The greatest lesson film can teach us as playwrights is how to write with economy. How to say the least while conveying the most. What filmmakers know instinctively is the inverse correlation between words and tension:
SUBTEXT. It’s all the things you need not “say.”
It seems antithetical to our “jobs” as playwrights. After all, we have things to say. We have a message. We have grievances. We want to get it on the page and out into the world. But without clean, concise, purposeful dialogue, much of that gets lost.
And when you really stop and think about it, some of the most interesting things your characters need to tell us are better said with silence. In fact, in the absence of noise, their interior worlds become even more vivid—more resonant—somehow. Think of a stolen glance. A forbidden gesture. The warmth of shared humanity… as in this video clip from Remains of the Day. Notice how the words fall away…
Everything we love about film—a story told through images—the way we can feel the character’s ache… there’s more craft than alchemy at play in those moments. We come away from the scene thinking, I don’t know much about housekeeping or running a country estate, but I know that look in his eyes…
PRACTICE EXERCISE:
Pick a page in your manuscript. Read it.
Now close your eyes and point to a line. Open your eyes, and cut that line entirely… make a mental note of how the moment reads without the omitted line.
Remove the last few words of a line and/or change a period to ellipses… leave it hanging.
Remove a character’s reply to a question… answer with a non-verbal instead. Use beats as a proxy.
Reduce a line by 50%.
Find ways you’re repeating yourself; trim.
Now read the page again. Do you notice more tension? If so, you’re on the right track.
Reduce. Reduce. Reduce.
Make ruthless distillation part of your everyday writing practice. Your actors will thank you. Your audience will thank you. You can find “ruthless distillation” along with my other “words for things” here: 52 Vocabulary Words for Playwrights
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Audrey Cefaly's plays (Alabaster, Maytag Virgin, The Gulf, The Last Wide Open, Trouble) have garnered the Lammy Award, the Calicchio Prize, the NNPN Goldman Prize, the Edgerton, and a Pulitzer nomination. Her works have been produced at Signature Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Barter Theatre, Merrimack Rep, Florida Studio, Florida Rep, Gulfshore Playhouse, and countless others. Cefaly is a Dramatist Guild Foundation "Traveling Master," an Arena Stage playwright cohort, and a recipient of the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. She is published by Concord Theatricals, Applause Books, Smith & Kraus and TRW
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