"Here, hold my beer and watch this.”

Got Something to Say?  Speak Up!

Do your characters speak or actually say something?  Think about it.  There’s a great difference between taking and saying something.  When Abe Lincoln was moving through the crowd at Gettysburg, he probably talked to the men and women there.  “Excuse me.”  “Thank you for moving aside.”  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to step on your foot.”  That was him talking.  A few minutes later, he SAID something.  We know it as the Gettysburg Address.

When it’s time for your characters to open their mouths, put words in them that say something.  In my screenwriting class on dialog, I ask what the participants think is the worst thing one person can say to another.  It’s a loaded question since I’m the instructor because I’ve already decided what it is.  A friend of mine and I were enjoying some adult beverages one night and I asked him that question.  We came up with two finalists.  You’re on the operating table, tubes, lines, bottles etc. hooked up to you.  Just as the Anesthesiologist puts the mask on your face and you take that last deep breath, you hear your surgeon say, “Oh,)$&&#, I hate it when I do that.”  Or…the winner.  You walk into your house and your significant other is sitting waiting for you.  From the look on his/her face you know you’re in deep kimchi.  He/she looks at you and with a look that would melt cold steel, says, “I know what you’ve been doing and I know who you’ve been doing it with.”

I ask for a volunteer and set up the scene.  I wait for her to get ready and then I say, “Hi, honey.  I’m home.”  I’m met with “I know what you’ve…etc.” and off we go.  It’s all spontaneous since I have no idea how she will play it or what she will say, but believe me, I’m never disappointed with what comes out of her mouth.  And neither is the class.

With the exception of the first two, there are very few complete sentences.  We cut each other off.  We step on the other person’s words.  We raise our voices. We swear.  We stutter and stammer and take long pauses between words.  We gather thoughts.  We talk like real people talk and not like they write.

Make your character’s dialog fit the scenario.  Imagine being in the boat that George Washington used to cross the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War.  You’ve seen the picture, I’m sure.  Put your character in the boat.  What did the man behind George say other than, “Damn, it’s cold.”  Did he say something about this being their last real chance to win the war?  Did he ask the man behind him to tell his wife and children he loved them if he did not make it home?

Think about the situation you’ve put your character in and let them run with it.  How long did it take Neil Armstrong to come up with “A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind” when he stepped on the moon?  That was not spontaneous.  He thought about it and fit the words to the situation.  He wasn’t a writer. He was an astronaut, but he said something.

And third place was….” Here, hold my beer and watch this.”