Real Life Dialogue

Do you ever hear people talking and suddenly hear a great naturalistic line that you would have never thought up?

I was at an ATM the other day when I overheard these two old men greeting each other. The start of their conversation was so simple and understated. I decided then that I must steal it and use it as an intro for a sketch one day.

I may have to start eavesdropping even more.

Alan Bennett gets some of his best stuff the same way. I think I read he carries a notebook especially for the purpose.

You'd be terrified to talk to him.

"He's mental, he is mental, he needs to get down the mental hospital 'cos he's mental,"

"He's a dirty bastard, he has the kids visit him just so he can wank the Doberman off in front of them,"

I wander if these conversations refer to the same man, as I heard them both in Croydon.

They have a great section on this in the Saturday Guardian.

"A's so far up B's arse he can see C's feet."

I once sat in the tube opposite a little girl and her mum.
When the next station was announced ("Next stop: Steinstraße."), the girl shook her head and said indignantly "Steinstraße! You don't say that!". The mother tried to convince her that there was nothing rude about the word "Steinstraße", but to no avail.

It was so surreal, I have since thought about using it somehow, but it is a bit subtle. (Very 'Outnumbered', though.)

Malapropisms on the train are my favourites. I always carry a notebook. The ones that are a few degrees away from being correct really add colour to dialogue. I think my all time exchange was:

"Well, I did want to encroach on the subject."
"Go on, splurt it out."

I find sometimes it can work to transpose that kind of dialogue but more often than not it doesn't. Films/comedies/sketches - they're not like real life. No one wants to hear conversations like this outside of reality:

MARK:
Get up to much on the weekend?

BILL:
Er, let me think - God, I know I did something, er, oh right, I went down the pub with Danny.

MARK:
Danny? How's he doing?

BILL:
You know Danny.

MARK:
Right.

LONG PAUSE.

BILL:
How's Jill?

MARK:
Jill's good.

You were listening on me were you Bussell, are you stalking me?

That said, I was in Canterbury the other weekend and I heard this snippet of dialogue:

MOTHER:
Are you hungry?

KID:
Dunno.

MOTHER:
I've got a chicken nugget in my purse if you're hungry.

Poetry.

Three lines and we know exactly who the characters are.

Quote: David Bussell @ September 4 2008, 10:04 AM BST

I find sometimes it can work to transpose that kind of dialogue but more often than not it doesn't. Films/comedies/sketches - they're not like real life.

View original

I agree with that. Most real life dialogue is a mess, but it does contain some gems.

Art is a mirror that distorts itself to make the distorted world appear normal.

I need a wee.

The art (which I guess means it's an aesthetic perfection that no one will reach) is to maintain the essence of character while using the bare essentials or most concise dialogue.

As David says, no one wants to hear dreary real life ramblings and tautology (unless they're the Slagg Brothers' script editor) as it's tedium and you can get 90 minutes of it for free on all public transport.

Real speech is so littered with tautology (as in Sooty's 'mental' example), gaps, and sidetracks that the art comes in selecting the key moments. For example, when we watch / hear / read fiction (in all forms) we aren't presented wuth the whole totality of what happened, we are presented with the edited highlights, the crucial moments. The scriptwriter's goal is prune (what they see as) the non-essential.

As much as I love Woody Allen, his constant interruptions and stutters sometimes work superbly and sometimes bug the daylights out of me. Husbands and Wives (chaotic camerawork and everyone cutting in, talking over, and stammering) is for me one of his harder films to watch - although it might be argued its his most realistic. But even his stutters and tautology are carefully worked out. Apparently tapes of his standup years reveal almost identical gaps and stammers between venues.

Our job as writers is to present a heavily edited and entertaining fabrication of 'reality' not to replicate it in its mind-numbing banality.

Quote: David Bussell @ September 4 2008, 10:06 AM BST

That said, I was in Canterbury the other weekend and I heard this snippet of dialogue:

MOTHER:
Are you hungry?

KID:
Dunno.

MOTHER:
I've got a chicken nugget in my purse if you're hungry.

View original

That is fab.