Fun and Flow with Writing
About more impactful, natural dialogue and voiceover
Heyho! My breaks before posting here seem to be getting longer. And this time it’s not because I’m uninspired or stuck. It’s flowing slowly and enjoyably. Even though I still have to overcome the fear of failure before writing, once I get going, I really enjoy writing and don’t want to stop. I celebrate it. Hurrah! That wasn’t the case at the beginning of my writing career some weeks ago. It’s still going slowly and often takes an hour, and I’ve only typed five sentences. But I also have more ideas and opportunities to continue, and therefore more momentum and energy to keep writing. I love it! The key to my enjoyment of writing is really taking time for myself, being a fisherman (cf. my second-to-last post), and waiting for something to bite. When the time does come, it’s so fulfilling to put my ideas on paper. I’m currently writing the third draft of Chapter 1/Scene 1 of “Loving John.” I’m learning how to touch my audience’s hearts with dialogue. At first, I simply wrote on an intellectual level what my character would say. And then I received feedback from my partner and the people in my writing class: There’s too much text, which could also be expressed through images, too redundant, too unnatural, like a rehearsed performance, not direct enough. Then I sat down, marked the important sentences of my previous text whose message I wanted to convey and actually felt the sadness I wanted to transport, and rewrote the whole passage from that sadness without thinking. I spoke it out loud first and then typed it out. And it worked: My text now has more impact, is more natural, half as short, and more direct, with the same level of information. Since then, I read out loud again to my class and to my partner and I’ve received further feedback: John sometimes unintentionally speaks like me. He needs more character development to differentiate him more clearly from me, even though he’s based on me and my experiences. Otherwise, it creates dissonance and prevents the audience from feeling what I want them to feel. Surprisingly, I’ve also found that some words like “very” sometimes don’t reinforce a character’s point. Paradoxically, sometimes omitting a word can generate more impact. (e.g. “I am very scared” versus “I am scared”) On the other hand, there are also speech rhythms that make the whole thing seem more natural when there are more words than fewer. So there are many details to consider. A bigger question that’s currently on my mind: How do I use voiceover skillfully? Sometimes I want to use voiceover in Loving John to emphasize John’s inner navigation. I’m aware that this can often be conveyed subconsciously without words, through images. However, in my particular case, I want to make a film that shows people how to inner navigate, by occasionally using voiceover that says something that can also be seen. I’m warned from (almost) all sides in my class not to do that. For example, when my character John explains how he handles expressing his sadness. Is he explaining it or just showing it? How clear is that for a viewer, especially if they have no idea about inner navigation? How interesting is it? Or does it get boring? I’m experimenting and researching with it...