EPISODE DESCRIPTION:
This episode presents the final point in a series of ten essential principles of good dialogue.
#10: Good Dialogue reflects an appropriate level of familiarity between characters.
This principle rests on the concept of high context versus low context communication.
- LOW CONTEXT DIALOGUE exists whenever people have a LACK of shared history, knowledge, or familiarity with each other. Examples: A first date, a doctor's appointment, a tour guide, etc.
- HIGH CONTEXT DIALOGUE exists whenever people have a GREAT DEAL of shared history, knowledge, expertise or familiarity with each other. Examples: Husband's and wives; best friends; experts in a shared field, such as doctors, lawyers, or cops, etc.
The writer's job is to make sure that characters in a scene speak to each other in a way that accurately reflects the status of their relationship, but this rule is often violated because writers are trying to communicate exposition to their readers through these exchanges.
UP NEXT
Writers need to be careful not to let their low context relationship with the audience lead them to write low context dialogue for characters who are in a high context relationship. For tools on how to effectively communicate exposition to the audience WITHOUT violating this essential principle, join us next week as we launch into part 2 of this series on dialogue, where we will explore ten great tools to help you write great dialogue.
Also, check out our new website here: https://www.thestorytellersmission.com
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Ep. 34 Transcript_Dialogue Essential #10
Wed, 10/21 10:21PM • 14:30
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
context, characters, dialogue, high, bosch, shorthand, familiarity, rosie o'donnell, talking, seattle, speaking, subtext, speak, shared, relationship, means, audience, meg ryan, prague, writer
SPEAKERS
Zena Dell Lowe
Zena Dell Lowe 00:05
INTRO: Hello, and welcome to The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story.
Zena Dell Lowe 00:16
PRESENTATION: Last week, we addressed principles number eight and nine in a series about how to write great dialogue. Today, we're going to address the final principle. So let's dive right in.
Zena Dell Lowe 00:31
Principle #10. The final essential principle of good dialogue is that the dialogue expresses appropriate familiarity between the two characters.
Zena Dell Lowe 00:45
Now, what on earth do I mean by that? What I'm talking about here is this concept of low context versus high context dialogue exchanges between your characters. And the best way to explain this concept is to tell you a little joke.
Zena Dell Lowe 01:03
So, there's a comedian convention, and all the comedians are there. And since they all know the jokes, they just stand up and say a number. So, one comedian stands up and looks around at his audience and he says, "Number 12," and everybody laughs. And then another comedian stands up and looks around he says, "Number 371." And everybody laughs. And then a new comedian stands up and says, "Number 72." And it's crickets. And he sits down and says, "Damn, I never could tell that one right."
Zena Dell Lowe 01:42
Now, this is a joke based on the concept of high context communication, which was developed by a guy named Edward T. Hall, and which is talked about in Jeffrey Sweets book, The Dramatists Toolkit. Now Edward T. Hall is an anthropologist and an author who wrote a series of books about how people communicate besides through literal dialogue. He talks about body language and micro expressions and negotiations over space. And one of the things he talks about is high context versus low context language.
Zena Dell Lowe 02:21
Low context language exists when the two people that are talking have a lack of shared knowledge or experience, or they have a lack of familiarity with each other. So they have to explain things to each other. And there are certain types of relationships, which necessitate low context language, like a first date. You don't know each other yet, so you're getting to know each other, so it's low context. Or a doctor's office or a specialist teaching somebody or a tour guide. Like, a tour guide is an expert but their speaking in low context language to the people that they're giving the tour to.
Zena Dell Lowe 03:00
However, high context dialogue exists when the people in question have a great deal of shared history or shared knowledge in a certain field, or a shared background, or some area that they're dealing with. Maybe they're both detectives looking for the same serial killer, or something like that. Or think about Fitz Gibbons in Agents of SHIELD. They both have this great knowledge of science and fringe science, as well, and so they speak shorthand with each other. They interact in shorthand. That is high context dialogue. So this could be any interaction between experts in a shared field; lawyers, philosophers, cops. Now, we've seen this be expressed in certain movies. In fact, in some usages, it's become kind of cliche.
Zena Dell Lowe 03:53
For example, I was recently watching the new Charlize Theron movie, The Old Guard, on Netflix. It's terrible, in my humble opinion. But one of the reasons that it's terrible is because it employs an old cliche, now, that rests on this idea of high context dialogue. So you have this crew that has been working together for years to combat evil. So what do they do in the climax of the piece? Well, they're trying to figure out their approach to attack the bad guys and one of them says something to the effect of, "Prague, 1972," and, of course, everybody has that shared knowledge, they remember what happened in Prague in 1972, and so they're all in the know about how they're going to approach this. Well, that's way overdone now. It's cliche. But it IS an example of high context dialogue.
Zena Dell Lowe 04:46
I also mentioned that they can have a common background, and that makes it possible for them to speak in high context dialogue. So an example, in one of the seasons of Bosch there's a serial killer, and Bosch can't seem to get ahead of the guy -- until he starts listening to a recording that was taken of the guy when he was being transported by the police. And in that recording the guy says something out loud about... what did he say.... He said something about going into the closet.... I can't remember the guy's exact words, but it was something about going into the closet. And Bosch suddenly zeroes in on that phrase because he realizes that the guy grew up in the same boy's home that Bosch did. And that's how he breaks the case. That's how he's able to identify the bad guy.
Zena Dell Lowe 05:43
Now, the reason that it's important for you to understand the difference between high context and low context dialogue is because when low context exists, the audience infers a lack of intimacy or familiarity between the characters. So, if you have husbands and wives speaking in a low context dialogue exchange, it doesn't ring true. Or, if they do speak that way, we either assume that they're newlyweds or they've had an arranged marriage or something, because otherwise they would speak in high context dialogue. Unfortunately, so many times when I get scripts or novels to review, the husbands and wives are speaking to each other in this very stilted, very awkward language that they wouldn't, because husbands and wives speak to each other in shorthand. They have a great deal of shared history, and knowledge or background in the area of their marriage and with each other, so they don't need to explicitly say things. They speak in shorthand. So you want to make sure that your characters are speaking with the appropriate level of familiarity that they would have with each other.
Zena Dell Lowe 07:06
Now, again, you are familiar with this concept, because we have also seen films where the characters are familiar with things that they shouldn't be, and it's what gives them away. I mean, one of the most classic examples of all is godfather. Right? Godfather 2. "I know it was you, Fredo," because Fredo was talking about something in a familiar way that gives away that he's the one who did it. So we've all seen this. I'm thinking of Minority Report in the scene where Tom Cruise's wife goes to the bad guy, doesn't know that he's the bad guy, and says something about how Tom Cruise has been incarcerated unfairly, it's wrong, he was onto something. And then the bad guy says something about, "Well, I'll look into this particular thing." And she says, "Wait a minute. I never said that." And she knows immediately that he's the bad guy. And this is the whole premise of LA Confidential. The whole reason why the bad guy gets exposed in that film is because he has information he's not supposed to have. So we've seen this happen on the reverse side of it. The key, though, is for you, the writer, to be intentional about what your characters are saying. When we've seen this happen, it was deliberately crafted that way to give the characters away. What's bad is if you have characters speaking this way, but you, the writer, aren't doing it on purpose for the purposes of story. You're accidentally having characters that are supposed to be in a high context relationship speaking in a low context way or vice versa. So what you have to do: you want to be careful that your low context relationship with your audience does not lead you to write low context dialogue for your characters, who should be in a high context relationship.
Zena Dell Lowe 09:05
And this is terribly difficult, especially for new writers, because they want to use those conversations to get out important story information and exposition to the audience. So they have characters saying stuff to each other that they wouldn't need to say. It's only for the audience's benefit. However, I am going to teach you tools that you can use to actually accomplish that goal, rather than violating one of the essential principles of good dialogue, which is to have characters speaking at an appropriate level of familiarity with each other.
Zena Dell Lowe 09:48
And by the way, this is one of the key ways that you can actually accomplish the goal of subtext, of having your characters speak with subtext, because since characters are speaking in a high context dialogue exchange, it can be loaded. What do I mean by that? Well, here's an example. There's a great scene in the film Sleepless in Seattle that exemplifies this very thing. Rosie O'Donnell plays the best friend of Meg Ryan. Meg Ryan has heard Tom Hanks and his son speaking on this radio show, and she's become obsessed or fascinated by this person and she thinks that maybe he's the one. Now, Meg Ryan plays a reporter of some kind, and Rosie O'Donnell is apparently her editor or her boss. And so Meg Ryan wants to fly out to Seattle under the auspices of this radio show getting all of these huge reviews and call ins all over the city and she should report on it. So she steps into Rosie's office and says something to the effect of, "I was thinking. Given what a hit this radio show is and how many callers this radio show got based on this particular person, that maybe more research needs to be done to check into this particular person." And Rosie O'Donnell responds, "Whoever's reporting on this story would probably need to fly to Seattle," and Meg Ryan responds, "I was thinking the same thing." Now, we the audience are in the know that this is a fabricated excuse for Meg Ryan to be able to go to Seattle. So the whole exchange that they have in Rosie O'Donnell's office is high context because of their shared relationship, their best friend status (Rosie O'Donnell knows everything about how Meg Ryan is feeling about this guy named Sam Baldwin), but it's also the editor and reporter high context relationship. Everything about it is subtextual and high context. It's a great example of how you can do both.
Zena Dell Lowe 11:57
RECAP: So to recap, then, you want to include subtext. You don't want to be on the nose. On the nose means you're writing it as plain as the nose on your face. Because subtext is what's underneath the text. In other words, your characters speak to each other in a way that is loaded. They say one thing, but they mean something else. And what is said is not as important as what is meant.
Zena Dell Lowe 12:27
And one of the best ways to get subtext is through the use of high context versus low context language. Good dialogue means that your characters are speaking to each other with familiarity that is appropriate for their relationship. They're either in a high context relationship, which means that they speak shorthand with each other, or they're in a low context relationship, which means they're strangers. And you need to make sure that they speak appropriately given the context. I hope that this has been helpful for you, and that you've enjoyed these 10 essential principles of good dialogue in story. Starting next week we will dive into some tools that you can use to accomplish what every writer wants to accomplish. And we'll start breaking those down for you.
Zena Dell Lowe 13:21
ANNOUNCEMENTS: Also, at long last, I am delighted to announce that I have transcripts available for download. Now, not all of the episodes are up yet, but the first six episodes are up and the last eight episodes, including this one, are available for download on my Buzzsprout site. And in addition to that, our new website, The Storyteller's Mission.com, is almost finished, which means you'll be able to download transcripts there, as well. In fact, I want to encourage you to just check us out right now. Go to https://www.thestorytellersmission.com and you can check out our new site and sign up for our mailing list, and you will be notified the moment that all of those transcripts are finally available for download on the site.
Zena Dell Lowe 14:13
OUTRO: Until then, you have been listening to The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.