Functions of Dialogue (class contribution)

• Convey message of the story
• Explore the character’s emotions
• Explore the character’s personality
• Creates moods
• Shows the relationship between the characters who are engaged in the dialogue
• Make the film more interesting

 Functions of a Dialogue (Ryan’s slide)

• Dialogue reveals character
  • Character talks about themselves
  • Other people talk about that character
• Dialogue establishes relationships between characters
  • Characters express attitudes and opinions that are in opposition to one another
• Good effective dialogue will move the story forward, sort of adds a momentum; if a dialogue helps to control the story, then its good
  • It conveys essential exposition
    • Exposition: information to the audience
  • Characters will talk about what happened, establishing the story line
• Dialogue ties the script together, another way in which it can make the film more interesting
• BAD DIALOGUE?
  • Characters expressing exactly how they feel when they speak
  • Sentences with ambiguous meanings
  • One-person dialogue
  • No-point kind of dialogue
  • Having too much conflict/drama. Not too realistic
  • Too real: then it’s just too boring.
  • Therefore, you would want to write a realistic dialogue
• Common mistakes:
  • Dialogue should be used sparingly, never telling the audience what they can see for itself
    • Dialogue is no substitute for action

• Screenwriter = Storyteller
  • The cinematic experience is not just made up of words you might put on paper, but the audiences’ emotional reaction to that information (what the audience is going to think when they have had that experience)
• Connections, connections!
  • Directior to people
  • Writer to people
  • Camera to people
    • Ultimately, the connection is from people to people. (not a job to the people)
    • So, all we need to do is connect
• What is the writer’s purpose?
  • To connect:
    • Themselves
    • Their unique vision
    •  The material
    • The drama (emotions, relationships, conflict)
    • Others
  • Audience wants to be transported by a screenplay
• Where do you look for a story?
  • Inside yourself (personal experiences; memories; things like that)
  • Everything you learn about other people that is already inside you
  • Now you need to figure how to connect to it
• LAST STORYTELLING TOOL: EXPERIENCE
  • Difference between memory and experience:
    • Memory: may not learn from it; Experience: learn from it
    • Are memories true?
      • May or may not be true because different people have different memories of the same experience
      • You choose what memory you want to remember
    • Memories filter through your reality; Experience actually happened
  • Everyone have fragments of stories
  • These potential ideas prompt your desire to know more
  • Respond emotionally and intellectually to what you heard
  • Good stories are born in the heart, not the head
  • When you just let it flow, it comes to you easily
  • Remember the role of an audience
  • After all, the audience is YOU (is this what I want to read? is this what I want to hear about?)

Character:

• Every story starts with a character (a character can make up for weak plot)
• It is the heart, sould and nervous system of your story
• Heart: provides emotions (it is through the characters that the viewers experience emotions)
• No Character = No Action = No Conflict = No Story = No Screenplay

Developing Character:

• Who is my character?
• What does he want? (This is the goal)
• What is her quest? (Things obstructing her from reaching her goal)
• What drives him to the resolution of the story? (Why is the goal important to the character?)

3 Dimensional Character:

1) Physiology

• Sex
• Age
• Height/Weight
• Hair/Eye/Skin Colour
• Posture
• Appearance
• Defects/Abnormalities/Deformities/Birth Marks/Diseases
• Heredity

2) Sociology

• Class
• Occupation
• Education
• Home Life
• Religion
• Race/Nationality
• Place in Community
• Political Affiliations
• Amusements

3) Psychology

• Sex Life/Moral Standards
• Personal Premise, Ambitions
• Frustrations, Chief Disappointments
• Temperament
• Attitude towards life
• Complexes
• Personalities
• Abilities
• Qualities
• IQ
• Skeletons in his closet

Interior Component of Life:

1. Takes place from birth until the moment the film begins
2. It is the process that forms the character

Exterior Component of Life:

1. Takes place from the moment the film begins until the film ends
2. It is the process that reveals the character

*You must create your character in relationship with other things or people so that they can interact in three ways:

1. So that they experience conflict in achieving their dramatic need
2. They interact with other characters
3. They interact with themselves

Storytelling tool 2: Memory

• Memory is a wonderful cabinet of past experiences which you had experienced or had been told
• These experiences are points of references to your own past
• “WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW” – its easier to write because you know what it is and the emotions felt makes it more real.
• “WRITE WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW” – blending it with what you know will make the story more interesting

WHEN AND WHERE WHERE DID HE LIVE?

• Born 384-322BCE (b4 common era), Stagira in North Greece

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF GREEK TRAGEDY?

• Imitation of action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude. In language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play, in the form of action not of narrative, with incidents arousing pity and fear wherewith to accomplish its katharsis of such emotions, every tragedy must have six parts: Plot, characters, diction, thought, spectacle, melody.

6 REQUIRED PARTS OF A TRAGEDY:

1) PLOT:

• Most important feature of tragedy

• Defined as “the arrangement of the incidents”

2) CHARACTER:

• Supports the plot

• Must be able to evoke pity and fear in the audience

3) THOUGHT:

• Found “where something is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is enunciated”

• Includes ‘themes’ of a play

4) DICTION:

• “expression of the meaning in words” which are proper and appropriate to the plot, characters and end of the tragedy

5) SONG OR MELODY:

• The musical element of the chorus

• Aristotle argues that the Chorus should be fully integrated into the play like an actor

• Should contribute to the unity of the plot

6) SPECTACLE:

• The production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet

CAUSE-AND-EFFECT CHAIN:

• Relates what may happen – what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity

THREE ACT STRUCTURE:

• Beginning – incentive moment, must start the cause-and-effect chain

• The middle, or climax, must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow it

• The end, or resolution, must be caused by the preceding events but not lead to other incidents outside the compass of the play.

EPISODIC PLOTS AND ARISTOTLE’S PROBLEM WITH THEM:

• Episodic plot:

1) Plot begins near the beginning of the story

2) Shows the audience a series of scenes, actions or episodes that shows various events

According to Aristotle, the worst kinds of plots:

• The acts (episodes) succeed one another without probability or necessity

• The only thing tying together the events in such a plot is the fact that they happen to the same person

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SIMPLE AND COMPLEX PLOT:

• Simple: Straightforward; Complex: Requires recognition

• Simple: EXPECTED; Complex: UNEXPECTED

RESPONSIBILITY OF CHARACTERS IN AN ARISTOTELIAN TRAGEDY:

• Characters:

1. The second most important feature to the tragedy
2. Responsible to support the plot
3. Essential Qualities:
   • Morally fine
   • Suitability to their roles
   • Realistic
   • Consistency of their personality
   • Necessity of having them
   • Should be presented as perfect or at least better than reality
     
   • Personal motives are connected to cause-and effect chain
   • The protagonist in the tragedy should be renowned and prosperous, so his change can be from good to bad
   • Main character brings about his own downfall because of his lack of understanding lof certain things

NEW VOCABULARY:

1) ANAGNORISIS: the moment of recognition

2) PEREPETEIA: when things change from good to bad

3) HAMARTIA: lack of self-knowledge

4) MIMESIS: imitation of the real world in art and literature

5) KATHARSIS: emotional release