JaneEspenson.com

A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in the audience at a classic film festival in here in L.A. and I overheard two young women having this exchange:

BOSSY
Have you seen “Seventh Heaven”?

DITZY
I’ve seen the television series.

BOSSY
Have you seen director Frank Borzage’s classic 1927 film “Seventh Heaven”?

DITZY
No.

You’ve probably got a good sense of how these lines were said. I’ve helped cement this impression with the names. But here’s how they were actually said:

BOSSY
Have you seen “Seventh Heaven”?

Ditzy hesitates. She knows this isn’t the right answer, but:

DITZY
(tentatively)
I’ve seen the television series.

BOSSY
(affectionately amused)
Have you seen director Frank Borzage’s classic 1927 film “Seventh Heaven”?

DITZY
(laughing at herself)
No.

What I love about the way this exchange actually happened is that it was unexpected and warm and human. It’s got subtler shadings than just a dumb girl irritating a bossy one. Sure, Ditzy is still a little ditzy and Bossy is still a bit bossy, but they’re tempered and real, more like people we know. That makes me more interested in getting to know them. Some might say that drama has been lost, but I think the old “drama is conflict” mantra can be a dangerous oversimplification. Simple conflict is less interesting than subtle conflict, even if that subtler conflict is less conflict-y. And you don’t need conflict between every pair of characters that has a scene together. Complicated shaded friendships are really interesting to watch, too.

I chose this example because I enjoyed overhearing this interaction. It made me start speculating about the girls. I imagined them to be college classmates who didn’t know each other very well. Perhaps they’d met up at the theater by chance, not design? I got curious because the interaction seemed to reveal so much about them — about Ditzy’s desire to be liked, about Bossy’s ability to make clear she was laughing with, not at, the other girl. There was a lot going on in a very few lines.

Pay attention to conversations around you when you’re out on your own. See if you can identify conversation molecules, the smallest pieces of conversation that capture important facets of all the characters involved. It’s really good training to help you write conversations that sound like they were lifted from real life, not from other writers’ screenplays. Even without collecting examples, I think you’ll find it’s a simple adjustment to look at dialogue you’ve written and play around with subtling up the attitudes.

Lunch: a BLT with a fried egg. It would be a BTLE, but the E is silent. Delicious!

I’m doing a lot of reading about old Hollywood right now, with particular emphasis on the transition from silent films to talkies. Oh, this is such good stuff, you have no idea.

The screenplays for silent movies obviously were about action and mood and intention instead of dialogue. I’m not talking about the dialogue that appeared on title cards, but the scenario for what happened in the film. The skills of a novelist were very appropriate for this kind of screenplay writing, which was descriptive, evocative, and internal. By “internal” I mean that it was concerned with what the character was thinking and feeling.

When the arrival of Talkies necessitated the writing of massive amounts of dialogue, new writers were hired, usually brought in from the East Coast. Novelists and journalists were both hired and given the chance to try their hands at this new kind of screenwriting.

So who thrived and who didn’t?

The journalists won. They had an ear for naturalistic dialogue and they knew how to write concisely and tell stories with clear-eyed details, not evocative prose. The novelists tended to write longer and more stylish (or stylized) speeches and descriptions. Beautiful stuff, but not as valuable as something short and potent.

Three of my colleagues in the writers’ room at Battlestar Galactica were former journalists. That’s about half the room. They were some of the finest writers I’ve met in the business. It looks to me like the skills still mesh.

I’m obviously not telling you to go out and find a newspaper to write for — that doesn’t seem like a particularly easy assignment right now. But I still think this information is useful for all you aspiring writers. Think like a reporter — pare the story down, find the bones of it, and listen to your characters talk in the language of whatever street they come from — even if you let them ramble on a bit in the first draft, eventually try to find the succinct quote.

You get to make up the facts and the people, but the core truths that you’re uncovering should be just as real as if the story had happened. Be a reporter.

Lunch: Wheat Thins and cheese today. But I went to “Street” the other day, Susan Feniger’s restaurant, and it’s amazing. I was not surprised to see her do well on Top Chef Masters this week. Try the “Kaya Toast”.