Writing Dialogue Through Redaction
This is the twelfth installment of The Curious
Creative, weekly 10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals
interested in exploring their creativity. For the complete rationale, click here.
My Thoughts:
This week,
we’ll play around with writing dialogue. This exercise relies on some of the
rules playwrights use when writing plays. If you so choose, you can turn your
exercise into a 10-minute play. If not, just have fun with dialogue as your
medium for creative play, and leave it at that!
Probably
the number one rule for playwrights writing dialogue is sparseness. Like
poetry, each word and phrase must carry a lot of meaning. If Joseph Conrad were
a playwright, he’d be awful at writing dialogue. The dialogues in his stories
are very verbose and repetitive. In this exercise, you will take a ‘black pen’
to his overwritten dialogue to create a new scene with dialogue that is
suggestive rather than overstated.
Your Turn!
- Below, you will find only the dialogue from the
beginning of Joseph Conrad’s “The Tale.” Copy/paste the dialogue to a new
word processing document.
- Delete as many words, phrases and even
whole sentences as you can. As you cross out dialogue, try leaving behind just
what is necessary to suggest who these people are and what is happening.
If you don’t know the story, even better! You are free to create a new
context and characterization. Have fun with it!
- Like in real life (and playwriting), leave behind incomplete
sentences and have characters interrupt each other.
- For example, here is an excerpt of the original dialogue:
WOMAN: Tell me something.
MAN: What am I to tell
you?
WOMAN: Why not tell me a
tale?
MAN: A tale!
WOMAN: Yes. Why not?
MAN: Why not?
WOMAN: You used to
tell--your--your simple and—and professional--tales very well at one time. Or
well enough to interest me. You had a--a sort of art--in the days--the days
before the war.
MAN: Really? But now, you
see, the war is going on.
WOMAN: It could be a tale
not of this world.
And here is a new
scene I created by crossing out as much as I could:
(Lights up on WOMAN and MAN, young lovers
lounging around MAN’s bedroom after having sex. It is nighttime)
WOMAN
Tell
me something.
MAN
What
am I to tell you?
WOMAN
Why
not tell me a tale? You used to tell tales very well.
MAN
Really?
WOMAN
It
could be a tale not of this world.
- The original dialogue from he beginning of “The Tale” is below.
Now it’s time to be trigger-happy and press delete as many times as you
can!
How
did you do? Is the scene that remains suggestive of who Man and Woman are, and
what their relationship is? Did you cut out 80% of the dialogue? Does it still
make sense? Can you imagine actors using body language and facial expressions
to carry the meaning home?
- To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious
Creatives, sign in from a google account so you can share your creation in
the comment boxes below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your
email address in the "Follow this Site by Email" box to the
right), you will get an email update whenever a new exercise is added.
Thanks for playing!
Source: my.ilstu.edu/~lsorr/Playwriting%20Dialogue%20Rules.doc
WOMAN: Tell me something.
MAN: What am I to tell you?
WOMAN: Why not tell me a tale?
MAN: A tale!
WOMAN: Yes. Why not?
MAN: Why not?
WOMAN: You used to tell--your--your simple and—and
professional--tales very well at one time. Or well enough to interest me. You
had a--a sort of art--in the days--the days before the war.
MAN: Really? But now, you see, the war is going
on.
WOMAN: It could be a tale not of this world.
MAN: You want a tale of the other, the better
world? You must evoke for that task those who have already gone there.
WOMAN: No. I don't mean that. I mean another--some
other--world. In the universe--not in heaven.
MAN: I am relieved. But
you forget that I have only five days' leave.
WOMAN: Yes. And I've also taken a five days' leave
from--from my duties.
MAN: I like that word.
WOMAN: What word?
MAN: Duty.
WOMAN: It is horrible--sometimes.
MAN: Oh, that's because you think it's narrow. But
it isn't. It contains infinities, and--and so------
WOMAN: What is this jargon?
MAN: An infinity of
absolution, for instance. But as to this another world'--who's going to look
for it and for the tale that is in it?
WOMAN: You.
MAN: As you will. In that world, then, there was
once upon a time a
Commanding Officer and a
Northman. Put in the capitals, please, because they had no other names. It was
a world of seas and continents and islands------
WOMAN: Like the earth.
MAN: Yes. What else could you expect from sending
a man made of our common, tormented clay on a voyage of discovery? What else
could he find? What else could you understand or care for, or feel the
existence of even? There was comedy in it, and slaughter.
WOMAN: Always like the earth.
MAN: Always. And since I
could find in the universe only what was deeply rooted in the fibres of my
being there was love in it, too. But we won't talk of that.
WOMAN: No. We won't. (pause) It's going to be a
comic story.
MAN: Well------ Yes. In a way. In a very grim way.
It will be human, and, as you know, comedy is but a matter of the visual angle.
And it won't be a noisy story. All the long guns in it will be dumb—as dumb as
so many telescopes.
WOMAN: Ah, there are guns in it, then! And may I
ask--where?
MAN: Afloat. You remember that the world of which
we speak had its seas. A war was going on in it. It was a funny world and
terribly in earnest. Its war was being carried on over the land, over the
water, under the water, up in the air, and even under the ground. And many
young men in it, mostly in wardrooms and mess-rooms, used to say to each
other--pardon the unparliamentary word--they used to say, 'It's a damned bad
war, but it's better than no war at all.' Sounds flippant, doesn't it. And yet there
is more in it than meets the eye. I mean more wisdom. Flippancy, like comedy,
is but a matter of visual first impression. That world was not very wise. But
there was in it a certain amount of common working sagacity. That, however, was
mostly worked by the neutrals in diverse ways, public and private, which had to
be watched, watched by acute minds and also by actual sharp eyes. They had to
be very sharp indeed, too, I assure you.
WOMAN: I can imagine.
MAN: What is there that you can't imagine? You
have the world in you. But let us go back to our commanding officer, who, of
course, commanded a ship of a sort. My tales if often professional (as you
remarked just now) have never been technical. So I'll just tell you that the
ship was of a very ornamental sort once, with lots of grace and elegance and
luxury about her. Yes, once! She was like a pretty woman who had suddenly put
on a suit of sackcloth and stuck revolvers in her belt. But she floated
lightly, she moved nimbly, she was quite good enough.
WOMAN: That was the opinion of the commanding
officer?
MAN: It was. He used to be sent out with her along
certain coasts to see--what he could see. Just that. And sometimes he had some
preliminary information to help him, and sometimes he had not. And it was all
one, really. It was about as useful as information trying to convey the
locality and intentions of a cloud, of a phantom taking shape here and there
and impossible to seize, would have been. It was in the early days of the war.
What at first used to amaze the commanding officer was the unchanged face of
the waters, with its familiar expression, neither more friendly nor more
hostile. On fine days the sun strikes sparks upon the blue; here and there a
peaceful smudge of smoke hangs in the distance, and it is impossible to believe
that the familiar clear horizon traces the limit of one great circular ambush.
Yes, it is impossible to believe, till some day you see a ship not your own
ship (that isn't so impressive), but some ship in company, blow up all of a
sudden and plop under almost before you know what has happened to her. Then you
begin to believe. Henceforth you go out for the work to see--what you can see,
and you keep on at it with the conviction that some day you will die from
something you have not seen. One envies the soldiers at the end of the day,
wiping the sweat and blood from their faces, counting the dead fallen to their
hands, looking at the devastated fields, the torn earth that seems to suffer
and bleed with them. One does, really. The final brutality of it--the taste of
primitive passion--the ferocious frankness of the blow struck with one's
hand--the direct call and the straight response. Well, the sea gave you nothing
of that, and seemed to pretend that there was nothing the matter with the
world.
WOMAN: Oh, yes. Sincerity--frankness--passion--three
words of your gospel. Don't I know them!
MAN: Think! Isn't it ours--believed in common?
Such were the feelings of the commanding officer. When the night came trailing
over the sea, hiding what looked like the hypocrisy of an old friend, it was a
relief. The night blinds you frankly--and there are circumstances when the
sunlight may grow as odious to one as falsehood itself. Night is all right. At
night the commanding officer could let his thoughts get away—I won't tell you
where. Somewhere where there was no choice but between truth and death. But
thick weather, though it blinded one, brought no such relief. Mist is
deceitful, the dead luminosity of the fog is irritating. It seems that you
_ought_ to see. One gloomy, nasty day the ship was steaming along…
