I had a conversation with a couple of prospective writers last week that bears repeating in a larger context.
What the point boils down to is "READ YOUR DIALOGUE OUT LOUD."
Until you've done that, your screenplay is not "done."
I read a LOT of screenplays, many of them bad... a few of them very bad. And one of the problems I see most often is that the dialogue just does NOT sound like words ever spoken by an actual human being.
I'll call the two recurring attrocities that annoy me the most, "You see... it seems that." As in...
"You see.... what no one realizes is..."
Or...
"It seems that... someone in this room is...
"Real humans just don't talk this way, and yet I see those phrases repeated in script after script and movie after movie. It's like the half-word "um"... would you ever actually type "um" into your dialogue? Of course not. It's a hiccup... a pause your brain takes before it decides what it wants to say next.
And that's what "You see, It seems that" is.
Worse, it's often the hallmark of that most objectionable refuge of the lazy writer... the talking villain. You know the scene, A vaguely European bad guy has his gun at the hero's head and says something like "Before I kill you in an uneccessarily complicated way, I'll do you the favor of putting all the puzzle pieces together and tell you both how and why I did it... you see, it seems that..."
GAH!!!
No movie character should ever say "You see... it seems that" unless they're wearing a long black duster, a black top hat, a handlebar mustache that they can't stop twirling, and the movie is set in 1890.
Don't believe me? Say the lines out loud with and without those phrases. Isn't it obvious? That, my friends, is the value of reading one's dialogue out loud. If it doesn't sound natural, like an actual human beaing speaking, reading it out loud will save you from that mistake, and your screenplays will be better for it.
Seriously, If I can stop even one writer from forcing their characters to start sentences with "you see... it seems that", my efforts will have been worthwhile, and I will die a happy man.
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2 comments:
Absolutely, postively correct!
This works for just about any written assignment that is intended to be presented.
Working in technology, I counted up 4 Acronymns in a single sentence.
Write what you want -- read it back out loud and then rewrite it. Even better, get a group of friends to sit around and read your script out loud. When you see them bumbling and stumbling over words or get that "how does this make sense?" look on their face, that's when you know you need rewrites in those areas.
Starting a line of dialogue with expression "Well..." was always a real pet peeve when I was reading for a living. I know there are a few others that I used to rail against, but I cannot quite remember them at the moment.
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