Rough draft complete!

I finished the rough draft of one of my short scripts today. It’s called “Judgement Day,” about a priest who meddles in the lives of his confessors. This is one of the two scripts that I’m considering for our project with Matt. It’s 20 pages, which is about right. It’s common to figure about a minute a page, and after 2 or three rewrites I’ll be fleshing it out another 5 pages or so. Right now it’s mostly the bare-bones of the story. The characters need more development and the story overall needs a bit of refinement.

One thing that helps me when I write dialogue is to remember something I read in a book on novel writing. It was an author — I don’t know why I’m thinking it was Steven King, so maybe it was — who said that you should every line so that the reader wants to hear how the other character is going to respond. For example:

*Tom: “Hello.”*

*Bridget: “Hey. How are you?”*

*Tom: “Cool. Nice shirt you have on.”*

*Bridget: “Thanks. I bought it yesterday.”*

*Tom: “I went shopping yesterday too.”*

…is not very interesting dialogue. This might be better:

*Tom: “Bridget, I haven’t seen you since that embarassing incident last year.”*

*Bridget: “I’m surprised you remember, considering the state you were in.”*

*Tom: “I swear, I didn’t even know the cat was there. You wouldn’t believe where he ended up.”*

*Bridget: “Where was that?”*

*Tom: “I can’t say. I promised not to tell you.”*

*Bridget: “How about a trade? I have something I know you’ll want.”*

Well, that’s a _little_ better, anyway. The point is, there’s more tension in the second dialogue. There’s a kind of tug-of-war between the characters. With each line, we want to see how the next one will respond. The challenge is to craft this sort of dialogue into a natural, believable conversation that is true to the characters and the situation. Probably the worst thing you can do is include every little phrase that someone might say just because “it would happen in real life.” That’s where you get dialogue like that first one. Do you know how boring most real-life conversations would be if you had to read them word-for-word? With a script, you have to cut to the core, past all the extraneous dialogue.

I’m not pretending to be an expert scriptwriter. I just like to share these things I’m learning along the way that inspire me.