CHAPTER NINE

Dialogue

The award-winning playwright August Wilson has often said that he doesn't so much write his characters as listen to them. The art of dialogue writing lies in the way dramatists listen both to the outside world and to our inner voices and the means by which our listening is transformed into character, action and meaning. We've already discussed dialogue as exposition and dialogue as action. Any playwright will tell you it's difficult to teach the talent of dialogue writing; you either have an “ear” for dialogue, or you don't. But even a talented dialogue writer can learn a few tricks that may enliven the words on the page.

PAYING ATTENTION TO REAL LIFE

When dramatists write dialogue, they often worry about “getting the diction right.” Diction, in this case, means the manner in which a character speaks. It means making a realistic character sound the way she would in real life: cab drivers talking like cab drivers; state department officials talking like state department officials. Different people use different code words and turns of phrase. Diction has to do with education, class, region, age and other character variables. For example, a seventy-year-old Boston-born attorney who graduated from Harvard would probably not say “pants.” He'd say “trousers.” A Pittsburgh mobster wouldn't say, “Do you want me to hit you?” He'd say, “Ya' want hit?” A young lady in Victorian England would never say, “I've dated weirder guys than you”—unless the lady were in a wacky comedy. In writing specific diction for your characters, you should avoid linguistic anachronisms at all costs, the exception being when the anachronism intentionally calls attention to itself for the sake of comedy. Inconsistencies and anachronisms are sloppy errors that take the audience out of the play, making them wonder why the playwright goofed.

As an example of inconsistent diction, let's look at David Mamet's Oleanna. Some critics argue that the character of Carol, the inarticulate student depicted in the first act of the play could never speak in the smooth, articulate manner she does in the second act.

The First Act Carol: “I failed. Flunk me out of it. It's garbage. Everything I do. ‘The ideas contained in this work express the author's feelings.’ That's right. That's right. I know I'm stupid. I know what I am.”

Now look at the Second Act Carol: “You call education ‘hazing,’ and from your protected, so-elitist seat you hold our confusion as a joke, and our hopes and efforts with it. Then you sit there and say, ‘What have I done?’ And ask me to understand that you have aspirations too … if you possess one ounce of that inner honesty you describe in your book, you can look in yourself and see those things that I see. And you can find revulsion equal to my own. Good day.”

As for anachronisms, we can turn to Kathleen Winsor's popular romance Forever Amber, set in seventeenth-century England and containing—as New Yorker critic Anthony Lane has pointed out—such twentieth-century slang phrases as “Thanks a million” and “Hey, just a minute.”

A writer has to choose the right dialogue. Try this exercise: Go to a party and tape some of the conversations. You'll pick up speech rhythms, colorful phrases, regional accents, and the stop-and-start pattern of real-life talk. You'll also realize that, for our purposes, a lot of that real-life talk is useless. Remember Hitchcock's definition of drama—life with the dull bits cut out? Good dialogue is talk with the dull bits cut out. Look at the transcripts of a trial, or—better—read the published transcripts of the Nixon White House tapes. The Nixon-Watergate transcripts are wonderful examples of real-life speech recorded while most of the participants were unaware of the taping system's existence. Here's a June 1972 exchange between President Richard Nixon, his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, and White House attorney John Dean.

NIXON: Hi, how are you? You had quite a day today didn't you. You got Watergate on the way didn't you?

DEAN: We tried.

HALDEMAN: How did it all end up?

DEAN: Ah, I think we can say well at this point. The press is playing it just as we expect.

HALDEMAN: Whitewash?

DEAN: No, not yet—the story right now—

NIXON: It is a big story.

HALDEMAN: Five indicted plus the WH former guy and all that.

DEAN: Plus two White House fellows.

HALDEMAN: That is good that takes the edge off whitewash really that was the thing Mitchell kept saying that to people in the country Liddy and Hunt were big men. Maybe that is good.

Nixon was asking John Dean if he was keeping a lid on the Watergate break-in scandal without giving the press the appearance that the White House was trying to cover-up—or “whitewash”—its involvement. The “WH former guy” is E. Howard Hunt, who worked in the White House and for the CIA. The “two White House fellows” are Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. Haldeman's last speech refers to his hope that the investigation will go no further than Liddy and Hunt. Nixon campaign chairman John Mitchell had told lots of people that Hunt and Liddy were key operatives in the campaign structure, so Haldeman thinks most observers will assume the buck stops with them.

What parts of this real-life dialogue would be valuable to a dramatist?

• The immediate action (“You got Watergate on the way, didn't you?”)

• The exposition (“Five indicted plus the WH former guy and all that … that takes the edge off whitewash.”)

• The peculiar and authentic-sounding code words (“the WH former guy.”)

• The interruptions (“—the story right now—” “It is a big story.”)

• The sense of rushed, real-life fractured grammar and syntax (“That is good that takes the edge off whitewash really that was the thing Mitchell kept saying that to people in the country Liddy and Hunt were big men.”)

But not all of this raw material is dramatically useful. Some of it is fat. Some of it is confusing. What “dull bits” would you cut out to make the scene sharper? What would you add to make the scene clearer? I'll bold-face my deletions and italicize my additions to the scene:

NIXON: Hi, how are you? You had quite a day today didn't you. You got Watergate on the way didn't you?

DEAN: We tried.

HALDEMAN: How did it all end up?

DEAN: Ah, I think we can say it went well at this point. The press is playing it just as we expected.

HALDEMAN: Does the press think we're trying to Whitewash it?

DEAN: No, not yet—the story right now—

NIXON: It'is a big story.

HALDEMAN: Five indicted plus the WH former guy and all that.

DEAN: PlusTwo White House guys.

HALDEMAN: That'is good. Admitting that two of them were connected to the White House takes the edge off any accusation of a whitewash. really that was the thing Mitchell kept saying that to people in the country Liddy and Hunt were the big men. Maybethe investigation will stop with them.

Let's look at the final version of rewritten reality.

NIXON: You had quite a day today didn't you. You got Watergate on the way?

DEAN: We tried.

HALDEMAN: How did it all end up?

DEAN: I think we can say it went well. The press is playing it just as we expected.

HALDEMAN: Does the press think we're trying to Whitewash it?

DEAN: No, not yet—the story—

NIXON: It's a big story.

HALDEMAN: Five indicted plus the WH former guy.

DEAN: Two White House guys.

HALDEMAN: That's good. Admitting that two of them were connected to the White House takes the edge off any accusation of a whitewash. Mitchell kept saying that Liddy and Hunt were the big men. Maybe the investigation will stop with them.

Selected reality. The truth is there. The clarity and shaping is imposed. It's the same with fictional dialogue. It's the old question of what to keep and what to throw away. Jon Jory, the artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville, once said in an article in The New York Times that he knew Marsha Norman would be a successful playwright because she “knew how to rewrite.” Cutting, shaping and clarifying dialogue is the largest part of rewriting. As you rewrite, draft after draft, you'll be amazed how much you find to change in your play. There's always more to cut, always more lines to be improved. According to the late critic Kenneth Tynan in a New Yorker profile, Tom Stoppard once read to a group of students twenty-four different versions of an invective spat out by Tristan Tzara to James Joyce in his literary-political comedy Travesties. The first version was “You blarney-arsed bog-eating Irish pig.” The last was “By God, you supercilious streak of Irish puke!” Commented Stoppard, deadpan: “All this takes weeks.” Getting it right takes time. And, as many writers have said, plays are not so much written as rewritten.

STYLIZATION

Stylization in dialogue is hard to define, but a true, original, effective style is always recognizable. Look at the language found in the plays of Oscar Wilde, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. An epigram like this one spoken by Lady Bracknell in Wilde's high-comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both seems like carelessness” is identified by its perfect balance, its symmetrical rhythm, its precise repetition of the words “to lose,” and the solemn silliness of its surprising punch line “seems like carelessness.”

Look at a speech like this one from Harold Pinter's Old Times:

DEELEY: You sat on a very low sofa, I sat opposite and looked up your skirt. Your black stockings were very black because your thighs were so white.… I simply sat sipping my light ale and gazed … gazed up your skirt. You didn't object, you found my gaze perfectly acceptable.… There was a great argument going on about China or something, or death, or China and death, I can't remember which, but nobody but I had a thigh-kissing view, nobody but you had the thighs which kissed. And here you are. Same woman. Same thighs.

It's pure Pinter. Suggestive. Spooky. Full of menace and sexuality. It's also reminiscent of three of Pinter's great influences—the witty English drawing-room dialogue of Noel Coward, the absurdist flourishes of Samuel Beckett, and the speech rhythms of London's Jewish East End, where Pinter grew up in the 1940s.

The roiling, southwestern tang of a Sam Shepard aria from The Toothof Crime, a futuristic tale of two desperado rock stars, is redolent not only of the mythical, violence-prone loners he often depicts but also of the rock lyrics that permeated his experience of living with the songwriter and poet Patti Smith: “Beat it! I'm too old-fashioned. That's it. Gotta kick out the scruples. Go against the code. That's what they used to do. The big ones. Dylan, Jagger, Townsend. All them cats broke codes. Times can't change that.… They were killers in their day.… Cold killers.”

You can't choose a dialogue style, like those of Wilde, Pinter, Shepard, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet or Christopher Durang. That comes with you, or it doesn't come at all. But you can refine it and mine it for all its dramatic and theatrical potential. The danger comes when a playwright imitates another writer's language. A writer can borrow a plotline or a story. The British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, in his play The Revenger's Comedy, which concerns a man and woman who meet on a bridge while attempting suicide but instead decide to murder their tormentors, combines the plot of Murray Schisgal's Luv, in which a man and woman meet on a bridge while attempting suicide, with Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, in which two men plot to murder their tormentors by trading victims. A writer can borrow an idea, he can even develop a language that is a hybrid of other writers; but a writer who slavishly impersonates another author's style is always a pale thief. Just as dangerous: a writer who starts with a recognizable style and then turns that style into a crutch. Tennessee Williams wrote some of the greatest dramatic language in the American theater. He wrote great stage poetry, evoking the hothouse passions, shattered psyches and honeyed tones of a baroque, dreamscape South. But the plays he wrote in the last fifteen years of life—when he was plagued by doubts and addictions—were parodies of that style—overblown and unintentionally funny. It can happen to the best writers. An original style is often millimeters away from going over-the-top. The finest stylists—Pinter, Mamet, Shepard among them—have often had to reign themselves in after becoming a bit too indulgent in one play or another.

DIALOGUE AS TEXT

George Bernard Shaw and Tom Stoppard are masters of “writing on the line.” Writing on the line means that the characters say what they mean. There are exceptions, of course (see Pygmalion), but by and large when Shaw's Henry Higgins speaks, we know he means what he says, nothing more, nothing less (and with Shaw, there's seldom any less). When Stoppard's characters, such as Henry in The Real Thing or George in Jumpers or Lenin in Travesties, speak, they are speaking their minds—clearly—without filters. Other writers who do this “on the line” writing might include the British writers David Hare, Howard Brenton and Caryl Churchill, as well as Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America. What kind of plays do they—and Shaw and Stoppard—often write? Political plays. Writing on the line is direct and clear, and political plays usually attempt to clarify complicated ideas and issues. That doesn't mean a writer can't approach politics or other complicated subjects like religion or philosophy from the avenue of metaphor. Tom Stoppard often writes very direct, elegant speeches about various subjects and ideas, but look at this example of metaphor from his Tony-winning play The Real Thing. Henry is talking to his wife about writing and the power of words. He holds a cricket bat in his hand.

HENRY: This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking off the top of a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking fly … (He clucks his tongue to make the noise) What we're trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might … travel …

It's a metaphor, but it's written on the line. You can deliver ideas and information in overt sentences (“One should write well”), or you can say it with metaphor (“We're trying to write cricket bats”), but writing on the line means that the language used is a direct, conscious attempt by the characters to communicate what they're thinking. Below is the term we use for unconscious or indirect communication.

DIALOGUE AS SUBTEXT

Actors know what the term “subtext” refers to in performing dramatic scenes. Its strict definition is this: (1) the complex of feelings and motives underlying the actual words and actions of the character being portrayed, (2) an underlying meaning or theme. Subtext means, for example, trying to find ways of saying “I love you” without having the words “I love you” at your disposal. The “I love you” is under the text—below the line.

Playwrights have to develop their subtext muscles. As we've discussed before, dramatic action is as much about what doesn't happen as what does. The trick to writing dialogue that underscores a romantic subtext has little to do with alternative words or codes for “I love you.” You don't have to write “I adore you,” or “Hey, babe: ‘eight letters,’ know-what-I-mean?” (“I love you” has eight letters). The trick is being able to write, “Pass the salt, please” or “Nice dress” or “When do you want me to be there?” and still be certain that the audience knows it means “I love you.” In Shaw's Pygmalion, to take a famous example, we know that Henry Higgins is in love with Eliza Doolittle when he says he has “grown accustomed to (her) face.”

Again, it's a question of context. In a play about infidelity, the audience takes its knowledge of the information it has received and applies it to the action they are watching.

Here's an example from Harold Pinter's Betrayal. Emma, under duress, has confessed her affair with Jerry to her husband Robert. No one has yet told Jerry that Robert knows. Robert, a publisher, and Jerry, a literary agent, are best friends. Jerry doesn't suspect a thing. They meet for lunch.

ROBERT: Emma read that novel of that chum of yours—what's his name? … Spinks.

JERRY: Oh Spinks. Yes. The one you didn't like.

ROBERT: The one I wouldn't publish.

JERRY: … Did Emma like it?

ROBERT: She seemed to be madly in love with it.

JERRY: Good.

ROBERT: You like it yourself do you?

JERRY: I do.

ROBERT: And it's successful?

JERRY: It is.

ROBERT: Tell me, do you think that makes me a publisher of unique critical judgement or a foolish publisher?

JERRY: A foolish publisher.

ROBERT: I agree with you. I am a very foolish publisher.

JERRY No you're not. What are you talking about? You're a good publisher. What are you talking about?

ROBERT: I'm a bad publisher because I hate books. Or to be more precise, prose. Or to be even more precise, modern prose, I mean modern novels, first novels and second novels, all that promise and sensibility it falls upon me to judge, to put the firm's money on, and then to push for the third novel, see it done, see the dust jacket done, see the dinner for the national literary editors done, see the signing in Hatchards done, see the lucky author cook himself to death, all in the name of literature. You know what you and Emma have in common? You love literature. I mean you love modern prose literature, I mean you love the new novel by the new Casey or Spinks. It gives you both a thrill.

JERRY: You must be pissed.

ROBERT: Really? You don't think it gives Emma a thrill?

JERRY: How do I know? She's your wife. (Pause)

ROBERT: Yes. Yes. You're quite right. I shouldn't have to consult you. I shouldn't have to consult anyone.

The genius of this dialogue lies not in the speeches themselves, but in what Pinter has dramatized before the scene takes place. If we didn't know before this scene that Robert was aware of Jerry and Emma's affair, this exchange would appear to be a business-and-art discussion, a sad rumination on the state of publishing and fiction in 1970s Britain. But knowing what we know, the scene becomes electric with subtext, that subtext being: “You have betrayed me, best friend. You have broken my heart. I could kill you.”

In other words, subtext in dialogue is transmitted to an audience more by the arrangement of actions than it is by code words and euphemisms.

Subtext is often found in two areas: understatedness and inarticulateness. The British are masters of the former (see that Betrayal scene), Americans of the latter.

Look at this example from Private Lives by the great British playwright Noel Coward. Elyot and Amanda have been married and divorced. In the first, famous scene of the play they meet on the joined terrace of a hotel in France. They have just remarried other people that very day. They are shocked to find each other so near. They try to act like nothing much has happened and they are not affected.

AMANDA: What have you been doing lately? During these last years?

ELYOT: Travelling about. I went round the world you know after—

AMANDA: (Hurriedly) Yes, yes, I know. How was it?

ELYOT: The world?

AMANDA: Yes.

ELYOT: Oh, highly enjoyable.

AMANDA: China must be very interesting.

ELYOT: Very big, China.

AMANDA: And Japan—

ELYOT: Very small.

AMANDA: Do they eat sharks' fins, and take your shoes off, and use chopsticks and everything?

ELYOT: Practically everything.

AMANDA: And India, the burning Ghars, or Ghats, or whatever they are, and the Taj Mahal. How was the Taj Mahal?

ELYOT (Looking at her) Unbelievable, a sort of dream.

AMANDA: That was the moonlight, I expect; you must have seen it in the moonlight.

ELYOT: (Never taking his eyes off her face) Yes, moonlight is cruelly deceptive.

AMANDA: And it didn't look like a biscuit box did it? I've always felt that it might.

ELYOT: (Quietly) Darling, darling, I love you so.

The last line puts the subtext right back on top again. Coward's characters are wildly articulate people. They have no trouble saying what they mean and saying it beautifully with style, wit and grace. But knowing what we know—that Elyot and Amanda have been married, that they are together again on this terrace, and, important, that they do not leave to retrieve their new spouses immediately—we understand the subtext of this wonderful exchange fully and completely: “I love you and you love me and we are still wildly attracted to each other despite this pathetic attempt to behave as if we were actually interested in discussing world travel.”

Let's look at an inarticulate American couple. Doc and Lola are the central characters of William Inge's dark drama Come Back, Little Sheba. But this time I'm not going to tell you what came before this exchange, the last scene of the play.

LOLA puts away the supplies in the icebox. Then DOC comes in the front door, carrying the little suitcase she previously packed for him. His quiet manner and his serious demeanor are the same asbefore. LOLA is shocked by his sudden appearance. She jumps and can't help showing her fright.

LOLA: Docky!

Without thinking, she assumes an attitude of fear. DOC observes this and it obviously pains him.

DOC: Good morning, honey.

Pause.

LOLA: (On platform) Are … are you all right, Doc?

DOC: Yes, I'm all right. (An awkward pause. Then DOC tries to reassure her) Honest, I'm all right, honey. Please don't stand there like that … like I was gonna … gonna …

LOLA: (Tries to relax) I'm sorry, Doc.

DOC: How you been?

LOLA: Oh, I been all right, Doc. Fine.

DOC: Any news?

LOLA: I told you about Marie—over the phone.

DOC: Yah.

LOLA: He was a very nice boy, Doc. Very nice.

DOC: That's good. I hope they'll be happy.

LOLA: (Trying to sound bright) She said … maybe she'd come back and visit us some time. That's what she said.

DOC: (Pause) It … it's good to be home.

LOLA: Is it, Daddy?

DOC: Yah. (Beginning to choke up, just a little)

LOLA: Did everything go all right … I mean … did they treat you well and …

DOC: (Now loses control of his feelings. Tears in his eyes, he all but lunges at her, gripping her arms, drilling his head into her bosom) Honey, don't ever leave me. Please don't ever leave me. If you do, they'd have to keep me down at that place all the time. I don't know what I said to you or what I did, I can't remember hardly anything. But please forgive me … please … please … And I'll try to make everything up.

LOLA: (There is surprise on her face and new contentment. She becomes almost angelic in demeanor. Tenderly she places a soft hand on hishead) Daddy! Why, of course I'll never leave you. (A smile of satisfaction) You're all I've got. You're all I ever had.

It's a reconciliation scene to be sure. A homecoming. But if you know the play you know that Doc is an alcoholic. You also know that he married Lola twenty years before when he got her pregnant. She lost the baby and couldn't have other children. Their hasty marriage crippled their early promise. There is no passion or romance in their lives. The “Marie” referred to is a boarder they took in to earn money. Marie was young and sexually attractive, and Doc lusted after her. When he saw that Marie had slept with a young man, Doc fell off the wagon, got drunk, came home and threatened to kill Lola, raging at her about “sluts” and “whores” and letting her know just how much he despised their marriage, how disgusted he was by her. At one point he grabbed a knife and screamed that he wanted to “hack all that fat off” Lola. Finally, Lola called for help, and Doc was carted away to the hospital.

Knowing what you know now, what do you make of the subtext behind these lines:

• “Are … are you all right, Docky?” (Have you come back to tell me our marriage is over? Are you sober again? Have you come to kill me?)

• “It's … it's good to be home.” (I have no place else to go.)

• “You're all I've got. You're all I've ever had.” (Our lives may still be in shambles. You probably don't love me. But what else is there for us?)

Again it's context and placement. Your own play's action will tell you how to employ subtext. Once you know what is essential to the plot and story you're telling, you'll know what words the characters must say as well. If it isn't necessary to say, “I love you,” don't say it.

PLEASE TAKE MY WIFE

Humor is essential to almost every play. There is a comedy in King Lear, in Hamlet, in Death of a Salesman, and in hundreds of other plays we think of as serious. An audience needs to laugh—for relief, for release or for pure joy. As for “official” comedies, the great scripts of Georges Feydeau, Kaufmann and Hart, Neil Simon, Wendy Wasserstein, Noel Coward and Christopher Durang cover every style from farce, drawing room comedy and satire to the borscht belt and surrealism. There is comic action (pratfalls, chases, hiding under beds and slamming doors), and there is comic dialogue.

You can't learn to be funny.

You have to have a sense of the ridiculous. But the ridiculous has to have its own weird logic. From Durang's hysterically funny and very moving The Marriage of Bette and Boo, a conversation between a grown son and his mother:

MATT: Why do you call me Skippy? Why don't you call me Matt?

BETTE: Skippy's my favorite movie.

MATT: My favorite movie is Citizen Kane. I don't call you Citizen Kane.

You have to understand irony. Irony is an awareness of the ridiculous coupled with perfect, deadpan, dry understatement, as in the following excerpt from Tom Stoppard's masterpiece about positivism, murder and morality, Jumpers, in which a philosopher attempts to explain logic and assassination:

GEORGE: Cantor's proof that there is no greatest number ensures that there is no smallest fraction. There is no beginning. But it was precisely this notion of infinite series which in the sixth century BC led the Greek philosopher Zeno to conclude that since an arrow shot towards a target first had to cover half the distance, and then half the remainder, and then half the remainder of that, and so on, ad infinitum, the result was … that though an arrow is always approaching its target, it never quite gets there, and Saint Sebastian died of fright.

You have to mine the comic power of bottled anger when it's finally released, such as in this statement from The Odd Couple, in which Oscar is telling Felix he hates getting little notes on his pillow:

OSCAR: “We are all out of cornflakes. F.U.” It took me three hours to figure out that F.U. was Felix Unger!

You have to be tough enough not to shrink from nastiness. Invective is essential to comedy, especially when it has the right setup and the correct number of syllables in the punch line. In Kaufmann and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner, the critic Sheridan Whiteside attacks his annoying nurse, Miss Preen:

MISS PREEN: Oh my! You mustn't eat candy, Mr Whiteside. It's very bad for you.

WHITESIDE: (Turning) My great aunt Jennifer ate a whole box of candy every day of her life. She lived to be a hundred and two, and when she had been dead three days she looked better than you do now.

You have to sense where to put the punch line. Imagine famous punch lines if they were mangled like this:

• “My watch has been stolen and it was taken from me by Hildy Johnson, who is a son of a bitch.” (Apologies to Hecht and MacArthur, the authors of The Front Page.)

• “Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. Somehow he got into my pajamas, but I don't know how he did it.” (Apologies to Animal Crackers' George Kaufmann and Groucho Marx.)

• “Please take my wife.” (Apologies to Henny Youngman.)

• “Why did the chicken cross the road? The reason: the other side. He, the chicken that is, wanted to get over there.” (Apologies to the ages.)

They sound like bad translations from Latvia. The rule? The key words should come at die end of the line. That's where the punch is. A “periodic sentence” is a line in which the meaning and intent of the sentence is only revealed by its last word or words. An example would be Dorothy Parker's famous cocktail party joke: “If you laid every woman at this party from end to end I wouldn't be a bit surprised.” Or Richard Greenberg's rueful observation from his one-act comedy about love, Life Under Water: “If I didn't trust you so much I'd be a lot wiser.” The audience expects the logic of the sentence to go in one direction, but the writer spins it in another. The crisp logic shift and the jolt of the surprise makes us laugh.

You have to know the difference between “witty” and “funny.” Sometimes witty is funny. In Tony Kushner's Angels in America, two men discuss the loss of a pet:

LOUIS: Cat still missing?

PRIOR: Not a furball in sight … I warned you, Louis. Names are important. Call an animal “Little Sheba” and you can't expect it to stick around.

But sometimes witty is clever without being funny. From Noel Coward's famous Private Lives, Elyot is complaining about Amanda:

ELYOT: Women should be struck regularly, like gongs.

Clever, but not very funny, especially nowadays. What is funny in Private Lives—along with most of this great comedy—is this exchange between the adulterous Elyot and Amanda, who, as we saw in the exchange quoted earlier, used to be married to each other but are now married to new spouses.

AMANDA: Do you realize that we're living in sin?

ELYOT: Not according to the Catholics; Catholics don't recognize divorce. We're married as much as ever we were.

AMANDA: Yes, dear, but we're not Catholics.

ELYOT: Never mind, it's nice to think they'd sort of back us up.

Now that's funny.

And you have to be able to write comic lines that are funny, not only by themselves (“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both seems like carelessness”) but funny in their dramatic context. Noel Coward, one of the funniest writers in the English language, said that the biggest laugh he ever got in the theater came after this line from Hay Fever: “Well, go on …” It's not funny by itself. But in context, it's a killer. The setup is that Judith Bliss is a charming and wildly egotistical actress. When a young man named Sandy comes to visit the Bliss family one weekend, Judith sits down with him for a chat. The subject of her acting comes up:

JUDITH: Have you ever seen me on the stage?

SANDY: Rather!

JUDITH: What in?

SANDY: That thing where you pretended to cheat at cards to save your husband's good name.

JUDITH: … “The Bold Deceiver” …

SANDY: You were absolutely wonderful. That's when I fell in love with you.

JUDITH: (Delighted) Was it really?

SANDY: Yes, you were so frightfully pathetic and brave.

JUDITH: (Basking) Was I?

SANDY: Rather!

(There is a pause)

JUDITH: Well, go on …

It's her grandiose desire for even more praise that brings the house down. The laugh is based on our knowledge of her character and our expectations of what she'll do. This is active, character-based, situation-based comedy. It's the most rewarding kind of comedy to write because it's the most dramatic way to write.

MONOLOGUES

Remember the playwright Gram Slaton's quote? “Monologues are the easiest speeches to write and the hardest to justify”—particularly when there's another character onstage listening to the speaker. One question you should ask yourself when you're experimenting with monologues is this: If there's someone else onstage, why isn't she interrupting the speaker? There has to be either (a) a specific dramatic situation that keeps the listener silent (mute, bound-and-gagged, unconscious), or (b) the monologue is so moving/thrilling/suspenseful/portentous that the listener would never dream of interrupting.

I faced this challenge when I was writing Scotland Road, a contemporary mystery about a woman found on an iceberg in the North Atlantic, who claims she is a survivor of the Titanic. I knew the mysterious woman was going to have a big monologue at the end of the play when she finally remembered what happened the night of the Titanic's sinking. I avoided writing that speech until I was in the right frame of mind, until I knew I had the woman's rhythm and syntax ingrained in my thinking. I knew I wanted to achieve a poetic effect as well as a dramatic one. The woman's speech was designed to unlock certain mysteries posed earlier in the story. It was also supposed to provoke her nemesis, an interrogator named John Astor, to make a decision and perform the final act of the play. The monologue would have to tell a story from the past—tell it in dramatic terms—and effect another action.

I waited a long time to write that speech. When I was ready I turned on my tape recorder and spoke for about three minutes. As background, you need to know that the woman claims to be a survivor of a disaster that took place almost a century before. John Astor has been interrogating her for six days, trying to get her to confess that she is a fake. The interrogations have taken place in a sterile, white room. But she has not broken down. The only clues John has are (a) that the woman has screamed the first time she heard the name “Astor,” (b) that during her sleep she has been heard to mutter “Take me up, take me up, take me all the way to the Hebrides,” and (c) that she has reacted strangely when she was shown an old ship's photograph of a man standing at the top of a flight of steps. Finally, John breaks down instead, confessing that he is in fact an imposter—not an Astor at all, but simply a lonely man obsessed with the romance and mystery of the great ship. When he confesses to her, the woman speaks:

WOMAN: The first time I saw him was at the Third Class Staircase. Sunday morning worship. Feeling the eyes across the room during the hymn and the admonition. And then the eyes meeting. A hat tipped. An offer of a walk along the deck on a Sunday afternoon. And then a spot of tea. And then supper. And more.

And the questions.

“What do you do before bed, darlin'?”

“I read the bible. And then—sometimes—my ‘Strand.’ But on Sunday, just the bible.”

And you know how they keep us in third class. Men on one end, women on the other. Like we were children, and they who run the ship know better. But you can come from one end to the other. You can come down from high above as well.

And it's dark out. And the sea and the sky and the stars have gone by. And indeed there is the bible. Laid out on the blanket. Across my breast. Unopened. And the “Strand” even farther away.

And the rap on the door then comes. And, yes, a talk would be lovely, although it's not really proper in the room.

“Oh, I am going to work in the household of Mrs. George Haverland Coe of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In-service just like yourself, but I could never claim a position as fancy as you. To be in service to such a fine family, I am very impressed indeed to be sure.”

And then more talk. And laughter, very hushed and silent.

And then the question. And the question again. And again. And then an answer.

And the bible is placed aside near the “Strand.”

And then, in the dark, in the silence, in the murmur of the machines in the heart of the ship, a finger draws along the side … and wakes.

“It's the ghost of your aunt, Mrs. James, wagging a finger at her naughty niece.”

And I laugh. And we go on.

And then there is another knock on the door. And voices in the passageway.

“We should go up and see …”

“No, darlin', not yet.”

“We should go up and see what it is …”

“No, not yet. A little longer, darlin'. A little longer.”

But I want to see what it is, and I look out the porthole.

And it is a sea of ice, mountains of ice going by, so beautiful in such a calm, black sea. We've stopped, and we can look out at this beautiful field of ice.

“Let's go up,” I say. “Let's go up and see.”

But we don't.

“Listen to me, darlin'. I must go up to the master, or there'll be hell to pay. But I'll come back. You wait under the covers, and when I come back I'll take you up to see the ice. I know a way to get up to the First Class Promenade Deck where we can see, and no one will know. I know a way up through a central passageway, a passageway that runs all the way through the length of the ship, from bow to stern.

“The officers call it ‘Park Lane.’

“The crew calls it ‘Scotland Road.’

“We'll go up, we'll go up all the way on ‘Scotland Road.’

“And I'll show you the ice, I'll show you the mountains of ice. I'll take you up ‘Scotland Road.’ ”

“Take me up. Take me up. Take me all the way to the Hebrides.”

He was so beautiful. My handsome valet to the Astors.

He never came back.

The monologue answers a lot of the play's mysteries and dramatic questions:

• How the woman came to be on the ship.

• Who the man in the photograph was.

• What the connection is with the Astors.

• Why the woman didn't get off the ship.

• How she died.

• And what the title of the play, “Scotland Road,” refers to (it was never mentioned earlier in the play).

John is silent during this speech. He would never dream of interrupting her. Nor would the audience.

TECHNICAL TIPS

There are many different ways of “writing” dialogue, some of which have nothing to do with pens, pencils or keyboards. The playwright August Wilson has said that he doesn't so much “write” his characters as “listen” to them. If the author of Fences and The Piano Lesson is right—that dramatic characters speak to their creators—it's important for us to get their quotes right. Sometimes your fingers can keep up with the speed of their dictation—at the keyboard, at the legal pad—and sometimes they can't. In those cases, you can just talk.

I don't think one word of Neddy came from my brain straight to the typewriter. The legal pad was always an intermediary. But so was a tape recorder, a pocket-sized one I carried with me. Like a lot of writers I used to carry a notebook to jot down overheard dialogue, scraps of the world around me. But I can never find my pens, so I bought the tape recorder and started mumbling into it. I found that dictation was useful to me and still is, even in the computer age. For Neddy, I often dictated whole speeches, sometimes a whole scene into the tape recorder. That often facilitated the flow I needed, the stream of consciousness. This isn't to say I didn't rewrite these speeches or scenes later; I did. But sometimes your own voice can take you into the character or the scene in a completely unfiltered way. And so I used the tape recorder to help engender that flow. Much of the dialogue and all of the monologues I dictated stayed in the play. I can't recommend this for everyone, but it has its uses, especially for monologues.

ONSTAGE EXPERIENCE AS AN ACTOR

Every playwright should try her hand at acting, even if it's just in a sit-down reading of a script. Act in old plays (Shaw, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Williams), act in contemporary plays (Guare, Norman, Churchill, Albee, Mamet, Wasserstein, Durang), and act in brand-new plays that aren't finished yet (fill in your own names here). You'll learn a lot. You'll learn what it's like to get through an overwritten speech or a badly shaped joke. What it's like to read dialogue that doesn't move action. What it's like to say words that don't seem to come from the character who's speaking them. And if you're fortunate, you'll occasionally get to read dialogue that works.

EXERCISES

1. No dialogue please, we're dramatists.

Some of the most famous dramatic scenes have little or no dialogue: Nora's exit in A Doll's House; the final duels in many of Shakespeare's tragedies; the “blinding” of the horses in Equus; the ritual hari-kari suicide of Gallimard in M. Butterfly; the nursing of the dying man at the end of The Grapes of Wrath.

In one to two pages, write a scene with one, two or more characters involving tension, conflict, character-based action and suspense in which no dialogue is spoken.

2. What you don't say.

Subtext concerns the meaning and relationships that lie under dialogue or action. In one to three pages, write a scene in which two characters express love for each other. They will never say the words “I love you.” They will never refer to their own feelings for each other. But it is vital that the audience understand that these feelings exist. Choose an action the characters have just performed, are performing, or are about to perform. Note: You may add a third character if you would like.

3. Do the same exercise. But this time change the word “love” to “hate.”

4. Subtext and juxtaposition.

Many scenes only begin to make dramatic sense in context, when their actions are juxtaposed against the other scenes and actions. Harold Pinter is a master of juxtaposition; see “Betrayal.”

Take this example:

Scene One: A man and a woman meet over a breakfast table. The man says, “I'll see you at seven tonight.”

Scene Two: The woman with another man. She says to him, “He'll be home at seven.”

What is happening? What's going to happen? What's the subtext?

Scene Three: The woman and the second man wait in a darkened dining room. The first man enters. Lights go on. A crowd of people emerge from the kitchen with a cake. They shout “Surprise!” It's a birthday party.

But what if Scene Three ended differently? A darkened room. The first man enters. A gun goes off. The lights are turned on. The first man lies dead. The second man holds a gun. Now it's a murder plot.

In each case, the meaning of the second scene subtext has been changed by what is learned in the following scene, juxtaposed against it.

In three scenes of no more than one page each, show how the dramatic, subtextual meaning of the second scene is altered by the information/action revealed in the third scene. Then write an alternative third scene, so that meaning is changed again.