I don’t write what the character is thinking. This is me as a writer deciding that there should be silence with a purpose. This is difference from other silence that occurs naturally. It simply tells the actor that is going to inhabit my character ‘’ Hey….he/she wants to say something, but they can’t find the words or don’t feel able to decide’ I don’t think for a second I invented this, but I’m a big fan of it. This is how I denote silence in my scripts. This can be hugely effective, particularly in scenes where the characters are trapped together for some artificially created reason. So sometimes I let my characters get away with saying nothing. At it’s worst the whole days writing has to go in the bin. The characters cease to be real and, at best, the whole script turns into a badly written soap opera. Then I start getting involved and adding in what I think they should say and before you know it. If I make them stay the dialogue becomes forced. It usually means that scene is a no go….there’s no reason why these characters want to stay in the same room, they want to leave and get their own space and there’s nothing compelling them to stay Sometimes though, characters run out of things to say to each other. I feel like I’m on work experience in my own brain. Sometimes I can’t type fast enough to keep up and that’s very irritating. I’m the least qualified person to input into the dialogue as far as my own imagination is concerned. Like one of those overworked people in the corner of a courtroom desperately whacking the type writer- or a harassed intern in the corner of the office desperately trying to keep minutes. I don’t know what scriptwriting feels for the rest of you but my experience is that I’m simply there to record the things these two imaginary people have to say to each other. Is it pretentious and wanky of me to say that my characters make their own choices on what they say? So if your characters don’t want to say something.
Either they’re doing it to give the audience information in the form of bad exposition, or you’ve got carried away writing an emotional high and descended into cliché. What do I mean by that? I mean that your characters are saying things that don’t need to be said out loud. There’s one thing that ruins decent scripts more than anything else. What’s the one thing that ruins scripts and screenplays more than anything else? Bad formatting? Terrible character names? A plot hole that’s so big you could drive a truck through it? No. “Seriously! Learn when to shut the hell up.” Photo by RobinHiggins on pixabay
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