Read your dialogue out loud! (Part 2: Who's who?)

Movies depend on well-drawn, distinctive, and interesting characters to fuel their stories. As a writer you really only have two tools with which to get that job done... Stage direction, and dialogue.

But stage direction can only take you so far. Let's say you want to show that one of your characters is a prankster. You can accomplish that by having him loosen the top of the salt shaker as he walks out of a diner. But what if you want the audience to know WHY he's a prankster... what is it about his past that makes him want to play pranks on people? You wouldn't bother to make him a prankster unless it was vital to his character and to the way the story will play itself out, so you're going to need to make the reasons behind his pranksterism clearly understood.

For that you're going to need outstanding dialogue.

The problem with a lot of the scripts I see is that, while the dialogue may do a good job of driving the story and keeping the action moving, it doesn't do enough to clearly draw and define the characters as flesh-and-blood individuals that I'm going to be asked to spend two hours caring about. In short, plot and action become the focus and the characters all begin to sound the same.

Reading dialogue out loud can help solve this problem as well... but you're going to need a trusted assistant. Try reading a few scenes to a friend. If your friend can't tell who's who... you might have a dialogue problem.

To give you a more concrete example of what I mean, let's look at some examples from my all-time favorite flick RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

First, here's the scene where Marcus tells Indy he has approval from the University to go after the Ark:

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Indy: "You did it, didn't you?"
Marcus: They want you to go for it!
Indy: "Oh, Marcus!"
Marcus: "They want you to get ahold of the Ark before the Nazis do, and they're prepared to pay handsomely for it!"
Indy: "And the museum...the museum gets the Ark when we're finished?"
Marcus: "Oh, Yes!"
Indy: "Ohhh....the Ark of the Covenant."
Marcus: "Nothing else has come close!"
Indy: "That thing represents everything we got into archaeology for in the first place!"
Marcus: "You know five years ago I would have gone after it myself. I'm really rather envious!"
Indy: "I've got to locate Abner...I think I know where to start. Do you suppose she'll still be with him?"
Marcus: "Possibly...Marion's the least of your worries right now, believe me, Indy!"
Indy: "What do you mean?"
Marcus: "Well, I mean that for nearly 3,000 years, man has been searching for the Lost Ark. It's not something to be taken lightly...no one knows its secrets! It's like nothing you've ever gone after before!"
Indy: "Oooh, Marcus....what are you tryin' to do, scare me? You sound like my mother! We've known each other for a long time, I don't believe in magic, a lot of superstitious hocus pocus! I'm going after a find of incredible historical significance, you're talking about the boogey-man! Besides, you know what a *cautious* fellow I am!"
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There's a lot going on in this exchange... the idea of a person named "Marion" who may or may not be a source of potential trouble for Indy, for one thing... but I'm more interested in how this exchange serves to clearly define Indy's character and use the aspects of his character that are clearly different from Marcus to tell us a little bit about what makes him tick.

So what do we know about these two men after this scene?

Well we know that Marcus is slightly older and has the seasoned look-before-you-leap attitude of a wiser older man. We also know he's the more politic of the two men. If you need someone to go before the board of directors and make an argument, you send Marcus Brody. But if you need someone to punch a Nazi in the neck, you call Indy.

We also get a sense of how long these two men have pursued this passion. Indy says the Ark is "everything we got into archaeology for in the first place." In fact, these two men will expound on this idea later, in the third installment of the trilogy. After Indy hands Marcus the cross of Coronado he asks "do you know how long I've been looking for that?"... Marcus replies with a semi-rhetorical "all your life?" Archaeology may seem like a dry subject for a man like Indiana Jones to dedicate his life to, but here we get a sense of how ancient artifacts can stir our hero's passions. We also get a sense of how a man who's seen so much, who just five minutes ago barely escaped alive from an ancient temple full of booby-traps with a ten pound golden idol in his hands, can still be wowed by something. Just a few clever lines of dialogue let the audience know that if the Ark of the Covenant can be the culmination of a dream for a man like Indiana Jones, well then it must be one hell of a treasure.

We also get a sense of melancholy over lost youth from Marcus, who seems sad that he can no longer join Indy on these kinds of adventures, perhaps remembering when he was the young buck with a whip and a mission. Though it's interesting to note that Indy never reacts to that line... perhaps Kasdan was trying to point out something about the tendencies of young men and women to be oblivious to the fact that they won't always be young, good looking, and full of piss and vinegar.

But the last four lines are by far the most important of the scene.

One of the most important elements of Indiana Jones' character is his inability, even in the face of the fantastic, to accept anything beyond what he can see and touch. His character is devoid of a capacity for wonder. In a sense, Indiana has lost the ability to really connect with what he does... his life in archaeology is all about the chase. The objects themselves have lost most of their value beyond the notches they represent on his belt. Indy wants to be the one who FOUND the Ark... not the one who studies it. So when Marcus interrupts his reverie to remind him that this isn't a matter of simply going down to the store to pick up a bottle of milk, that for thousands of years, people have believed the Ark capable of incredible violence, he laughs it off, throws a loaded pistol into his suitcase, and gives his wiser older mentor a condescending look.

A more powerful set-up for a hero's journey you will not find in the movies.

But good character moments are not a do-it-once-and-forget-about-it kind of thing, and Kasdan wisely continues to come back to this theme over and over again.

Later, Indy has this conversation with Salah:

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Sallah: The Germans have a great advantage over us.They are near to discovering the Well of Souls.
Indy: Well, they're not going to find it without this.Who can tell us about these markings?
Sallah: Perhaps a man I know can help us. Indy, there's something that troubles me.
Indy: What is it?
Sallah: The Ark. If it is there at Tanis, then it is something that Man was not meant to disturb. Death has always surrounded it. It is not of this earth.
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Again note that the dialogue clearly defines the characters who are speaking. Ever-practical Indy ignores the craziness of Salah's family and his mischevous monkey and cuts to the chase... where can we get the markings on this headpiece decoded? Salah the Egyptian mystic is worried about the danger that the Ark's ancient magic might pose for his friend, and says so. What's interesting about this moment though, is that this time our agnostic hero is not so quick to dismiss a warning about the supernatural. Is this an example of a developing character arc? I like to think so.

Incidentally, all this character development does not happen in a vacuum. If your character development does not service the story, what good is it? In the case of RAIDERS, the writer is slowly setting us up for Indy's final heroic moment. Trapped on the island, tied to a post with his girlfriend, with 2,000 years of theological wrath bearing down on him, Indy is desperate for a way out. He can't fight his way out, he can't shoot anything, and his whip is somewhere back on that Nazi U-boat. All he's got left is his mind... his knowledge of ancient theology... and what he comes up with (we must not look upon the face of god or be destroyed), is so at odds with everything we know about this man up to this instant, that it creates an enduring moment of drama and the culmination of what we call in Hollywood, Indiana Jones' "character arc"... the moment where he abandons reason and finally gives in to belief.

"DON'T LOOK AT IT MARION, KEEP YOUR EYES SHUT!!!"

Goddamn that's an awesome scene!

And the payoff comes a few minutes later when we finally see something that would have seemed impossible two hours earlier... Indiana Jones on the other side of the argument. Joining with Marcus Brody to to plead with those "bureaucratic fools" that "the Ark is a source of unspeakable power and it HAS to be RESEARCHED!"

That's character development ladies and gentleman... all done brilliantly, and subtly, with dialogue that clearly differentiates and defines each character as an individual.

If you've failed to clearly define your characters, reading your dialogue out loud is the best shot you have of discovering your mistake before a studio executive discovers it for you.