Dialogue

I pondered today, what dialogue makes for believable drama. Often I find it hard to write what would be easier explained using a video camera or illustration. Then it occurred to me that the essence of drama is getting your audience to focus on it. Sometimes it seems that you have to “tell” the audience that they should feel scared, upset, angry, etc…

Everyday in my college English classes I had to hear about it… “show don’t tell.” Well, I was often perplexed by the meaning of that phrase. I drew my own theory that writing needs to be a little of both. Words like angry, miserable and lustful were created to illustrate a character without going into long winded detail about his/her inner workings.

“Keep it short and sweet” was also something I had heard all too often. Hypocritical academia, “be long winded but keep it short!”

All that aside, I looked for similarity in writing, mainly through screenplays and movies themselves. I have found that there is one word that both shows and tells, is short yet often elongated. The word is “NO.”

It is the word that ends things, shows fear, warning, anger, and misery. It calls out to the audience.



It is sometimes funny too.

My high school biology teacher (who hated my guts) had tried to the best of her ability to describe why we laugh. She had said that we as animals have metaphorical “yes” and “no” buttons in our head. When we see something we like or want to happen, the “yes” button is pressed and gives us satisfaction, love, and euphoria. When we see something that we disagree with or despise, the “no” button is pressed to give us fear, doubt, hate, and pain. We laugh when both are pressed at the same time. For instance, we always laugh at things that are stupid and clumsy because we feel both sorry for the fact that they are hurt or inept and we feel good that someone is dumber than we are and that their pain isn’t ours. Best examples, slipping on a banana peel and a pie in the face.

Think about everything you have laughed at and you will understand what I mean.