim appears to have been to amuse,
there always seems to be a conscience lurking somewhere in the
dialogue. By the mid-1980s, though, his priorities had changed.
His plays were (and still are) funny, but the moral tone had become
more pronounced. Yet his technique, despite having been refined
over the years, had not in essence altered. The actual language is
close to naturalism (of course selected, edited, chopped around, a
little exaggerated here and there), yet the speeches are often very
funny, above all because of the situations people find themselves in.
But Ayckbourn sometimes adds a further element which heightens
the effect of the naturalistic dialogue: he so constructs many of
the scenes as to allow us to witness more than one scene taking
place at the same time. In one of his earlier plays he allows us to
witness two dinner parties simultaneously – the lines spin off each
other, providing not only dramatic irony but continually adding
new meanings in addition to those intended by the speakers. By
the 1980s, and now at the National Theatre, he has a bigger
budget to play with, so in A Small Family Business he presents us
with a set which is a cross-section of a complete house – kitchen,
double living-room, bedrooms, bathroom, the lot. There are some
wonderful sequences where events are taking place simultaneously
in a number of these places. The effect is not only of tremendous
vitality and life, but also of lines from separate locations appearing
to have an effect on each other. It allows, too, for the dialogue in
the different places to be in completely different moods, which also
can then play off each other. This is an extreme example, but there
are many others less extreme (and more affordable!) of simulta-
neous scenes adding new levels of meaning to dialogue.
120 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The final example of apparently naturalistic dialogue presented

in a non-naturalistic manner comes from the work of Woody Allen.
Allen’s dialogue is superb. Some complain that it is limited in scope
and even that it is repetitive in tone (both of which can apply to
many successful writers), but the dialogue is, nevertheless, excellent.
In what way? He catches quite wonderfully all that messiness of
language referred to in Chapter 1, usually transforming it for comic
effect. Some writers produce very funny scripts which rely mainly
on jokes; there are some scripts which rely heavily on situation
(such as Ayckbourn’s); and there are others in which the humour
arises directly out of the characters. Woody Allen’s work falls into
this last category. Of course, there are jokes and there are situa-
tions which set up the humour, but nevertheless the humour in
Allen’s dialogue is created primarily out of his accurate depiction
of character. Very often there is an element of the pathetic in Allen’s
leading characters: they spend much of their time trying to explain
themselves, convince themselves, justify themselves or raise their
own status (by however tiny a degree), so that we laugh at them at
the same time as we laugh with them. They are weak but warmly
drawn, so we allow ourselves to recognize ourselves in them.
The dialogue itself, though, is really a very clever, subtle form
of naturalism. It is frequently sophisticated in terms of meaning,
and certainly is frequently subtle in variations of tone, yet it feels
almost as though it has been improvised. Often, though, Allen will
use the form in which he presents the dialogue to further heighten
its effect. In the following example, from near the start of Annie
Hall, the main character, Alvy, has up to this point been narrating
as an adult voice-over. The scene takes place in a classroom, where
we have just seen the child Alvy kiss:

1st girl
(Making noises)
Ugh, he kissed me, he kissed me.
teacher
(Offscreen)
That’s the second time this month!
Step up here!
As the teacher, really glaring now, speaks, alvy rises from his
seat and moves over to her. Angry, she points with her hand
 Heightened naturalism 121

while the students turn their heads to watch what will happen
next.
alvy
What’d I do?
teacher
Step up here.
alvy
What’d I do?
teacher
You should be ashamed of yourself.
The students, their heads still turned, look back at alvy, now
an adult, sitting in the last seat of the second row.
alvy (as adult)
(First offscreen, then onscreen as camera moves over to the
back of the classroom)
Why, I was just expressing a healthy sexual curiosity.
teacher
(The younger alvy standing next to her)
Six-year-old boys don’t have girls on their minds.
alvy (as adult)
(Still sitting in the back of the classroom)
I did.
The girl the young Alvy kissed turns to the older Alvy; she
gestures and speaks.
1st girl
For God’s sake, Alvy, even Freud speaks of a latency period.
alvy (as adult)
(Gesturing)
Well, I never had a latency period. I can’t help it.
teacher
(With young Alvy still at her side)
Why couldn’t you have been more like Donald?
(The camera pans over to donald, sitting up tall in his seat,
then back to the teacher)
Now, there was a model boy!
alvy (as child)
(Still standing next to the teacher)
Tell the folks where you are today, Donald.
donald
122 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

I run a profitable dress company.

alvy’s voice
Right. Sometimes I wonder where my class-mates are today.
The camera shows the full classroom, the students sitting behind
their desks, the teacher standing in front of the room. One at
a time, the young students rise up from their desks and speak.
1st boy
I’m President of the Pinkus Plumbing Company.
2nd boy
I sell tallises.
3rd boy
I used to be a heroin addict. Now I’m a methadone addict.
2nd girl
I’m into leather.

For much of this extract Allen is not producing dialogue that is

‘non-naturalistic’ in the sense of speech which is highly poetic, or
which is in a style in which no-one would normally speak. Rather, he
is heightening the effect of the dialogue by presenting it in an almost
surreal way. As the scene progresses, however, the line between
heightened naturalism and non-naturalism becomes blurred. Allen
is not content to have one of his characters act as both narrator
and younger self – he has to have the other characters actually
interact with the older narrator, whom now we not only hear but
also see. Part of the delight of this arises from Allen’s playing with
the conventions of narration (this will be discussed further in a later
chapter). The words spoken may be fairly ordinary, but the context
becomes so extraordinary that we start to question everything –
the surrealism is really limited to the presentation but feels as if
it has infected the dialogue itself. The added fun here comes from
putting the dialogue of adults into the mouths of children. The
open manipulation, the playful display of the hand of the author, is
certainly non-naturalistic. Here, then, the scriptwriter is straddling
the line between naturalism and non-naturalism, basically using
the former in terms of the actual words used, but the latter in the
form in which they are presented, thus creating extremely arresting
effects of which dialogue forms a part.
 7
Tone, pace and conflict

Light and shade

If consistency of dialogue style is vital for a successful script, being
a major element in establishing the convention that the particular
script creates, then attention to tone and pace in the dialogue is
equally important, as they contribute to the production of light
and shade within that overall consistency of dialogue. We must also
look at how these elements are tied into both the climaxes and the
meanings within the script.
Consistency of dialogue style is, as we have already seen, essen-
tially about the relationship with naturalism in the dialogue. Tone
is different. Tone may be ironic, light, serious or tragic, and it may
be any of these in whatever style of dialogue has been adopted, at
whatever distance from naturalism the scriptwriter may choose.
Tone, then, should not be confused with style, though the two
do certainly affect each other (and it has to be admitted that it is
sometimes very hard to disentangle them). Words which are close –
though not identical – in meaning to ‘tone’, as it used here, would
be ‘mood’ and ‘atmosphere’.
One further clarification: a script will have an overall tone
(perhaps one of those suggested above, or something quite different),
but tone will also vary – must also vary – between one scene and
another. If the tone does not vary sufficiently, the script starts to
take on a monochrome quality; this can have a certain attraction
but is much more likely eventually to bore the audience. Tone must
be varied, and above all tone in dialogue must be varied.
124 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

It is important to establish the overall tone at the start of the

script. To take one example, in Goodfellas we are immediately
thrown into a scene which becomes appallingly violent. But
the scene is not only a presentation of violence; it is also about
attitudes towards violence – attitudes which are revealed in the
dialogue. Three men, Jimmy, Tommy and Henry, are driving along
a freeway at night. They hear a thumping noise, and react with
a collection of lines full of repetition, half-listening-to-each-other
responses and hesitations, annoyed by the noise and wondering
whether they have a flat tyre. They stop the car and open the boot,
and we see a body covered in tablecloths, soaked in blood. The
body – Billy Batts – is still alive, moving. Batts manages to plead
for his life, but one of the three, Tommy, is clearly angry that Batts
has not died yet, and, swearing at him for being alive and yelling
at him to look him in the eye while he does it, stabs him again and
again while Batts squirms in the boot. For good measure Jimmy
then pumps a number of bullets into the now inert body. We hear
a voice-over, from Henry, telling us that from a very young age he
had always wanted to be a gangster.
This opening scene is shocking, and sets the tone for the rest of
the film. Certainly it establishes the tone of violence – this is in the
action – but the dialogue does more than that. At the start, when
they hear the thumping, the three men do actually realize that the
noise is coming from the boot, and that Batts is still alive. However,
we don’t realize that they know until, when they get out, they go
straight round to the boot and Tommy takes out a knife. What the
opening dialogue gives us is a confused and exasperated conver-
sation about whether or not they have a flat tyre – we see that they
are genuinely irritated and annoyed, but at same time we come to
realize that this opening conversation is in fact a sort of macabre
joke: Batts is of so little importance to them that they speak about
him as they would some sort of mechanical fault – he is beneath
being mentioned as a human being, let alone being treated as an
object of compassion.
So the dialogue establishes at the start that these people talk
in a way which distances them from the meaning of violence and
from suffering. It is dehumanizing dialogue, at the opening of a
film which will trace the dehumanizing effects of gangster life. But
there are two further important elements as well. The dialogue
raises the issue of a particular kind of respect: Tommy yells at Batts
 Tone, pace and conflict 125

to look him in the eye while he stabs him to death. It is only later
that we discover that Batts was all but killed in the first place for
failing to be respectful to Tommy in a bar. More importantly, the
dialogue establishes a tone of camaraderie: the men in the car are
together, and talk in that highly informal, only half-listening and
yet co-operative manner which sets the tone for much of the rest of
the film, for Goodfellas is also the story of one man who is willing
to do almost anything to be accepted – to be one of the ‘goodfellas’.
At the start of Goodfellas, then, the tone of the whole film is set,
together with the tone of the dialogue too (and we very soon realize
that Scorsese and Pileggi have leapt forwards in time in order to
use these opening scenes for just this purpose). The tone of this
dialogue is bound up with the themes and meanings of the film: it
is very hard to disentangle the two – dialogue tone on the one hand,
themes or meanings on the other; perhaps one should not try too
hard to separate them in any case. The scriptwriter must allow the
two to feed each other.
Over recent years there has been a marked increase in multi-
stranded scripts, particularly films. Crash, Traffic and Babel are
good examples. Here, since the strands are connected but also
separate, there are clear opportunities for variation of tone.
However, those opportunities are not always taken. Babel, for
example, has three separate narratives, set in Morocco, the USA
and Japan respectively. Yet despite the contrasts in location, the
three separate casts and the three separate storylines the tone of
the whole piece is pretty uniform: angst. Despite the film’s success
(though one reviewer described it as ‘exasperatingly conceited’) this
seems to have been a missed opportunity.
The start of Lynn Nottage’s wonderful and harrowing play
Ruined establishes a clear tone from the outset. Here are the
opening stage directions:

A small mining town. The sounds of the tropical Ituri rainforest.

The Democratic Republic of Congo.
A bar, makeshift furniture and a rundown pool table. A lot
of effort has gone into making the worn bar cheerful. A stack of
plastic washtubs rests in the corner. An old car battery powers
the audio system, a covered birdcage sits conspicuously in the
corner of the room.
mama nadi, early forties, an attractive woman with an
126 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

arrogant stride and a majestic air, watches christian, early

forties, a perpetually cheerful travelling salesman, knock back
a Fanta. His good looks have been worn down by hard living
on the road. He wears a suit that might have been considered
stylish when new, but it’s now nearly ten years old and overly
loved.

The tone has been clearly set: ‘rundown … worn … old …

worn down … old …’. This is a worn out place. But there are
contradictions. Whatever battering this place and these people have
received, there is still resistance. Huge effort has gone into making
the place feel positive. Mama Nadi is still majestic, Christian
manages to remain cheerful. And we want to know about that
covered birdcage (we find out it holds a captive parrot, who is also
capable of raising hell within its bars). It is these contradictions,
these ways of resisting, these ways of enduring, set up at the very
start, that will be explored as the play unfolds. At the heart of these
contradictions is Mama, who profits from the vulnerable young
girls she takes in and uses, but who also protects them.
The play is about rape and extreme sexual violence used as
weapons of war. It could easily have been grim throughout. But
it is not. From early on the dialogue is lightly laced with humour.
Christian, the affable travelling salesman, has remembered to bring
Mama her lipstick, and produces it. ‘Play nice,’ he says, ‘or I’ll give
this to Josephine. She knows just how to show her appreciation.’
Mama replies, ‘Yes but you always take home a little more than
you ask for with Josephine.’ It is almost a rule: the greater the
agony within the subject matter, the more important it is to lace it
with humour.
Let us look at another, very different opening, which also
establishes a tone of dialogue. At the start of the film The Player
(writer, Michael Tolkin) we are given one tracking shot of quite
extraordinary length, in the car park and offices of a Hollywood
studio. We move seamlessly from one conversation to another as
we move through the premises. The impression is not so much of
being in a single scene as of overhearing snatches of conversation
– we feel like outsiders, eavesdroppers, at one point hearing a
discussion about a film proposal from outside the office where it is
taking place, through the window. In terms of shot (and precision
of co-ordination in the production), then, this opening scene shows
 Tone, pace and conflict 127

tremendous professionalism and confidence. And what of the

dialogue? There is a series of speeches in which people are openly
attempting to impress each other – and succeeding or otherwise
– and all the dialogue is soaked in a consciousness of cinema:
at one point a character mentions another film and the extraor-
dinary length of the opening tracking shot. This is the tone of the
dialogue, then – confident, smooth, cool, powerful. Again we have
the establishment of a tone of dialogue which chimes in perfectly
with the themes and meanings of the film. The Player is about the
confidence, professionalism and power of film producers, and it is
also about an outsider (like an eavesdropper) who has never been
able to ‘get in’. We will eventually see that the plot is circular and
is about itself; the dialogue at the start slips in this idea of referring
to itself when the comment is made about another film with an
exceptionally long opening tracking shot. The manner of presen-
tation of the dialogue at the start of The Player, then, sets up the
outsider theme, while its tone underlines the theme of the power
of producers.

What we hear and what we don’t

In the opening of The Player, the dialogue serves almost entirely to
establish tone: its main function is not to assist plot or even charac-
terization (though it does achieve this as well), but rather to present
dialogue as a particular sort of wallpaper, which tells a lot about
the occupants who choose to live in this environment. Focusing in
on a particular conversation is less important than the tone of the
conversations in general.
Talking of dialogue as wallpaper, this seems an appropriate
point at which to digress briefly on selecting what dialogue we hear
as an audience and what we don’t. This can be important both in
plot terms and also in terms of empathy – whom we are invited to
sympathize with.
Let us imagine a party, in real life. There are perhaps sixty or
seventy guests. As we walk around we will hear snatches of speech
from a dozen conversations. We will stop and take part in some
discussions, possibly overhear a few other bits and ignore the rest.
Alternatively we might take part in only one conversation all night,
128 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

or we might sit in a corner close to a stereo speaker and a bowl of

peanuts and say nothing to anyone. But whatever we do, the party
is still there; there is still all this dialogue happening.
Now let us imagine writing a scene, or a series of scenes, set at
a party. There is all this dialogue going on (except, of course, that
because this isn’t a party in real life, there is no dialogue going on at
all until we write it). Which parts of it do we commit to the page?
There are a number of considerations here. The scriptwriter
may choose to present (or perhaps to select) certain conversations
in order to develop particular aspects of characterization; he or
she might choose to show certain speeches in order to push the
plot along. But there is also the matter of empathy. When we hear
dialogue, it is as if we are there, listening and looking, often over
someone’s shoulder. And just our being there, at that person’s
shoulder, leads us to start to empathize with that character, to see
the world from that character’s point of view.
So, to return to the party, let’s say that as the scriptwriter you
want to present a major discussion about social welfare, since the
inadequacy or otherwise of social provision is one of the themes in
your script. How much of the discussion do we – the audience –
hear? The obvious answer is: all of it. All the other conversations
at the party continue to take place, of course, but we concentrate
on this important debate – this is what is scripted while the rest is
left to improvisation. This gives due weight to the issues and to the
characters involved in the conversation. On the other hand, we may
not hear all of it. We might join the party with a certain character
– let’s call her Sarah – who then hears a number of snatches of
other conversations before having her interest taken by this one.
This reduces the amount of dialogue shown from this particular
debate (perhaps – remember that you are in control of what is
said!), but adds to our empathizing with Sarah: we are joining this
conversation because she is (it feels as if we are) choosing to do so
in preference to joining some other discussion, which is in itself a
statement about Sarah.
Or perhaps we don’t join this conversation with Sarah. Perhaps
we join it with Dan, who then becomes bored with it and leaves – so
we do too. This makes a statement about Dan; and since there is a
tendency for the audience to empathize with the character through
whom we are seeing the world (the character we are ‘with’), there
will be a certain tendency for us to accept that character’s views – in
 Tone, pace and conflict 129

this case, that the conversation about social provision is of limited

interest – more readily than we might otherwise. (To revert for a
moment to Goodfellas, if we were not presented the story through
Henry’s eyes, we could easily see him as a disgusting character and
nothing more. Instead, though, while we are revolted by many of
the things he says and does, we come to understand him and even
to a certain extent to sympathize with him.)
There are many other ways in which the dialogue of the
discussion at the party could be presented. We could, for example,
hear just a snatch of it as, together with our character, we walk
past. Maybe we don’t need to hear much of the debate at this point,
but we do need to receive the impression that this debate is current;
that it is in the air.
But perhaps a more interesting presentation would be to adopt an
approach corresponding to that used at the start of the The Player,
in which we – the audience – do not follow any one individual
or group of characters: we are there, as it were, unaccompanied,
simply roaming around. We might hear part or all of this argument
or none of it; it might be presented as part of the wallpaper, part
of the ambience, or it might be dwelt on at greater length, but we
would be listening to it in a way that was perhaps more objective
and less linked to the view of any particular character.
The meaning of the dialogue, then – how we interpret it – is
inextricably linked with how we come across it; the viewpoint we
are invited to take.

The party on stage

This last section has been written mostly from the point of view
of film or television, in which the camera or microphone can make
choices about what we are seeing and hearing – what is ‘in focus’.
To a large extent the same can be done on radio, although of
course who we are ‘with’ (if anyone) needs to be identified through
the dialogue, where in film this can be done visually. On stage it
is rather different, as we have the choice of what to look at. If, for
example, we were to fill the stage with a party and tell everyone
to get on with it, the audience would probably hear nothing at all
with any clarity. Thus there has to be some focusing, just as the
130 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

camera or microphone does this job in other media. But the fact
that it has to be done differently on stage does not mean that we
cannot achieve a comparable effect of slipping from one conver-
sation to another. We do not have to limit our choice of what we
hear or do not hear – we do not have to write the dialogue as a
solid block – simply because this is a script for the stage.
There are two or three basic solutions to the presentation
of party-type dialogue on stage. In film we can move from one
conversation to another; on stage we can, in fact, do the same. A
character can move around the performing area from one conver-
sation to another so that these are the conversations that we hear,
but as there are no microphones to do the selecting for us, the
conversations which are out of focus have to fade to a much lower
level of audibility (a more stylized approach might make use of
freezes). Or, just as in film, instead of following a character from
one conversation to another, certain pieces of dialogue may become
audible and inaudible of their own accord: our attention is drawn
from one conversation to another simply on the basis of what we
can hear most clearly.
Another, rather more conventional, solution – still often used –
is exemplified in the following stage directions at the opening of
Act Two of Chekhov’s Ivanov:

A reception room in the Lyebedevs’ house; doors left, right

and centre, the last leading into the garden. Expensive antique
furniture. Chandeliers, candlesticks and pictures, all under dust
covers.

zeenaeda saveshna, kosyh, avdotya nazarovna and

yegorushka, gavrila, babakina. Girls and elderly ladies,
visitors in the house. A maid. zeenaeda saveshna is on a sofa;
on either side of her sit elderly ladies in armchairs; the young
people sit on chairs. In the background, by the door leading
into the garden, several guests are playing cards; among them
are kosyh, avdotya nazarovna and yegorushka. gavrila
stands by the door on the right; the maid hands round a tray
of sweets and pastries. Throughout the act, the guests pass in
and out from the garden and through the door on the right.
babakina enters through the door on the right and walks up to
zeenaeda saveshna.
 Tone, pace and conflict 131

Here the action stays in one place – we do not ‘move’, as we

might in film – but the dialogue comes to us. We are with a major
character (Zeenaeda Saveshna) within a group, and she is involved
in dialogue not only with her immediate group but also with others
as they pass through. Again, the fact that this is a party presented
on stage does not mean that the variety of dialogue we can write
– the number of conversations of which we may hear a part – has
to be limited.
There is actually a third option in presenting party-style
dialogue, particularly suited to improvised or semi-improvised
theatre (though there is often an element of scripting, as well).
This option is to not highlight any particular piece of dialogue at
all, but for there to be an element of chance as to which pieces of
dialogue any particular member of the audience hears. This can
work well when the play is staged in the round, and even better in
a promenade performance, in which the audience actually moves
around within the performance area, stopping and listening to
dialogue for as long as they like before moving on. When a scene
is presented in this way, equal attention has to be given to the
scripting (or improvisation, or mixture of the two) of every piece
of dialogue taking place simultaneously.

Where we are on radio

The writer for radio has to be particularly aware of what the
listener is and is not primarily hearing. There is an interesting
example of this in Abigail Adams by Mark Shand. This radio play
begins:

Ext. roof. night.

Distant traffic. wind.

We hear everything from where mum and dad are standing.

They are both close and shouting to abigail in the distance.

mum Abi. Please. Don’t.

dad Abi, you’re scaring your Mum to death.
132 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

A little later there is this:

abigail Mum, please don’t be mean to Dad. He’s trying his

best.
mum I’m not being mean to your Dad. (to dad) What’s she
talking about?
abigail He’s a good person. Be kind to him.
mum Be kind to him? (to dad) What’ve you been saying to
her?
dad (to mum) I don’t know.
abigail Blimey, Dad you look terrible.
mum Abi, I’ve seen pictures of people who jump. It’s not nice.
abigail No you haven’t.
dad/mum (screaming) Abigail! / Abi!

Through all of this we are with Mum and Dad, with Abigail at
some distance from us. It seems that Abigail may be about to
commit suicide. In fact she does not jump, but slips and falls. After
she falls, with the comment, ‘Oh bugger, I’ve fallen off’ we are
taken into her thoughts and memories.

abigail (V.O. running) This morning, before I fell off the top
of our tower block, Billy McCready chased me for two miles
– for my new red retro Nike trainers, that Dad got off Steve
from work, and my cream linen suit, that I started to make,
but me Mum finished. (shouting to billy) You stay back Billy
McCready! You won’t get me or my red retro Nike trainers!
(V.O.) He chased me all the way from the old gas works and the
house that me Mum and Dad used to live in before I was born.

We are then taken back through recent days with her parents,
reliving events, the scenes being regularly punctuated by more of
her voice-overs (there are seven in total) looking back from when
she slipped, until we eventually catch up with the present, the start
of the play. Then we hear the same lines from part of the opening
scene again, but this time we are close to Abigail, not her parents,
hearing only part of what they say from the distance, and this time
hearing some of Abigail’s thoughts:

abigail (V.O.) Up here you can properly see the gas works.
 Tone, pace and conflict 133

There’s nothing blocking the view. And I can see Mum and
Dad’s old house. (to mum) Mum, please don’t be mean to
Dad. He’s trying his best.
mum (distant) I’m not being mean to your Dad.
abigail He’s a good person. Be kind to him.
mum Be kind to him?
abigail (V.O.) I can get some proper perspective and I can
finish the painting. (to dad) Blimey, Dad you look terrible.
mum Abi, I’ve seen pictures of people who jump. It’s not nice.
abigail No you haven’t. (V.O.) Why do they think I’m going
to jump?
dad/mum (screaming) Abigail! / Abi!

The play is about perspective – in painting, with a telescope, in

our attitudes to events – and here the writer gives us the final shift
in perspective. (We then learn that she only fell six feet and was
caught in a net – all that we have heard had raced through her
brain in those seconds.)

Pace
Sometimes musical analogies may be useful. In a short piece of
music, or a song, it is often perfectly satisfactory for the pace to be
the same throughout. There is little or no variation needed. If we
enjoy, say, The Beatles’ She Loves You, or Schubert’s Mein!, we
do not complain that there is no change of pace: we do not have
time to get bored. In a piece even a little longer, though – whether
Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody or a Mahler symphony – we need
some variation. This not only avoids monotony but also allows the
pace of one section to bring into stronger relief that of another. And
some sections need to be slow, while others can only really work
if taken at speed.
The same considerations apply in scriptwriting, although they
tend to be less obvious – we don’t write Adagio or Presto for
different parts of a script. We need variation of pace, both in
small scale and in large scale. In the small scale there needs to be
variation within conversations: the most furious row may use-fully
be broken up by a slower, subdued, almost controlled interlude,
134 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

where we know that the full force of the storm must break out
again. In the larger scale there needs to be contrast between whole
sections. In John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, for example, the
cutting, thrusting dialogue is offset by those parts of the play where
we only hear Jimmy playing his trumpet in another room, while
those present are talking things over quietly. Even in a play as full
of quick and quick-witted dialogue as Much Ado About Nothing
there are sections where the audience is allowed time to relax a
little.
Let me quote further from my radio play, A Few Kind Words.
This 45-minute script is divided into three scenes, each one shorter
than the last. The first scene begins slowly, but then works up to
a climax when Jenny refuses her father’s request that she write an
epitaph for her mother’s gravestone. Tommy’s son-in-law Roy is
also present:

tommy Where’ve yo put mah things?

jenny Don’t be silly, Dad, you’ve only just got here. What
I’m –
tommy Wor’ve Ah axed from yo? Ever. Wor’ve Ah axed?
Me uz brung yer up, wor’ve Ah axed from yo since yo’ve
bin a grown woman? Nothin’. That’s wor Ah’ve axed. And
wor am Ah axing now? Just this one … Ah’ll get mi own
things.
roy Dad all –
tommy Don’t yo Dad me. You’ve note te do wi’ me.
jenny It’s just that I can’t see –
tommy An’ yo niver ’ave bin. Dad this Dad that, yo’re
summat mi dotter fahnd, an’ ’er, she’s not mi dotter any
more, thinks of ’ersen an’ nobody else. Ah don’t know
why Ah bothered te come dahn ’ere, thot just this time she
might do summat for’t family but no yo’ve risen above that
haven’t yo girl eh yo’re much too high an’ mighty te tek any
notice of what your father might say, after all he’s only –
jenny (spoken simultaneous with tommy’s speech, joining in
halfway through it) Take no notice Roy, he’s getting too old
to argue straight any more. He’ll stop in a minute and say
he’s sorry and expect us to forget it completely because he
wants us to. He can turn it on and he can turn it off and he
expects us to fit in with whenever he decides to change his –
 Tone, pace and conflict 135

roy For God’s sake shut up, shut up both of you!

Dad, Mr Hetherage, whatever you want me to call you –
tommy Ah’m gooin’.
jenny All right Dad come on let’s do it, come on, let’s do it.
tommy (going out of the room) Ah’m not stoppin’ ’ere te –
roy Look if you want your things Dad I’ll get them –
jenny (shouting for the first time) I said let’s do it!
(pause)
Come on Dad, let’s sort out what we put on Mum’s
gravestone. The epitaph. Do you want something light and
funny …

Here, then, there is dialogue of some pace, with whole speeches

overlapping. Indeed, it is impossible to hear either Tommy or Jenny
clearly in the two speeches that are given simultaneously, and the
impression is of considerable verbal activity.
The second scene is much slower. There are many more pauses
written in between speeches, and the whole feel of the dialogue
is more contemplative. The third and final scene, of which the
following is an extract, is slow but intense. It is set in a nursing
home:

jenny So what do you want?

tommy From yo, nothin’.
(internal) Ah wanted ’er te look at me, te look at this place
… Ah wanted ’er te say, it’s all raight Dad, Ah’m wi’ yo
an’ Mum, Ah’m wi’ yo. That’s all Ah ever wanted. Nor ’er
thought aht wods …
jenny (internal) To look at me and say, you’re mine. A
disappointment, not what I’d have wanted
tommy (aloud) Nothing you can give me.
jenny (internal) – but you’re mine, that’s all I’d want from
you.
(aloud) God, you’re impossible to please.
tommy Ow’d yo know, yo’ve niver tried.

Here we have a scene of tremendous conflict between two people

incapable of being for each other what they would like to be, but
the pace – in terms of speed of line delivery – is not fast. It doesn’t
need to be. A whole script at this pace could be tedious; instead,
136 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

there is contrast between this and the preceding scenes and there
is also contrast, both of pace and tone, within this scene, from line
to line.
When it comes to performance, actors and directors will talk
about pace and, quite rightly, they will not be talking merely about
the speed at which the lines themselves are delivered. They will
also be talking about the speed at which cues are picked up – in
other words, the space between one line and another. In the extract
above, none of the lines would be spoken fast, but many of them
would continue without any gap at all from the preceding line.
This is partly a matter of interpretation, but it is also a matter of
you, the scriptwriter, hearing these lines in your head. If you have
heard them well, then they will probably be heard similarly by
talented performers; the meanings will affect the pacing of cues
which the performers give to them. But you can help further, simply
by writing-in pauses if you wish this pace – the pace of the cues –
to be slowed down, or on the other hand writing in overlapping,
cutting in or simultaneous where appropriate (or you can use the
system demonstrated in the extract from Top Girls in Chapter 1).
Remember that silence – pauses – allows the audience an oppor-
tunity to assimilate what has gone before, and thus can be very
important. It is well known that Pinter was fastidious about his
pauses, but so have been many other writers, for the gaps between
lines – in which characters themselves give time or fail to give
time to consider what has gone before – can have a very powerful
influence on the effectiveness of any given piece of dialogue.

Conflict, and the ‘off switch’

Let us now turn to a basic ingredient of good dialogue that we have
not yet examined directly – although we have assumed its presence.
It hardly needs to be said that dialogue needs to hold the
attention of the audience. On radio and television it is very easy to
switch channels, and on a number of occasions I have left cinemas
and even theatres (although only at an interval!) before the end
of the performance. Audiences are not, in fact, captive. Yet many
inexperienced scriptwriters, because they find a certain topic fasci-
nating, or because they have a burning desire to bring a particular
 Tone, pace and conflict 137

issue to the attention of the public, allow themselves to forget that

the material must work in terms of good dialogue. Good intentions
are not enough. We must also hold the attention of our audience.
A major ingredient in holding this attention is conflict, or, if you
prefer, struggle. I am told that there are some societies in which art
may be created out of the contemplation of peace and tranquillity.
Western art, however, is not like this – even though we might wish
it to be. In music, for example, there is not just contrast but an
element of conflict between keys, and even the most simple musical
phrase will often be based upon conflict (in the form of some
discord, whether violent or mild) followed by resolution. Drama,
similarly, has to have struggle, and that struggle has to make itself
felt in the dialogue.

Conflict and choice

Why, though, is conflict so important? This is not easy to answer,
but it is worth looking into, as otherwise we may allow ourselves to
forget how central it is to drama, and we might then let ourselves
produce dialogue lacking in this vital element.
Conflict – or struggle – implies choice. When there is conflict,
we, the audience, are invited to take sides; we are invited to make
a choice. Let us begin with the most straightforward conflict – the
battle. In the film Braveheart (writer, Randall Wallace) we want
Wallace (Mel Gibson) to defeat the English on the battlefield. Here
the conflict is clear, and whom we are meant to support is equally
obvious. But we have, nevertheless, made a choice about whom
we are backing. Often, though, conflicts are less clear-cut than
this. We are not sure about where to place our support, or perhaps
we change our minds as the performance progresses. This applies
particularly to the conflicts which are quite unlike pitched battles:
conflicts not between characters, but within them.
Staying with Braveheart for a moment, if we turn from Wallace
to Robert the Bruce we find that, yes, he is in conflict with others,
but more importantly he has conflict within himself. Bruce wants
to be a man of greater integrity and less cynicism than his father,
yet his father has considerable power and influence over him.
Bruce wants to support Wallace unambiguously, yet is swayed by
138 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

his father into taking another course – a decision which he bitterly

regrets later. Bruce, then, has internal conflicts, and these conflicts
draw us in because they invite us to make choices on behalf of
the characters. Do this! No, don’t do that! Don’t be aggressive to
her, she’s your friend! You must leave that man now, whatever the
consequences! Conflicts mean that decisions have to be taken – by
ourselves as well as by the characters. Then, we want to stay on
to the end not only to see how things turn out for the character(s)
with whom we empathize, but also to see if we were right in our
choices.

Moment-to-moment conflict
The conflicts referred to so far are clearly part of the plot, as well
as being central to the development of characterization. But they
must also be present in the dialogue. They may not necessarily be
directly stated – though sometimes they are precisely that – but
they must be present, in whatever form. The conflicts might be
hinted at or might be displaced on to something else altogether;
nevertheless, they must be there.
These are the big conflicts, the major ones which shape a
whole script, but there must also be minor conflicts right the way
through the dialogue (conflicts of status, of power, of control of the
agenda). These minor conflicts in the dialogue pull us in, just as do
the major ones, calling on us to unravel what is going on and then
inviting us to make choices on behalf of the characters.
If we present dialogue without choices, we give the audience too
little to do. Furthermore, if there are no choices in the dialogue –
within characters or between them (because there are no conflicts)
– this also cuts down the desire of the audience to know what
happens next. If instead the scriptwriter allows the dialogue to flag,
if at any point he or she allows the dialogue to carry the message
that all conflicts have been resolved, then the audience may well
lose interest, deciding either to change channel or to leave the
building.
 Tone, pace and conflict 139

Conflict and identification

The scriptwriter must always be aware of which character(s) an
audience is most likely to empathize with, and this is not just a
matter of what each character does (although of course that is
extremely important). It is also a matter of what the character says,
and of how it is said. More than one script has been turned down
by a script editor with the comment, ‘Yeah, it’s great – but I just
don’t like any of the characters.’ There may be the strongest plot
and a thousand conflicts at every level, but if we don’t like any of
the characters then we don’t care about them, and the likelihood
is that if we don’t care about the characters we won’t care about
the production at all. Once again we will reach for the ‘off’ button.
We have already seen that our merely being ‘with’ a character
produces a tendency to identify with – to ‘side’ with – that character,
even if they might not otherwise seem particularly sympathetic. But
that consideration aside, we will tend to identify with characters
who are attractive, and a major element of attractiveness lies in
a character’s speeches. Sometimes a character may show innate
goodness through his or her dialogue, and we normally like to
take the side of good people (so long as they are not insufferably
good, in which case we can’t identify with them at all); or they
may be attractive because they are very funny, or their dialogue
may be endearingly unpredictable. But we need to have attractive
dialogue. However true to life a piece of scripted language may
be, or however well-intentioned the content, if there is not some
element of attractiveness about the script then the bottom line is
that the writer is unlikely to be able to sell it.

Conflict and the rounded character

Conflict in the dialogue ought to pull us further into the production,
at the same time as increasing our identification with one or more
of the characters. The character who is attacked by another but
manages to come off best through witty speech is immediately more
attractive. We should be wary, though, of giving all the best lines to
one character, as this can lead to fighting only paper tigers – which is
far from satisfying for the audience. The scriptwriter is wise to give
140 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

a number of the cleverest, most attractive lines to characters with

whom the audience probably does not identify, since then at least
the hero or heroine appears to have a worthy adversary in dialogue.
An excellent example of this occurs in the film Robin Hood, Prince
of Thieves (writers, Pen Densham and John Watson). The hero, of
course, is Robin Hood (Kevin Costner), who is not only brave and
good but charming as well. But the scriptwriters give many of the
most memorable lines to the Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman).
The dialogue involving this character fairly crackles; the character
(and, one suspects, the actor) self-consciously delights in the depth
of his own depravity. Indeed, through the quality of his dialogue
the Sheriff comes close to stealing the show. But this is no bad thing:
conflict only works if it is genuine, and through the lines given to
the Sheriff, a fitting adversary – a foil – for Robin Hood is created.

Climax
Let us now look at where conflict reaches a climax within a script,
and how the dialogue functions at such points. We turn once more
to Arthur Miller, one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers, for
an example. In the first act of Death of A Salesman, Miller presents
us with the Loman family: Willy, Linda, Biff and Happy (along
with a few other characters whom we shall ignore for now). Miller
could simply drop us straight into a scene involving the whole
family, but he chooses not to; instead, he first carefully shows them
to us in pairs and in trios. The dialogue explores these relationships
one after another: Linda and Willy; Biff and Happy; Willy with Biff
and Happy in the past (though as if in the present in Willy’s head);
Linda and Willy again; Willy and Happy; Biff, Happy and Linda.
Only then, at the end of the act, does he allow the four of them to
talk together, and the result is an explosion.
The important element to consider here is form. The form
chosen by Miller has led him to present us with sections of dialogue
which gradually build up to a climax. He really is like a bomb-
maker, using dialogue carefully to add one ingredient after another
until all are present. Then there is only the touchpaper to be lit.
However, the climax here should not be confused with the
element of pace in dialogue. A climax takes place when a certain
 Tone, pace and conflict 141

level of intensity is reached; and in order for this to be as effective

as possible, Miller holds back in the timing of mixing his ingre-
dients. If a level of intensity in the dialogue is reached too early,
then the remainder of the act (or film, etc.) may feel like an anti-
climax. So, however tempting it might be to let a piece of dialogue
ignite whenever possible, it can be wiser to delay the high point.
The confusion of climax with pace is a common one. Again,
we can turn to a musical analogy. In an eight-bar melody the high
point (literally the highest note) is usually around bar seven. The
same corresponding positioning of climax is often successful in
scripts. But that high point in a melody may not be the moment
where the music is at its fastest; in fact, sometimes to linger on that
highest note is most effective. In Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony the
climax of the whole piece is just one, searing, high, exposed phrase;
it is not fast and it is not loud – but it is tremendously intense. A
scriptwriter makes a mistake if he or she assumes that dialogue
must be at its most fast and furious to achieve the strongest climax:
it is the meaning (and very often the conflict, of which more in a
later chapter) which must be at its most intense.
Let us look at the climax of Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House. It is in
two parts: first there comes Helmer’s discovery of the secrets that
his wife Nora has been keeping from him; the language reflects the
strength of his emotions:

helmer (walking about the room) What a horrible

awakening!
All these eight years – she who was my joy and pride
– a hypocrite, a liar – worse, worse – a criminal! The
unutterable ugliness of it all! For shame! For shame! (nora
is silent and looks steadily at him. He stops in front of her.)
I ought to have suspected that something of the sort would
happen. I ought to have foreseen it. All your father’s want
of principle – be silent! – all your father’s want of principle
has come out in you. No religion, no morality, no sense of
duty – How am I punished for having winked at what he
did! I did it for your sake, and this is how you repay me.

Here, then, we have a climax of fury. The lines are probably

delivered at considerable speed, and perhaps at considerable
volume, too. But the stronger climax is still to come, when just
142 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

a few minutes later Nora speaks quietly of the complete lack of

communication which has always existed between them, and of
her own willingness up to this point to be first what her father had
wanted her to be, and then what her husband had wanted her to
be – and now she is going to be herself. This is a climax in which
the dialogue would sound most natural if not delivered fast, and
probably it needs no great volume, but the intensity of meaning is
very clear indeed.
 8
Highly stylized dialogue

The hand of the author

Up to this point we have concentrated upon dialogue which has
been essentially naturalistic – on the attempt to represent what
will feel like ‘realistic’ dialogue, even if it is heightened from time
to time. But in Chapter 6 on heightened naturalism we noted that
many writers have clearly embraced forms which are non-natural-
istic; forms which openly declare that they are using dialogue
which is at a very clear remove from ‘real life’. This is the dialogue
we will be looking at in this chapter, first with a review of the two
main modern non-naturalistic styles, and then moving on to some
other options open to the writer of script dialogue.
It must be emphasized once again that the dividing line between
heightened naturalism and what I am calling ‘highly stylized
dialogue’ is not entirely clear. Did anyone really ever speak like the
characters in The Big Sleep,1 with such cool intelligence wrapped
up in such lingo? Did any cowboy ever speak so few lines yet
so to the point (his spits almost outnumber his lines!) as Clint
Eastwood’s eponymous hero in The Outlaw Josey Wales?2 The
answer to both questions is almost certainly ‘No’, but it has to
be followed with ‘But who cares?’. The point is that this is how
we enjoy these characters speaking. We like the idea that in these
particular worlds – here, the worlds of private detectives or of the
Wild West – this is how such people spoke. Whether or not this
actually is how people speak is of little or no importance. Accuracy
doesn’t matter (although consistency does).
144 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

However, I would still class these examples of dialogue as

basically naturalistic, though using heightened naturalism. For me,
the line into non-naturalism is crossed when the dialogue appears
to acknowledge the hand of the author.
From a purely mercenary standpoint, it should be pointed out
immediately that non-naturalism (with some notable exceptions,
which we will come on to later) is much harder to sell. Some of
the greatest names in scriptwriting (mainly, it has to be said, for
the theatre rather than for other media) are those of writers whose
work is non-naturalistic, but the public nevertheless seems generally
more attuned to heightened naturalism. In order to be able to sell
a non-naturalistic script the quality has to be quite exceptional.
Even on the stage, the non-naturalism of the 1960s and 1970s is
no longer generally in vogue. A much-lauded contemporary theatre
talent like April de Angelis writes dialogue which is much closer
to naturalism than that of, say, David Mowat, a similarly praised
writer of the 1960s. We have to some extent moved away from
experimentalism, at least in the commercial theatre.
There is, nevertheless, a significant amount of successful
non-naturalistic scriptwriting taking place, from the films of Peter
Greenaway to the stage plays of Howard Barker, and any aspiring
scriptwriter should have some grasp of the variety of ways in which
dialogue in this form can function.
This is not the place to embark on a history of non-naturalistic
dialogue, but it might be useful at least to recognize what the trends
have been. To generalize enormously, much of present non-natural-
istic dialogue has sprung from two traditions – the major figure on
the one hand being Brecht, and on the other being Beckett; the one
tradition (initially, at least) heavily political, the other ‘absurdist’.
Of course, these two figures were not alone and they had their
antecedents too, but for the sake of simplicity we need not be
concerned with them here.

Brechtian dialogue
The term ‘Brechtian’ has come to mean any form of theatre
employing techniques of ‘alienation’. The term is also used, but to
a much lesser extent, in other media. Brecht was aware that the
 Highly stylized dialogue 145

audience was generally very ready to identify with characters, to

suffer and rejoice with them and ultimately to undergo ‘catharsis’,
a sort of purging of emotions. But at the end of all this, did they
actually learn anything? Were they any different at the close of the
play? Had the performance genuinely changed them? Brecht was
concerned to teach his audience, so he employed techniques of
‘alienation’: he kept reminding them – through the visibility of all
the stage equipment, through the acting style and above all through
the non-naturalism of the script – that this was a play; that it was
not real life and therefore the response should not be as to real life.
Where much theatre up to that point (and later) had simply taken
away a front wall, allowing us to see a version of ‘real’ life in a
‘real’ setting, and had invited us to suspend our disbelief, Brecht
did no such thing. The audience was not there to indulge itself, but
to learn. Brecht was calling for an essentially intellectual rather
than emotional response to his work.
This is in fact something of a caricature of Brecht’s beliefs
(which anyway changed over time); he recognized that some identi-
fication with characters was not always negative and that there is
a place for emotional response as well, and certainly much of his
dialogue is highly entertaining. But it was his constant belief that
mere entertainment, or emotional involvement, was not enough.
The works of Brecht himself have waned in popularity somewhat,
but elements of his techniques have become so much a part of
the fabric of our artistic world that we take them for granted. I
occasionally have individuals say to me of a documentary drama of
mine, ‘It’s really Brechtian, isn’t it?’ when this had not occurred to
me in such a stark form. I, along with thousands of other writers,
have simply absorbed his work – it is in the atmosphere now,
unavoidable. We take it for granted.
So, in terms of dialogue, what was Brecht doing? He was aiming
at clarity: characterization is clear and so are the dilemmas into
which characters are placed, so the dialogue, too, is clear. There is
no sustained attempt to imitate the sloppiness of natural speech,
and ambiguities of meaning – so prevalent in our everyday conver-
sation – are mostly avoided, since they would cloud the clarity of
the lesson. Brecht is perfectly happy to have characters speak in
quite a stilted way, and at other times in poetry or song, and for
them to tell each other information that is clearly in the dialogue
primarily for the benefit of the audience. He has characters speak
146 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

directly to the audience and often employs what is in effect a

‘chorus’, or narrator(s), also speaking directly to the audience,
frequently interpreting events, and suggesting the conclusions we
might wish to reach. If Brecht’s plays often seem to have the quality
of parables, the dialogue within them, too, shares something of the
quality of dialogue in fairy-tales – poetic, symbolic, and designed
to present a lesson.
For a modern example of scriptwriting clearly influenced by
Brecht, we might turn to Edward Bond. The following is the
opening of his stage play, Restoration. We soon realize that Lord
Are is trying to strike the sort of pose taken up in a pastoral
drawing, in an attempt to impress a wealthy heiress:

London. The Park of lord are’s house. are and frank.

frank is in livery.
are Lean me against that great thing.
frank The oak sir?
are Hold your tongue. No no! D’ye want me to appear
drunk? Nonchalant. As if I often spent the day leaning
against an oak or supine in the grass.
frank Your lordship comfortable?
are No scab I am not, if that gives ye joy. Hang my scarf
over the twig. Delicately! – as if some discriminating wind
had cast it there. Stand off. How do I look?
frank Well sir … how would yer like to look?
are I wore my russet and green of a purpose. Must I sprout
berries before I am at home in the landscape?
frank Not seen your lordship –
are Pox! Ye city vermin can’t tell the difference between a
haystack and a chimney stack. Wha-ha! I must not laugh,
it’ll spoil my pose. Damn! The sketch shows a flower. ’Tis
too late for the shops, I must have one from the ground.
frank What kind sir?
are Rip up that pesky little thing on the path. That’ll teach it
to grow where gentlemen walk.

It comes as no surprise that this script also includes many asides,

poetic speech direct to the audience and also songs, for here we
are well beyond heightened naturalism. Lord Are, attempting in
his ridiculous and unbelievable way to look the part of the country
 Highly stylized dialogue 147

gentleman, is speaking as no-one has ever spoken, and indeed we

are not intended to believe that anyone ever has spoken in this way.
Rather, the dialogue is about the idea of the character and of the
relationship between this member of the aristocracy and his servant
– it is not pretending to be the character and the relationship.
This, then, is the kernel of this form of dialogue. Just as in
this type of theatre it is the idea of a carriage, a train, a pig or
whatever, rather than the thing itself, that would be represented by
imaginative use of props or effects on stage, so the same principle
is applied to language. It is the idea of the character and the
conflicts (here, class conflicts) which is communicated through the
dialogue; dialogue is used for this rather than to imitate language
as it ever might have been spoken. And by reforming the language
around the ideas – and in the process reminding the audience
that this is language which is made by a writer, not merely some
sort of reproduction of life – the scriptwriter is free to invite the
audience to consider those ideas, those issues, rather than merely
react to emotional situations. This does not mean, however, that
the dialogue is just dull and teacherly. As the example shows, this
style of dialogue can be as clever, witty and engaging as any other,
but within a different convention. (Bizarrely, this particular extract,
taken out of context, could almost be from Oscar Wilde!)
In this extract, as is often the case in the scripts of Brecht himself,
the setting is an historical one. Sometimes, too, the action in these
types of plays takes place in a some sort of semi-mythical place far
from our own culture, as in Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan
or Bond’s Narrow Road to the Deep North. This distancing from
the present day and location seems to free the scriptwriter further
from any temptation merely to imitate the speech and actions of
life here and now; the time and place invite the dialogue to be
further removed from naturalism. It is not a coincidence that in a
play like Saved, set in the here- and-now of the time of its writing,
Bond’s dialogue is utterly different – really a form of heightened
naturalism rather than non-naturalism, imitating with extraor-
dinary (and terrifying) accuracy the speech of a group of corrupt
and amoral young people. Non-naturalistic dialogue certainly may
be set in the here and now, but its most natural home appears to
be elsewhere.
148 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

An absurd approach
The other major non-naturalistic approach to dialogue in the
twentieth century has come through what is now known as
‘absurd’ or ‘absurdist’ writing. Samuel Beckett is generally accepted
as being the father of this style, while many other major writers
in Britain and abroad (particularly France; Beckett wrote in both
English and French) have adopted a similar approach – Pinter,
Ionesco, N. F. Simpson and Edward Albee among others. Rather
as with Brechtian theatre, while new scripts written in a straight
forwardly absurdist style are a relative rarity these days, the essence
of the style appears to have soaked into the collective subconscious
of the scriptwriting fraternity, so that a writer such as Stoppard can
use many of the techniques of Beckett without ever being labelled
an ‘absurdist’. (After reading the following, the reader might like to
turn again to the extract from Albert’s Bridge on pp. 31–2, noting
there some traces of the style of absurd theatre.)
The following example is from Beckett’s most famous play,
Waiting for Godot. Precisely who – or what – Godot is never
becomes clear; neither is it clear why these characters are waiting
for him. The set consists simply of a country road with a tree.

vladimir Well? What do we do?

estragon Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer.
vladimir Let’s wait and see what he says.
estragon Who?
vladimir Godot.
estragon Good idea.
vladimir Let’s wait till we know exactly how we stand.
estragon On the other hand it might be better to strike the
iron before it freezes.
vladimir I’m curious to hear what he has to offer. Then we’ll
take it or leave it.
estragon What exactly did we ask him for?
vladimir Were you not there?
estragon I can’t have been listening.
vladimir Oh … nothing very definite.
estragon A kind of prayer.
vladimir Precisely.
 Highly stylized dialogue 149

estragon A vague supplication.

vladimir Exactly.
estragon And what did he reply?
vladimir That he’d see.
estragon That he couldn’t promise anything.
vladimir That he’d have to think it over.
estragon In the quiet of his home.
vladimir Consult his family.
estragon His friends.
vladimir His agents.
estragon His correspondents.
vladimir His books.
estragon His bank account.
vladimir Before taking a decision.
estragon It’s the normal thing.
vladimir Is it not?
estragon I think it is.
vladimir I think so too.

Here, clearly, the situation is absurd – two characters waiting for

another character for no clear reason at all. But the absurdity of the
situation should not blind us to the absurd nature of the dialogue,
too. This is conversation between people who are pretending to
understand their position, yet who don’t. In this extract Estragon
appears at the start to know what Vladimir is talking about, but
then in the fourth line it becomes clear that he does not. Then the
two of them go on to try to convince each other that they know
what they have asked Godot for and what his response was –
though it’s not really clear that they have ever even met him. Even
all this, very strange though it is, could have been couched in a
form of dialogue close to everyday, natural speech, but it is not.
The cliché, ‘Strike while the iron is hot’ is mangled by Estragon
(in naturalistic dialogue it would surely be presented in its normal
form, but in this world no-one has a full command of language or
meaning); then at times it is as if one sentence has been chopped up
and split between the two of them – the undisguised artificiality is
clear. Yet the beauty of this type of writing, when it is well done, is
not that it is merely weird but that the dialogue does, nevertheless,
faithfully communicate the essence of how characters who are lost,
who don’t know where to turn, really do talk to each other. Again
150 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

– though in a very different form from that of Brechtian theatre –

we are dealing with essences.
So what are the implications for us, as scriptwriters, if we
choose to make use of this type of dialogue? First we should bear
in mind that whenever it is used, it has the strong tendency to carry
the meaning – whatever the words do or do not actually say – that
the characters are trying but failing to make sense of the world.
Indeed, in Waiting for Godot we gain the strong impression that
this is because it is actually impossible to make sense of the world;
all we can do is come up with more or less convincing rational­
izations for what goes on, attempting to convince ourselves that we
understand our existences.
Similarly, in Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,
we have two characters who find themselves as virtual walk-ons,
while the real action in life is taking place elsewhere; both are
trying and failing to make sense of this and trying to avoid their
inevitable fate (they can’t, and we know what it is if we have
seen Hamlet). Or in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros a whole society is busy
rationalizing the gradual change of the population into rhinoc-
eroses; to us this may appear to be about society being taken over
by vulgarians (or possibly even fascists), but the meaning is never
spelled out. Thus, in absurd dialogue there is always a great deal
of ambiguity; meanings are never clear.
But all these scripts do seem to have in common the belief that
communication through language between individuals, and real
understanding between them, is extremely difficult. It is as if in
absurd dialogue the language resonates, and the characters can
only do their best to pick up the resonances – direct communi-
cation appears not to work.
So this, then, is the territory we are entering if as scriptwriters
we choose to employ the ‘absurd’ style of dialogue. It is an option
open to us, but – whatever else our script may be saying – it is
difficult to avoid these meanings which seem to be in common in
scripts written in this style.
Yet, despite this, ‘theatre of the absurd’ is very far from being
all the same. Harold Pinter, for example, particularly in his early
work, managed to forge a remarkable combination of absurd-type
dialogue with speech that at the same time appears to be a high
point of closely observed naturalistic speech. Most of his early
scripts present characters from close to the bottom of the social
 Highly stylized dialogue 151

scale, and he is able to produce a type of dialogue which both

imitates the incoherence of many of these individuals while at the
same time seeming to be quite ‘absurd’. Motivations and meanings
– and very often tremendous aggression – are here expressed not
so much through the words as under them. And here, as elsewhere,
‘absurd’ dialogue is predominantly the speech of those who feel they
have very little control over their lives. On some occasions another
layer of stylized non-naturalism is added through the repetition
of phrases and even whole speeches (again, almost as if they were
passages of music, as noted in Chapter 5). ‘Absurd’ dialogue may,
then, be combined with something like a certain naturalism, but
again it is consistency of style that is important. A simple mixing of
‘absurd’ dialogue with sections which might sound like, say, David
Hare, would produce something quite indigestible.
Martin Crimp’s In the Republic of Happiness very clearly plays
with our expectations in terms of naturalism. It starts off as a
fairly traditional family drama, which is then disrupted totally in
stylistic terms by the arrival of Uncle Bob, who disrupts not just the
Christmas family gathering but the whole play, taking us careering
away from naturalism. The central scenes then offer a complete
change again, as the whole cast is assembled onstage (seated facing
the audience in a line, in the production at the Royal Court) giving
vent to their fears and aspirations, rather like a panel on a television
show, but as individual lines rather than genuine discussion. While
not actually absurdist, this section of the play has something in
common with that tradition. But there is little humour here, not a
great deal of insight and little or no characterization, particularly
as the speakers of the lines are not identified (and can be changed
from night to night). This is non-naturalism taken to a particular
extreme, and its reception has been varied.

From the comic books

The Brechtian and ‘absurd’ traditions offer two of the main
options for scriptwriters of non-naturalistic dialogue, but there
are also others. One that has become particularly popular has
evolved from comic books, leading to films and television series
such as Batman, Superman, Dick Tracy and Spider-Man. In these
152 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

productions, many of the events – and, of course, many of the

characters, as well as the settings – are brazenly non-naturalistic.
With Superman zooming up to explode an asteroid that is threat-
ening Earth, Batman inhabiting the ultra-gothic Gotham City,
and even the colours used in the film of Dick Tracy screaming
high stylization, one might expect a corresponding approach in
the dialogue. Rather surprisingly, though, the dialogue in these
scripts tends to be their most naturalistic element. The characters
may be mentioning phenomena which to us seem impossible or
at least utterly futuristic, yet the language in which they express
themselves is hardly stylized. In some versions (the older Batman
television series comes to mind) there is an imitation of the comics’
‘Aaaaaaaaagh!’ or ‘WHACK!!!’, splashed across the screen as
words, but generally scriptwriters seem to have realized – particu-
larly when dealing with feature-length films – that while these
may work well on the page in relatively short comic strips, they
can easily become tedious when repeated in another medium.
Sometimes there is a certain division between naturalistic speech
for the main ‘positive’ characters and much more stylized speech
for the villains. Here the type of dialogue employed emphasizes
the ‘otherness’ of the villains – thus making them even less
appealing and more luridly villainous – while the more natural-
istic speech of the heroes or heroines seems to make them more
like ourselves, and so strengthens our empathy with them. In the
television series The New Adventures of Superman, the dialogue
between Lois and Clark and the rest of the staff at the Daily Planet
may be clever, witty and at times even laced with irony, but it is
essentially a heightened naturalism with which we can identify; it
is the everchanging gallery of villains who employ extreme styles
of speech, distancing us from them even further.
In the related genre of science fiction some attempts have
been made to script dialogue in a form as stylized as the rest
of the production. These range from the guttural sounds of the
Klingons in the Star Trek series of films to the impressively sophis-
ticated Future-Anglo-Russian-speak in Stanley Kubrick’s film A
Clockwork Orange (the language, of course, comes originally
from the novel by Anthony Burgess). The option for highly stylized
dialogue in these forms certainly exists, though few scriptwriters
take advantage of it.
 Highly stylized dialogue 153

Poetic dialogue
In general, if scripts using highly stylized dialogue are the hardest
to sell, then scripts using poetic dialogue are the hardest to sell of
the hardest to sell. We may all greatly admire Under Milk Wood
or the work of Tony Harrison or, for that matter, Murder in the
Cathedral, but in our own time there is really hardly any market
for poetic dialogue. In fact, if one were to give a single piece of
advice on how not to have your script accepted, it would be to
write it in poetry.
But again, there are exceptions, particularly on the stage, and
they vary enormously. Tony Harrison has already been mentioned,
but there are others such as the Caribbean writer Derek Walcott,
slipping back and forth from poetry to prose in, for example,
Ti-Jean and His Brothers; or there is the muscular, obscene and
dynamic poetic dialogue of Steven Berkoff in plays like East and
Greek. Clearly in all these scripts, as in the Dylan Thomas play,
there is a real delight in the use of language for its own sake, but
for those determined to write poetic dialogue, the strongest piece of
advice – actually borne out by these scripts – must be not to be self-
indulgent. The poetry, however stunning in itself, must always be
at the service of the drama. Just as in all other forms of dialogue, it
must always be developing character, plot or some other aspect of
the drama (in whatever way – obscure, subtle or otherwise). Words
for their own sake – whether poetry or prose – are not enough. And
when you read these successful poetic scripts you see that every
flourish of rhetoric is, in fact, at the service of some other aspect of
the script; there are no mere words.

The fantasy sequence

There is another non-naturalistic technique which has become
increasingly common: the fantasy sequence. Over recent years
this has become very popular in television scripts (particularly
comedy), but it can also be found elsewhere, as in for example the
sexual fantasy in Laura Jones’ film adaptation of Henry James’
Portrait of Lady. Fantasy shows the momentary fears or longings
of the character, rather than what actually takes place, and often
154 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

it is immediately juxtaposed with what does actually happen. So

we have Ally McBeal’s endless little flashes of her wishes or the
deepest fears from within Frasier’s psyche. In Everybody Hates
Chris there is a particularly compelling reason for the fantasy
sequences, as Chris feels generally rejected by those around him,
and thus needs to fantasize about what his life could be like. In
Ugly Betty, similarly, at the start of the second series the unwanted
Betty gets her man – but only in fantasy. In the case of The Singing
Detective (writer, Dennis Potter), too, there is a need for the fantasy
(which takes a particularly surreal song-and-dance form) as an
escape from both his past and his awful illness. Very often fantasy
is extreme; in Scrubs there is a sequence in which the arrival of the
stunning Julie compels even a dead patient to sit up in bed. What
is common to most of these fantasy sequences is that dialogue is
kept to a minimum, and in many cases is dispensed with altogether.
Since fantasy is a sort of daydream, that dreamlike quality is essen-
tially visual rather than verbal. There are exceptions, such as the
sequence in Six Feet Under where we are misled into thinking that
Nate is being followed by his ex, Brenda. In this extended fantasy
there is considerable dialogue, but it is precisely this element (along
with the sheer length of the fantasy) that misleads us into thinking
that it isn’t a fantasy at all. Fantasy dialogue, then, is usually very
little dialogue at all.

Romeos and Juliets

Let us complete this chapter with a glance at an excellent example
of where non-naturalistic dialogue has been combined with other
equally non-naturalistic elements. In Shakespeare’s time it was the
norm to write dialogue in poetic form: Marlowe, Jonson, Webster
and others all had their characters speak in poetry. Now, of course,
it is far from the norm. But perhaps we may learn a little from how
this poetic speech may be presented to a modern audience.
Baz Luhrmann adapted Romeo and Juliet for the big screen,
set in modern times with guns, helicopters and all. He could
have rewritten the dialogue in the same way as it was rewritten
for West Side Story (itself using clearly stylized language), or
he could, instead, have reworked the dialogue into a more
 Highly stylized dialogue 155

naturalistic modern idiom. Instead, in his film Luhrmann keeps to

the precise language of the original, opting only to edit (as, after
all, often happens in stage productions). The result is extraor-
dinary – television commentators speaking utterly non-naturalistic
Elizabethan poetry, drivers of beaten-up motors speaking the
language of the 1590s. Yet it works marvelously, as it is done
with real commitment and flair. The idea of antique dialogue in a
thoroughly modern context may seem odd, but in fact the result is
satisfying because the non-naturalistic dialogue matches extremely
well the equally non-naturalistic visual presentation – the florid,
exaggerated sets and costumes, the jarring cuts, the pieces of film
running at double speed and a host of other consciously cinematic
effects. It is with all this that the language of the dialogue is of a
piece: we very soon realize that ‘in-your-face’ non-naturalism is
the convention established by the film – and we accept it. So, if
we are considering writing dialogue in non-naturalistic or even
poetic form, we come back to the same lesson: what is demanded
is consistency of approach, such as is delivered in this film.

Notes
1 Writers, William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, from
the novel by Raymond Chandler.
2 Writers, Phil Kaufman and Sonia Chernus, from the novel by Forrest
Carter.
156
 9
The character tells the story

Two types of narration

We noted in an earlier chapter that there is no narrator in life –
we have to find our way through it as best we can without such
assistance. Similarly, scripts have to be negotiated by the audience
mostly without the aid of a narrator. At the same time, however,
there is something comforting about narration; it can lend a certain
air of security, so that the audience feels that at least someone
knows what is going on. For this reason and others (which will be
discussed later), many scriptwriters have used a variety of forms of
narration within the dialogue.
In examining narration we should first make a clear distinction
between narration from within character and so-called ‘imper-
sonal’ narration. In the former, a character is speaking direct to the
audience, as a sort of aside. On stage this is normally a character
quite literally turning to the audience to make a comment; on
television and in film, character-narration is usually presented
through voice-over, but there are a number of notable excep-
tions where the narration is to camera. On radio it is a matter of
a change of microphone and acoustic, making it clear that this
character is somehow outside the scene at this moment.
‘Impersonal’ narration, on the other hand, involves using a
speaker who is not a character within the drama.
158 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Impersonal narration
These two types of narration produce very different effects. Most of
this chapter will examine the use of narration from within character,
but here we will look just briefly at ‘impersonal’ narration. This is
rarely used now, although a form of it does arise occasionally as
‘chorus’. Sometimes, too, in films (as in Casablanca) there is a brief
use of impersonal narration, particularly at the start – comparable
to the prologue in an Elizabethan stage play – and at the ending,
though these often take the form of on-screen text rather than
voice-over. The problem with the impersonal voice-over is that
it is not, in fact, impersonal in the same way that an impersonal
narrator in a novel might seem. In film or in other script media
we hear a real voice, so it ceases immediately to be impersonal –
we want to know whose voice this is, and perhaps even why it is
making the statement.
There are some successful uses of impersonal narration in
modern script media. For example, in his play The Fire Raisers
Frisch makes effective use of a chorus of unidentifiable individuals
(an inheritance from Greek theatre); in fact, it is immediately
clear that the narration is not truly ‘impersonal’, since the chorus
represents the guardians of the city – and, by extension, of the
civilization. Similarly, the memorable opening to Citizen Kane
(writers, Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles) uses what
seems to be an impersonal narrator, but we soon come to identify
the voice and speech style with newsreel used at other points in
the film; the narration is part of a broader quasi-documentary
effect. In the film Jules et Jim (writers, François Truffaut and Jean
Gruault) there is, for once, a genuinely impersonal narrator, giving
at least an impression of cool detachment, a clear view on highly
emotional events. But this is a rarity in the script media; where
there is narration at all it is much more common – and generally
much more successful – for it to come from within character.
Then there are the comic impersonal narrators of the pseudo-
fly-on-the-wall documentary, in for example the television series
2012 and W1A. Here the humour lies mainly in the contrast
between the serious, factual tone of the narration and the banal
absurdities of its content. At one point in W1A, a satire on the
workings of the BBC, the narrator helpfully segues: ‘With the
 The character tells the story 159

BBC now accused of ageism, sexism and institutional anti-west

Country bias in its treatment of Spotlight South-West presenter
Sally Wingate, the Woman’s Hour interview is an important test
of Ian’s purpose as the Corporation’s new Head of Values and as a
man.’ The statements almost makes sense but not quite – ‘and as a
man’ – and it is the not quite that makes them funny. Or there is
this: ‘Meanwhile producer Lucy Freeman is with potentially new
writer Dan Shepherd. After working towards developing a new
drama, Home Truth, with him for over two years, the project is
finally nearing another meeting.’ Here again it doesn’t quite make
sense. The ‘potentially’ is not quite right – he is either a new writer
or he isn’t. He is writing a script that could potentially be aired by
the corporation, but that’s not the same thing. And then there is the
bathos and surprise at the end. We are expecting, after the build-up,
anything but the word ‘meeting.’ Here, then, we have a fictional
narrator who takes himself very seriously but never quite gets
things right. One of the reasons this is so effective in this particular
series is that the narration matches the version of the BBC that the
series projects – well-meaning, serious and ultimately not quite
competent. The style of narration matches the programme.

The character-narrator
In the theatre, there are many examples of character-narration
in Elizabethan and in modern drama. Both the soliloquy and
the short aside are common in the work of Shakespeare and his
contemporaries, while in modern drama that has been even vaguely
influenced by Brecht, character-narration direct to the audience is
an accepted part of the style. The more strictly naturalistic school
tends not to make use of it, however, as it jars somewhat with the
manner of the rest of the production. Where film and television are
concerned, while a character suddenly speaking direct to camera
seems somewhat outrageous and so is not often used, occasionally
it does work well, as in the Carry On films. It may be reserved
for endings, as in the tongue-in-cheek conclusion to Robin Hood,
Prince of Thieves (writers, Pen Densham and John Watson) in which
Friar Tuck in effect asks the audience out for a drink, or the last line
of Devil’s Advocate (writers, Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy) in
160 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

which the Devil (Al Pacino) turns to camera to remark that vanity
really is his favourite sin. Perhaps the technique is so often left for
the end of the film because stylistic consistency would demand that
any earlier use be followed by further usage, which would be very
difficult to accomplish successfully while maintaining an otherwise
essentially naturalistic presentation. However, there are one or
two successful examples of consistent narration to camera, such as
the television series for teenagers As If, or the film High Fidelity
(writers, D. V. DeVincentis and Nick Hornby). In general, though,
contemporary film and television scripts tend to make far more use
of character-narration as voice-over.
So, if we are to pepper our dialogue with voice-over character-
narration, what are its uses, and what are its dangers? We noted
earlier, in Chapter 7, one effect of character-narration: it tends
to increase the audience’s identification with the character who
is narrating. To turn once more to Goodfellas, here we have a
gangster, Henry, narrating his life to us – a life of violence, crime,
selfishness, abuse of his wife and betrayal. Yet the fact that it is
Henry narrating this to us, Henry telling us the story in his own
words, does nevertheless create a bond between audience and
character: we are to some extent on his side, despite everything.
There is something similar in The Opposite of Sex (writer, Don
Roos) where our anti-heroine, Dedee, is really very unpleasant to
all those around her, but her voice-over narration is so wickedly
funny that we find ourselves empathizing with her anyway.
Similarly in The Wolf of Wall Street (writer, Terence Winter,
adapted from the memoirs of Jordan Belfort), Belfort, the central
character, narrates. But he more than narrates – he takes control
of the narrative, just as he does of all those around him, in his
irresistible way. (Despite his appalling behaviour he is an attractive
character. When he tells his employees ‘This is Ellis Island, people.
I don’t care who you are, whether your relatives came over on the
Mayflower or an inner-tube from Haiti. This right here, is the land of
opportunity’, he is espousing a version of the American Dream with
genuine fervour, which many may find endearing.) And the narration
is more than just voice-over; rather, he speaks direct to camera –
there is a brazenness about this delivery of dialogue; it seems there
is nothing he is ashamed of or would wish to hide. At one point
near the start he even decides that his car needs to be a different
colour and – hey presto – the car is instantly transformed. This is a
 The character tells the story 161

man who controls everything, even the film itself, and the manner of
presentation of dialogue is an integral part of showing that.
In the film The Usual Suspects (writer, Christopher McQuarrie)
the character Verbal Klint recounts criminal events as voice-over
while we watch them. As we have seen, this is a common use of
voice-over in film: we are in a scene with a character recalling
events from the past; the voice then continues seamlessly as it
becomes voice-over and we see the events themselves rather than
the scene from which the person is speaking (though we usually
return to that scene at the end of the voice-over). In The Usual
Suspects, however, there is an added twist: Verbal Klint is an
intentionally unreliable narrator. The fact that he is given voice-
over while we apparently see real events lends his version of events
credence, and thus it comes as a greater shock when it is revealed
that his version is in fact a lie.
The film The Black Dahlia (writer, Josh Friedman, from the
novel by James Ellroy) offers an interesting example of character-
narration through voice-over. We see almost every event through
the eyes of the central character, the police detective Bucky
Bleichert, and the narration is of course his. But this voice-over
not only provides a commentary on events, with insights into his
thoughts and feelings; it also provides a strong link between this
film, produced in 2006, and the mid-twentieth century film noir.
Indeed, The Black Dahlia (along with other films such as LA
Confidential) is sometimes referred to as being neo-noir. One of the
recurring traits of film noir was voice-over by the central character
(often a detective) and the use of this device in The Black Dahlia
seems in part designed to place it firmly in that tradition.
Let us now look at an extract from early in the film The
Shawshank Redemption (shooting script; writer, Frank Darabont).
Red (Morgan Freeman) has already been in prison for many years.
Now a new delivery of convicts (‘fresh fish’) arrives:

10 EXT – EXERCISE YARD – SHAWSHANK PRISON –

DUSK (1947)

High stone walls topped with snaky concertina wire, set off at
intervals by looming guard towers. Over a hundred cons are
in the yard. Playing catch, shooting crap, jawing at each other,
making deals. Exercise period.
162 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

red emerges into fading daylight, slouched low-key through

the activity, worn cap on his head, exchanging hellos and doing
minor business. He’s an important man here.

red (v.o.)
There’s a con like me in every prison in America, I guess. I’m
the guy who can get it for you. Cigarettes, a bag of reefer if
you’re partial, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your kid’s high
school graduation. Damn near anything, within reason.

He slips somebody a pack of smokes, smooth sleight-of-hand.

red (v.o.)
Yes sir, I’m a regular Sears and Roebuck.

two short siren blasts issue from the main tower, drawing
everybody’s attention to the loading dock. The outer gate
swings open … revealing a gray prison bus outside.

red (v.o.)
So when Andy Dufresne came to me in 1949 and asked me to
smuggle Rita Hayworth into the prison for him, I told him no
problem. And it wasn’t.

con
Fresh fish! Fresh fish today!

Red is joined by heywood, skeet, floyd, jigger, ernie,

snooze. Most cons crowd to the fence to gawk and jeer,
but Red and his group mount the bleachers and settle in
comfortably.

11 INT – PRISON BUS – DUSK (1947)

andy sits in back, wearing steel collar and chains.

red (v.o.)
Andy came to Shawshank prison in early 1947 for murdering
his wife and the fella she was bangin’.
 The character tells the story 163

The bus lurches forward, rumbles through the gates. Andy

gazes around, swallowed by prison walls.

red (v.o.)
On the outside, he’d been vice-president of a large Portland
bank. Good work for a man as young as he was, when you
consider how conservative banks were back then.

12 EXT – PRISON YARD – DUSK (1947)

tower guard
All clear!

guards approach the bus with carbines. The door jerks open.
The new fish disembark, chained together single-file, blinking
sourly at their surroundings. Andy stumbles against the man in
front of him, almost drags him down.

Here we have Red, one of the two central characters, telling

the story. What is particularly interesting about the voice-over
narration in this script is that Red is not in fact the central
character – that position is taken by Andy (Tim Robbins). Rather,
Red is the narrator-observer, watching and interacting with Andy
from when the latter first arrives. This is a sort of second-person
character-narration, in some ways similar to what you might find
in novels such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Certainly
some of Red’s voice-overs are concerned with himself, but primarily
he presents us with how Andy is seen; and how Andy is seen – as
opposed to what he might actually be – is crucial to the story.
(Incidentally, a quick note on presentation: normally scripts when
first submitted should not have the scenes numbered, as numbering
is added later during the production process. Also, the writer here,
after the initial introduction of the characters, ceases to refer to
his central characters in stage directions as red and andy – they
become Red and Andy. This is now quite common practice.)
Voice-over has become increasingly popular in television series,
particularly comedy. It occurs, for example, in Everybody Hates
Chris, Grey’s Anatomy and, of course, the highly successful
Desperate Housewives. Here the narrator, Mary Alice Young,
once of Wisteria Lane, looks down indulgently on the antics of
164 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

her former neighbours, while she now resides in the next world.
A similar position (though with rather more bitterness) is adopted
by Lester, the central character in American Beauty (writer, Alan
Ball), as at the start of the film he introduces us to his family from
his position beyond the grave. In this latter example the narration
not only tells us about the family and setting but also poses the
unstated question, how and why did he die?
There are, then, many different forms of character-narration, in
some of which the narrator is given a reason for narrating, while
in others we simply have to accept that a character is telling us
the story, without any particular reason being given. Sometimes
character-narration arises out of a letter, diary or other document
(this starts up in series four of Mad Men), which is then delivered
in voice-over. As a one-off this hardly constitutes narration, but
when it is used repeatedly then it does take on the characteristics of
narration. A good example occurs in Dances With Wolves (writer,
Michael Blake), in which Dunbar’s journal provides the text for the
voice-over while we watch the events he refers to. There is a reason
for these words: as a military man Dunbar keeps a journal; we are
simply hearing it.
In all of the examples given above the narration is delivered
by one of the central characters. A different and somewhat less
successful approach to character-narration is adopted by Arthur
Miller in his otherwise excellent play A View from the Bridge. The
problem with the character-narrator here, Alfieri, lies in the ratio of
narration to other speech. We simply do not see enough of Alfieri
apart from his role as narrator for him to be firmly established as
a character in his own right. The result is that he appears to be too
much a device rather than a character. Miller has fallen between
two stools: Alfieri is neither an impersonal narrator, outside the
action, nor a convincing character-narrator.

The character-narrator and time

We have already seen narration from beyond the grave. Now let us
turn to a very different type of character-narration, looking once
more at the extract from early in the script of Woody Allen’s Annie
Hall (see pp. 109–10). Here we have Alvy as voice-over narrating
 The character tells the story 165

events that took place when he was a child. The important point
here is that it is Alvy as an adult narrating the events of his own
childhood. Looking back on things often has a certain moving
quality (it is the attraction of reminiscence); the past of any
individual can never be recaptured or changed. Yet we want to
capture it again, and we want to change it. We want to be able to
live the wonderful moments once more, and the fact that we never
can – all we can ever have is the memory – is moving. At the same
time, we want to be able to change those things which went badly
wrong, we want to be able to relive our lives in the light of what
we have subsequently found out, but once again this is impossible,
and that impossibility too is moving. So narration from a character
looking back at their own experiences tends to have a very strong
emotional appeal – stronger than that of a narrator concentrating
on the experiences of others. It is therefore important that it is
the adult Alvy looking back at himself. Then, as we noted earlier,
Allen takes this further, having impossible interaction between the
characters of then and now, which is humorous but at the same
time also adds to the pathos (although this is pathos with a light
touch) because we know, of course, that it is precisely this sort of
interaction that is impossible. (The appeal here has something in
common with that of Groundhog Day and Sommersby, both of
which in their very different ways present the possibility of leading
life again, without the mistakes of the past.)
This question of narration and time is a complex one. The script-
writer who decides to use character-narration in the dialogue has to
decide from when the character is narrating. A character can narrate
from the very moment of the action, speaking in the present tense,
so that it becomes a sort of personal running commentary. This
can certainly work well, and indeed Allen himself uses it on more
than one occasion; it is particularly effective later in Annie Hall,
presenting the thoughts – popping up on to the screen as written
words – of two characters while they are out on a first date. But
that is the point: whether as voice-over or as text, this is narration
as thoughts, at the very moment when the events are happening.
Certainly there is a place for this form of narration in dialogue, but
it has its limitations: it does not have that moving quality of looking
back; nor does it afford the opportunity for the narrator to have
thought about these events since they have happened, and therefore
to have come to some conclusions about them.
166 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

To refer to The Black Dahlia again, the matter of how time is

handled in relation to narration is particularly clever in this film.
The voice-over character-narration by Bucky is in the past tense, and
we assume that this is from a position looking back from the end of
the story. This is not the case, however. For example, at one point,
immediately after a shoot-out, Bucky tells us through voice-over that
his partner had saved his life. Near the end of the film, however,
we learn – again through Bucky’s voice-over – that he now realized
his partner had not saved his life at all but had in fact tricked him
into believing he had. So what eventually becomes clear is that this
narration, although not in the present tense, has been looking back
on events scene by scene, giving the perspective that the character
had at that time rather than the one that he would have been able to
adopt at the end of the story. Thus this use of time in the narration
produces an element of unintended (on the character’s part) narrative
unreliability, adding an extra element for the viewer to unravel.

Multiple narrators
Sometimes there is more than one narrator in a script. In Michael
Frayn’s Copenhagen, for example, the narration shifts fluidly
between the three characters; it is usually the character who is least
directly involved in the action at that moment who takes on the
narration. The play is set after the death of all three characters;
each of them is giving his or her interpretation of the momentous
events of many years ago. So, while sometimes their recollections
and understandings dovetail happily, at other times they do not
tie in at all. The play is about interpretations, of Science and of
History. The multiple narration underscores that the play is not,
ultimately, about facts, but about how these facts are viewed.
There is interesting use of narration in American Hustle (writers,
David O. Russell and Eric Warren Singer). Here we have double
character narration, and a lot of it, from both Irving and his
partner Sydney. For a short time there is even a third narrator, as
the character of Richie takes up the reins. After the initial hook
scene we jump back; Irving narrates his own back-story (a la
Goodfellas) – ‘I took it upon myself to drum up business’ he tells
us, as we see his younger self smashing windows to create more
 The character tells the story 167

clients for his father in the window business. But he also narrates
while we watch the younger Sydney: ‘Like me, she’d come from a
place where her options were limited.’ Similarly, Sydney narrates
part of her own back-story – ‘My dream, above anything, was to
become anyone else other than who I was.’ But she also narrates
about him and his past: ‘He was who he was. He didn’t care.’
She even narrates his relationship with his son, which she hasn’t
witnessed. This mixing of who narrates what is a strong indication
of how well they know each other and how much they trust each
other; they both live each other’s stories.
The film is about con-men and fakery. As Sydney remarks, ‘We’re
all conning ourselves one way one another, just to get through life.’
All the hair-dos are fake, particularly those of the leading men. This
is a film of curlers and comb-overs. But the fakery doesn’t extend
to the narration, so for almost the entire centre of the film there is
no narration at all; we are cut adrift. That is because through this
centre of the film we are invited to think that Sydney really does
become alienated from Irving and falls for Richie. If this section
had been narrated, we would probably have learned otherwise, and
the film would have been much the weaker for it. The narration
slips back in towards the end of the film, as what has been fake and
what has not begins to become clearer.
The film The Grand Budapest Hotel (writer, Wes Anderson)
also has two narrators, carefully layered. Let us look at an extract,
beginning partway through a scene between Zero, a hotel lobby
boy, and M Gustav, the concierge.

zero
Were you ever a lobby boy, M Gustav?
m gustav
(bristling but playful)
What do you think?
zero
(speculative)
Well I suppose you had to start –
m gustav
Go light the goddam candle.

ONE MONTH LATER.

INT. LOBBY. DAY.
168 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The crowded room buzzes in all corners. Zero circulates among

tables and sofas holding out a folded telegram while he calls out
a name, searching. A military officer in grey uniform hails him,
and Zero dashes over to deliver the missive.

mr moustafa
(voice-over)
And so, my life began. Junior lobby boy (in training), Grand
Budapest Hotel, under the strict command of M Gustav H.
I became his pupil, and he was to be my counselor and
guardian.
m gustav
(voice-over, rhetorical)
What is a lobby boy?

Montage:

Zero pushes an old man in a wheelchair. Zero arranges a white

banquet. Zero replaces dirty ashtrays, rearranges furniture,
and shields a large woman with a toothpick from view as she
excavates between her teeth.

m gustav
(voice-over)
A lobby boy is completely invisible, yet always in sight.
A lobby boy remembers what people hate. A lobby boy
anticipates the client’s needs before the needs are needed. A
lobby boy, above all, is discreet, to a fault.

A little later, across another montage showing M Gustav with

various women, Mr Moustafa describes the female guests who
would receive the particular attentions of M Gustav:

mr moustafa
(voice-over)
The requirements were always the same. They had to be: rich,
old, insecure, vain, superficial, blonde, needy.
 The character tells the story 169

Cut to:

Mr Moustafa and the author at their dinner table. The remains

of a rabbit tart are replaced by a sizeable roasted pheasant as the
author gently inquires:

author
Why blonde?
mr moustafa
(after a moment’s reflection)
Because they all were.

Here, then, we have two narrators, but narrating from different

times. Mr Moustafa – the young version of whom is referred to as
Zero – is thinking back over his life and M Gustav’s role in it, from
‘now’; the voice-over of M Gustav is in fact a continuation of his
conversation with Zero in the past (the early twentieth century) –
though it is the present for M Gustav himself within the scene that
starts this extract, and while we hear the voice we see Zero doing
his best to live up to M Gustav’s description in the hotel’s heyday.
A little later the (re-)appearance of Author reminds us that in fact
all this is within a frame in which Mr Moustafa’s reminiscences are
being related to Author, which has been established at the start of
the film. That conversation is Mr Moustafa’s ‘now’. But there is
also a third narrator. At the start and end of the film Author himself
narrates, his voice-overs looking back on the already slightly shabby
hotel (at the time of his visit to it) while again we see what he is
describing. But this narration is not part of his conversation with Mr
Moustafa – rather, it is a conversation with us, as he addresses the
camera directly; he introduces us to Mr Moustafa and his narration.
These speeches of Author, then, form the narrational frame within
which the other narrational frame exists, and are the ultimate ‘now’.
A particularly stunning example of voice-over narration occurs
in the television series Peep Show (writers, Jesse Armstrong
and Sam Bain). Each of the central characters narrates – often
right next to each other – from his own point of view. The style
of narration is unusual in two respects. First, it is not looking
back upon the events shown but rather is presenting us with
the character’s thoughts – the fears, the hopes, the ironic reflec-
tions and in Jeremy’s case often the idiocies – at the moment the
170 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

events are happening. Second, while we hear these thoughts, the

sound of any dialogue that might be going on at the time is cut
out, but it is cut out not only for us, the audience, but also for
the character whose thoughts we are hearing. It is as though in
the act of thinking the character cannot quite manage to listen
at the same time. Which may well be true. When combined with
a filming style that has the actors speaking to camera whenever
they are speaking to each other, the effect is uniquely involving
of the audience.
Corridor, a radio play of mine, is set in a prison, during
the half-hour which was at that time allowed for a visit (it is a
30-minute play). The two characters have spent much of the visit
so far arguing, and Roy has just given a fifteen-line rant on how
he doesn’t regret his life of petty crime and has no intention of
reforming. It then continues:

maureen You’re not the man I married, Roy.

roy That’s right. Things have changed a bit since then.
maureen Prison’s done something to you.
roy It does something to everyone. (internal) For some –
maureen Roy can’t you take your mind off prison and
pinching bloody televisions?
roy (internal) – it’s like a school. They go there every few
years for a bit of training when they’re falling behind the
times.
maureen There’s years of your life left, our lives left. Can’t
you think about that?
roy (internal) Others, it makes them curl up, pathetic –
maureen (brightly) I was talking to Joe Chipperfield the other
day.
roy Oh yeah?
(internal) – you watch them drying up in front of you. By
the time they leave –
maureen Saying he was fed up with kids working in the shop
– unreliable, never stay more than a few months, and they
can hardly add up.
(internal) I don’t know if it was then that I realized.
roy (internal) – they’re no good for anything, dried up old
apples.
maureen Anyway, cut a long story short –
 The character tells the story 171

(internal) It might have been. It might have been before the

visit started.
(aloud) – he says he’d like to have you working for him
when you come out.
roy (internal) Kicked about outside and end up back here
again. And some finish up like me. Got to hold on.
(aloud) Joe Chipperfield?
maureen Yes.
roy Ha!
maureen (internal) But I knew I wouldn’t visit him again.
roy His Dad gave us a beating for nicking apples out of his
precious orchard. I wouldn’t have worked in his lousy shop
if he paid me. I suppose he would have paid me. Or maybe
he’d have been showing enough of his big heart by letting
me work there for nothing – permission to be in his holy
shop at all would have been enough.
maureen He says he doesn’t mind about what you’ve done in
the past –
[roy (internal) And what had it got to do with him?]*
maureen Says it doesn’t make any difference, as far as he’s
concerned.
* This line deleted in rehearsal.

Here we have two narrators operating at the same time, both

looking back on the one occasion from very different perspectives.
This technique can produce fascinating results, as we are aware
not only of the ‘present’ – the scene as it is happening – but also of
two different perspectives from the future. The contrasts between
these perspectives is much starker when presented like this – as the
‘present’ is happening – than would be the case if the scriptwriter
instead had merely moved on to a later period of their lives and
allowed us to learn their views at that point. It is this jarring mix
of simultaneous perspectives which is so effective.
Roy’s narration is in the past tense, so it is looking back from
a future point, but at times it also has some of the quality of
thoughts at that moment. It is as if, looking back on that occasion,
he not only gives us his views from this later ‘now’ looking back,
but is also reminded of what he thought at the time. So there is a
certain ambiguity here, a mixing of his thoughts of now and then.
In addition, parts of his narration are in fact in the present tense,
172 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

even though he is looking back. As we noted in an earlier chapter,

a person telling a story will often slip into the present tense, as
they are reliving the moment and also making it more vivid for
the listeners. So there is an element of that here. But there is more
than that: Roy’s use of the present tense implies a continuity – that
things are still like this in prison, and this prepares us for the fact
that although Roy is looking back on this occasion from a future
time, at that future time he is also in prison – he is back inside
again.
I have included here a line which I decided to cut during
rehearsals. This is because it was confusing. On hearing the actor
give the line, I realized something that I should have realized earlier
– that however well delivered by the actor (in this case the excellent
Kenneth Cranham), it would be unclear to the audience whether
this line was ‘internal’ or spoken to Maureen. A great deal can
be done with a change of microphone and change of acoustic, as
well as a change of tone of voice on the part of the actor, but here
the line itself was too misleading – it had to go. The distinction
between speech to the audience and speech to another character
must be a clear one.
Narration from a point in the future looking back allows us –
at the end of the script, or sometimes earlier – to catch up with
this ‘now’; the ‘now’ that is the point from which the character is
looking back. So in Corridor, for example, we find out at the end
that Maureen has split up with Roy and is now living with another
man, while catching up with the ‘now’ of Roy only leaves us in
prison once again.

A new scene, a new narrator

There are some scripts in which narrators are not mixed together,
as in Corridor, but where instead different characters narrate
different sections of the script. This is a device more common
in the novel than in scripts, but in scripts, too, it can be very
effective.
We have already referred to A Few Kind Words, the first long
scene of which is narrated by Tommy, the old Derbyshire miner.
The second scene, though, is narrated by his daughter, Jenny; this
 The character tells the story 173

pushes us into seeing the relationship from a new perspective. Only

in the final scene do we have the two characters narrating together.
Tommy is now dying, in a home. Until this scene, Jenny has refused
to produce an inscription for the headstone for her mother’s grave –
the ‘few kind words’ Tommy has wanted from her. Now, however,
she has come along with a possible inscription – ‘You lived the life
you had to live. We loved you for it’ – but Tommy hates it. Here,
then, is the ending of the play:

jenny So what do you want?

tommy From yo, nothin’.
(internal) Ah wanted ’er te look at me, te look at this place
… Ah wanted ’er te say, it’s all raight Dad, Ah’m wi’ yo
an’ Mum, Ah’m wi’ yo. That’s all Ah ever wanted. Nor ’er
thought aht wods …
jenny (internal) To look at me and say, you’re mine. A
disappointment, not what I’d have wanted –
tommy (aloud) Nothing yo can give me.
jenny (internal) – but you’re mine, that’s all I’d wanted from
you.
(aloud) God you’re impossible to please.
tommy ’Ow’d yo know, yo’ve niver tried. (pause)
Lived the life she ’ad te live. What’s that make me? Slave
driver?
jenny We all live the lives we’ve got to.
tommy An’ what’s the use of puttin’ that on’t gravestone?
jenny What’s the use of anything? It just happens. I’m trying
to stop blaming people.
tommy What’s there te blame for?
jenny (internal, with control) This was –
tommy Did she live such a terrible life?
jenny She was a collier’s wife.
(internal) – the last time –
tommy An’ wer that such an awful thing?
jenny (internal) – and I couldn’t –
(aloud) It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t your fault –
tommy Yo with yer perfect broken marriage an’ yer job that
does no-one any good –
jenny (internal) – do any better – (aloud) It does do some
good.
174 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

tommy An’ yo sit theer lecturin’ me

jenny (internal) – do any better –
tommy – on ’ow uz we’ve gorra live lahk this or live lahk
that –
jenny (internal) – do any better –
tommy Well Ah’m tellin’ yo that we live ’ow we want te live,
an’ we die ’ow we want te die, an’ fer me that’s wi’ yo not
’ere.
jenny (internal) – than this.
pause
tommy (internal) A few kind words –
jenny (internal) – that’s all I wanted.

This use of double narration within dialogue produces a very

powerful effect of dramatic irony – we know the perspectives of
each of the characters, but neither of them truly knows that of the
other. In this particular script the clash of the two sets of narration
has been held back for the end of the play, which increases the
emotional impact. And we find out that in fact there are strong
similarities between the two: ‘a few kind words’ are not only
what is needed for the gravestone, but are also what each of
them desperately wants from the other but is incapable of giving.
At the very end of the play their feelings are at heart so similar
– despite their conflict – that they even share one line between
them, Tommy beginning it and Jenny finishing it. We hear all this,
but the characters don’t, and it is this which adds so much to the
effectiveness of the scene.
One other small point may be made here, although not specifi-
cally related to narration. Jenny repeats the phrase ‘do any better’
a number of times. It has been noted earlier that repeated lines
or even whole speeches can take on new meanings each time,
but here the effect is rather different. On each repetition the line
acquires more and more power, but leading finally only to ‘than
this’ – a horrible anticlimax that can only be followed by a pause.
Repetition in dialogue, then, can be an extremely versatile tool.
 The character tells the story 175

A shared experience
We have seen in the previous example that a line may sometimes be
shared by two characters. We saw a very different example (though
not of narration) which also felt like lines shared between two, in
Waiting for Godot. Lines may, in fact, be split between a larger
number of characters.
Let us take a speech that we have decided to give to a character
in a stage play, speaking to the audience:

As joyce speaks we see a number of women taking things to

the pawnbroker’s, and a couple of well-dressed ladies walk past.

joyce We used to go down the pawn shop, every week. Take

his best trousers in on the Monday, get ’em out again the
end of the week. And if things got really hard, we’d take
in other bits and pieces as well – my grandfather’s watch,
I remember. Sometimes we’d not get things back. Couldn’t
afford to. And you’d see the toffs walkin’ down the street,
watchin’ you as you went in. But I’d look up, I would. I’d
look ’em in the eye.

This speech works perfectly well as a piece of narration. Perhaps at

the same time we are seeing something of what she is describing.
But now let’s split the lines up:

As joyce speaks we see a number of women taking things to

the pawnbroker’s, and a couple of well-dressed ladies walk past.

joyce We used to go down the pawn shop, every week.

alice Take his best trousers in on the Monday –
joyce – get ’em out again the end of the week.
sarah And if things got really hard, we’d take in other bits
and pieces as well –
anne – my grandfather’s watch, I remember.
sarah Sometimes we’d not get things back. Couldn’t afford to.
joyce And you’d see the toffs walkin’ down the street –
alice – watchin’ you as you went in.
joyce But I’d look up, I would. I’d look ’em in the eye.
176 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Now, with the lines clearly split between a number of characters,

we have the effect of a truly shared experience: the sharing of
the lines seems to symbolize the sharing of this aspect of their
lives. But the lines are not split at random. The passage is still
dominated by Joyce, who begins and ends it, and who is given
the most memorable line (in this case the final one). And the
sentences about taking in other things and perhaps not getting
them back are shared by Sarah and Anne – very gently implying
that these characters have more experience of this than the others.
A completely random distribution of lines tends to lend uniformity,
which is not quite the intention.
Now we may experiment with taking it a stage further:

joyce and alice are taking trousers to the pawnbroker’s.

joyce We used to go down the pawn shop, every week.

alice – down the pawn shop, every week. Take his best
trousers in on the Monday –
joyce – in on the Monday, get ’em out again the end of the
week.
Reluctantly producing more items –
sarah And if things got really hard, we’d take in other bits –
anne and pieces
sarah – as well.
anne My grandfather’s watch, I remember.
sarah Sometimes we’d not get things back. Couldn’t afford to.
joyce And you’d see the toffs –
sarah – the toffs –
anne – the toffs –
alice – the toffs –
all – the toffs! –
Two well-dressed ladies appear, and watch the others.
joyce – walkin’ down the street –
alice – watchin’ you as you went in.
joyce But I’d look up, I would. I’d look ’em in the eye.

Now repetition is used to further emphasise the shared nature

of the experience, and there is more detailed splitting up of the
lines, serving here to stress the meaning: the slight awkwardness
produced by splitting the line ‘bits / – and pieces / – as well’ draws
 The character tells the story 177

attention to the reluctance of these characters to keep going, to do

it, to produce these items and take them to the pawn shop.

Dangers in character-narration
So, the use of character-narration certainly opens up opportunities
for the scriptwriter. But there are dangers here, too.
The first danger is that, poorly used, character-narration can
seem opportunistic. It can give the impression that the writer is
stuck; unable to think of any way of communicating a certain
piece of information through dialogue or action, he or she throws
a piece of narration into the mouth of a character. At worst, some
scripts are actually like this, though mercifully, most of them are
not produced!
This tendency is most often seen in radio writing. As we have
noted earlier, many inexperienced writers for radio seem to believe
that it is important for us to be given all the information that
we might receive visually were the script intended for any other
medium. However, they don’t see how it can be done; they don’t
want to stuff the information into ordinary conversation, as it
would sound false. Solution? Have someone simply tell us it all
– throw in a bit of narration. Invariably, though, almost all the
information imparted for this reason is irrelevant; we hardly ever
need to know what people or things look like, for example, since
we would rather imagine them for ourselves. And most other
details, if we really need to know them, we can gather from the
implications of normal dialogue.
Perhaps it is the actual storyline that the radio writer is having
trouble conveying:

Acoustic as for bedroom. We hear night sounds, perhaps an

owl, and a ticking clock.
carol Why can’t I sleep? Why can I never get a decent night’s
sleep?
(pause)
Oh, I’ll go and get myself a glass of milk, I think it’s my
stomach playing me up.
We hear carol getting out of bed, going down the stairs,
178 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

going into the kitchen, taking milk out of the fridge and
pouring it.
carol My God, there’s someone in the garden. I’m sure there
is – there’s someone in the garden. There’s someone in the
garden. What do I do? He’s seen me! He must have seen me!
But maybe it’s not … Maybe it’s nobody. Maybe it’s just
shadows … Yeah, there’s nothing there, there’s nothing
there.

This is very poor writing. The scriptwriter has come across a

problem: when there is only one person present in a radio play –
and of course you can’t see anything – how do you tell the audience
what is happening? The solution should not be to have a character
talking to herself – it sounds utterly false and opportunistic. Instead,
there are at least two other possible solutions. The first is the
simplest: change the story, either cutting this incident altogether or
radically altering it to include someone else; perhaps, for example,
the scene could open with Carol on the phone, panicking, telling a
friend (or maybe even the police) that she is watching – at this very
second – a man in her garden in the middle of the night. The second
solution, if the writer is certain that this part of the story cannot
be altered, is to let us find out about the incident afterwards. Use a
bit of telling rather than showing. So the following day Carol tells
her colleague, friend or relation that she thought she saw this man,
though it might only have been shadows.
Here we should make clear distinctions between the following: a
character speaking to the audience, telling a piece of the story; the
audience hearing the thoughts of a character, given as the events
are happening; a character speaking to him- or herself. We have
already seen the ways in which the first two may work, but the
third is almost always a failure. After all, in normal life we do tell
each other stories and we do have thoughts, but we very rarely
speak to ourselves at any length. Why then, it might be asked,
does a soliloquy such as ‘To be or not to be …’ work so well? The
reason is that, although in a sense Hamlet is talking to himself,
these are essentially his thoughts – a reflection of his state of
mind. Character-narration works best when it is essentially telling
us about state of mind, and is at its worst when it is basically a
running commentary.
 The character tells the story 179

Establishing the convention

We have noted in many other contexts that a script establishes its
own conventions of use of language, and that consistency of style
is vital. This is particularly so in the case of character-narration.
If a writer is going to use this technique, he or she must establish
the convention very early in the script; otherwise, the first time
a character speaks direct to the audience it will appear very odd
indeed. Similarly, once use of the convention has been established, it
must be adhered to. It will not work if only used very occasionally.
In this context there is a delicious moment in Alan Bennett’s The
History Boys, where Mrs Lintott turns to the audience:

mrs lintott I have not hitherto been allotted an inner voice,

my role a patient and not unamused sufferance of the predilec-
tions and preoccupations of men. They kick their particular
stone along the street and I watch.

I am, it is true, confided in by all parties, my gender some sort

of safeguard against the onward transmission of information
… though that I should be assumed to be so discreet is in itself
condescending. I’m what men would call a safe pair of hands.

Here we have the writer playing with the convention of character-

narration by alluding to it, and in the process drawing attention
to how narration tends to be reserved for the more important
characters (and to how and why – in this script at least – these tend
not to be women).
One last word on narration: it has to be just as engaging as all
the rest of the dialogue. It is not good enough to think that the
really interesting exchanges happen between people, whereas the
boring background stuff can go into narration: narration has to be
as alive as all the rest. In this respect as in every other, narration
must never be thought of as an easy option.
180
 10
Comic dialogue

The context of comic dialogue

It is notoriously difficult to pin down exactly how comedy works.
Why, exactly do we laugh? What, for us human beings, is the
function of laughter – what exactly are we doing it for? Well, fortu-
nately here we do not have to come up with the answers to such
questions. Just as you don’t need to understand electricity in order
to turn a set of lights on, so you can write comic dialogue without
knowing all the theories of how humour works. You do, however,
need to know where you might find the switches. In this chapter we
will find some of the switches for comic dialogue, and check that
we know how to flick them.
First, we have to make a distinction between comedy and
comic dialogue. Of course, it is possible to create comedy with
no dialogue at all – mimes do it, and clowns, and Buster Keaton
was pretty successful at it, too. And then when there is dialogue in
comedy, it is not the only ingredient of the humour. Sometimes the
dialogue does work virtually alone, but much more often it is only
effective because of how the language reflects upon character, or
has an effect upon plot, or interacts with other elements – visual,
musical, whatever. In short, comic dialogue takes place within
a context, and the humour arises from the particular language
in the particular context. Even stand-up comedians, whom one
might think of as simply telling jokes, like to create a ‘persona’, a
character particularly suited to their type of humour. It is not just
the lines themselves which create the laughs. For example, think of
182 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

the personae of stand-up comedians Ben Elton on the one hand and
Ken Dodd on the other. The comic lines of Elton would cease to
be comic if presented within the persona of Dodd, and vice-versa.
They wouldn’t work. The context in which the lines are presented
is crucial.
The comedy series Catastrophe in fact works very much from
the starting point of developing stand-up personae. There is an
element of story of course, and the two central figures (both
real-life stand-up comedians) certainly have developed personae,
but the series is little more than stand-up turned into drama, with
the dialogue falling back on the old stand-up reliables of sex jokes,
toilet jokes and observational humour, with some elements of
shock and a lot of bad language thrown in. The series has been very
successful, despite what might be seen as its limitations. Humour
is a broad church.
Yet comic dialogue – even in Catastrophe – is not merely a
succession of jokes: in fact, exactly the same line in two different
scripts might come across as funny in one, and as serious in the
other. Let us take, for example, a piece of dialogue which we
looked at when discussing status, in Chapter 2. Here we had three
characters, each subtly attempting to raise their own status at the
expense of that of the others. Our analysis of the passage was
straightforward, and assumed that this was not a particularly comic
piece of dialogue. But here it is again, below, this time with the two
sections printed without a break. When you read it, think of it in a
different context; think of it as comedy. Remember, a comic script
is always read (or heard or seen) with the expectation that it will
be funny – this allows us to hear the lines differently. And for this
passage let us assume that certain exaggerated character traits have
already been established:
MM John is a brainless twit, though a twit with money;
MM Andy always likes to be the centre of attention, and has a
tendency to patronize;
MM Tim is a snob who generally considers himself superior not
only to these two, but to the rest of humanity in general.

At the start, then, Andy is extremely patronizing to John, and

enjoys drawing attention to himself as soon as possible. Later
on, Tim is very far from happy that John, this brainless twit, is
 Comic dialogue 183

outshining him by buying a yacht, so Tim does his best to limit the
damage to his ego. Bearing all this in mind, try reading this as part
of a comic script:

john It was terrible. I thought I was going to get stuck under

the boat!
andy That’s really scary, isn’t it, when you capsize.
john It certainly is!
tim At least the first time.
andy I remember once when we went over I actually was
stuck under the boat – only for a while of course. And it
was in October.
tim The water must have been freezing.
andy It was.
tim I was hit by the boom once. I was actually unconscious.
It’s just incredibly lucky that I wasn’t sailing single-handed
or –
andy (laughing) But it’s a bit stupid letting yourself get hit by
the boom, isn’t it?
tim (laughing) I had a hell of a bump on my head, I can tell
you!
(slight pause)
john You know that money I inherited.
andy Nnn.
john Well I’m thinking of buying a yacht.
andy A yacht?!
john Only a small one. About thirty foot.
andy Doesn’t sound that small to me. But … would you know
how to sail it?
john There are training courses. I’d go on one of those. I
don’t suppose it’s all that difficult, but you ought to learn
properly, if you’re going to be serious about it, don’t you
think?
andy Well yes, I suppose you’re right.
tim So are you completely set on this?
john Not totally.
tim Only – don’t get me wrong – I mean I’ve been on yachts a
number of times, and it’s great, but it’s not quite as exciting
as dinghy sailing. It’s a bit more sedate really. Well it’s
bound to be isn’t it. You’re not leaping around the whole –
184 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

john (overlapping) But I don’t think I want to be leaping

around the whole time.
tim Fine. Well, maybe … maybe a yacht’s the thing for you
then.

Perhaps to enhance the humorous effect one might want to tweak

a line here or there, but this passage – read as part of a comedy,
with lines now heard in the context of clear and exaggerated
characterization – is already using a major ingredient of comic
dialogue: status games. The fact that many people put a great
deal of energy into trying to raise their own status and lower
that of others was noted when this passage was first considered,
in a non-comic context; in a comic context, status becomes – if
anything – an even more important consideration.

Status and comedy

A huge variety of comic dialogue plays with the idea of status.
Sometimes the humour arises from the reduction in status of
those who genuinely do have it; but far more common is the
character who speaks (and acts) as if he or she had some sort of
high status, when in fact they do not. Thus Captain Mainwaring’s
lines in Dad’s Army are amusing to a large extent because we know
– and he doesn’t – that he is really not a very important person
(the same applies in The Brittas Empire). The comic effect lies
in the distance between his view of himself and our view of him.
Sometimes Harold Steptoe in Steptoe and Son (writers, Ray Galton
and Alan Simpson) has lines which are similarly amusing: in his
desperate attempt to escape his origins (his low status), Steptoe
puts on airs and graces which convince no-one but himself.
Sometimes a series will have a whole ‘pecking order’ of statuses,
from high to medium to low. Blackadder (writers, Richard Curtis,
Ben Elton and Rowan Atkinson) works wonderfully in this respect.
Each series of Blackadder is set in a different period, but the status
relationships between the major characters remain a major feature.
Blackadder himself is sandwiched between Baldrick, at the bottom
of the scale, and the Prince (in the series set vaguely in a sort of
Napoleonic period) above him. Each of them speaks in an entirely
 Comic dialogue 185

different way, emphasizing their status positions. Baldrick tries to

say wise things but only manages idiotic statements; Blackadder
speaks in a clipped, precise and measured manner, appropriate to
a senior servant of the Prince; and the Prince himself tries to be
jolly funny but instead is only jolly silly, though he needn’t worry
about it as he is a Prince anyway. The status positions of these
three characters inform not only the plot but also the whole of the
dialogue. What is particularly hilarious is the inversion of status
and how this is handled through the dialogue. Blackadder is the
only intelligent one of the three, yet he is always polite. Thus while
the Prince is being daft, Blackadder might tell him so (though the
Prince rarely understands that this is what Blackadder is doing),
but does it while continuing to use polite – courtly – language
(further emphasized by Rowan Atkinson’s manner of delivery),
which in this context is much funnier than outright abuse. Thus
Blackadder retains the language of his status, and the contradiction
between this and the meaning of what he is actually saying is a
large ingredient of the humour. Then even when Blackadder is
speaking to Baldrick it is sometimes in the relatively formal manner
appropriate to his station, though in fact he is invariably insulting
Baldrick – and much more directly than he does his master. Again,
it is the contrast between what he says and how he says it that
produces much of the humour. Of course, many of the lines are
undeniably funny in themselves, but it is the language in the
context – and particularly the exploitation of the status element of
the context – that is central to the whole comic effect.
Another example of pecking order in comic writing occurs in
Fawlty Towers, and again the major character is in the middle:
Basil Fawlty is pecked by his wife (who to his fury always adopts a
position of senior status in relation to him) and in turn pecks Polly
and, even more, Manuel. And, again similarly, there is a contrast
between the meanings of what the central character says and the
language he uses to express them. Very often Fawlty is at the end
of his tether, insulting all those around him, but he is constantly
battling to try to use appropriate language, and it is this struggle
within Fawlty’s strangled dialogue which is so extremely funny.
In the gently comic television series Detectorists (writer,
Mackenzie Crook), too, part of the humour arises from status.
Terry is in charge of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club. There is
something a little sad about the sparsely attended meetings of this
186 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

club, but Terry likes to do things properly. An ex-policeman, he

takes his duties seriously. Much of what he says has the primary
purpose of reinforcing his status relative to Andy, Lance and the
rest of the metal detectorists.

Language and caricature

In some episodes of Blackadder the pecking order is further
extended, as for example when the character played by Stephen Fry
appears. He is a step higher up the status ladder than the Prince.
Different series have Fry appear in different roles, though always
in the same (high) status position. He is wonderful as the Duke of
Wellington, who seems to believe that any army may be disciplined
and any battle won if only the generals shout loud enough. The
Duke’s style of speech, then, is quite distinct from that of the other
characters: he shouts, shouts and shouts again.
This leads us to the use of caricature in comic dialogue. There
is a delight in believing that generals are pig-headed, caring little
either for strategy or for the welfare of those under them, and being
content to use brute force (shouting being the verbal equivalent).
This is what is being caricatured here. Similarly the language of the
Prince is a caricature of that of the upper-class chinless wonder;
the language of Blackadder that of the respectful manservant;
and the language of Baldrick that of the dumb-skull. Certainly
each of these is a character in himself, individual; yet at the same
time we recognize them as belonging to type, particularly in their
use of language. It is this recognition – despite however absurdly
exaggerated the language may be – that greatly adds to our
pleasure in listening to them.
In Elizabethan times there was a theory of ‘humours’. The
word here does not mean comedy, but refers instead to dominant
elements in an individual’s character. It was believed that there
were four humours, and that when these were properly mixed in
someone’s personality then that person would be balanced, but
if one of them came to dominate then that personality would be
unbalanced. Jonson in particular wrote wonderful comedies, such
as Volpone and The Alchemist, full of these unbalanced characters
who have allowed themselves to become obsessed by one thing.
 Comic dialogue 187

They may not be fully rounded characters, but they work very well;
comedy does not always need fully rounded characters.
Similarly, today, there are many examples of successful comic
creations who have little more than one strong characteristic. The
dialogue then need not strive for a variety of subtle effects – the
recognition of this one characteristic is often enough. In A Fish
Called Wanda (writers, John Cleese and Charles Crichton), Otto
may have other characteristics, but he is amusingly dominated by
his obsessional need not to be called (or thought to be) stupid.
In the television series Red Dwarf, Cat is even more limited: his
dialogue tells us little more than that he is a fashion addict. But we
don’t complain. In this context, it is sufficient.
One word of warning about the use of caricature, however:
the character must always be rooted in reality. I use the term
‘caricature’ here, but the audience must not be aware of caricature,
in the sense of this being a character taken to such an extreme as to
be unrecognizable. Caricature when taken this far may be able to
raise the odd laugh, but this will not be sustainable; indeed, it may
even threaten the credibility of the whole script, as the audience
soon ceases to have much interest in a character so far removed
from reality as to be beyond recognition.

Character recognition and

comic dialogue
Recognition, in fact, plays a significant role in a number of ways in
comic dialogue. There is pleasure in recognizing a type of character
(we all recognize the type of a grumpy old Victor Meldrew – we
have all met one), but also in recognizing an individual character.
We have touched upon this in a number of ways already, but now
we shall have a closer look at it, referring again to the American
series Friends.
We noted in the first chapter that Phoebe is continually
misreading things: she often attempts to join in a conversation in
the same way as the others, but doesn’t quite succeed. Her uncon-
scious breaking of social codes is, as we noted, both charming
and funny. But in addition, every time she says something which
just slightly misreads the tone of the conversation, we laugh and
188 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

say to ourselves, ‘She would!’ This recognition – that a character

in comedy is acting in character – is an important ingredient of
the humour. Similarly, when Monica tells someone off for leaving
a speck of dust somewhere, or Joey says something particularly
inane, the line in itself may not be funny – it would not stand up as
‘a joke’ – but it may be very funny simply as a result of confirming
our view of this character. This ‘He would!’ or ‘She would!’
factor should not be under-estimated in comic dialogue; it is the
humour arising directly from recognition of character trait, for
comic dialogue is utterly intertwined with comic characterization.
We should not always attempt to write ‘funny lines’, but should
recognize the comic power of the relationship between dialogue
and characterization.
In comic dialogue, then, the characters should not be at the
service of the jokes. Rather, the dialogue should be at the service of
the characterization.

Laughing at and laughing with

Staying with Friends for a while longer, the series also affords an
example of the distinction between laughing with and laughing
at. While each of the six regular characters have some lines which
they – the speakers – know are funny, only two of the six (Ross
and particularly Chandler) are regularly allowed to say things
which they as characters know are amusing. The humour in the
lines of the other four arises almost entirely despite the intentions
of the character. The character says something which is intended
to be taken ‘straight’, but which we the audience (and often other
characters) find funny; to some extent, then, we are laughing at
the characters rather than with them. However, if their faults (and
it is usually faults or weakness that we laugh at) are not serious
ones, than then the writer can invite the audience to laugh at the
characters without diminishing the all-important empathy with
them. Once again, we come back to the point that the writer must
not try to make the dialogue alone do all the work – in this case
in the form of ‘jokes’. ‘Jokes’ arise when characters know they
are saying something funny, but we laugh just as much (or, often,
more) when a character is not intending to amuse.
 Comic dialogue 189

In connection with ‘laughing at’, there are many characters in

comedy who are naïve, a little odd or just plain dim. Just to limit
ourselves to television, they include Phoebe in Friends (naïve and a
little odd), Linda in Becker and Will in W1A (both naïve and dim),
Woody in Cheers and the Prince in Blackadder (both plain dim),
and Nana in The Royle Family (naïve, a little odd and perhaps a
bit dim too), not to mention Jeremy in Peep Show. These characters
offer great opportunities for comic dialogue as they always seem to
come to subjects from an unexpected angle.
In one episode of The Royle Family Nana is talking to Denise
and Mary about Denise’s planned honeymoon. On being told
that Denise will be going to Tenerife, Nana mentions that her
own honeymoon had been in Blackpool in a bed and breakfast,
which is now a Harry Ramsden’s wet fish shop. This leads her
straight into talking about that having been after she and her
friend Betty had been to a dance in the town hall, and that leads
her to talk about how Betty had married a joiner and moved to
Leeds. Nana then mentions that the joiner used to hit Betty, that
Betty’s home was lovely and then, finally, that she – Nana – had
actually never liked Betty, even when they had been the best of
friends.
It is above all the inappropriateness of what Nana says that
makes it so funny: Denise is about to get married and here is
Nana rambling on about her friend whose husband used to hit
her. Then – even more inappropriate – she goes on to mention
how lovely her home was, as if the fact that he ‘used to knock her
about a bit’ wasn’t really so important after all. The final line of
the extract manages to show both naïvety and disarming honesty
at the same time. The fact that one may not actually like one’s
supposedly best friend may not be so very surprising, but Nana’s
willingness to confess to it certainly is. This is not how most of
us would deal with the fact, and it is this coming to it from an
odd direction which is both arresting and amusing. It should be
noted, though, that the dialogue from characters such as Nana
must never simply invite the audience to react in a cruel way
towards them; we may be amused by their naïvety or oddness or
plain stupidity, but there should always be a strong element of
affection in the writing.
Let us take another example, from an episode of Extras (writers,
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant):
190 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

ANDY GLANCES AT THE CROWD OF EXTRAS. HE

MOMENTARILY CATCHES THE EYE OF ONE OF THEM,
A BIG, OVER-FRIENDLY DULLARD WHO NODS AND
SMILES AT ANDY. ANDY LOOKS AWAY QUICKLY BUT
IT’S TOO LATE, HE’S UNWITTINGLY MADE A NEW
FRIEND. ANDY MOVES OVER TO THE TEA AND COFFEE
AREA, TRYING TO SEEM PREOCCUPIED BUT THE BIG
GUY WANDERS OVER AND STARTS A CONVERSATION.

dullard (leaning in towards andy) Quite incredible eh?

andy Huh?
dullard Mr Samuel L. Jackson in our midst.
andy No, I’m not Sam Jackson. I can see the confusion, we
look alike but –
THE DULLARD LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY.
dullard I’ve hit gold, eh? I’ve found the joker in the pack.
andy I don’t know about that.
dullard No, I tell you what seriously, that is great that
is, mate. That is brilliant. That’s a gift that is, the gift of
laughter. You remind me of a mate of mine, Pete Shepherd,
he used to run the Londis near me, and God, we used to
have a laugh together.
andy (not interested) Did you?
dullard Oh, he’d have me in hysterics every time I saw him.
He was a Chelsea fan, I was a Spurs fan and when we’d
meet we’d always have a chat and a laugh.
andy Yeah. Why are you telling me this?
dullard We used to have a laugh, you know, we’d have a
chat and a laugh every time.
andy Oh good.
dullard And one day a couple of kids, right, they were
messing around in his shop (suddenly serious) and they
chucked bleach in his eyes and blinded him. I went to visit
him in the hospital, tears coming out of his bandaged,
frazzled, useless eyes. And he went, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever
laugh again.’ Do you know what?
andy (taken aback) What?
dullard I don’t think he has. I stopped going to visit him in
the end, to be honest.
andy Did that cheer him up?
 Comic dialogue 191

dullard Got too depressing, you know. I only used to hang

out with him because he was a laugh but he just got boring.
(andy raises his eyebrows)
He was miserable, blind, not my cup of tea. ‘My eyes, me
eyes …’
AN ASSISTANT DIRECTOR APPEARS.
a.d. Sorry to interrupt.
andy (relieved) No, please don’t apologize.
a.d. (to dullard) I need someone to do a few lines, sometime
next week, probably not until Tuesday, it’s an officer in an
ID parade. Interested in that?
dullard I don’t mind. I don’t mind. Oh, hang on though. I
was already seen. I was on the desk when Samuel Jackson
walked past.
a.d. Oh, yeah. No, I can’t use you then, sorry, mate. I need
someone who hasn’t been seen.
dullard (pointing at andy) He hasn’t been seen.
andy (eager) I haven’t been seen.
a.d. All right, you fancy that?
andy Yeah.
a.d. Sam Jackson comes in, you’re joking around with him
and then you go, ‘Ten to one he’s going to pick Sergeant
Harris again.’
andy With Sam Jackson?
a.d. Yeah, you want to have a stab at that?
andy (quickly) Yeah.
a.d. Yeah?
andy Yeah.
a.d. All right. Well, I’ll let you know when we’re doing it. It
won’t be today though.
andy Okay, cheers mate.
(The a.d. wanders off. andy turns to dullard)
Oh, bloody hell, a line with Sam Jackson, cheers for that.
dullard Eh?
andy I owe you one.
dullard Hey, a favour’s a favour. Don’t worry.
(Pause)
Just take me out one night.
andy What?
dullard Take me out, on the town, one night.
192 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Here, again, it is the wild inappropriateness that provides most of

the humour – but it is taken a stage further. Initially we think the
joke is simply that Andy has found himself with someone he can’t
escape, and who is going to bore him to death. The line, ‘Why
are you telling me this?’ is in fact quite cruel, but hardly has that
moment passed before the humour moves onto another level with
the Dullard suddenly recounting the blinding of his friend. This is so
entirely out of place, and introduced so abruptly, that Andy has no
idea how to respond, and we find ourselves laughing in sympathy
with his confusion. Similarly at the end of the scene the humour
arises out of the inappropriateness of the Dullard’s taking ‘I owe
you one’ literally. Again Andy is taken by surprise, but unlike him
we are in the privileged position of being able to laugh about it.
There is similar comic change of dialogue tone in a scene in the
film In Bruges (writer, Martin McDonagh). In this black comedy
two fairly amiable hitmen, Ken and Ray, have been sent to Bruges
to allow things to calm down back in London. Their boss Harry
phones apparently to see how they are. There ensues a long conver-
sation about the delights of Bruges, and how the place is ‘like a
fairytale’.

harry
So is he having a nice time, seeing all the canals and that? I
had a lovely time when I was there. All the canals and the old
buildings and that.
ken
When were you there?
harry
When I was seven. Last happy holiday I fucking had.
Have you been on a canal trip yet?
ken
Yeah.
harry
Have you been down, like, all the old cobbled streets and that?
ken
Yeah.
harry
It’s like a fairytale isn’t it, that place.
ken
Yeah.
 Comic dialogue 193

harry
With the churches and that.
ken
They’re Gothic.
harry
Yeah.
ken
Is it Gothic?
harry
Yeah.
So he’s having a really nice time?

This seems to be what the conversation is about, the beauties of

the city. And in a somewhat Tarantino-like manner here are these
professional killers discussing a period of ecclesiastical architecture.
Harry is certainly a rough diamond but there is a pleasant glow to
the conversation. But then it suddenly becomes apparent that the
real reason Harry is ringing is because he needs Ken to murder his
colleague Ray, as he casually makes clear at the very end of the
phone call. The change of tone is shocking and, in its dark way,
very funny.

Dialogue for one situation as though it

were for another
We will use Friends to demonstrate a further option for comic
scriptwriters: writing dialogue for one sort of scene as if it were
dialogue for another. Here are some examples. When Joey decides
to go and get his own apartment, his leaving scene is scripted
absolutely as though it were a scene between two lovers splitting
up; and when Ross and his monkey go to a party and the monkey
goes off to have fun without Ross, this too is scripted as though
Ross were a jilted lover. In another scene, a little boy receives a
small bump on the head; the dialogue of the scene following is
scripted as though it were from an emergency-ward soap opera.
This is all quite sophisticated comic scripting, which calls upon
the audience to recognize another type of scene – or even another
genre altogether – and to acknowledge that the writer is being
194 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

playful. It also relies on the characters not being aware that there
is anything odd going on. Any acknowledgement by them of what
is happening would kill the humour.
There is something similar at one point in the film The Mummy
Returns (writers, Stephen Sommers and Lloyd Fonvielle). Our
heroes are on a London bus that is being ferociously besieged by
vile-looking mummies. Rick is fighting them off valiantly, turning
attacker after attacker to dust. But then, for one memorable
second, he seems not to find these disgusting creatures a real threat,
but rather only a tedious nuisance. ‘Mummies!’ he says dismiss-
ively, bored with them, as he chops another to pieces. We laugh
because there is an acknowledgement somewhere here that it is
hard for us – the audience – to take all of this too seriously. Rick is
reacting to the creatures much as we are: we have seen enough of
them attacking the bus like this and want to see a different type of
action. The character is almost speaking directly to the audience,
but he is not, and the distinction is vital.
Similarly, in one episode of the television series The New
Adventures of Superman, Perry and Jimmy complain to each other
that they are a little irritated that Lois and Clark seem to get all
the attention: Perry says it feels as if he and Jimmy were secondary
characters in a television series. The humour here arises from the
knowing wink between writer and audience: if the characters
themselves were in on the joke, it would cease to be funny. The
scriptwriter must take great care in the handling of this sort of
irony.
In the examples given so far, the technique has been (in different
ways) to bypass any knowledge possessed by the character – the
joke has gone straight from the writer to the audience, without
the character knowing it (although in The Mummy Returns it is
a close thing). This same technique may be extended to a whole
script. The entire film Airplane (writers, Jim Abrahams, David and
Jerry Zucker) is a ludicrous and hilarious pastiche of the serious
disaster movie, though of course none of the characters is aware of
this. The television series The Detectives adopts a daft version of
cop-show dialogue in order to poke fun at cop shows (as do Police
Squad, Naked Gun and other Leslie Nielsen vehicles), while the
radio (and later television) series People Like Us is a fake version of
a serious radio documentary. In each of these cases the dialogue of
the original has clearly been closely observed, then exaggerated and
 Comic dialogue 195

made ridiculous. But, however ludicrous the lines, the scriptwriter

must never let the characters in on the joke.

Pathos
A number of the examples we have been looking at are on the edge
of satire, and satire tends not to have great variations of mood. But
in much of comedy it is useful also to work into the dialogue an
element of pathos. Some comedies – particularly those which tend
to be aimed at the lower age-group market – do zip along without
any respite from the jokes. If this is the market you decide to aim for,
then this is the type of dialogue you need to write. But in general,
humorous dialogue does not have to be funny every moment –
some light and shade is desirable. And strangely, an element of
pathos can work not only by acting as a contrast in mood, but also
by feeding into the humour itself, giving it a particular colour and
power. At times One Foot in the Grave (writer, David Renwick)
almost makes us cry as much as laugh, and this certainly applies
to Steptoe and Son. Even the series Absolutely Fabulous has its
sad moments; these characters, for all their attempts to remain
glamorous and to stave off the effects of the years, are funny in
part because they are rather pathetic. We laugh with them and
at them at the same time, and occasionally we are invited not to
laugh at all, but just to appreciate the sadness of them. A comedy
like Groundhog Day (writers, Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis)
certainly has some funny lines, but the humour of the dialogue is
rooted in the negative quality of the central character; he is in fact
a very sad man (in both modern senses of the word), and while
this is a comedy it is at the same time the story of his redemption.
Again, it would have been a mistake for the scriptwriter to try to
get the dialogue to do all the work of the comedy, in the form of
jokes; instead, the pathos feeds the comedy.

Let the situation do the work

In comic dialogue, as in other forms of dialogue, it is unwise to
try to make the words themselves produce the total comic effect.
196 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Characterization has a large part to play, but so too do other

elements. In film in particular, if there is a choice between making a
joke with words or with visuals, always choose the visuals. (In fact,
this piece of advice holds good even when comedy is not involved;
in film, visuals should carry as much as possible of the story, and
dialogue as little as possible.) Yet again, it is a matter of not making
the dialogue work too hard.
Similarly, situations can in themselves be funny, almost without
the dialogue: if you describe the situation in Mrs Doubtfire, for
example (another comedy with plenty of pathos), or in Housesitter,
it is amusing in its own right. The dialogue, then, has to serve the
development of this situation. In this sort of comedy, much of the
humour is plot-driven, so while individually funny lines are always
welcome, they are less important than lines which feed the humour
of the plot. We have already noted that in comic dialogue the lines
should be at the service of the characterization, and here we note
that it must also serve the plot; we are coming to realize that it
really is the context which is crucial in allowing the humour itself
to surface.

The ‘running gag’

The ‘running gag’ uses repetition to increase the intensity of
humour – just as repetition may be used in other forms of dialogue
to increase intensity. Basically, there is a joke, usually but not
always verbal; the audience laughs. Then each time the joke
comes back, the audience laughs again – but now they are not just
laughing at the joke in its original form; rather, they are laughing at
the fact that whatever it is has actually happened again. Surely the
character involved should have learned from things the first time
round? And they are laughing, too, at their own recognition of the
joke; in fact, as soon as it appears that the joke is even about to
be repeated, the audience starts to laugh. The running gag can be
extremely effective in comic dialogue, but there are dangers as well.
The first is of monotony. If the gag is simply repeated exactly as in
the original, the audience will soon tire of it and it will become not
only unfunny but also a liability: there has to be a little variation
in how it is expressed, or the dialogue must be put into a different
 Comic dialogue 197

context. Furthermore, as the audience comes to recognize the gag,

less and less needs to be said each time – so that eventually, it might
come down to hardly any words at all. Not only does this allow
the gag to continue working, but it adds a further element, as the
audience enjoys the game of recognizing the joke with fewer and
fewer clues.
There is a variant on the running gag in the film American
Hustle. Louis, the CRS boss of Richard, one of the central
characters, starts to tell Richard an anecdote about ice fishing in
his childhood. Richard tries to tell Louis what must be the point
of the story, but Louis tells him he is wrong. This happens over
and over again, while their relationship becomes more and more
antagonistic and eventually violent. The pay-off is that there is no
pay-off. We never do know the point of the story – or even hear the
end of it. The humour of the gag lies in Richard’s – and our – ever-
growing frustration at never understanding the story, and that lack
of understanding also represents just how deeply the two men fail
to comprehend each other in general.

The comic insult

A major ingredient of comic dialogue is the imaginative comic
insult. Consider, for example, Basil Fawlty’s stream of invective
in Fawlty Towers, or Blackadder’s withering sarcasm, or Harold
Steptoe’s scornful remarks to his father. We enjoy insults, since they
are not normally socially acceptable; these characters are saying
what we would love to say on many comparable occasions.
The strength of insults – and thus their comic effect – can be
greatly increased by their being repeated back by the recipient. So
instead of:

don You birdbrain!

nick I’m not a birdbrain!

we might prefer:

don You birdbrain!

nick Birdbrain? Birdbrain?
198 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The type of insult must always be in keeping with the character,

though. One character may totally lose control (Basil Fawlty in
one episode both physically and verbally thrashes his car), while
another may be insulting in a more cool, detached manner. We
must not allow ourselves to give rein to an amusing insult if the
style fails to fit the character.
The King of the comic insult is, of course, Malcolm Tucker
in The Thick of It. There is, ‘Terri, when I want your advice, I’ll
give you the special signal. Which is me being sectioned under
the Mental Health Act.’ Or ‘I’d love to stop and chat to you but
I’d rather have Type 2 diabetes.’ The list is endless, and endlessly
offensive. But it is not gratuitous. It is what Malcolm Tucker – and
the series – is about: bullying, in a political context. Insult, charac-
terization and meaning are all working in tandem.

Comedy and political correctness

There has been a long debate concerning scriptwriting and political
correctness – a debate going back certainly to the first uses of the
term itself, and really pre-dating that (though then we spoke of
‘censorship’ and ‘self-censorship’ without the specific concept of
‘political correctness’). As scriptwriters, we all have a tendency to
censor ourselves. We are careful about the language we use: what
swear-words should I cut out in order for my script to be seen as
acceptable in a given context, and how often may they be used?
There is nothing particularly hypocritical in this; we do, after all,
moderate our language – or not – in real life, depending upon
where we are and whom we are with. Scriptwriting demands that
we do the same. The golden rule is: know your market. If you are
planning to write for children’s television, for example, watch it
first and see what is generally considered acceptable.
But a scriptwriter should not be too timid. There is a school of
thought which suggests that if you think a certain character would
swear continually in real life, or a group might indulge in a certain
form of unusually deviant sex, or a particular situation would
inevitably lead to some horrendous violence, then you should not
shrink from showing that in both dialogue and action. Then – or so
the argument goes – it is for the commissioning editor, script editor,
director or whoever is in the relevant position in whichever medium
 Comic dialogue 199

to decide whether this actually is acceptable or not, and if necessary

to make suggestions for alterations (which the scriptwriter may or
may not accept). At least then the writer is not doing the censoring.
This is a perfectly reasonable approach, and one which I attempt
to adopt (although some self-censorship does tend to creep in).
But it can have negative consequences. For example, a script with
language that is utterly unacceptable for the intended audience
might lead a script-reader to feel that this writer is completely out
of touch with both the market and the medium, and thus the script
as a whole could be discredited before the writer even has a chance
to debate any alterations. The writer should at least be aware of this
danger, and then take as much of a risk as they wish in the light of it.
In terms of dialogue, however, the limitations do not only apply
to the use of swearing; they also apply to language involving
‘political correctness’ in general. Thus language that is racist, for
example, is (thankfully) almost totally unacceptable unless placed
in the mouth of a clearly unsympathetic character. But other issues
are much greyer, and these touch upon comic dialogue even more
frequently than upon other forms.
Should we as scriptwriters feel inhibited from portraying
negatively any of our female characters, or any black characters,
or disabled ones? There is no easy answer. Certainly we would
not wish to contribute to caricatured ideas of foreigners or ethnic
minorities, or the general belittling of women … but if we are not to
allow our dialogue to portray any women, blacks or foreigners in a
negative light, surely we end up writing in a strait-jacket; we finish
up, in fact, with another set of caricatures – the politically correct
set. And this set of characters to which we find ourselves limited
simply cannot fulfil the needs of drama, as they cannot speak or act
as people actually do speak or act, and thus the audience cannot
relate to them, so little good is done anyway. The scriptwriter, then,
has to attempt to balance the legitimate demand that we should not
malign groups of people with the demand that we should represent
people as they are – and perhaps show how they may change.
Comic dialogue likes to be honest. If it shows two men – or two
women for that matter – discussing someone of the opposite sex,
and then dismissing that person as a partner because they are too
tall, short, fat, thin or whatever, this may be entirely politically
incorrect but we laugh because we recognize it. We think, ‘Yes,
exactly!’; whether or not we approve, we may well still find it
200 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

funny. After all, there are many things we do ourselves which we

do not approve of – we might even be a little ashamed of them –
but we recognize them when they are portrayed in front of us. It
is no use the scriptwriter presenting a sanitized world. As I have
emphasized already, a major element in effective comic dialogue is
recognition, so comic dialogue needs to show us what we recognize
– and this includes the politically incorrect. (Saints tend not to be
very amusing, not just because they don’t say funny lines but also
because most of us don’t know any saints – we don’t recognize
them. But people who want to be seen as saints are amusing, partly
because they say funny lines – often without knowing it – and
also because we recognize them: we all know people who consider
themselves ripe for canonization.)
So a series like Till Death Us Do Part (writer, Johnny Speight)
shows a whole set of dreadful attitudes, mostly displayed by a
character who is clearly bigoted and – literally – ignorant. We all
know people with these attitudes, and here we have these attitudes
presented for us to laugh at. Similarly, Men Behaving Badly (writer,
Simon Nye) shows men doing just that: these are lager-swilling
oafs, and though they may be soft at heart they nevertheless
display appalling attitudes towards society in general and women
in particular. Again, we recognize them and are invited to laugh at
them (albeit without losing all empathy).
But there is a danger here, of which the scriptwriter should be
aware. However we are meant to regard Till Death Us Do Part, it
is possible that some racists may feel supported by the portrayal
of Alf Garnett. He is a figure to be ridiculed, but this is not the
reaction of everyone. Similarly, there may well be a section of
viewers watching Men Behaving Badly who – even while they
laugh – feel that some of their own attitudes towards women are
vindicated by these men, who despite everything are essentially
sympathetic characters. What a scriptwriter might present to an
audience with a certain ironic approach might in fact be taken
literally, at least by some viewers.
So the scriptwriter ought to be aware of this danger, which tends
to arise particularly in comedy. We want comic dialogue to deal
with taboos, with serious issues, to poke fun, but it may be misin-
terpreted. Perhaps the risk is worth taking. Perhaps even to worry
about it is to be, to some extent, patronizing. But whatever attitude
we take towards it, the risk certainly exists.
 11
Documentary dialogue

What is documentary dialogue?

Up until now, we have looked mainly at dialogue in fictional
scripts. Some plays and films are based upon factual events, but
usually the dialogue is fictional, even if a few factual speeches
are included. This chapter, however, deals with dialogue of a very
specific nature – that written for documentary drama.
The term ‘documentary drama’ covers a wide spectrum. At
one extreme it simply means a play or film (or what for radio or
television is sometimes called a ‘dramatized feature’) closely based
upon real events. In this type of production, while the plot will
keep as closely as possible to known facts, the dialogue will be at
least in part – and usually to a large extent – fictional. Sometimes
this form is referred to as ‘faction’, the mixture of fact and fiction.
David Hare’s play Stuff Happens I would class as faction, as I
would Peter Morgan’s play (and later film) Frost/Nixon. The words
of the public figures that are on record are used unchanged, but
the background scenes are fiction, though compatible with what is
known of the characters and situations.
There have been some interesting recent developments in the
dialogue of ‘faction’. In my own radio script Everything Will Be
Fine, for example, most of the voices we hear are the actual voices
of taped interviewees recounting their experiences as refugees.
Within this there are two voices that we as listeners assume are
also ‘actuality’, but are in fact the voices of actors speaking scripted
dialogue. This only becomes clear after about half an hour of the
202 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

programme, as little by little the storytelling spreads out to become

a re-enactment of events, so we become aware that we must be
hearing (at least some) actors. The questions then are: How do we
know which interviewees have been actors? How do we judge who
is telling the truth? At the same time, the fact that the long and
(apparently) purely documentary opening section has allowed us to
believe that we are hearing ‘reality’ lends a certain credibility to the
re-enactments which then arise out of that section. At any rate, the
initial misleading of the audience points up the strained relationship
between documentaries and reality: as documentaries commis-
sioned by the Third Reich demonstrate, the fact that something is
a documentary does not mean that it is presenting the truth (even if
there were one simple truth). Fairly close to the other extreme from
the true story with fictionalized dialogue, the term ‘documentary
drama’ can be interpreted to mean a play or film in which not only
did all the events occur in reality, but also almost everything spoken
is documentary as well – the exact words coming either from tape-
recorded and transcribed interviews or from written sources such
as letters, reports, council minutes, newspapers, official records or
school logs. With minimal alter­ations and very few additions, the
words from the source or a variety of sources are knitted together
rather like a patchwork, to form a drama. This is very different
from the other, less strict, version of the form. Then there is also
the huge range of documentary drama which falls between these
two extremes.
Leaving aside the experimental use of faction as in Everything
Will Be Fine, the first extreme differs relatively little, in terms of
dialogue, from a well-researched fiction-based script. Of course the
dialogue is limited in that it should not stray from what is already
known about the real characters (and remember, real characters, if
still alive, can certainly bite back if they believe that they are being
defamed!), but otherwise all that has been said in earlier chapters
applies. The purpose of the following section of this chapter,
however, is to look at the techniques involved in writing dialogue
closer to the second extreme, which is strictly documentary drama.
Before we move on to do so, however, we should briefly answer
the following question: Why should any scriptwriter bother to
work in such a constricting form as strict documentary drama?
There are two main reasons. First, the language from original
source materials is often quite wonderful, and its preservation in
 Documentary dialogue 203

a script can really lift that script. Second, and more important,
keeping almost entirely to the exact words adds tremendous
authenticity to a script. Of course, any script is still the subjective
work of the author; but it does make a difference if a writer can tell
the audience that the words they have heard have almost all been
said or written by the people concerned. This applies particularly
in the flourishing world of community theatre.

From interview to dialogue

Let us say that the following is a tape-recorded interview which
has been transcribed; we will look at the ways in which it might be
transformed into dialogue.

mike Well I’ll tell you about … let me tell you about this
particular day. This particular day we’d all been got into
assembly. And in those days of course you couldn’t come in
chatting or any of that – you had to come in in single file,
and you’d all be standing up straight and not saying a word,
’cause that’s how it was in those days, not like it is now.
So anyway, I can see it now, there we all were, standing
up straight, and then when we were told to sit we’d all sit
down, but on the floor, we’d sit on the floor with our legs
crossed, ’cause there wasn’t enough chairs in the hall for
the whole school, or maybe there was, I don’t know, but
anyway we sat down in the hall. And the Headmaster, he
was up the front and the teachers were all the way round,
and usually, but not today for some reason … Normally
he’d just give some little talk – you know, some homily, and
that’s what – some little story, and then a prayer, and then
he’d give some notices – like not to walk on a particular
bit of grass or whatever. Whatever seemed important. But
today he took it into his head, instead of saying the Lord’s
Prayer like he always did with us joining in – ‘Our Father,
which art in heaven …’ – but instead of this, he says, ‘Paul,
come here, and you can recite the Lord’s Prayer.’ Why he
picked on this boy Paul I’ve no idea, but anyway he did, so
Paul looks shocked – remember we were only about nine
204 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

or ten – ‘Come on, stand up, come to the front.’ So Paul

goes to the front and – maybe the Head thought it’d be
really nice to have a boy recite the Lord’s Prayer instead
of him saying it. Goes to the front. Maybe he thought
it’d, I don’t know, make it seem more real or something. I
don’t know. So anyway, this boy Paul starts to recite the
Lord’s Prayer, and of course he’s shaking. He’s in front of
the whole school and the Headmaster’s breathing there in
front of him, and you could see he’s shaking. And he can’t
keep it up. He gets as far as ‘Forgive us our trespasses …’
and then he says it again, ‘Forgive us our trespasses …’
and that’s as far as he can get. And the Head just stares at
him. He does a little nod, like to say – Yes? Yes? but Paul’s
gone. He’s blank. And there’s this horrible silence, everyone
waiting for something to happen. But nothing does. So then
the Head, he goes to his briefcase, big old leather briefcase,
and he takes out his ruler, and then he gets hold of Paul’s
hand and he lifts it up and sort of flattens it out. He gives
him three whacks of the ruler – one, two, three, and Paul
bursts into tears but the Head just says to him, ‘Sit down’
and then he turns to the rest of the school and says, ‘You
will all learn the Lord’s Prayer.’ And I’ve never forgotten it.
Not the Lord’s Prayer I mean, but that day. And it taught
me everything I’ve ever wanted to know about religion –
well, organized religion – and about tyranny too. I’ve never
forgotten it.

So, how might this be reworked into dialogue for the stage?
Already, as a piece of storytelling it is very effective, but it will need
to be reworked in some ways in order to function well on the stage.
Here is one version:

michael (to audience) It taught me everything I’ve ever

wanted to know about religion.

School children, including michael, are coming in, single file,

standing up straight, while teachers take their places round the
outside of the space, the headmaster at the front.

Two children very quietly exchange a word.

 Documentary dialogue 205

teacher You two!

The two children are instantly silent.
2nd teacher (to two other children) Up straight!
All the children are now present. After a couple of seconds of
silence –
headmaster Sit down.
All children sit cross-legged on the floor.
michael (to audience) Normally he’d just give some little
talk – you know, some homily, some little story – and then
a prayer, and then he’d give some notices – like not to walk
on a particular bit of grass or whatever. Whatever seemed
important. But today he took it into his head, instead of
saying the Lord’s Prayer like he always did with us joining
in –
headmaster Paul, come here.
Clearly shocked, paul, one of the children, looks around to
check it really is him the headmaster wants.
michael (to audience) Why he picked on this boy Paul I’ve no
idea.
headmaster Come on, stand up, come to the front.
While paul makes his way to the front –
michael Maybe he thought it’d be really nice –
headmaster You can recite the Lord’s Prayer.
michael to have a boy recite it.
Pause, as all wait for paul to speak.
paul Our Father, which art in Heaven, Hallow’d be thy name,
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in
Heaven, Give us this day our daily bread … and forgive us
our trespasses … and forgive us our trespasses …
paul has frozen. Everyone waits.
The headmaster goes to his old leather briefcase, takes out a
ruler, then gestures to paul to hold his hand out. He makes
sure paul’s hand is suitably open, then brings the ruler
down on paul’s hands three times. paul bursts into tears.
headmaster Sit down.
As paul returns to his place –
headmaster You will all learn the Lord’s Prayer.
michael Everything I’ve ever wanted to know about religion –
well, organized religion – and about tyranny too. I’ve never
forgotten it.
206 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The process here is relatively simple. There has been some editing
of the original interview speech, and one line – ‘Everything I’ve
ever wanted to know about religion’ – has been repeated, but the
quality of the actual speech has for the most part been retained.
The most important point to note is that as much as possible has in
fact been taken out of speech and put into action, and as much as
possible of what is left in speech has been given to other characters
and shown rather than merely told. It should also be noted that
duplication has been avoided: you either show something or you
tell the audience about it. If you are consciously aiming for a
very specific effect, such as a comic one, the combination of both
showing and telling can have a humorous effect, as in the following
example:

george (to audience) So she bonked him over the head.

sarah hits barry over the head with a box file.
george (to audience) And it hurt.
barry Oy! That hurt!

Usually, however, you should do one or the other.

Stylized documentary dialogue

In the above example about the Lord’s Prayer, the taped speech
from one person has been split up between a number of speakers.
This often happens in documentary drama. Now let us take the
following as part of an interview:

jill We were going like the clappers in this beaten-up old

thing, I don’t think it had ever done this speed in its life
before, and Cherry had got her head out the window yelling
at all the passers-by and Sheila and Penny were in the back
shouting things like ‘Is this all it can do?’ ‘Put your foot
down’ – but my foot was flat on the floor as it was, I mean
we were determined to get to the cinema before the thing
started and, well it was fun too, I mean it felt really great
… all of us together … And then – well you know this –
the tyre blew, the front tyre on the driver’s side, and there
 Documentary dialogue 207

wasn’t time to say anything, not even … well I mean maybe

someone said ‘Oh God’ or something but I don’t remember
any screaming, though there may have been, I think we just
sort of clung on – to whatever – just sort of clung on, and
first we went all over the road and then we went off into
this ditch and you could feel the balance going and we went
over, and over, and over, and then we stopped. I thought I’d
had it. I thought we all had. And then there was a moment,
well I say a moment, I don’t know how long it was – but
thinking, ‘I’m still alive. I’m still here.’ And then we all
started checking that we were all there. And we were, God
knows how, especially Cherry, who’d had her head out the
window. She was in hospital for three months, traction,
on her back, but she was alive. The front window, the
windscreen, it came out in one piece – I suppose it’s meant
to do that, and we all crawled out of that. We didn’t deserve
to be alive, I suppose.

Now let’s see how this might be presented in a documentary stage

play:

jill, cherry, penny and sheila face the audience.

sheila The front window, the windscreen, it came out in one
piece – I suppose it’s meant to do that, and we all crawled
out of that.
jill, cherry, penny and sheila take up positions as though
in car. jill is driving, sheila has her head out of the
window and sheila and penny are in the back. They are all
obviously enjoying themselves.
jill (yell – as though over the sound of the engine) We –
penny (yell) – were –
sheila (yell) – going –
jill Like the clappers!
penny – in this beaten-up old thing.
sheila I don’t think it had ever done this speed in its life
before, and Cherry –
cherry Yoohoo!!
sheila – had got her head out the window.
penny (to jill) Is this all it can do?
sheila (to jill) Put your foot down!
208 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

jill It’s flat on the floor as it is!

cherry We’re going to get there before it starts!
sheila And it was fun.
jill It felt great!
penny All of us together!
All freeze. This is held for a few moments, and then while the
others stay frozen sheila turns to us.
sheila I don’t remember any screaming, though there may
have been.
Someone may have said ‘Oh God.’ A tyre’d blown.
We just sort of clung on.
penny and jill slowly turn to us, but cherry remains frozen.
penny Sort of clung on …
jill Clung on to …
sheila Clung on to whatever.
Now suddenly all, including cherry, are totally unfrozen, and
screaming, as together they turn over and over.
All lie still, silent.
jill And I thought, ‘I’m still alive. I’m still here.’ (slight pause)
You there?
penny Yeah.
sheila Yeah.
(slight pause)
jill Cherry?
(slight pause)
sheila Cherry was still there, God knows how.
cherry I was in hospital for three months, traction, on my
back. But I was alive.

Here, as in the previous example, we have one original speech

distributed over a number of characters, though this time there are
a great many more changes in sentence-order than in the previous
one. The major difference, though, is that this time the style of
the dialogue, while remaining as faithful to the original, is much
less naturalistic. The transformation of the opening sentence into
a series of yells conveys the excitement and exuberance of that
moment, along with the feeling that this was very much a shared
experience – they even share this utterance (a technique, as we have
seen, also available in other non-documentary but highly stylized
dialogue). Of course in real life four women would never divide a
 Documentary dialogue 209

sentence up between them like this, but this is theatrical dialogue,

not real life. Then:

… We just sort of clung on.

penny and jill slowly turn to us, but cherry remains frozen.
penny Sort of clung on …
jill Clung on to …
sheila Clung on to whatever.

– again emphasizes, through the shared words and the painfully

slow progress through the phrase, both that this was a very
difficult experience to cope with and, once more, that it was shared
between them. The non-naturalism of the dialogue matches the
non-naturalism of the visual presentation.
The material is divided up almost entirely between three
of the four characters. Some of the lines of narration could
easily have been given to Cherry, but by not giving her lines of
narration (until the very end) we place her somehow outside of
the memory, and this seems to imply that she did not survive,
particularly given that she had had her head out of the window.
This heightens the tension, though at the end, when she speaks
to the audience for the first time, we discover that she did live
after all.
In the original, taped interview we are told about the burst
tyre when it happens, but in the new version this information is
fed into the dialogue differently. First, at the start, we are told
that they had crawled out of the windscreen, which had come
out in one piece. This adds an edge to the section immediately
following, where the characters are all full of high spirits but
the audience knows that something dreadful is going to happen.
Then, when the tyre blows we are not told immediately; instead
we are given:

All freeze. This is held for a few moments, and then while the
others stay frozen sheila turns to us.
sheila I don’t remember any screaming, though there may
have been.
Someone may have said ‘Oh God.’ A tyre’d blown.
We just sort of clung on.
210 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Here there is a slight jump in time, with Sheila first telling us how
she and the other women did or did not react. This too increases
the tension – react to what? Only then do we find out.
So, to summarize, the scriptwriter:
MM presents a mixture of characters narrating and speaking to
each other;
MM alters the timing of the release of information;
MM maximizes tension;
MM divides the lines non-naturalistically to emphasize meaning;
MM transforms much of the original into action (which is also
non-naturalistic);
MM takes great care over duplication of telling/showing.

Dialogue that is pieced together

So far, we have looked at how individual speeches – personal
anecdotes – may be scripted for a number of characters. However,
documentary material may not be anecdotal in the first place,
but rather may take the form of a number of fragments. In this
case the process is something like the reverse of the above. For
example, in among the research material may be the following
fragments:

1) from school log:

20th May.
– Again many boys absent, believed to be at Mr Hammond’s
brickworks. Some have not been seen for weeks now. I have
written to Mr Hammond to request that we meet to discuss the
situation.

2) from a taped interview:

– Of course, we’d be working down the brickfields all summer,
whether we was meant to be at school or not. That’s how I got
my first job as a barrow boy down at Hammond’s, from having
worked there on and off since I was twelve. It brought a bit of
extra money into the house, didn’t it?
 Documentary dialogue 211

3) from a book about brick-making before the First World

War:
– The barrow boy would bring the pug to the pug mill ready
for the moulder. The moulder, who was himself on top wages,
would be in charge of his gang, or ‘stool’, and would be respon-
sible for paying them, except for the barrow boy, who would
receive his money separately.

These three fragments might then be welded into a single scene or

a mini-sequence of scenes, as follows:

The moulder is at work, shaping bricks.

moulder Right, you bring the pug to the pug mill, for me.
I’m the moulder.
boy Right.

Separately, a teacher approaches the headteacher.

teacher There are many boys absent again.
headteacher And where –
teacher I believe they are at Mr Hammond’s brickworks.

Back to the brickworks:

boy (to audience) That’s how I got my first job down at
Hammond’s –
moulder I’m in charge of the stool.
boy (to audience) – from working there on and off since I was
twelve.
moulder And I’m responsible for paying them. Except you.
You get yours separately.

Back at the school:

teacher Some have not been seen for weeks now.
headteacher Well then, I shall write to Mr Hammond,
requesting that we meet to discuss the situation.

At the brickworks:
boy It brought a bit of extra money into the house didn’t it?

The source material here has been spliced together to produce a

sequence which works, material from two of the sources being used
212 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

together in one location while the school log extract is used as a

counterpoint – we see the educationalists’ attitude at the same time
as we see the boy’s pride in what he achieved.
This example leads us to the problem of mixing written and
verbal sources within documentary drama. Occasionally, where
a word from a written document seems too inappropriate for
dialogue, it will be changed (as above, ‘You get yours separately’
as opposed to ‘received’ in the original), but mostly it is best to
keep to the source version. An audience comes to realize that, as
this is documentary drama, the dialogue will not always work
exactly as in other forms, and while much of the language will be
wonderfully believable – it has, after all, been transcribed verbatim
from someone speaking – other parts will have a certain stilted
quality. Indeed, it is often possible to draw attention to the fact that
the original was written rather than verbal – sometimes Council
Minutes will include, in the playscript itself, ‘It was agreed that …’
or a letter might include the date and address.
In addition, there is the issue of the original text about the
Moulder being a secondary rather than a primary source; each
writer has to decide whether in a documentary drama it is
acceptable to include such material.

The challenge of documentary dialogue

Dialogue in documentary drama can be as exciting as in any other
form, though the challenges for the scriptwriter are somewhat
different. There is a basic limitation: you must stay as close as
you feel is possible to the exact words from the sources, and this
is difficult. On the other hand, this limitation can prove a blessing
in disguise, as it often forces the scriptwriter to find more imagi-
native ways of presenting material (visual or musical, perhaps). The
documentary form invites us into a non-naturalistic presentation of
dialogue which otherwise simply might not occur to us.
One last word on documentary dialogue. There are certain
tricks of the trade which the scriptwriter will quite rightly use, such
as putting a speech from one original source into the mouths of a
number of characters, or for that matter putting the speeches from
a number of sources into the mouth of one character. However, the
 Documentary dialogue 213

writer must be sensitive, and never have any named and identifiable
character (as opposed to, say, 1st Labourer or 2nd Milliner) speak
a line which was not theirs originally and which they would object
to having attributed to them. This means that contributors should,
where appropriate, have the opportunity to point out where a line
seems false. In practice there are very rarely any problems, as long
as the scriptwriter is true not only as far as possible to the letter
of the sources, but also to the spirit of them. After all, as any
news editor will confirm, it is perfectly possible to quote nothing
but what was actually said, yet to select and present the quotes in
such a way as to put forward something that is a very long way
from the real truth. Documentary drama is just the same, and as
it carries the name ‘documentary’ – referring to the dialogue more
than anything – the responsibility upon the scriptwriter to be true
to the spirit of the material is greater than ever.

Verbatim scripts
Verbatim scripts have become very popular in recent years, particu-
larly in theatre. In verbatim scripts not a single word is altered or
added from the interviews, though of course there is an editing
process – the interviews are not presented in their entirety. At the
furthest extreme there is what is known as ‘recorded delivery’, in
which the actor wears headphones and hears the (edited) interview
extracts; the actor then speaks the words exactly as heard – not
just the exact words with all the hesitations and repetitions, but
with the exact inflections and rhythms. This is presented as being
the most authentic presentation of a script based upon interviews.
Opinion is divided, with some being excited by this attempt at
verisimilitude while others ask why we don’t simply hear the
original voices rather than an actor’s imitation.
Most verbatim scripts, however, are not ‘recorded delivery’ but
do present the exact words from the tape. There are problems,
however. As this form does not allow for any changes to the
original – not even a change of tense – virtually everything is in
the past tense (as the original speaker was talking about events in
the past) and virtually everything is direct address to the audience
(since the interviewee spoke directly to the interviewer) – there is no
214 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

genuine dialogue in the sense of a number of people talking to each

other and responding in the normal way (although the interviewer
can at times also be presented as a character). One way round this
is if some or all of the interviews are carried out with more than
one interviewee present, so that there are elements of conversation
between interviewees in the original, rather than single monologue.
There are limitations inherent in the form, then, such that when
the material is unimaginatively handled in this genre, with endless
direct address and continual telling about past events, the result is
not a dramatization of the events that are being talked about in the
interview; rather, it is a dramatization of the interview.
However, very talented writers have found tremendously
effective solutions to these problems. One of the foremost of them
is Alecky Blythe. In the play and later the film London Road, for
example, there are at times genuine conversations, where conversa-
tions were recorded rather than conventional individual interviews.
For the most part, though, what seem to be scenes and dialogue
are a marvelously successful sleight of hand. The writer manages
to convey the feel of a particular day when the whole community
were putting out flowers, for example, through action, music
(including songs with verbatim lyrics, brilliantly put together by
Adam Cork) and the interweaving of lines from many interviewees,
so that it feels as if they are talking to each other even if they are
not; we hardly notice that it is in fact virtually all direct address.
Blythe is a very fine writer. In lesser hands this technique can very
easily be a rather lazy form of writing, in which little more than
editing passes for something rather more creative.
 12
Reworking the dialogue

Getting unstuck
Before we can rewrite a script it has to be completed. But there
are times when, for whatever reason, we feel blocked, uncertain,
lacking the confidence to continue and finish the piece. There may
be all sorts of reasons for this, one of which may be that we actually
fear completion as this will mean submission and judgement. Or
it might simply be that we don’t feel that some element or other
is working. Of course, if we know what it is we try to fix that
element and move on. But sometimes the solution is not to try to
write the next scene. Instead, take your characters somewhere else,
or to some other time. Invent a scene that does not figure in your
plan for the script, that is not intended to be part of the finished
product. That takes all the pressure off. Now you can simply play
with your characters and their interaction, play with possible or
even wildly improbable scenarios. But this playing can loosen you,
opening up new possibilities. Then when you go back to the script
proper you may well feel yourself suddenly unblocked, full of ideas
of how to make the next part of the script work. It really does pay
to be playful.
216 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

The need for rewrites

The point was made in an earlier chapter that a certain amount
of rewriting of dialogue should be done as you go along: you read
through the work of the previous session, making whatever altera-
tions seem necessary, before – all being well –plunging into the next
part. But in this chapter we will look at the rewriting which takes
place later, when the initial draft is complete.
The most important point to make is that the first draft really
is only a first draft. There is a terrible temptation, when you have
finally written the last scene, to think, ‘Great! That’s it! All done!’,
press ‘Send’, post it and hope for the best. It is as if it were a baby,
and now that it has finally been born you are determined that
it should not be mutilated. (Some writers also make the similar
mistake of refusing to allow script editors, producers, directors or
actors to have any effect upon the script.) Such an approach is fatal.
A first draft always benefits from rewriting. The rewrites may be
quite drastic, affecting fundamental points of plot or setting, but
whether or not other major elements are involved, there is always
rewriting of the dialogue to be done.

Give it time
Always wait at least a few weeks before rewriting, and longer if at
all possible. Of course, there may be occasions on which you are
hard up against a deadline and so realize that it is not possible to
put the script aside before returning to it – but that is all the more
reason to avoid finding yourself in this position. (We have all done
it, of course – but our writing has suffered as a result.) You should
always plan your writing to allow for this time gap as well as for
the rewriting itself. This period is needed because when the script
is very fresh in the memory, it is virtually impossible to read it as
others would who are not acquainted with it. When you go back to
your script you want to be as close as you possibly can to reading it
as though for the first time. Ideally, you will feel as a script reader
might on being presented with a new product. Ask yourself: does
the structure work; is a certain surprise in the plot convincing; are
the climaxes correctly placed; is the use of time appropriate? Above
 Reworking the dialogue 217

all, you want to feel – both in an overall sense and line-by-line –

whether the dialogue works.
It is probably best to read the whole script through at one sitting
first, just jotting down notes very quickly but not stopping to deal
with every tiny point. This way the overall effect of the dialogue
(and other aspects of the writing) becomes clear: you get some idea
of whether or not you are generally on the right track. Then it is
time for the more thorough reading.
Incidentally, if, like most scriptwriters, you work straight on
to computer, it is best to print off the script and read it from that
rather than from the screen. Simple typing errors (not always
detected by a spell-check) seem to go unnoticed on the screen but
not on the page, and the whole feel of reading a script – with luck,
lying back and enjoying it – is quite different.
So, looking at the dialogue with a genuine openness and
willingness to rewrite, what should you be looking out for?

Things to look out for

MM However right a line may have felt when you first
committed it to the page, now it has to justify itself: you
have to be hardheaded. Every line must pay its way. Of
course, the ‘payments’ will vary enormously: some lines will
contribute mostly to plot, some to characterization, some to
comic effect, some to motivation. Some will imply subtext;
some will build up tension. Some will be there as wallpaper
– but a wallpaper that is saying something. Any lines which
do not pay their way – however ‘realistic’, in the sense
that this might well be what people would actually say
– must go. You must be willing to cut even the lines you
most like in themselves, if they are contributing nothing to
your script. There is no such thing as a neutral line; a line
is either for you or against you. It is either contributing
positively, or it is merely holding things up. Be brutal.
MM Check that you are not using dialogue to feed information
to the audience. Remember that for a line to be said, there
must be a need on the part of the character to say it. Your
own need to tell the audience something is not enough.
218 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

Which brings us on to motivation. Every individual line

must have a credible motivation, whether conscious or
unconscious, and the overall motivations of each of the
characters – what comes out through their dialogue (and
actions) through the course of the script – must be coherent
and credible. Be certain that the motivation is clear rather
than vague, and on the other hand that it is not crudely or
unsubtly expressed.
MM Check that you have not written dialogue that is too literal.
Make sure that there really are subtexts and agendas
operating through every passage. Check that the dialogue
isn’t simply superficial, but involves genuine interaction
between characters.
MM Cut conversational ping-pong. Make sure that the
dialogue is not taking all the mystery out of the plot
by giving information too early, or the mystery out of
characterization by making statements that are too clear.
(There may be moments when your characters will declare
very clearly their motivations or beliefs, or what they think
is the kernel of a conflict; it is only if this is happening
continually that you need to start wielding the knife.) In
short, check that your dialogue is leaving enough work for
the audience to do.
MM Cut clichés. Make sure that the dialogue has enough
variation of pace. Alter it if it is too slow or static; alter it
too if it is unremittingly fast and frantic. Similarly, check
that there is enough variation of tone of dialogue, both
within scenes and between them.
MM Cut out any padding. (Naturally, you didn’t think it was
padding when you wrote it, but now you can see that it
is.) Don’t let dialogue ramble. Try to shorten the dialogue
in scenes, particularly beginnings and endings. Arrive late,
leave early.
MM Be sure that your dialogue has maintained a consistency of
style, a consistent position in relation to naturalism.
MM Your plot should have allowed your major characters to
change or reveal more of themselves as a result of their
experiences. Make sure that these character developments
 Reworking the dialogue 219

are reflected in the dialogue (again without necessarily

being stated directly).
MM
Make sure that each character uses the speech patterns
appropriate for the individual and the situation, and
that the speech patterns of characters are sufficiently
differentiated from each other.
MM Make sure you haven’t unconsciously tidied up the
language.
MM Check that your dialogue is not too predictable. There
ought to be a few surprises in there, but they need to be
credible at the same time.
MM Make sure that the dialogue engages us emotionally. It
may work in plot terms, or even in terms of development
characterization, but if it is not engaging us at an emotional
level, it is not working.
MM If you have a line that is only there to be funny, but isn’t,
cut it.
MM Check that you are not using words where action or visual
effects would do the job better.
MM Check that in the dialogue itself, the ratio of telling to
showing is not unbalanced (remember that there should be
a great deal more of the latter).
MM If you are using narration, make sure that you are not
abusing it. Check that you are not using narration to state
the obvious, to provide a running commentary or just to fill
in gaps.
MM Make sure that the dialogue doesn’t allow tension to
dissipate where it should be building up. Any dialogue
which is floppy, cut.
MM Check that the presentation is correct. Make sure that the
layout is appropriate for the medium and that you haven’t
written unnecessary directions for the delivery of the lines.

So, there is a lot to be looking out for. Be sure that when you alter
something, you take into account the knock-on effect on other
parts of the dialogue, or other elements of the script: a change in
just one line of dialogue may subtly alter characterization, which in
220 WRITING DIALOGUE FOR SCRIPTS

turn may lead to another character responding in a slightly different

way – perhaps in a part of the script a considerable distance from
the point where you made your initial alteration. Or a change in
dialogue might release or hold back a piece of information, which
perhaps has an effect on dramatic irony elsewhere. Even something
as simple as changing a name can have unexpected results. If you
decide, for example, that Kevin should become Anthony, it is easy
to tell the computer to alter every occurrence of the name, but in
fact the change alters the rhythm of the sentences. Our language is
strongly rhythmic (we tend to speak in duple or triple rhythm), so
where the name actually occurs in the speech, for the new sentences
to run smoothly you might well find yourself having to add (or take
out) little one-syllable filler words. (When changing names I now try
to find names with the same number of syllables.) Do try to think
through – and act on – all the implications of all your changes.
It is in fact very difficult to think through all the effects of alter­
ations in advance. It is also hard simply to bear in mind all the aspects
listed above at one sitting. Furthermore, while you are altering one
part of the dialogue it is hard to feel the whole script, and how it is
changing. For all these reasons it is a very good idea to leave another
time gap and then read the script through again, making further
adjustments. The process should be repeated as many times as
necessary, until you are entirely happy with the result. But each time,
before you carry out changes, make a copy of each existing version.
You might find that you change your mind and want to revert to the
previous version, so make sure you allow yourself that opportunity.

Be your own harshest critic

Of course, others will have their own comments and suggestions
about your dialogue, but you must first be a perfectionist. Once
you have sent off the script, it may well be too late to come up with
ideas of how this or that aspect of the dialogue could be improved.
And don’t always feel that tinkering is the answer. Be willing to
take drastic action, cutting whole sections if necessary, and be
open to making major alterations to dialogue which will affect the
script in all sorts of other ways. Remember that you always have
the previous version(s) to go back to if you decide you want to. A
timid approach can only produce limited improvements. Be bold.
 13
Last words

Don’t think you’ve ever cracked it

Language is a living thing, so it is changing all the time. New words
enter the dictionary (or at least come into use); words change their
meanings or drop out of our lives entirely. New phrases appear, and
new references from current affairs slip into the language. So dialogue
– in real life and in scripts – changes too, and we have to keep abreast
of it. Even social codes change, so that while we may be using the
same words with roughly the same meanings, we may find ourselves
using them in slightly different settings. Again, we must be sensitive to
this: dialogue written to conform to the social codes of twenty years
previously (perhaps the formative years of the writer) will not do.
So, keep listening. Keep listening to language as it is used by all
sorts of people in all sorts of different situations. Play it back to
yourself in your head. Analyze exactly what is going on – the use
of vocabulary, the subtexts, everything.
And keep your eye out for artistic innovations. Keep up to date.
Listen to scripts on the radio, watch their realization on television,
film and the stage. Listen to scripted language critically, and if you
like a new way of presenting dialogue, add it to your repertoire.
This does not mean you imitate the dialogue of another writer, but
simply that you learn from it. Miller didn’t imitate the dialogue of
Ibsen, nor Tarantino imitate that of Lars von Trier, but they certainly
learned from each other, and adapted their work for their own uses.
So enjoy spoken language. Take a delight in its enormous and
minute variations. And enjoy your scripting of dialogue.
222
 INDEX

2012 158 Angelis, April de 109, 144

Annie Hall 120–2, 164–5
Abigail Adams 131–3 Armstrong, Jesse 169
Abrahams, Jim 194 As If 160
Absolutely Fabulous 195 Aspects of the Novel viii
absurd 98–100, 100, 144, 148–51 Atkinson, Rowan 184
action viii, 11, 41–2, 44, 50, 52, Austen, Jane 60
55–6, 59–60, 63, 68–9, 73, authorship vii
75–8, 81–2, 84, 90, 92, Avary, Roger 103
102–3, 113, 119, 124, 131, Ayckbourn, Alan 115, 119
147, 150, 164–6, 177, 194,
198, 206, 210, 214, 218–20 Babel 125
see also business Bach, J. S. 107
agenda 11, 27–45, 48, 54, 138, Bain, Sam 169
218 Ball, Alan 163
of characters and writer 64 Barker, Howard 144
conscious and unconscious Bartlett, Mike 7, 44, 110
28–30 Batman 151–2
Aherne, Caroline 49 Beatles, The 133
Airplane 194 Becker 44, 61, 189
Albee, Edward 148 Beckett, Samuel 109–10, 144, 148
Albert’s Bridge 32–3, 148 Bedroom Farce 119
Alchemist, The 9–10, 186–7 beginnings 47–51
Allen, Woody 62, 120–2, 164–5 Belfort, Jordan 160
Alphabetical Order 18 Bennett, Alan 82, 179
Altman, Robert 54 Berkoff, Steven 153
Amateur 107 Betrayers 83
ambiguity 18, 54, 67–8, 70–1, Big Sleep, The 143
89–101, 150, 171 Bill, The 54–6, 74
American Beauty 164 Black Dahlia, The 161, 166
American Hustle 96, 166–7, 197 Blackadder 184–6, 189
Anderson, Paul Thomas 111 Bleasdale, Alan 111
Anderson, Wes 167 Blue Heart 110
224 Index

Blue Jasmine 62–3, 96 Cheers 189

Blythe, Alecky 214 Chekhov, Anton 109, 130
Bohemian Rhapsody 133 Chernus, Sonia 155
Bond, Edward 109, 146–7 choice 137–8
Brackett, Leig 155 Churchill, Caryl 6, 7, 9, 10, 87,
Brecht, Bertolt 109, 144–8, 151, 109, 110
159 Citizen Kane 158
Bridge, The 15–16 class 12–14, 19, 24, 47, 93, 97,
Brittas Empire, The 184 100–1, 115–16, 147, 186
Brooks, Adam 61 Cleese, John 187
Burgess, Anthony 152 cliché 13, 149, 218
business 56, 68–9, 75–7 see also climax 79–80, 123, 134, 140–2,
action 174, 216
Clockwork Orange, A 152
caricature 145, 186–7, 199 Comedians 111
Carry On 159 Cork, Adam 214
Carter, Forrest 155 Corridor 170–2
Casablanca 158 comedy see humour
Cash, Craig 49 comic books 151–2
Catastrophe 182 conflict
Chandler, Raymond 155 agendas and 29, 32
character viii–ix choice and 137–8
agenda of 27–45 class and 147
analysis of 25 climax and 140–2
class and 13 expression of 218
comic 181–200 identification and 139–40
culture and 16–17 moment to moment 138
description of 63–4 the ‘off switch’ and 136–7
distinctions of 52 pace and 135–6
identification with 139–40 the rounded character and
improvisation and 53–4 139–40
jargon and 10 subtle 67–8
motivation 33–5, 41–2, 61–2, unexpected 42
151 control 3, 8, 14, 30–3, 103, 128,
narration and 81, 157–79 138, 151, 160–1, 198
recognition 187–8 Copenhagen 166
rounded 139–40 Coronation Street 13
social codes in dialogue and 15 Crash 125
trait 8, 11 Crichton, Charles 187
verbal limitations of 56 Crimp, Martin 151
verbal tic and 19 Crook, Mackenzie 185
wants of 27–8, 30 Crucible, The 75–6
characterization see character Curtis, Richard 184
 Index 225

Dad’s Army 184 88–9, 92, 117, 119, 132–3,

Dances with Wolves 164 146, 152, 161, 164–6,
Darabont, Frank 161 169–70, 178, 201–2,
Death of a Salesman 75, 96, 111, 213–14
140–1 Everybody Hates Chris 154, 163
Densham, Pen 140, 159 Everything will be Fine 201–2
Desperate Housewives 163–4 evidence 82–5
Detectives, The 194 Extras 189–92
Detectorists 185–6
Devil’s Advocate 159 faction 201–2
DeVincentis, D. V. 160 fantasy 97, 153–4
dialect 12–13, 23–4 Far Away 87–9
Dick Tracy 151–2 Faulkner, William 155
Dickens, Charles 18 Fawlty Towers 185, 197–8
documentary 201–14 Fellowes, Julian 54
challenge of 212–13 Few Kind Words, A 12, 50, 74,
definition of 201–3 134–6, 172–4
from many sources 210–12 film vii–viii, 50, 64, 103–4,
interviews as basis of 203–6 129–31, 141, 157–61, 196,
stylized dialogue in 206–10 201–2
verbatim and 213–14 Fire Raisers, The 158
Doll’s House, A 141–2 Fish Called Wanda, A 187
drafting 2, 18, 41–5, 215–20 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 163
dramatic irony 92–5, 97, 119, Fo, Dario 102
174, 220 Fonvielle, Lloyd 194
duplication 206 form 15, 59, 80–1, 115, 120, 122,
140, 147, 149–50, 154–5,
Earthquakes in London 7, 44, 201–2, 212–14
110 Forster, E. M. viii
East 153 Frasier 29–30
edge 29–30, 32, 70, 209 Frayn, Michael 18, 77, 166
Ellroy, James 161 French Kiss 61, 118
Elton, Ben 184 Friedman, Josh 161
emotions 20, 27, 106, 112 Friends 15, 187–9, 193–4
displacing of 69–73 Frisch, Max 158
extreme 73, 141 Frost/Nixon 201
purging of 145 Fugard, Athol 76, 109
empathy 127–8, 152, 188, 200 Furthmann, Jules 155
endings 47–51, 158
English Patient, The 74, 89–96, Galton, Ray 184
98, 101 gender 14, 17, 47, 117
Ephron, Nora 8 Gervais, Ricky 189
events 60, 62, 65, 68, 77–82, 84, Gilroy, Tony 159
226 Index

Glengarry Glen Ross 111 status and 184–6

Godber, John 115 substituting situations and
Good Woman of Setzuan 147 193–5
Goodfellas 103, 124–5, 129, 160, unintentional 15
166
Gosford Park 54 Iannucci, Armando 76
Grand Budapest Hotel, The 74, Ibsen, Henrik 109, 141
167–9 I’m Talking About Jerusalem 51–2
Great Gatsby, The 163 Imitation Game, The 16
Greek 153 Importance of Being Ernest
Greenaway, Peter 144 96–101
Grey’s Anatomy 163 Impro, Improvisation and the
Griffin, Ted 118 Theatre 34
Griffiths, Trevor 102, 111 In Bruges 192–3
Groundhog Day 165, 195 In the Republic of Happiness 151
Gruault, Jean 158 insult 197–8
interviews see documentary
Hamlet 150 Ionesco, Eugene 148, 150
Hare, David 109, 151, 201 Ivanov 130–1
Harrison, Tony 109, 153
Hartley, Hal 107 James, Henry 153
helping out 8 jargon 9–10, 56
High Fidelity 160 Johnson, Terry 112
History Boys, The 179 Johnstone, Keith 34
Hitchcock Blonde 112–13 Jones, Laura 153
Holmes, Janet 14, 25 Jonson, Ben ix, 9–10, 109, 154,
Hornby, Nick 160 186
Housesitter 196 Jules et Jim 158
humour 8, 76, 119, 126
ambiguity and 96–101 Kaufman, Paul 155
caricature and 186–7 Knight, Steven 117
character recognition and Kubrick, Stanley 152
187–8
context of 181–4 LA Confidential 161
insult and 197–8 language see speech
laughing at/with and 188–93 Language, the Sexes and Society
the ordinary and 57 25
overworking dialogue to create Lawton, J. F. 40
195–6 layout 6–7, 219
pathos and 195 Leigh, Mike 52–4, 56
political correctness and Lemkin, Jonathan 159
198–200 listening 20, 25
running gag and 196–7 London Road 214
 Index 227

Look Back in Anger 52, 134 multi-stranded vii, 125

Luhrmann, Baz 154–5 Mummy Returns, The 194
Murder in the Cathedral 153
Mad Men 76, 164
Madox Ford, Ford 61 Naked Gun 194
Mahler 133 narration 59–64, 81, 122, 219
Mamet, David 4, 6, 109, 111 character 157, 159–79
Mankiewicz, Herman J. 158 dangers of 177–8
Marlow, Christopher 154 documentary 209
‘Master Harold’ … and the boys impersonal 157–9
76–7 multiple 166–77
Maybin, J. 25 second person 163
McDonagh, Martin 192 split-line 175–7
McPherson, Conor 80 time and 164–6
McQuarrie, Christopher 161 Narrow Road to the Deep North
meaning viii, 61, 73, 120, 147
149–50, 176, 198, 210 naturalism 47–57, 159
ambiguity and 89–96 appearance of 49–56
business and 69–73 definition 45
change in 106 heightened 109–22
character and 117 in non-naturalism 118–22
climax and 141–2 script’s relation to 102
coded 29–30 selective 50–1
contested 70 see also stylization and
contradictions of 185 non-literal
form of dialogue and 15 New Adventures of Superman
indirect communication of 76 152, 194
jargon and 10, 56 No Further Cause for Concern
stage directions and 74 113–15
viewpoint and 129 Noises Off 77
Men Behaving Badly 200 non-literal 87–107
Mercer, Neil 25 Normal, Henry 49
Merchant, Stephen 189 Norman Conquests, The 119
Midsummer Night’s Dream, A 101 Nottage, Lynn 125
Miller, Arthur 75, 109, 111, Nye, Simon 200
140–1, 164, 221
Morgan, Peter 201 objects 70
motivation see character Ocean’s Eleven 118–19
motivation Office, The 96
Mowat, David 144 Oil! 111
Mrs Doubtfire 196 Oleanna 4
Much Ado About Nothing 134 Ondaatje, Michael 89
multi-narrative see multi–stranded One Foot in the Grave 195
228 Index

Opposite of Sex, The 160 recorded delivery 213

Osborne, John 52, 134 Red Dwarf 187
Othello 101 re-drafting see drafting
Our Country’s Good 6 Renwick, David 195
Outlaw Josey Wales, The 143 repetition 3, 5, 18, 20, 48, 111,
124, 151, 174, 176, 196,
pace 123, 133–42 213
padding 218 resolution 79–80, 94, 137–8
Parade’s End 61–2 Restoration 74, 146–7
parody 100–1, 116 revising see re-working and
pathos 165, 195–6 drafting
pauses 136 re-working 107, 215–20 see also
payoff 72 drafting
Peaky Blinders 117–18 Rhinoceros 150
Peep Show 96, 169–70, 189 rhythm ix, 20, 111, 213, 220
People Like Us 194 Robin Hood Prince of Thieves
personae 181–2 140, 159
pet phrase see verbal tic Romeo and Juliet 154–5
phone calls 4–6 Roos, Don 160
phonetic spelling 13, 23–5 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
Pileggi, Nicholas 125 Dead 77, 150
Pinter, Harold 107, 109, 136, Rosenfeldt, Hans 15
148, 150–1 Royle Family, The 15, 49, 189
Player, The 126–7, 129 Rubin, Danny 195
plot viii, 10, 42–3, 117, 127–8, Ruined 125–6
138–9, 153, 181, 185, 196, running gag 196–7
201, 216–19 Russell, David O. 166
poetry 111, 145, 153–5
Police Squad 194 Saved 147
political correctness 198–200 Scorcese, Martin 125
Portrait of a Lady 153 script world 115–18
Potter, Dennis 102, 154 Scrubs 154
predictability see surprises Secrets and Lies 52–6
presentation 13 see also layout self-delusion 96–7
Pretty Woman 40 Serious Money 9, 110
Pulp Fiction 103–7 Shakespeare ix, 79, 109, 118,
154, 159
Queen 133 Shand, Mark 131
Shaw, George Bernard 109
radio viii, 50, 59, 64, 131–3, 157, Shawshank Redemption, The
170, 177–8 161–3
Ramis, Harold 195 She Loves You! 133
Real Thing, The 110, 115 Shepard, Sam 109
 Index 229

Sibelius 141 film characters’ names in 163

silence 3, 7, 11, 92, 136 Star Trek 152
Simon, David 62 status 14, 34–41, 120, 138, 182,
Simpson, Alan 184 184–6
Simpson, N. F. 148 Steptoe and Son 184, 195
Sinclair, Upton 111 Stoppard, Tom ix, 32–3, 42, 61,
Singer, Eric Warren 166 77, 109–11, 115, 148, 150
Singing Detective, The 154 Strauss, Richard 107
situation 5, 14, 19, 20, 23, 32, struggle 137, 185 see also
43, 53, 67, 81, 84, 93, 95, conflict
117, 119, 120, 147, 149, Stuff Happens 201
193–5, 196, 198, 201, 219 stylistic consistency 101–2
Six Feet Under 154 stylization 143–55
Small Family Business, A 119 subtext 15, 74, 87, 96, 217–18,
Smith, P. 25 221
Soderbergh, Steven 118 Superman 151
Sommers, Stephen 194 surprises 42, 80, 99, 159, 192,
Sommersby 165 216, 219
speech 1–25 symbolism 61–2, 70, 75–6, 146,
as code 15–17, 29–30 176
culture and 16–17
fingerprints of 17–19 Talking Heads 82
gender and 14 Tannen, D. 25
interruptions to 3–7 Tarantino ix, 103, 221
messiness of 2–7 television viii, 50, 64, 80, 129,
patterns 19 136, 151, 153, 157,
ping-pong in 11, 218 159–60, 163, 189, 198,
regional 12–13 201, 221
register in 19–20 telling and showing 44, 77–84,
repairs to 2–3 178, 206, 210, 219
rhythm in 20 Tempest, The 78–9
shorthand in 9–10 tension 5, 20, 29, 32, 95, 97, 106,
simultaneous 3–7 209, 210, 217, 219
situation and 19–20 theatre vii, viii, 60, 64, 80, 109,
social codes and 14–16 131, 136, 144–50, 158–9,
written language and 1–2 203, 213
Speight, Johnny 200 There Will Be Blood 50, 111–12
Spider-Man 151 Thick of It, The 4, 76, 198
split lines 149, 175–7 Thomas, Dylan 82, 109, 153
spoon-feeding 44, 65–8 Ti-jean and his Brothers 153
stage directions viii, 6, 92, 93, Till Death Us Do Part 200
125, 130 Tolkin, Michael 126
for actors 73–4 tone 102–3, 123–9
230 Index

Top Girls 6–7, 136 wallpaper dialogue 127–9

Traffic 125 Watson, John 140, 159
Truffaut, François 158 Webber, Andrew Lloyd 107
Webster, John 109, 154
Ugly Betty 154 Weir, The 80
Under Milk Wood 82, 153 Welles, Orson 158
Using English, from Conversation Wertenbaker, Timberlake 6
to Canon 25 Wesker, Arnold 51–2, 117
Usual Suspects, The 161 West Side Story 154
When Harry Met Sally 8
verbal tic 18–19, 23, 103 Wilde, Oscar 97, 99, 101, 117,
verbatim theatre 213–14 147
View from the Bridge 164 Williams, Tennessee 109
vocabulary 12–13, 16, 17, 19, 24, Winter, Terence 160
48, 221 Winter’s Tale, The 79–80
voice-over see narration Wire, The 62
Volpone 186–7 Wolf of Wall Street, The 60, 63
Von Trier, Lars 221 world view 102–7

W1A 103, 158–9, 189 You Just Don’t Understand 25

Waiting for Godot 110, 148–50,
175 Zucker, David 194
Walcott, Derek 109, 153 Zucker, Jerry 194