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195 pages

English

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The long-awaited follow-up to the perennially bestselling writers' guide STORY, from the most sought-after expert in the art of storytelling. Robert McKee's popular writing workshops have earned him an international reputation. The list of alumni with Oscars runs off the page. The cornerstone of his programme is his singular book, STORY, which has defined how we talk about the art of story creation. Now, in DIALOGUE, McKee offers the same in-depth analysis for how characters speak on the screen, on the stage and on the page in believable and engaging ways. From Macbeth to Breaking Bad, McKee deconstructs key scenes to illustrate the strategies and techniques of dialogue. DIALOGUE applies a framework of incisive thinking to instruct the prospective writer on how to craft artful, impactful speech.

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Publié par	Methuen
Date de parution	04 novembre 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780413778352
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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DIALOGUE
Also by Robert McKee
Film Works (BBC Press)
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (Methuen)
with Thomas Gerace
Storynomics – Story-Driven Marketing in the Post-Advertising World (Methuen)
DIALOGUE
The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage and Screen
ROBERT McKEE
METHUEN
DIALOGUE First published in Great Britain by Methuen in 2016 First published in ebook format by Methuen in 2021
1
Methuen Orchard House, Railway Street Slingsby, York YO62 4AN
Copyright © 2016, 2021 by Robert McKee
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Methuen & Co. Ltd. Reg. No. 05278590
All rights reserved Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: (hardback) 978 0 413 77795 9 ISBN: (ebook) 978 0 413 77835 2
Typeset by SX Composing DTP, Rayleigh, Essex Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Produced in the UK by ePub KNOWHOW
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.methuen.co.uk
For Mia When she speaks, my heart listens.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every writer needs a circle of the trusted who will read rough drafts, take insightful notes, and never let friendship blunt criticism. I am indebted to Carol Tambor, Bassim El-Wakil, James McCabe, Joel Bernstein, Paul McKee, Mia Kim, Marcia Friedman, Steven Pressfield, and Patrick McGrath.
CONTENTS
Preface: In Praise of Dialogue
Introduction
PART ONE: THE ART OF DIALOGUE
Chapter One: The Full Definition of Dialogue
Dramatized Dialogue
Narratized Dialogue
Dialogue and the Major Media
Dialogue Onstage
Dialogue Onscreen
Dialogue on Page
Indirect Dialogue
Chapter Two: The Three Functions of Dialogue
Exposition
Characterization
Action
Chapter Three: Expressivity I: Content
The Said
The Unsaid
The Unsayable
Action versus Activity
Text and Subtext
Chapter Four: Expressivity II: Form
The Conflict Complex
Dialogue Onstage
Dialogue in Film
Dialogue on Television
Dialogue in Prose
Chapter Five: Expressivity III: Technique
Figurative Language
Paralanguage
Mixed Techniques
Line Design
Economy
The Pause
The Case for Silence
PART TWO: FLAWS AND FIXES
Introduction: Six Dialogue Tasks
Chapter Six: Credibility Flaws
Incredibility
Empty Talk
Overly Emotive Talk
Overly Knowing Talk
Overly Perceptive Talk
Excuses Mistaken for Motivation
Melodrama
Chapter Seven: Language Flaws
Clichés
Character-Neutral Language
Ostentatious Language
Arid Language
Prefer the Concrete to the Abstract
Prefer the Familiar to the Exotic
Prefer Short Words to Long Words
Prefer Direct Phrases to Circumlocution
Prefer an Active to a Passive Voice
Prefer Short Speeches to Long
Prefer Expressive Language to Mimicry
Eliminate Clutter
Chapter Eight: Content Flaws
Writing On-the-Nose
The Monologue Fallacy
The Duelogue
The Trialogue
Chapter Nine: Design Flaws
Repetition
Misshapen Lines
Misshapen Scenes
Splintered Scenes
The Paraphrasing Trap
PART THREE: CREATING DIALOGUE
Chapter Ten: Character-Specific Dialogue
The Two Talents
Vocabulary and Characterization
The Principle of Creative Limitation
Locution and Characterization
Principle of Character-Specific Dialogue
Culture and Characterization
Chapter Eleven: Four Case Studies
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
Out of Sight
30 ROCK
SIDEWAYS
PART FOUR: DIALOGUE DESIGN
Chapter Twelve: Story/Scene/Dialogue
Inciting Incident
Story Values
The Complex of Desire
Forces of Antagonism
Spine of Action
Story Progression
Turning Points
Scene Progression
The Beat
Five Steps of Behavior
Introduction to Seven Case Studies
Chapter Thirteen: Balanced Conflict (THE SOPRANOS)
Chapter Fourteen: Comic Conflict (FRASIER)
Chapter Fifteen: Asymmetric Conflict ( A Raisin in the Sun )
Chapter Sixteen: Indirect Conflict ( The Great Gatsby )
Chapter Seventeen: Reflexive Conflict ( Fräulein Else and The Museum of Innocence )
Chapter Eighteen: Minimal Conflict (LOST IN TRANSLATION)
Chapter Nineteen: Mastering the Craft
Notes
Index
About the Author
PREFACE: IN PRAISE OF DIALOGUE
We talk.
Talk, more than any other trait, expresses our humanity. We whisper to lovers, curse enemies, argue with plumbers, praise the dog, swear on our mother’s grave. Human relationships are in essence long, long talks into, around, through, and out of the entanglements that stress or bless our days. Face-to-face talk between family and friends may go on for decades, while self-to-self talk never ends: A guilt-ridden conscience scolds unconscionable desires, ignorance ridicules wisdom, hope consoles despair, impulse mocks caution, and wit laughs at it all as the inner voices of our best and worst selves argue to our last breath.
Over decades, this downpour of talk can drain words of their meaning, and when meaning erodes, our days shallow out. But what time dilutes, story condenses.
Authors concentrate meaning by first eliminating the banalities, minutia, and repetitious chatter of daily life. They then build their tellings to a crisis of complex, conflicting desires. Under pressure, words fill with connotation and nuance. What a character says in the face of conflict radiates the meanings hidden beneath her words. Expressive dialogue becomes a translucency through which readers and audiences perceive thoughts and feelings shadowed in the silence behind a character’s eyes.
Fine writing turns audiences and readers into virtual psychics. Dramatized dialogue has the power to unite two unspoken realms: the inner life of a character and the inner life of the reader/audience. Like radio transmitters, one subconscious tunes to another as our instincts sense the churnings within characters. As Kenneth Burke put it, stories equip us to live in the world, in intimacy with others, and, most importantly, in intimacy with ourselves.
Authors give us this power through a series of steps: First, they create those metaphors for human nature we call characters. Next, they dig into the characters’ psychologies to unearth conscious wishes and subconscious desires, those longings that impel inner and outer selves. With this insight in hand, writers clash the characters’ most compelling desires into flashpoints of conflict. Scene after scene, they interlace their characters’ actions and reactions around turning points of change. In a last step, authors let their characters speak, but not in the repetitious monotones of the everyday, rather in the demi-poetry known as dialogue. Like an alchemist, a writer mixes and molds concoctions of character, conflict, and change, and then gilds them with dialogue, transforming the base metal of existence into the burnished gold of story.
Once spoken, dialogue carries us on waves of sensation and substance that reverberate through the said to the unsaid and the unsayable. The said are those ideas and emotions a character chooses to express to others; the unsaid are those thoughts and feelings a character expresses in an inner voice but only to himself; the unsayable are those subconscious urges and desires a character cannot express in words, even to himself, because they are mute and beyond awareness.
No matter how lavish a play’s production, how vivid a novel’s descriptions, how lush a film’s photography, character talk shapes the deepest complexities, ironies, and innerness of story. Without expressive dialogue, events lack depth, characters lose dimension, and story flattens. More than any other technique of characterization (gender, age, dress, class, casting), dialogue has the power to pull a story up through life’s multilayered strata, thus lifting a merely complicated telling into the full array of complexity.
Do you, like me, memorize favorite lines? I think we learn dialogue passages by heart because reciting them again and again not only re-inspires the vivid word-pictures they paint, but in the echoes of the character’s thoughts we hear our own:
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.
—Macbeth in The Tragedy of Macbeth
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she walks into mine.
—Rick in CASABLANCA
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.
—Ahab in Moby Dick
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
—Jerry in SEINFELD
Like these four characters, each of us has suffered the scald of irony, that flash of insight into what the world has done to us, or worst yet, what we have done to ourselves, that double-edged moment when life’s joke is on us and we don’t know whether to grin or groan. But without writers to marinate these ironies in words, how could we savor their delicious distaste? Without the mnemonics of dialogue, how could we hold these paradoxes in memory?
I love the art of dialogue in all its variety. Moved by that amity, I have written Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action on Page, Stage, Screen to explore the crowning act of story-making: giving voice to your characters.
INTRODUCTION
Part One : The Art of Dialogue radically expands the definition of