Having said that, there is still a lot to learn from dialogue scenes, even if they are pulled out of their respective plays. In all of them, the dialogue does build off of the previous lines. It seems incredibly basic, but one of the most important things in dialogue seems to be believability. The actor needs to say something that can convince the audience that it would actually be said in reply to the previous line (or after a thought process by the character, even if we don't hear their train of thought). Whether or not the response would actually happen is not as important as the audience's perception that it would.
Besides actually seeming believable within the context of the play, (which will vary drastically from Shakespeare to Arthur Miller) dialogue needs to maintain interest and achieve a purpose, usually forwarding plot or character. In many of the snippets I read, much of the dialogue would pass fairly quickly, or at least with short sentences between people, until a more significant moment of revelation or plot took place. Then a single character would get a more developed line. This does follow a logical form of conversation: the participants chat around until one of them finds something more important or in depth to say. Similarly, in the script, the characters can have less impactful conversation (which ideally still builds character or plot) that links more key points.
As important as these key points are, at times it is more important that the characters know what they are talking about than that the audience know right out. An example from The Shape of Things (I know that's in the reading for Thursday, but I read it and it has the perfect example) shows the effect of keeping the audience guessing:
EVELYN: And I whispered back to you, I said...In this exchange, the characters know exactly what they are talking about. It doesn't seem like they are referring to something that the audience would know about from earlier in the play, so if this is the case, then the audience is left to determine the meaning of their exchange, which could be influenced by the actor's interpretations as well (this still works for the single scene out of context, even if this is referenced explicitly earlier in the full play). Angels in America also uses a similar technique for the majority of the first scene in the excerpt. Harper has a question for Joe, but neither acknowledge what that question is until the last few lines of the scene, drawing the tension out while still conveying character and plot.
ADAM: I remember.
EVELYN: I meant that. I did.
ADAM: Yeah?
EVELYN: Yes.
ADAM: ...oh.
So, it boils down to believability within the aspect of the play, character, and plot. And voice and rhythm and diction and comprehensibility and... No pressure.
Actually Melissa, you make all this sound so easy. It doesn't need to sound real -- it just needs to fit in with the reality (rest) of the play. The audience doesn't need to follow it -- only the characters do. Dialogue doesn't need to be long and drawn out -- few word exchanges punctuated by very occasional longer thoughts is plenty. So I'm cheered. Maybe not no pressure but less.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, sometimes the audience doesn't know what's going on, and that is used to great effect -- to build tension, to force us to our own conclusions, to reveal mood or character or circumstance, etc. But ultimately, there's no point in writing it if the audience isn't eventually going to understand it. The question is only what we eventually understand -- often not what the characters do. So in your example, I don't know what they're whispering about, but the exchange reveals much about them and their relationship instead.
This is hard to do as a writer -- making people say one thing to each other and another thing to their audience. But it gets easier -- takes practice. There are lots of tricks here as well. It's worth underlining them as you read -- places where you understand something other than exactly what is said.
I like your point too that dialogue needn't be realistic. It just has to seem like it is.
I absolutely agree with you that dialogue builds off of itself. That's the beauty of it. If, like in The Shape of Things(which i don't know about you but I really want to read more of) the question of whether or not Evelyn really loves him builds and builds until we never really find out. Sure, we can speculate as to the fact that that's what she said to him in his ear, but we don't know, it leaves the audience hanging! That's the beauty of theatre in my mind, being able to get someone so involved in a situation(like life) and then often the situation isn't resolved(also like life, what do you think stress is a result of?) But at the same time, dialogue can tend to be on the more theatrical side, and i think that's just as good. If you have repeated lines, sing song lines, nothing represents the artistry of theatre itself and the artistry of the spoken word more than theatricality in theatre.
ReplyDeleteI agree on the importance of believability. It's going to read awful (and sound awful, later) if the dialogue is too wooden, as we discussed in class extensively. I think one thing we all need to keep in mind as we go into our dialogue writing for next week is that we shouldn't try and rush exposition in. It will overload the writer, as well as the audience, if too much explanation gets dumped at once. Keeping conversation natural and well-paced will be key to a good dialogue. You're also right about the idea of balancing what the characters know from past interactions vs. the interactions that the audience has seen. Having one character say to another something like, "remember that one time on the freeway?" not only serves as being naturalistic, but it also can keep the audience in suspense. This sort of thing should tie into backstory--when a character has a shared experience with another character, they will mostly likely know what the other one is referring to. Just like in real life!
ReplyDeleteI agree on the importance of believability. but you need to be careful that it doesn't get boring. Just because its believable doesn't mean its going to be interesting. So make sure it keeps moving and also fits in with the world of the play. Like we discovered in class in Angel's in America, that we learn something about the characters on almost every line but its not necessarily obvious unless you are looking for it. But at the same time, we also pick up on things about the character that are then just assumed in the minds of the audience. I think this is probably the hardest part of dialogue, letting the audience know things that it doesn't even necessarily know its learing at the time.
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