Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 760: How to Write Dialog that Pops Off the Page with Linda Seger

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IFH 760: How to Write Dialog that Pops Off the Page with Linda Seger · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle
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Podcast, Episode number seven sixty. If I'm doing my job right, then
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I'm not writing the dialogue. The characters are just saying the dialogue, and
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I'm just jotting it down. Quentin Tarantino broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood.
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It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive
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and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And
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here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the
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Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's
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The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook. If
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dot com. That's film Bizbook dot com. Well, guys, today on
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the show, we have the legendary Lynda Seeger, who is the author of
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a new book called You're Talking to Me How to Write Great Dialogue, And
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she's also the author of the best selling screenwriting book Making Good Scripts Great.
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And I wanted to have her back on because now she's focused specifically on dialogue
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and writing good dialogue and making that dialogue crackle and pop off the page.
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So, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Linda Seeger.
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I like to welcome back to the show returning champion, Linda Seeger. How
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are you, Linda. I am just fine in spite of everything. Yes,
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it is a crazy, wacky world we are living in. But I
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think storytellers, filmmaker screenwriters are more needed now than ever before, and it's
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a good time to do writing. Yes, I mean, you know you
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would think, you would think, but yeah, you're in your quarantine.
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You have no excuses anymore. You just you can't say, oh, I
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have to allowed to do this. They're like nope, So now you actually
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a little fit the face, not only the white page, but you also
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have to face yourself. Yes, so we're here to talk about your new
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book. You talking to me. You talking to me. Sorry, I
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have to do the whole the Niro thing. You're talking to me how to
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write great dialogue And I haven't really had a full episode just dedicated to dialogue,
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and it's such an important part of screenwriting. So that's why I was
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so intrigued by your book and I want it of course, anytime I get
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a chance to talk to you. It is always a wonderful, wonderful time.
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But so to get into it, what makes great dialogue, in your
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opinion, great dialogue is really very specific to the person and the context and
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everything that goes around wrong with that character. So it includes the vocabulary,
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it includes the rhythms, it includes the backstory sort of who is this person
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and how did they expect dress it versus how somebody else expresses it. So
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it's not it's not just saying the text. It's not just saying I have
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to go to Milwaukee. It's finding an interesting way to say, got to
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get some more of that. Let's spear here, I go right. So
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that that's two different So that's two very different ways of saying the exact same
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things that you've got to go to Milwaukee, but one's a lot more interesting
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than hey, I'm going to Milwaukee. Yes, Yes, And is that
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what makes dialogue kings like Tarantino, Mammut and Sorkin so good? I mean,
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because I mean their dialogue is just so crispy and it just pops off
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the off the screen, off the page. Yes, And they know how
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to define each character, So there are different rhythms they know how to work
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with subtexts, the underlying meanings of dialogue. I love that opening scene of
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Inglorious Bastards. It's just so rich was subtext is here comes these Nazis and
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the farm guy who's ready to bring them into the house, and he tells
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his daughter, you know, go into the house, don't run. Well,
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you think, oh, obviously something is going on, and also why
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is he so nervous? What's happening here? They're just having a nice,
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normal conversation, but oh, something else is happening here, and it's it's
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literally under the floor. So it's like like literally it's like, so you're
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talking about it's visual subtext. It's fascinating that's finally find out the Jews are
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hiding under the table and is on top of the little car but which is
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under the floor and courts the Nazi guys. Seems to know all along there's
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something here and he is going to find it out. It's it's fascinating because
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I honestly think that scene was what kind of locked him in for the Oscar
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when he won the Oscar for Glorious Bastards. I mean, it's just such
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a it's a masterclass in dialogue. Yes, he has a real voice as
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a writer, meaning that he as an artist, has a specific way of
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doing his films. You can go to the movie theater and say, oh,
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what is this movie? Who's it by, And within a couple of
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minutes you say, oh, I'm watching a Tarantino film. Because he knows
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what he's doing, he knows his rhythms. He's just very good at what
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he does. Now, as far as you mentioned backstory, how important and
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please can you tell the audience the importance of backstory to not only character,
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but to dialogue, because the backstory A lot of times when I read scripts,
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the characters are kind of wooden, you know, almost made of cardboard,
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because there's no depth to them whatsoever. And then hence the dialogue isn't
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it doesn't have any depth to it. I think what makes Tarantino and Mammod
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and Sorkin so good is that there's so much depth into their characters that allows
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dialogue to come out so wonderfully. That makes sense to do it as opposed
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to just kind of like painting an old fence trying to make it new again.
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There's no depth back there. Maybe that's not good. Analogy but you
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know what I'm saying, So what do you think in regards to that?
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Well, backstory is really what went on before the character entered the movie.
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What kind of family do they come from, what kind of education, what
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kind of socioeconomic class, all what kind of religion. All of this information
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can be used by the writer to make that character much more specific. So,
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for instance, I'm from a little little town in northern Wisconsin named Peshtigo,
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and when I say the word about you will hear a slight Canadian or
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northern Wisconsin accent. So people have these various accents that they you know,
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are dialects that they bring to it. And they also have phrases that they
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use or they have a sense. For instance, if we were driving past
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a group of cows, and I might say those are efforts, and you
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might say, how does she know that? Well, Wisconsin is cow country.
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I grew up around I wasn't on a farm. So you think about
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all these details of how we thread our speech with things that tells somebody else,
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Oh, I hear a little bit of Alabama there, Or you have
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a you insert a phrase in the dialogue and that says, gosh, that's
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so Southern, like give me a little sugar, honey. Now you're not
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supposed to give them a sugar bowl. That's the South to say, oh,
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I know what that means. Or in the cell someone as they say,
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God bless them, which really means he is. God's the only person
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who could possibly bless that kind of stupidity. So we you know, various
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countries, various cultures have these things, and sometimes just putting them in,
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they tell us the backstory, They tell us where is that person from?
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And I will even talk in a different rhythm, for instance, being a
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Midwesternmerica. Listen to me, I probably don't have the same hurried rhythm of
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a New Yorker or the same language rhythm you might get from somebody from the
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South. Now I know you're going to talk to my co author later down
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WINTONRAINI. John has been all over the place, from Oklahoma to Michigan to
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New York. And when you start thinking about all the accents and patterns that
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someone like that has picked up versus me, who pretty much in Peshtigo,
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Wisconsin until I was eighteen. We'll be right back after a word from our
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sponsor, and now back to the show. So like a movie like Fargo.
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If you would put Fargo into Los Angeles, it's not really as it's
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not. I mean, you could have the exact same dialogue, but some
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of that DIALOGU won't even make sense because you're in Los Angeles because it's so
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specific to the region. But what makes Fargo? So what of it?
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That's the kind of first time. I mean, I'm from South Florida originally
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and raised in New York and South Florida and now in La so I have
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no idea about Wisconsin or Montana or those kind of upper northern states. The
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first experience I had with it was Fargo. I was like, what,
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what's that accent? I've never heard of that before. Yes, because all
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those Scandinavians settled in the North Dakota, South Dakota, you know, Minnesota,
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Wisconsin, and so you do have these speech patterns, and it's and
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it's so cold, I mean it's cold. It is so cold. I
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came to a place where it's sometimes fifty degrees below zero, and I could
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identify with Fargo and where they were all that snow all the time, yes,
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yes, all the time. And then when Marge at the end says,
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you know, how could you have killed someone It's such a beautiful day
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and it's nothing but a white out and snow. When you say, yep,
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that's somebody who's been around snow and cold still see the beauty. So
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that's another thing you were saying about tempo. That's something very interesting that.
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That's something I hear very often when when people are discussing dialogue. Tempo of
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dialogue based on region, based on dialect of the character is so important.
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So you just kind of touched upon that. Can you elaborate a little bit
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on that? Yes, so tempo, and I'm going to actually read a
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touch from the dialogue. Okay, go for it. So you have a
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number of different kinds of writers who use different rhythms and tempo. So,
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for instance, Harold Pinter is known for his pauses and everything is slowed down.
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So Emma says, you know what I've found out last night. He's
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betrayed me for years now. You can see how the writing forces you into
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that. And then you have a movie like Network. He says, I'm
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going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't
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want you to protest. I don't want you to write. I don't want
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you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you
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to write. I don't know what to do. And at the end he
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says, you've got to say I'm a human being. Goddamn it, my
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life is value. Now you cannot read that slowly? Is? It is
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written with that sense? And a great dialogue means that anyone can read it
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and sound relatively good. So when I read that, it probably wasn't awful,
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right, I mean there was I was getting in the rhythm. Now
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I'm a terrible actress. I got to see an acting in graduate school.
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I was not allowed to go to the next class because you had to get
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to be to go to the next class. So I mean, that's we're
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talking about pretty bad. But when you have this kind of great dialogue,
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you it starts the actor in that rhythm, and then you hope there's a
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great actor who's going to go further and start getting nuances you know as well.
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And when you get into accents and dialogues and dialects, then you have
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different rhythms. The Irish rhythm. We have a quote from writers the Sea
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wor all together now Michael and Seamus and I and you get this Irish lilt
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or the cockney. You know, all I want is as a room somewhere
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far away from the cold night act. You know is ed resting on my
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knee, and the all these details. When are the h is dropped?
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When do people not say the I N G? When do they say gunna
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instead of going to which tells us educational level, tells us informal versus formal
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speech. So the writer needs to be aware of all those layers. And
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sometimes that means the research. You you go someplace, you say, I
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just got to listen for a while, and then I have to repeat those
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rhythms to myself and get them inside me. So when I write, I
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am writing for that person in that particular rhythm. Yeah, I realized even
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in my own writing, But when I've read other people's scripts that a lot
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of times when it comes to dialogue, sometimes they'll just go, oh,
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it's gonna go there, or they'll use a slank, but there's no there's
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no basis for it. They're just kind of like on the on the whim,
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it's kind of like just your jazz. It's like jazz. They're improvising
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as they go along with certain that's that's where you start seeing like, oh,
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that's that's not working that character. And then there's when you don't feel
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that connect, that that straight line from the beginning to the end of the
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movie with that that character from that character's point of view. So if Marcellus
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Wallace from pulp fiction all of a sudden starts talking in a cockney tempo or
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or in an extremely educated not you know, you know, Harvard level professortorial
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dial like dialogue, it doesn't work at all for that character. But sometimes
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that's where writers make a lot of mistakes. Do you agree, yes,
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And they just think that in order to have informal vocals audio speech as opposed
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to what's written, they have to put them in the gunners and the wannas.
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And he said, but it doesn't fit that character because you're trying to
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clarify that's not an informal character. That's that's the professor that is talking.
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And it doesn't mean a professor will never say gunna, but it does say
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you want to establish that professor is a different person. Then let's say the
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rancher, who might have a different not only those kind of informal speeches,
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but also certain patterns. And now I live in Colorado and cowboys will say,
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you see what I'm saying now you really can't see. Some say that
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literal, but they say all the time. And in Colorado people say cool
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almost. I could spelled k E W L as opposed to cool, which
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might be a more jazzy way of saying it. So you, when you
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go into another culture, sometimes what you want to do you not only listen,
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but get file folders and start saying, this is my cowboy speech,
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this is my educator speech, this is what I heard a scientist say.
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So that you have that to draw on when you're doing that kind of character,
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you can say, let me open my let me open my folder,
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because I have to write my children's dialogue and I'm just trying to think where
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to go with that. Wait a minute, I copy down Children's dialogue over
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the last ten years, so I can look you know, I can look
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at it. If you look at a movie Shawshank, which is a movie
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I talk about constantly. It's one of my favorite scripts and movies of all
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time. You see all the individual cons in the film, convicts that are
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playing around. They each have very specific voices, you know, Andy obviously
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Andy, and Morgan Freeman and Read, they have their specific tone. It's
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always funny. I always loved the story that Read was originally Irish, hence
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the name Read. But when Morgan Freeman he got the part, which makes
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that character so much more interesting. But these other characters have their specific tone,
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accents, points of view even and it's just such a wonderful collage.
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I think that's one of the reasons why that that works so well. Even
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to the old man that you know at the end, you know, spoiler
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alert, that hangs himself, he has a very specific point of view because
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of the time period and his age and all of that. So I mean,
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do gree that's a good example, and it's a good thing for writers
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to watch movies like that several times. Then to also read the script.
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Usually you can get the script pretty easily. If you can't find it,
19:14
go to script City and Los angelesas Dan will send you whatever you need to
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have to read it and then read it to yourself and read it out loud
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to begin to feel the difference between these different characters. And then when somebody
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writes a script, decide this morning, I am only going to do Amy's
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dialogue, and I'm going to look at everything of Amy and make sure she's
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consistent and interesting, and I'm going to shade it in and nuance it.
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Now this afternoon, I'm going to do Jim's dialogue and just work on that
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and then say it out loud, because the other thing with dialogue you need
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to be able to say it. We'll be right back after a word from
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our sponsor, and now back to the show. And there's a lot of
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tongue twisters that writers put in that they really don't mean to. When I
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was in college, I was in a Greek play Hecuba, and I had
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one line of dialogue, only one, because I wasn't a good actress,
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and the line of dialogue was, surely no man could be so callous and
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so heart of heart that he could hear this woman's heart, heartless cry and
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not be touched. Well, I cannot say that line of dialogue. Well,
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they finally took it away from me, so I was simply another person
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in the chorus. And the person who then was handed the line she couldn't
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say that line well either. So there are times when you why it's really
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important for writers read the whole script out loud and find those places where the
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actor simply cannot say it, no matter how good that actor is. Yeah,
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I was watching the behind the scenes of Star Wars, the original Star
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Wars, and Carrie Fisher was just saying, George wrote this dialogue. That's
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so hard. You just like rattle off, oh general stuff. I heard
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your foul stenchion, and it's just this whole thing. It's like, you
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can write. They said, you can write this crap, but you can't
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say it. Yes, yes, And you have to help the writer the
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actor with that, which is another reason why John and I in this book
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recommend people take acting lessons that writers should have that experience to say, Now,
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I know what it's like to think through this rule and try to get
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all my clues on how the character is who the character is, but I
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also need to know how to read a line and to assess whether or not
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that line can be said and carries the meanings that we want it to.
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Now, can you talk a little bit about how dialogue can help reveal the
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world of the character, because it's something that a lot of times I think
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it's lost opportunities when it comes to writing dialogue. Yes. Well, we
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all live in a context and we have backgrounds in different careers. For instance,
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So in the writing world, if I said to you, well,
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you know, I think the first turning point is a little late, you
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would know what I'm talking about. But if I said it to someone else,
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they might say, wait, are you talking about La There's that movie
22:45
called The Turning Point. No, I'm not talking about Bala. And one
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of the tricks is to find the specific dialogue and make it clear enough that
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you will know what I'm tring talking about. So my co author John Rainey
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and I are both musicians. We both play piano. We would do duets,
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we needed breaks, and so if I said to you, I think
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we should do a glissando at the end of this, now you might say
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I don't you, and the audience might say, what in the world is
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a glissando? So I might say, let's do a glissando here, and
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then I put my fingers on the keys and I roll all through the keys.
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You know, I play twenty keys this rush and say, oh,
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now I know what a glissando is. Or I come out of the horseback
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riding world. So if I said to somebody a character do your flying lead
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change in the middle of the circle. I'd say, well, a lot
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of people don't know what a flying lead change is on a horse. But
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if I had a close up of a camera on say now, and you
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see the horror shift its feet like a little skip, you say, oh,
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yeah, that's it. So there are times you take a word or
24:11
a line of dialogue and say, I got to illustrate this because many people
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won't know what it is. Other times, you might have a medical person
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just roll out all this dialogue with all these words you've never heard of,
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and you think it really doesn't matter that I need to know what's going on
24:30
with the person's esophagus. What I need to know is when the doctor says,
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get this person to er fast after saying three lines of something, I
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have no idea what he's talking about. I got in I said, I
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don't need to know exactly what this is in this case. And what happens
24:52
a lot of times is writers get so deeply into having the specific vocabulary that
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everyone knows what they're talking about, or they are so concerned about the clarity
25:07
that they don't get the specifics. So one of the things John and I
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talk about is that dialogue is communication and expression, and you're always balancing the
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thing to say, what does the audience need to know? How do I
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clarify it while still expressing each character very very clearly, very cool. Now.
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One of the other things I find with dialogue, and especially when I'm
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writing, is the conversational aspect of it. It sometimes becomes a little too
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sterile or a little too academic, meaning that it's you're writing like you're writing
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dialogue as you would write, not as you would speak. What advice would
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you give to make dialogue a little bit more conversational. Well, one thing
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in screenwriting, the dialogue is like a tennis ball. You never want it
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to be in the other person's court for very long, so it goes,
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you know, we could say, it goes back and forth from one character
26:04
to the other. And generally in screenwriting, dialogue is about two or three
26:08
sentences before the ball gets sent back with the next piece of dialogue the other
26:15
person. So there is a flow sometimes in novels, once in a while,
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in films and screenwriting writing, you will see a longer speech. It's
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pretty you know, it's it's pretty unusual to see that. So you're always
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looking for what that flow is, which makes it more conversational, and then
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you are looking for the words that make it more conversational. So we probably
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are not going to use any really really big words in this interview, but
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if I'm writing, I might decide to do some big word because I think
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it's kind of carries a lot of levels of manning, or it's sort of
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a vicious kind of word. So you're always balancing this. But another thing
27:06
is simply to listen to people talk, write it down and say, ah,
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this, and see if you can figure out from what they say something
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about the specifics. So many years ago I interviewed one of the writers of
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Rainman and he kept using words where I said to him, are you a
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Buddhist? And he said, actually, he said, I'm a Presbyterian.
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But he said, I actually feel very connected with Buddhism because words, let's
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say, a word like detachment or a word like mindfulness. You know,
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you start hearing these words and you say, oh, I'm getting hints about
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something about that person. So it's always saying because dialogue is so refined,
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you know, you're saying what I can't do my aid sentences, how do
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I really hone this, so you start honing it for those specifics. And
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so much of dialogue writing is you rewrite, and you rewriting, write,
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You work for the right word, you go for the right rhythm. You
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say, it doesn't quite sound like a Alabama person. Okay, I need
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to do a little more research on Alabama. And oh now I need to
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do research on scientists at Alabama. And so many times you say, who
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can I talk to who would know about this? Or who can I have
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read this to feedback to me? You are off. So, for instance,
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in how to write Grite Dialogue book, we have a chapter on accents
28:53
and dialects. So I found a acting coach in New York who teaches people
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accents and dialects, and she, graciously, without even charging me, agreed
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to read the chapter and give me feedback on that chapter. So you don't
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want to just throw something in there. And the same thing. I sent
29:22
that chapter to my friends in England and said, check those few references to
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England. And then you know John was working on it and he knows all
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the Southern stuff, and he had a friend who knew about dialects too.
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So you always think about, how do I make sure I got it right?
29:45
And how do I make sure I got it artistic? Now there was
29:49
It was very interesting in regards to dialect. If you remember, for Scump
29:52
Tom Hanks who obviously won the Oscar for that amazing dialect. Will be right
30:00
back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
30:08
Originally the dialect, the director Rob Zamacus wanted him to, wanted the kid
30:15
who played Little Forest to follow Tom and try to earn but Tom's like,
30:19
no, his his accent's perfect, and he actually started finding that accent.
30:25
But it was interesting how he just like the tones, the beats, the
30:30
He wouldn't have been able to come up that without having Little Forest around.
30:34
Yes, yes, yeah, And that is one of the things the listening
30:40
and sometimes called the flavor of the speech. So there are times when you
30:45
get so deeply into the dialect that you can't understand what the person is saying.
30:52
I've seen British movies, I said, I have no idea where school
30:56
I mean they are and they are so clear about their expression and maybe people
31:03
in England understand what's going on. But I need subtexts, you know,
31:07
in subtitles. But that is you know, one of the things that sometimes
31:14
said is you get the flavor of the Southern accent, because if you did
31:18
Tennessee too much, it might be like a foreign language. And you know
31:23
there's certain Southern accents. Is I have no idea what they're talking about?
31:29
So you say, okay, what do I need to go after? I
31:33
need to go after maybe dropping the h's, or I need to go be
31:37
careful of my I n g's, or you know, or use the d
31:41
sound instead of the th sound, which you find in Huckleberry Finn for instance.
31:48
But do you actually when you're writing the dialogue, do you suggest dropping
31:51
the h in the dialogue as you're writing it, or do you suggest,
31:53
now, how does that work? Well, there's different opinions on this,
31:59
but I think if it's still understandable when you read it, then I would
32:04
say, yes, you know, give as much of a flavor as you
32:07
can in the script itself. Then you expect that the actor will then go
32:13
to a coach if it's not what their background is. Mary McDonald was in
32:22
Dances with Wolves, she was in another I think it was when she did
32:27
Passion Fish and she said the director said, Mary, you have just crossed
32:31
from Georgia to North Carolina in your accent, so you really often need that
32:37
coach to say no, no, the a is not sounded that way.
32:43
And think about people who are so good at doing these, like Meryl Street
32:47
for instance, just a master and a course as a coach. Yeah.
32:52
I mean if I've seen movies that have a strong Boston accent that I can't
32:57
understand, or in the you know, in the Bayou, like that accent
33:01
is so strong that you're like, I need subtitles. I literally will turn
33:05
on close captioning titles. Yeah. I think that standard English is actually considered
33:13
from Iowa, and there are people like us from Wisconsin the Midwest who think
33:19
we don't have an accent. When I went to college and people said,
33:23
are you from Canada? I said, why would you think that? Well,
33:27
it's certain words. I say, it's kind of like Canadians came down
33:32
into northern It's like Canadian Ish. It's like it's just like a little bit
33:37
of a flavor if you will. You're not a full a boot, but
33:39
you're getting close. Yes. Yeah. And one of the things they said,
33:45
I think in the Full Monte is they said that the accent was actually
33:49
thirty miles away from where it took place, and it got criticize because it
33:54
wasn't exactly I think it's a Sheffield accent. And then Billy Elliott they consider
34:01
trying to tone down that accent when they did the New York play and there
34:06
was such an uproar. They said, no, we'll just try to get
34:10
the kids to enunciate well enough. But these, you know, all these
34:15
accents very very specific from one, you know, one place to another,
34:21
and it does add a tremendous amount of flavor to a character when you when
34:24
you give them those accent, I mean, like we were saying it with
34:27
Fargo, I mean and and other. What was that movie the one the
34:34
Town with Ben Affleck and oh, yes, in the Boston I mean,
34:37
I mean, I've heard the Boston accent before I've gone to Boston. It's
34:40
something, but in that movie it's so it's so there. Yes, yes.
34:47
And one of the things with accents and dialogues dialects also has to do
34:52
with you. You have to be careful about it falling into cliche. Right,
34:58
So for instance, hu Berry Finn has eight different accents in it,
35:04
as the White and as the Pike, County, and it's in the black
35:07
and the lower educated black and the lower educated white, and it does sometimes
35:14
get a critique of that. But one of the books I looked at was
35:22
this was this. It was Hurston because I don't just just forget her first
35:28
thing, but it was her book about the last slave that came in the
35:32
Last Slave Ship in eighteen sixty and died in nineteen twenty seven. And she
35:37
interviewed him and really looked at his language, and what's interested me was his
35:44
language. In many ways, it was much like Huckleberry Finn the d dat
35:50
and dem And I tried to do some research on this because I said,
35:54
is this a stereotype or did they actually hear this? But the research I
36:02
did said that is what happens because certain cultures can't say the same words we
36:08
say in English. So Prinsance, the Japanese culture, the el's it's really
36:15
hard to say the L, so you can't say lolligig. I don't know
36:22
when the last time I used the word lolligag is, but obviously I need
36:24
to use it much more often. It's like cornucopia, like you need to
36:29
get how often do you use that word? I had a Japanese doctor and
36:34
as a chiropractor, and he would actually ask me to give him some good
36:37
L words so he can practice. So we I'd throw all these kind of
36:44
words, and I can't do a double R like for Spanish. So the
36:51
best I can do is pero, which is different than the word for dog,
36:54
which has the role two ours. So that would be if I may
36:59
am obviously a bold perro. Yes, you can do that. And the
37:04
thing we also understand to some extent is that we grow up and we train
37:09
our MOUs to do certain words because that's what we learned, you know,
37:14
in our culture. And then we try to do another language and a lot
37:20
of people like me can't do it because I didn't grow up with another language,
37:27
and there's there's certain of those tongue things that I'm not able to do.
37:31
But you did excellent. Yes, well, I mean I am a
37:36
Cuban man, so so it took me. I lost my I lost my
37:39
R when I was a kid, and then now I actually have I've picked
37:44
it up later in life, but before it was berro berro for a long
37:47
time until I finally got that ru. It took a second, but I
37:53
got it and you were talking about stereotypes. One of the most famous Cuban
37:57
stereotypes of all time is not only Ricardo, but also Scarface Tony Montana,
38:04
and both of those guys. You know, Ricky spoke Ricky Ricardo spoke like
38:10
spoke like a a Cuban of that time period. But then Tony Montana took
38:15
it completely to the stereotypical side. I still love his performance, and even
38:21
though he's an Italian man, mister Paccino, but it was almost cartoonish,
38:25
yes, in the way, and that whole movie is very big and cartoonish
38:31
in general, with the violence in the way it was portrayed. But talking
38:36
about going into into almost parody, it was getting close to parody. And
38:44
we suggest in writing Great Dialogue that people don't shy away from accents and dialects
38:52
that do they actually take that as a challenge and you do your research and
38:57
you listen and you say, how am I going to write this to get
39:00
the flavor of it, and how is the actor going to do it to
39:04
actually add some other details as well. So I think what happens People get
39:09
scared, but then they are differentiating their characters well enough exactly Now one of
39:16
the biggest mistakes I've when I started writing that, I got called out on.
39:22
And every time I read a script or we do coverage on a script
39:27
is on the nose dialogue. Yes, discuss on the nose dialogue and how
39:31
the heck to avoid it. Yes, Well, sometimes you need to write
39:37
it on the nose to say, yes, this is what this is what
39:43
I need to get across. I'm going to Milwaukee and we're going to take
39:46
Route eighty, So say I got that. And I might have to write
39:51
that in the first draft. Maybe when the second or third we'll be right
39:57
back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. But
40:06
now I'm going to go back and I'm going to start honing and tweaking and
40:09
finding ways to do that more interesting of one of the chapters in Your Talking
40:17
to Me is about the mission or the intention or the objective of the character.
40:23
And one of my favorite pieces of dialogue comes from The Fugitive, where
40:28
Sam Durad says, your fugitive's name is doctor Richard Pimball, go get him
40:35
right now. What he's really saying it could be the first or second or
40:39
third draft is it could have been go find him, or your job is
40:46
to go get him, is to go find him and arrest him, or
40:51
but go get him. That's what you say to a pitbull that you know,
40:55
And so you get this immediate thing. Send your art as a pitbull,
41:01
and he will not let go of the person he is after. So
41:07
you could imagine some place along the draft, after writing the text say I
41:14
no need to do it. That it layers. So how do I write
41:17
a sentence? What do I want to say about this character? How might
41:22
he say this versus somebody else who's not like a pitbull, but somebody who's
41:30
maybe more intellectual. And so you hear all of these, but listen up.
41:37
You know a guy as someone who says guys instead of fellows, who
41:43
says fellows instead of hey you all. So you're saying I might have to
41:50
go through that stage of writing it on the nose. One of the people
41:57
who endorsed this book is Treva Silverman, who was the first woman to win
42:00
an Emmy Award, and she won it for the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
42:06
And I asked Treva Lenze, I said, well, how often do you
42:09
rewrite dialogue? She said, well, this morning it was twenty two times.
42:15
Now she's a comedy writer. I honestly don't know if it was nineteen
42:21
twelve or twenty two. Twenty two probably sounded better that morning. But what
42:28
she's saying is you don't just write it and say there it is. You
42:34
rewrite and rewrite. I often have a saying, even with my writing,
42:38
on book writing, nonfiction writing, if I have not rewritten a sentence ten
42:45
times, it's probably not good enough. And I just say, you're going
42:50
to just rewrite and rewrite because you're going to switch the rhythms and you're going
42:53
to say, I don't like that word. It's not rich. When John
42:58
and I were writing this book, Done had a tendency sometimes to use big
43:06
words, and I said, John, I don't want them going the dictionary.
43:10
And if I don't understand that, probably most people won't. And so
43:15
sometimes we'd say, Okay, you can use the word, but you have
43:19
to define it right after, like a nice phrase that clarifies you know what
43:23
it is. And so I think, finally, at the end, out
43:28
of humor, I said, how about this, John, is you can
43:32
do one really big word in this whole book that no one will understand,
43:37
but only one is that. Okay, yes, so we had we had
43:40
a we had a good relationship writing this book together and pulling these different ideas
43:49
about writing and about dialogue and different you know, all these different techniques et
43:58
cetera that you have to pull together when you co write. Yeah, and
44:02
I agree with you. When I was writing my books as well, I
44:06
will I'll write one just to get so there on that night. There was
44:08
the fiction, but there was a kind of autobiography, and then there was
44:12
the nonfiction book. And with the nonfiction, you just write all just get
44:15
it all out, get everything out first, and then go back and you
44:21
start, you get to start, you know, you add it. I'd
44:23
like to say, you're laying down the foundation. You're putting up the framing
44:27
of the house, and then and the walls. And then slowly you go
44:30
back and you start painting the walls, you start decorating, you start putting
44:32
things where you want it to go. But the base is there for you
44:36
to kind of go, go and do that work. And it is super
44:38
important. And I think that is one of the mistakes of especially screenwriters,
44:42
like don't write their first draft. And I'm like, okay, that was
44:43
easy. Yeah, let me say no, you're just at the beginning stage,
44:47
now, very very very very beginning. Now, what are some other
44:52
things you should avoid when writing dialogue? Actually, the last chapter is about
45:00
we call the red flags, and a red flag is sorry or yes.
45:07
I can't tell you how many times I've read yes in the script with an
45:13
exclamation point of so, yeah and so all these kind of cliches that are,
45:20
as you say, you know, very much on the nose. Sometimes
45:23
people write screaming in the parentheses next to the character's name when it is very
45:30
clear that if you see, if the dialogue is get out of here,
45:37
you're probably not going to say it like get out of here, or or
45:44
it could depending on the performance choice, and if it works, it might
45:46
be much more terrified. Yes, and because the actor might then approach that
45:52
line and say what am I going to do with that? So it's all
45:59
of or the one that says you're going to be okay, you're lying on
46:04
the ground, you've just been shot in the head, ready to do your
46:07
last, you know, then the person say it's okay, you're going to
46:15
be okay. All the best thing to say is you are ready to die
46:19
with their last, not not last phrase? Is there one last word do
46:24
you want to say at that moment? So it's really avoiding a lot of
46:31
a lot of cliches. I think. The other thing in writing one has
46:35
to be careful about something I said in many many of the scripts I consulted
46:39
on, be careful of indefinite pronouns. So what did he do? Well?
46:47
No, wait, there's three he's in the room, which he are
46:52
we talking to? And so there's that unclarity of writing that people sometimes do
46:57
is say I don't know what you're talking about. Go for clarity and communication
47:01
if needed, and then find a interesting way to maybe repeat that heat nick
47:10
name whatever. Another thing is introductions. John, This is Mary, Mary,
47:15
this is John. John's from Chicago. Oh, I've been to Chicago.
47:19
What do you do there? Well, I call it date chat,
47:22
you know, first date chat is say oh no, no, you know,
47:29
we played John and I would play around with things like you know,
47:34
I'm going to Chicago, as the woman says, why would you want to
47:38
go to Chicago when there's so much funny here? So you know, there's
47:45
there's like have fun with your dialogue and say how do I get these layers?
47:51
How do I get all the you know what's we say, what's what's
47:55
beneath? What lies beneath? I guess you know. I have a book
48:00
I'll call writing Great Subtexts, you know, writing subtexts, And so subtexts
48:05
is that underlying meaning? And then you're talking to me as we have a
48:09
whole chapter on subtext and getting the rumblings and the undercurrents that go into what
48:20
are you really trying to say here? Now, there was a chapter that
48:24
in your book that absolutely intrigued me and I have never even thought about this,
48:29
and I think it's something we should definitely talk about. How do you
48:30
write dialogue for animals, aliens and other critters? Yes, oh, that
48:37
was such a fun chapter. So one because it is true. People say
48:43
I'm never going to write dialogue for animals. You say you probably will.
48:47
You might have a dog in your movie. At least give them a wolf
48:52
and a orphan bow wow, and figure out when they say one sound versus
49:00
another. Because dialogue is a communication a sound, it does not have to
49:07
be a word. If you say to your dog, will you go get
49:10
the paper? And the dog goes ooof and then goes get the paper and
49:16
as he's ready, to put it down, he grows. There is communication,
49:21
And I'm always surprised how many times there are animals in a movie and
49:27
the animal doesn't have the dialogue, like, for instance, in both Seabiscuit
49:34
and Secretariat, those animals the owners kept talking about how wonderful those forces were.
49:45
There was no communication. There was none of the little nag or the
49:52
snorting or all the things that animals do. We'll be right back after a
49:59
word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So when John
50:07
and I started talking about the actor, we started going back to what do
50:13
we know? So, because I had horses for about thirteen years, I
50:21
went to my horse trainer and I said, let's talk about all the different
50:24
sounds. Like a horse will actually squeal sometime it almost sounds like a pig.
50:30
Well, it usually means you're hurting them really hard. You stepped on
50:36
his log tail or on his foot, or something like that. And I
50:40
had a horse where the first time he was in a horseshow trainer rode him,
50:45
he got to the middle of the arena and he let up this plain
50:49
tip may that. It was like, where are my friends? I'm all
50:53
alone in the middle here. What's going on, and you knew exactly what
50:59
was going on with that horse at that moment of uncertainty. So one of
51:05
the things people need to do is to actually analyze what do I know?
51:10
And if you don't know a lot about that animal, go and talk to
51:15
people who know those animals. I worked on a dragon script one time when
51:20
the dragon didn't do anything, and so I applied my horse knowledge to say,
51:25
well, here's a number of different things because the dragon is swort of
51:30
like a horse, but not sure why not? Yes? And another thing
51:36
I did before writing that chapter is when my cat would purr, would I
51:42
would, I would actually vocalize with a cat, And then I go to
51:45
piano to see what note is he purring on? And it was the able
51:51
O middle C. And said, okay, if you wrote a cat,
51:54
you want to get that. It's perfect, you know, I mean,
52:01
Babe is so great. Let me see if I can quickly find Babe in
52:07
here. Because one of the things that's so fabulous about Babe is that the
52:14
like the the sheep god ma, you know, talk about the one sheep
52:21
is the ma and you have the I'm just animals chapter, so h yeah.
52:30
So so like, for instance, in Babe Ma says a hard of
52:36
gold and the sheep respond hard of gold and the facts the cat says,
52:43
pigs don't have a purpose, just like ducks don't have a pearl, and
52:50
that, I mean, what a just it's such a marvelous movie to look
52:55
at to hear how every animal is differential and thinks, what are the sounds
53:02
that that animal's vocal cords make? Are they little vocal cords? Are they
53:08
big? You know? Then rival the aliens have this very particular It's not
53:16
only a deeper sound, it's almost like a fluttering sound of the vocal cords,
53:22
like a predator too. I mean, the predator has those those things,
53:25
even aliens and those kind of characters. Now, are you specific?
53:30
So maybe something specific obviously because the animals talk in that so obviously you would
53:32
need dialogue there. But when you're writing an average, average but a normal
53:37
script that has an animal, that has an animal being an animal like a
53:40
dog or a cat or a horse, are you suggesting you like horse or
53:45
whatever the character of that animal's name is, and you put bah or wolf.
53:51
Well, there's two ways of doing it. One is to do it
53:52
in the description and say the dog rolls and then the owner, Jack says,
54:00
stop it. It's okay, but quiet down. You know. Another
54:04
one is that Jack that the dog you have dog? Look the dog fidal
54:10
and under there's gurr. And then Jack says, quiet down, and it's
54:19
I think it's okay both ways. And some of it has to do is
54:22
whether or not you're trying to get a flow of dialogue right back and forth,
54:27
because the page will give more of a sense of the flow if you
54:30
write it like dialogue. And also to be aware of how many different animals
54:37
have far more ways of communicating than we, you know, we think we
54:43
do. I mean, I'm surprised with the cat. I could literally,
54:45
as we were unlocking the door, the cat would mew and I'd say,
54:51
here we are. The cat would meow, and I mean literally there was
54:54
a back and forth with the meal, and then you into what kind of
55:00
meals they do at any one time, because they do have different kinds of
55:05
meals as well. Yes they do, Yes they do. But if I
55:09
think the part of what we're saying is if you are going to have an
55:14
animal in your script, use the animal is to actually use it as part
55:21
of the dialogue. And the richness of what you are writing. And you
55:25
just have to turn on the TV to see how many animals are advertising things
55:30
these days, from the pigs to the owls, to the boxes to oh.
55:36
I always tell people, if you want to make a successful movie,
55:38
just have a dog save Christmas and it's going to get sold. Well,
55:42
yes, yeah, yeah, the dog is as they say in Shakespeare in
55:46
Love, the bit with the dog. Don't forget the bit with the dog
55:51
exactly. And I want to ask you. You also talked about something in
55:54
your book called visual dialogue, creating a visual with the dialogue, and you
55:59
kind of upon that a little bit. Yes, think of how often we
56:02
use sensory words to say something like it's a gray day, or I am
56:09
in the pink today, or I slept like a log or you know,
56:15
we use a lot of sensory language, and one a good thing to do
56:22
is to start thinking of that because it makes the line of dialogue pop.
56:29
It's one thing to say, well, well, I mean I can say
56:32
I'm a little down. That's a sensory, but I can say I'm a
56:36
bit blue and blue is a little is sort of different. What you get
56:42
is that image that goes with it and you say, oh, yeah,
56:45
I'm getting a little more information. I loved an Ordinary People when the boys
56:52
said it's a gray day. It's so much better than saying, oh,
56:58
you know, I'm not or how are you doing today? Not too good?
57:05
But if you say it's a great day, Oh my gosh, it's
57:08
so rich, so interesting, and so a good exercise is to write down
57:15
all those sensory words that we tend to say anyway, you know, all
57:20
handed, on a high note, or you know whatever. My husband's and
57:25
my favorite phrase is it's not over till the fat lady things. Right.
57:30
These are all cliches, and you have to be careful not to be cliche
57:31
about some of this as well. And sometimes what you do is you play
57:37
with the cliche and you twist it, you know, slightly. I think
57:44
in Steel Magnolius, there's a line about, you know, his feet are
57:49
planted firmly on the quicksand right like that, you know, and then it's
57:53
different, absolutely, and it pops, It pops a lot. I was
57:57
thinking of, Uh, I mean, Tarantino has he writes so visually,
58:00
but he uses pop references to kind of help along with those visual things.
58:07
So like I'm going to walk the earth like Kane and Kung Fu, Like,
58:09
yeah, you're there so quickly in your head, and there was all
58:16
going to be cool, little Fonzie. We're all going to be cool little
58:19
Fonnzies. Like everybody got that right away. It was pretty. It's amazing.
58:23
But yeah, something along those lines. You talk about being visual.
58:25
I love James Brooks movie as good as it, yes, yes, and
58:31
how they take the cliche, Like there's a line where Simon, instead of
58:36
saying do you know how lucky you are? He says do you know where
58:39
you're lucky? That's so interesting. It's kind of like, you know,
58:46
yes, I like the same, but it's a little twist on it.
58:52
And there's a lot of we have in the book from Steel Magnolias because it
58:58
is just so you know, it's just so rich. Even Weezy says,
59:04
I can't get enough grease in my diet. I mean that's that's general for
59:09
everybody. I'm assuming it's like Martha's Martha Stewart, Julia Chiles like everything's better
59:19
with butter. Well, yes, I mean you could put shoes shoes and
59:23
base it in butter and fry it. It's gonna taste better. Right,
59:30
So so what are you up to now, Linda? After this book,
59:32
what's the next thing for you? Well, I officially retired on June first
59:37
from consulting in seminars, So the focus is now on books. Congrats one
59:44
of and I'm going to show you first what we're doing. You see,
59:46
these they're called Sager Notes. We remember the cliff Notes that we all read.
59:52
Yes, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now
1:00:00
back to the show. So these are coming out the first of every month,
1:00:07
and this is the third one, which will be out of July first.
1:00:08
So we've done African Queen and Sideways and this third one is Shakespeare.
1:00:15
Look, they're five dollars and twenty five cents online and they're generally pretty close
1:00:21
to five thousand words, so they're wow, you like books article, Yeah,
1:00:25
So they're not a book or anything there's and they're written in order for
1:00:35
people interested in film to say, what are the things that that film does
1:00:38
that I can learn from. What was the challenge of writing that script and
1:00:45
how did they solve that? Because I want to learn from the masters.
1:00:49
So everyone is what I would call a great example of something specific. So
1:00:58
my next one is going to be Jojo Ra and I have I will be
1:01:01
starting to work on that because I have to have them done by the fifteenth
1:01:07
and then I send them to the publisher who's in Taos. And the woman
1:01:12
publisher is a leg Where Houston who's the daughter of John Houston, and she
1:01:17
is just great. She's I've really been enjoying working with her, so first
1:01:24
of every month, and yeah, you can find them either by going on
1:01:30
my website Lindasaga dot com or the going on. I always have to remember
1:01:38
exactly it's the gosh, I'll put it in the show notes on my website
1:01:45
dot com. I'll and you could also just look up Saga notes, but
1:01:50
just go on lindasagre dot com and you'll see the informational Saga notes and then
1:01:53
of course the dialogue book. Yes, and so I'm turning my attention to
1:02:01
some other books as well. I want to I want to write about creativity
1:02:06
and spirituality, which has been percolating for thirty years. And I'm going to
1:02:13
write another book for Alegra and her company on They're Doing Anything, called the
1:02:21
Things the stuff they never teach you. And so I'm going to write a
1:02:24
book on how to teach a class in a seminar. And and so we're
1:02:32
you know, but the saga notes are are out as of June first.
1:02:37
So we did two June first, then we're doing one a month. Nice.
1:02:43
Well, it seems like you're busy. It seems like you're busy.
1:02:45
Yes, yeah, I'm not without anything to do. And I'm playing a
1:02:50
lot of piano. And one last question I try to ask all of my
1:02:54
guests, and you haven't had this one before, what are three screenplays every
1:03:00
screenwriter should read? Ah, yes, that's a very good question. I
1:03:09
tend to always end up putting Witness on that list because it's such a perfect
1:03:15
structure, and it's and is so good at kind of getting into another culture
1:03:21
and you know, community. And I think Amadeis, I call Alma Davis
1:03:27
the big diamond of the Emerald. I call stand by Me the little little
1:03:35
diamond. And then I think it's an interesting thing for people to say,
1:03:38
what script spoke to me? Was there ever a movie that changed my life
1:03:45
or impacted me or taught me something new that change you know, attitudes,
1:03:51
And maybe just read that one and to better understand how it affected you.
1:04:00
People sometimes asked me. They said, was there ever a movie that changed
1:04:03
your life? And I said, oh, yes, City Slickers, City
1:04:09
Suburbs. City Slickers got me back to writing first BacT writing, and I
1:04:15
went in a cattle drive after City Slickers. And then that got me into
1:04:19
riding around the world. I mean I wrote in France and Italy and Spain
1:04:24
and you know, lots of wyoming. I took riding vacations, I entered
1:04:30
horse shows. I mean, I just did that for quite some time.
1:04:32
And so any of those movies where you say they're just great movies, I
1:04:41
would put one more on the list because we have a whole chapter on theme
1:04:46
and we use the movie The Defiant Ones and trace how the theme keeps changing
1:04:51
and transforming through that whole film. It's a really in depth analysis of how
1:04:59
you can work with the scenes through dialogue. And that's a great movie to
1:05:03
watch. This a great movie. It's a great script to read. Linda,
1:05:08
it is always a pleasure having you on the show anytime. You're always
1:05:11
welcome back. It is I learned so much every time I talk to you,
1:05:14
So thank you so much for coming on the show and dropping the knowledge
1:05:17
bombs on the tribe today, So thanks again, yes, thank you.
1:05:20
It's as a pleasure for me as well. I want to thank Linda for
1:05:25
coming back on the show and helping us write some amazing dialogue that pops off
1:05:31
the page. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in
1:05:34
this episode, including a link to the book, please head over to the
1:05:39
show notes a anyfilm also dot com forward slash seven sixty and if you have
1:05:43
it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe and leave
1:05:48
a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot,
1:05:51
guys. Thank you again so much for listening. Guys, as always,
1:05:55
keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there,
1:05:58
and I'll talk to you soon for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
1:06:01
Indie Film Hustle dot com. That's I N D I E F I L
1:06:06
M h U S T L E dot com. M