Time to Write

How to write dialogue that reveals character

On my screenwriting Q & A group call the other day someone asked about how to reveal character through dialogue. 

My advice is to answer this question:

"What, in addition to the content of the dialogue, does the speaker wish to reveal?"

Consider this example:

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa complimented the Times Literary Supplement by saying, “I have been reading the TLS since I learned English 40 years ago. It is the most serious, authoritative, witty, diverse and stimulating cultural publication in all the five languages I speak.”

Showing off a little, were we, Mario?

SECONDARY INTENTIONS AND WHERE THEY COME FROM

The speaker doesn't even have to be aware of his or her secondary intention. In fact, most would deny it. Generally they stem from insecurities created in childhood. More examples of these kind of messages and their secondary intentions:

"That's a lovely dress, I'm beginning to regreat I spent so much on a designer when dresses as lovely as yours are available off the rack!" = "No matter what you have or do, I own or have done something better."

"I'm so sorry you have such a bad case of the flu. I know from my time in a coma that being bedridden is no fun." = "No matter how badly you have suffered, I have suffered more."

"You would be much more comfortable sitting over there." = "I'm in control here."

"It's kind of you to invite me to play with you, I know you're by far the better player. I just hope it's enough of a challenge not to be boring for you." = "I'm not a threat or a rival"--unless it's said by a person who knows they're a better player than the other person, in which case the message is, "I feel safe behind a wall of false modesty" or "I can con manipulate people easily.")

AN ADVANCED FORM

There's an advanced form in which the speaker bigs himself up while appearing to put himself down, as in these examples:

"I was so stupid not to stop playing roulette when I was a hundred grand ahead--I ended up with only fifty thousand in winnings."

"The breakup of the relationship was my fault. I was too nice."

"I really admire prolific writers. I can manage to prouduce only two books a year."

LISTEN FOR THESE AND MAKE THEM WORK FOR YOUR WRITING

If you listen for examples of these kinds of statements over the next few days I guarantee you'll hear some.

Being aware of people's secondary intentions is a good way to get insight into real people, and using them in your character's dialogue is an excellent tool for letting your reader in on what your character really is like, without saying it outright. 

(Among the many masters of dialogue who give writing advice cited in my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," are Dickens, Hemingway, and Elmore Leonard. Find out what they reveal--you can get the book from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

 

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Re-reading your work (The Writer's Life series)

Get Inspired to Do Something Different: The case of the moving mannequins

I believe in taking inspiration from anything innovative others are doing, whether or not that relates to writing books or screenplays. In this DSD weekly series, we'll see example of this and  I encourage you to think of ways these might inspire you in the kinds of projects you're doing.

First up, mannequins that mimic your movement:

 

My take-away idea: people are intrigued when they see something that reflects themseles or their experience. Idea: a series of cartoons in which I share some of my writing-related thoughts and experiences that might resonate with you. First one appears tomorrow.

(If you'd like inspiration for how to do something different, get a copy of my book, "Do Something Different," published by Virgin Books with a foreword by Sir Richard Branson. It features 100 case studies of how people in all kinds of field marketing themselves or their products creatively and inexpensively, and gives you tips for how to apply their methods to your projects. You can get it from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

Let life inspire you to create quirky characters

Do you want to create interesting, quirky characters for your novel or screenplay?

There's never a shortage of inspiration when you find out the interesting ways of many real-life people.

The only danger is that often people will accept highly unusual things in real life but reject exactly the same thing as implausible if they encounter it in fiction.

What prompted this musing was an article I read on the website of the London Evening Standard. It includes a quote from Olivia Fane's book, "The Conversations: 66 Reasons to Stop Talking":

The rules were: when my husband was abroad for a period exceeding two weeks, he could have an affair providing (a) he had my permission, and (b) the woman didn't live in England. The quid pro quo was that I should be allowed 10 snogs a year and one two-week affair every other year, providing the location of the aforesaid affair was Stoke Newington.

I assume they lived in Stoke Newington, not that it was a particularly sexy place for affairs.

And if you're not English you may not know that "snogs" are sessions of kissing and cuddling that stop short of actual sex.

Alas, this very organized approach went wrong:

What went wrong with my first marriage was that we broke our own rules. My husband asked my permission while abroad for a short affair but it happened the woman lived in London.

It confirms that inspiration for quirky characters is as close as the nearest newspaper.

PS: I wouldn't suggest recommending this kind of arrangement to your spouse or partner unless you're pretty sure it will get a positive response.

(If you'd like advice from the best classic and modern writers on how to create great characters, get a copy of my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Writer's tools: the Internet Archive

 Want a terrific source for research and entertainment? Try the Internet Archive 

It's a non-profit organization founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. 

Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages 

Movies there include Battleship Potempkin, the original A Star is Born (1937), A Farewell to Arms (1950 with Gary Cooper and Helen Hays, and Meet John Doe, a classic Frank Capra film.

They also have audio books, like Orwell's 1984. 

One of their projects is open library.org--that has a million books you can read instantly - including 615 on Abraham Lincoln, for instance.

They also have TVnews search--clips and transcripts of TV news items from the past 15 years. You can manipulate the timeline to see only items from a particular period. Type in the topic and you'll get loads of clips to choose from. 

Amazing stuff, just don't get lost in there, it can make hours disappear!

Creative people: when you can't beat the forces of convention...

This is the story of a kind of unconventional collaboration. It also illustrates the principle, "when you can't beat them, join them"...sort of.

Street artist Mobstr is used to having his graffiti painted over. He decided to tell a story one line at a time, with the next one appearing when the previous one had been painted over.

You can see the results here: 

http://designtaxi.com/news/355932/Street-Artist-Teams-Up-With-The-People-Who-Destroy-His-Work-To-Tell-A-Story/

Who or what do you consider the opposition to whatever creative projects you hope to achieve? 

Could there be a way to make it work with you or for you?

Be a writer right now!

Korean novelist Yung-ha Kim gave a TED talk entitled "Be an Artist Right Now."

He pointed out that there are many reasons that we, as adults, resist the impulse we may feel to tell stories. One is that it seems daunting to write something as long as a novel or screenplay. In answer to that, he quoted Roland Barthes on how Flaubert wrote: "Flaubert did not write a novel. He merely connected one sentence after another. The eros between sentences, that is the essence of Flaubert's novels."

Yung-ha Kim said, "That's right--a novel, basically, is writing one sentence, then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence. And you continue to make connections."

Maybe that makes it sound too simple, but I've found that often when a book or a screenplay doeasn't work it's because the story takes a sudden turn in the direction of what the writer thought might be an interesting scene but that in some way betrays what went before. 

If you're hesitating about writing, start now with one page. Tomorrow write another one. If at some point you feel ready to work out the rest of the story, go for it. Otherwise keep following one page with another and have faith.

(The great writers like Dickens and Austen and Twain had advice to help writers. I've collected it all and added tips on how to apply that advice to your own novel or script. The book is called "Your Creative Writing Masterclass" and you can buy it right now at Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Is the opening of your novel or screenplay like a stone in a slingshot?

What should the opening of your novel or script be like? 

In a TED talk, Pixar writer/director Andrew Stanton said it should be like a pebble in a slingshot as the elastic is pulled back...

We want to see what will happen--what is the stone's target? Are we watching a Davd fighting a Goliath? Obviously our reaction will be very different if, instead of a giant, the target is a little boy. 

In either case we want to know the basis of the conflict. And we want to know how it will turn out. 

In other words, you have our attention and you have started to pull us into the story--we want to know more. 

Although there can be variations in the pacing, you have to keep the tension going. Maybe the first shot misses. If the target is a giant, we will tend to identify with the person with the slingshot and we will worry about his fate.

If the shot doesnt miss, is it enough to kill the giant or might it just enrage him more? 

I think it's a very useful metaphor, one that can help you build in tesion right from the start, and can guide you in tightening the story when you do the next draft.

(Want guidance on writing your book, from the first idea right through publication? Or your screenply, from seed of an idea through to something you'd be hapy to submit to an agent or producer or studio? You can get it in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.) 

 

 

 

Will it hit the target? What is the conflict that 

A different way to tell and find stories

Storify.com offers a different way to tell and find stories. Their site describes it this way:

"Storify users tell stories by collecting updates from social networks, amplifying the voices that matter to create a new story format that is interactive, dynamic and social. Discover meaningful social media from the best storytellers online, including journalists, bloggers, editors and people like you, too.

Our front page displays the best images, videos, links, updates and other media collected by Storify users. You can click on the story associated with each media element to get the context of why it’s interesting. Any element can be re-used for your own stories, or also commented on, liked or shared."

As well as pulling together elements from a variety of sources, you can create a headline, write an introduction, and insert text anywhere in the story to create a flow.

When you're done, you can get an embed code and put the story or a link to it on your own website or blog. You can also notify the people whose work you incorporated. If they notify their followers, it could mean your story gets greater attention.

Here is the first one I've done, on how to be more creative:

http://storify.com/j4london/here-s-how-to-be-more-creative

Would Storify stories be useful in marketing your work? I haven't used it enought to figure that out, but my hunch is that it could be a tool that isn't yet being overused. I'll keep you posted, and if you've had any experience with it, good or bad, I'd love to hear about them, either in a comment on this post or via email to [email protected]. 

Writer's tools: How to make your own brainstormer

The Brainstormer is an iPhone and iPad app for $1.99 that lets you spin a wheel to randomly combine words to create a plot with a subject and a setting or style. Of course most of them are not really usable, but they are fun and can stimulate your thinking. Here is one I just did:

Odd Couple +

retro sci-fi +

artist's studio

Hmmm….maybe a comedy variation of "The Portrait of Dorian Grey" in which an obnoxious "star'" artist who paints pictures of space suddenly finds himself whisked into an alternate reality in which he is at the mercy of someone very much like himself… Well, I did say most are not really usable!

Make your own analogue version 

You can make your own by creating lists or a batch of index cards with types of characters, settings, genres, and emotions.

Randomly take one from each stack or list and see how they could fit together into a story.

Great for when your creative mind feels sluggish. Have a few minutes of fun with this before starting on your project.

(Want to find out how to be more creative? The answers are in my book, "Creativity Now," published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.) 

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What Dan O'Bannon said about what a story is

Scriptmag.com recently featured an interview with Diane O'Bannon, widow of Dan O'Bannon who co-wrote "Alien" and "Total Recall", and Matt Lohr, who completed a book Dan started (he wrote about 75% of before he died). It's called "Dan O'Bannon's Guide to Screenplay Structure" and it's published by Michael Weise Productions.  One point they discussed is what constitutes a story:

DIANE: The thing that’s surprising is people often don’t get what a story is. How about Prometheus? Prometheus is a fabulous film, it’s visually stunning, but it’s not a story. It wanders. At no point do you feel like you know who to watch next. Ridley Scott is a fantastic filmmaker, but he didn’t think it was important not to frustrate and anger a lot of viewers. Or he didn’t notice that he didn’t have a story that went from A to B, that brought you up, that brought you down, and completed itself.

MATT: A string of incidents is not a story, even if they involve the same characters. Prometheus is a string of incidents.

What's the difference? Largely it's cause and effect.

Each major incident in a story has an effect on the characters, although it may not be immediate. In fact, often it's more interesting if it's not immediate because it allows us to speculate what the consequence will be.

If you provide a mixture of what we expect and what we don't, you create a satisfying experience.

We also expect stories to have a beginning, middle and end. That's not to say an ending can't leave room for interpretation, but it shouldn't feel like you just decided to stop writing. 

(You can get lots of tips about creating characters and powerful stories, in my book "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon.com or your other favorite book seller.)

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A great exercise for you or the characters you create

I enjoy mentally exploring the worlds of the fictional characters who inhabit the scripts and stories I write. It's all about discovering them rather than inventing them. One way to learn about your characters (or yourself) is to time travel. 

Well, at least virtually. At Stanford University a researcher had young people virtually experience old age and asked them to decide what they’d do if their current (younger) selves were given a thousand dollars. According to Psychology Today, those with the elderly avatar put more than twice as much into long-term savings.

What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self? What advice do you think you’d get today from the twenty years older version of yourself?

To find out, set up two chairs facing each other. When you sit in the first one, you are your present self. Then move to the other one and imagine this is the twenty-years-older version of you. In this chair, what do you want to tell the current you?

You can also take on the role of one of the characters you have created. We are all formed by our pasts, so figuring out what your character regrets, what he would tell his younger self, and what his younger self would say to him can reveal a lot.

 ACTION: Give this exercise a try. You can also experiment with different time periods—what would the one-year-older you or the character have to say? How about the five-years-older versions?

(If you like this exercise I think you'll enjoy many of the others included in my book, Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing and available now from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

The most important thing you'll ever write

 

 

"You are the storyteller of your own life

and you can create your own legend or not."

- Isabelle Allende

 

That's it. that's all for today. If you were expecting to spend more time reading this post, you can use that time to start (or continue) working your own legend. - Jurgen

Can art or writing help people heal?

A lot of people have said that writing or creating art has helped them through the most difficult times in their lives. However, does art actually heal on the physical level? 

If science can come up with clear evidence of the medical benefits of art it will help many more people and also make a better case for public funding for such programs.

This is a brief report from the BBC on research being done in this field now:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21579762

 

How to be 15% happier right now

A study by psychologist and author Richard Wiseman reported that people who were asked to remember something good that happened the previous day got an immediate 15% boost in happiness. (Don’t you love how precise social scientists pretend to be?]

ACTION: What’s one good thing that happened to you yesterday? If you have trouble remembering, jot down good things as they happen—I have a hunch that would be another great happiness-booster.

If you are unhappy about something in particular, for instance that you're not making the quick progress you'd hoped for when you started a creative project, think back to how excited you were to start it, and how much you will enjoy it again when you get past this rough patch. Remember times in the past when you persevered and it worked out well. 

You don't have to do anything fancy, just remember how good life can be, even if it's not so great right now. If you need help, consult an expert: a baby, a kiteen or a puppy.