Tag: dialogue

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Speaking of Coupling

Yesterday was not what I’d planned.  I meant to write about the dialogue of Coupling.  Watching Star Wars: Episode II last night reminded me.  It turns out that no matter how much glamor you throw up on the screen to dazzle the audience, you can still fail big because you can’t get the right words into an actor’s mouth.  Hell, in some case back out.  In some cases those three movies were like a high school musical with a sixty million dollar budget.

Coupling’s conversations remind me of a writing trope: an essay should be like a skirt; long enough to cover the subject, short enough to maintain interest.  In the case of this program I’d say they were cutting the hemline to something more like a thong and a pair of pasties.  Or maybe more accurately in the style of Benny Hill simply having a naked person walk through a scene and be strategically and timely covered up with fitting props.  However one might try to imagine the dialogue it’s good.

I hear many writers complain that they can’t write speech well.  Maybe they agonize over making men sound like men and women like women.  Or maybe they miss the mark when it comes to teen slang.  Or maybe all their Elizabethans sound like Valley Girls–or worse Victorians.  It’s a common sticking place for many writers.

Any book about writing creatively contains a chapter on dialogue.  Listen to speech in the wild.  Record and transcribe a conversation.  Go to the mall or the park.  Read good dialogue.  Don’t clutter your speech with stage direction or clumsy backstory, but still propel the story forward.

I’ve never thought much about my dialogue.  I suspect I should.  It stands to reason that not having written it much, I don’t know how to it well.

A brief exchange on a recent episode of New Amsterdam on Fox made me realize how much you could put into a scene with just the spoken word.  An exchange in the servants’ quarters between the master and the coachman quickly uncovers a history of rape and a hint of coming justice.  It wasn’t the first scene in the series of flashbacks, but it could have stood alone with very little more added.

Next time I will be employing the Five Times technique to some dialogue to explore what I can come up with.

Word count: 932
Day 192

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The 38th of March

I wrote the following last year on my 38th birthday. I’ve not had a place or time to release it. I wasn’t sure it made as much sense to the reader as it did to me. I’m going to pick up the thread of it later today, but thought I might let it hang in the air today to allow time for comment. Tell me what you think is happening and I’ll see what I can do to get it back on the course I’d meant it to be on.

Before you read on be warned that what follows amounts to a vulgar and irreverent ‘conversation’ with God.

“Fah! At least those atheists bother to decide.”

That from the plastic Jesus swinging on the rosary–glow-in-the-dark–hanging from the rear-view mirror of my grandmother’s car. A 1976 Chevy Nova that smelled equally of peppermints and cigarette smoke.

“Impressive. You don’t take your own name in vain?” I never know why I goad Him here, but it feels good.

Outside the Nova objects and things are awash in sunlight. Their overexposed details and faded colors as imprecise as you’d expect from ‘objects and things’. Contrastingly, inside the car features are distinct. The tan-to-match dashboard is dusted with a combination of road grit and the eroding flecks of sunburned plastic. The brown and gold houndstooth fabric of the bench seat captures my attention each time I look-so I don’t anymore. In fact, the cab is dark enough that you can tell Jesus is angry since He’s glowing. The dream always starts earlier, but my memory of it doesn’t kick in till His atheist line so I never know exactly why He’s vexed with me.

“Cursing with your own name sounds dumb. Try it.”

“Abigail H. Johnson it’s hot in here!”

“Nice with the ‘H’. I guess you’re uncomfortable saying ‘fucking’ in front of your Lord, Jesus Christ?”

“Well…”

“You know, I am everywhere, right?”

I think, how is that different than taking your own name in vain? You weren’t everywhere two years ago.

The dream ends and I wake up next to my husband.

“Happy Birthday,” he says.

Of course he’s not dead…then his unrequited kiss fades into a buzzing.

I wake up alone. I wake up alone groping for the snooze bar.

“Fucking Christ.”

Word count: 380
Day 188

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The Pilgrim Meets You

“Inside. ‘nside. ‘nside. ‘nside.  Get. In. Side.”  Johnka chased Tritti into the empty red tent.  He stumbled to the ground trying not to overrun her with his bulk after she halted abruptly in the entrance.  He just lay there in the sand rather than get up.

“What was that?”  Tritti knelt to help him up but he invited her to just sit.  She crossed her legs and rubbed the sand out of her eyes.  The wind pulled loudly at the tent trying to drag it out of it’s moorings like a barking dog straining it’s tether.

“Raish.  That was a raish wind.  a little early in the season I’d say, but a raish for sure.”  Johnka said it like he was trying to convince himself as well.

“I know what a raish is old man.  I meant the woman.  The woman with the gun.”

“You saw that?”

Tritti nodded tightly as if to ask, ‘How the hell could I not?’

Above the noise of the raish they could hear shopkeepers and patrons alike yelling to get in out of the wind.  Curses at the sand for lost income and scattered products out weighed the wailing of a single woman who had just lost her daughter.  All Tritti could hear was that woman.

“She was dressed like me.  She had hair braided like mine.  Anyone not knowing either of us would have thought us sisters–twins maybe.”

“Twins?  Certainly not.  You are much more beautiful…”

“Stop.  Stop it.  Just because I can’t figure out who you really are doesn’t make me stupid or blind,” Tritti seethed, “That woman…that woman was trying to kill me.  And she would have had you not paused to admire that other girl’s scarf so obviously.”  Tritti paused before saying the next thing.  She wanted to hear it in her head first to make sure she wasn’t guessing.  “You saved my life by helping that woman take that girl’s instead.”

Johnka opened his mouth to explain, but something else came out instead.  “Hate me then, but you’re alive.”

“I will.  Never doubt that old man.  Never doubt that.”