EXT. SALLY’S YARD – AFTERNOON
JACK
Hi, how are you?
SALLY
Good, how are you?
JACK
Oh my gosh, can you believe our parents?
Sally
No, oh my gosh it’s horrible.
JACK
This rivalry is so stupid!
Sally
Yeah it is!
JACK
What do you want to do tonight?
SALLY
I don’t know, what do you want to do tonight?
JACK
Want to go skating?
SALLY
Haha silly we can’t go skating!
JACK
Oh haha.
SALLY
Hey you wanna go bowling?
JACK
Sure!
SALLY
Come on!
Since Thanksgiving my sleep schedule has been a mess. Normally I get off of work at 3 a.m., so it’s not like I’m up bright and early in the morning, but lately I’ve been going to bed probably around 7 or 8 a.m. and sleeping until late afternoon. No, this does not please me. Yes, I’m working on fixing this as we speak.
The main issue with staying up all night is the wonderful middle of the night programming that comes on TV. Note the sarcasm. So there I was, minding my own business flipping through the channels, with the sounds of my husband’s snores drowning out most other sounds in existence. There is, of course, absolutely nothing on. I wasn’t in the mood to watch the latest ab building machine, the most comfortable pillow in the world, new ways to organize my closet, or super absorbent towels, so I settled on some delightful made-for-TV Christmas movie.
What I heard, miraculously over my husband’s snores, was pretty much what you see above. I wanted to shove my ears in my husband’s mouth in an attempt to drown out that garbage. This is exactly what LimebirdVanessa was talking about the other day about on-the-nose dialogue. A term that any film student is probably all too familiar with. It’s terrible!
It brings to mind another mantra of the writing classroom – Don’t tell, show! In the example above, Jack and Sally are bored, think their parents are being silly and can’t think of what to do. Instead of this inane conversation, we should be shown how Jack and Sally feel. Up to this scene of the movie we’ve seen Jack and Sally witness a rivalry between their parents. Instead of this scene, for instance, we could have had Jack and Sally AT the bowling ally, laughing and having fun. Sally could have said, “This is so much better than watching the parents bicker.” End. Done. Now we see the action Jack and Sally decided to take – by having them at the bowling alley. We cut out the dribble – how are you, what do you want to do – stuff.
Screenwriting professors will tear your ears off if you write on-the-nose dialogue, LimebirdVanessa warned us about its evil ways the other day, I experienced the horror of it first hand during a sleepless night. What can you do to save the world from this evil? Also… does anyone have an argument *gasp* in favor of this dialogue?
