Читать книгу Talk the Talk - Penny Penniston - Страница 9

HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.

—William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

LESSON ONE:

Capturing the Voice

As a scriptwriter, one of the first things you need to master is the ability to capture dialogue on the page. This is trickier than it sounds. Schools spend years drilling us in prose writing — writing that is meant to be read. Dialogue isn't meant to be read; it is meant to be heard. The scriptwriter has the difficult task of taking something that is meant to be heard, putting it on the page in such a way that it can be read, but ultimately making sure that once it comes off the page and into an actor's mouth, it will still sound like speech.

Scriptwriters do this by abandoning almost everything we ever learned about composition, grammar, and punctuation. In dialogue, people rarely pre-organize their thoughts. They don't necessarily use complete sentences or speak with proper grammar. People do not talk in prose. And because people do not talk in prose, scriptwriters do not write dialogue in prose. We do not stay bound to the traditional rules of composition. We reappropriate grammar. We create vocabulary. We employ rogue punctuation marks such as the ellipsis and the em dash. Your fourth grade teacher would be horrified, but your actors and your audience will thank you for it.

A few tips on dialogue punctuation:

• An ellipsis (…) suggests that a character's thought trails off.

• An em dash ( — ) suggests that a character stops a thought short, interrupts himself, or is interrupted by someone else.

• Periods create a pause or complete a thought. They work sort of like the word “stop” in a telegram. Forget what you learned in school. In dialogue, you don't need a complete sentence in order to use the period.

Here's an example:

MARK

So. Right. There's this girl — she's not the type I usually go out with. I usually go out with someone… skinnier. More fit, you know? But this girl — she's fat. I mean FAT. And the thing is, I think it's hot. Yeah. Smokin’.

LESSON 1: SCRIPT ANALYSIS EXERCISE

NOTE: In this exercise, beginning and intermediate writers should analyze published work by established writers. See the Appendix for a list of suggestions. Advanced writers have the option of bringing in their own work for analysis.

Have each member of the group bring in one page of dialogue from a play or screenplay. It's helpful to include a broad range of authors, genres, and writing styles.

For Discussion:

Review each page of dialogue with the group.

1. Describe the speaking style of each character.

2. How did the phrasing and punctuation of the dialogue contribute to your sense of each character's voice?

3. How does the style and rhythm of the dialogue contribute to the overall tone of the scene? Is this a comic scene? A romantic scene? A melodramatic scene? What in the rhythm of the dialogue contributes to this impression?

4. Do you notice a difference in the style of dialogue from author to author? Compare and contrast your impressions.

LESSON 1: BEGINNER EXERCISE

For this exercise, you will need a portable audio recorder. Interview two to three different people and ask them the same question. The question should be open-ended: one that can't be answered with a simple yes or no. (See below for a list of examples.) When selecting your interview subjects, try to find people as different from each other as possible: different ages, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds, nationalities, etc. It doesn't matter if your subjects know or remember all the details that the question asks — the point is to get them talking and to get them to answer the question as fully as possible in their own voice. Try to speak as little as possible while they answer.

Record each interview with an audio recorder. Then type up the interview word for word. As you type, try to capture the rhythm of the subject's speech in your punctuation.

Some suggestions for interview questions:

• What is your earliest memory?

• Describe the job of president of the United States.

• Tell me what happened in the most recent episode of your favorite television show.

• How did God create the world?

• Describe a dream that you had recently.

For Discussion:

1. Look over your transcriptions. Does anything surprise you? How does the transcription of the dialogue differ from traditional prose?

2. Have someone in the group (preferably someone with an acting background) read your transcription out loud. After the group member has read the transcription, play the original audio recording. In what ways did the reader sound different than the original speaker? Were there differences in the rhythm of the speech? Were there differences in emphasis or tone? If so, was there something in the way that the speech was transcribed onto the page that caused this difference?

3. What verbal habits or tics do you notice in the speaker's pattern of speech? For example: Is this a person who uses a particular phrase over and over? Is this a person who speaks in clipped, precise sentences? Is this a person who rambles from topic to topic without ever completing a thought? Is this a person who can never come up with the word he's looking for?

4. What tones do you hear in the speaker's dialogue? Has the question provoked an emotional response such as anger, passion, or enthusiasm? How does the speaker seem to feel about what he is saying?

5. Have members of the group try to describe the speaker based on what they hear in the interview. What do you imagine that this person is like? Where do you think he lives? Where does he work? Who are his friends? What does he do in his free time?

LESSON 1: INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED EXERCISE

The following three paragraphs are from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain. The book is a memoir of his years working as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. In this excerpt, Twain reflects on how his growing expertise of the river eventually killed his romance with it.

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me…. I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.

But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face… Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind tomorrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that…

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a “break” that ripples above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?

The prose is beautifully written. But imagine if Twain did not have the luxury of sitting down at a typewriter and carefully composing his thoughts over several drafts. Imagine instead that Twain told this story out loud, in the moment, to someone standing in the room with him. Rewrite this excerpt as that monologue.

For Discussion:

Have someone in the group read the original essay out loud and then read her monologue version of it.

1. How did the monologue version differ from the prose version?

2. After all the monologues have been read, compare and contrast the choices made by the monologue authors. In what ways were all the monologues the same? What were the differences?

3. Have each writer discuss the process of adapting the essay. What was the thought process that went into the choices by the writer? In what ways did the writer decide to stay faithful to the original text? In what ways did the writer feel free to diverge from the original text? How and why did the writer make those decisions?

4. Were there any aspects of the original piece that were particularly difficult to capture in monologue form? If so, why?

LESSON 1: SOLO EXERCISE

Pick an excerpt from any piece of prose (e.g., an essay, newspaper article, or novel). Rewrite that excerpt as a monologue. The challenge is to stay as faithful as possible to the original tone, style, and content of the piece, but to re-create it as something spoken instead of read.

Now, rewrite that monologue. In the rewrite, keep the words of the monologue exactly the same, but change the punctuation. How much can you alter the tone and meaning of the monologue simply by changing the punctuation?

As an ongoing workout, experiment with different source material. What kinds of prose are easy to adapt into monologues? What kinds are not? As you get better at adapting, challenge yourself by picking difficult selections.