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Sample Exercise
This is an exercise Tristine introduced at the Weekend Autobiographic Writers' Retreat, that you won't find in her book, Your Life as Story. Try it as a technique to help you write dialog that expresses character and has the spontaneous quality of natural speech.
PREPARING TO WRITE A DRAMATIC SCENE
WITH DIALOG
The following exercise is an adaptation of one I learned long ago as an actor. When you are writing dialog you are assuming the role of an actor, whether as yourself as a younger age or as another person entirely.
This exercise will put you into an imaginative state conducive to creative surprises. It is important to have a block of uninterrupted time when you do it. Protect yourself from interruption until you have completed a first draft of your scene.
Before you write your scene put yourself into a state of relaxation and then write in your creative journal the Steppingstones of each person in the scene, in order to enter each character's perspective. Begin with your the earliest event you know about the character and continue chronologically until you reach the moment of the scene you are going to write. Only begin writing the scene after you have done the Steppingstones for each character in the scene. I wrote these Steppingstones in preparation for a scene with my best childhood friend, Timmy:
TIMMY'S STEPPINGSTONES
I am eight years old.
Trissy is my best friend.
My mother and father fight.
My mother hates my father.
My father spanks me with a board.
My father is an optometrist.
My father left three weeks ago.
My mother says we have no money now.
My mother sent me to stay with Trissy.
I feel afraid but my father told me boys don't cry.
Trissy's mother is bringing me back to my house now.
I am supposed to get out of the car and be polite and say thank-you, but I am afraid I might cry.
MY STEPPINGSTONES
I am the exact same age as Timmy.
I love him and he is my best friend.
Our parents are best friends.
Timmy and I have secrets we share with no one else.
I think some day we will marry.
I am angry at him because when we camped out in my backyard in the tent, he went to the bathroom in the house, after I had pooped in the garden, and he ruined the make-believe.
He hasn't been very much fun this week.
My mother isn't telling me what is going on and I don't like it.
The lists are like chants to pull you into the life path of each speaker. For many writers they would be sufficient to jump start writing the scene, but there is another actor's exercise which I like to add to the speaker's life histories, their Immediate Circumstances. By becoming mindful of what each person sees, smells, feels, and expects, you bring a specificity and reality to your scene writing. To the lists above I added:
TIMMY'S IMMEDIATE CIRCUMSTANCES:
I am sitting in the back seat of Marie's Mercury.
I don't know who is home at my house.
It is late afternoon.
It is the end of summer, only weeks before school starts again.
If all of this were so, what would I want, what would I say, what would I do?
MY IMMEDIATE CIRCUMSTANCES:
I am sitting in the back seat of my mother's Mercury next to Timmy.
We are parked in front of his beautiful white Colonial house.
I wish I lived in a two story house like Timmy's.
I wish I had a train set like his.
I wonder if he didn't like staying at my house.
If all of this were so, what would I want, what would I say, what would I do?
By adding immediate circumstances to each life history list, you enter into the immediate moment of the scene. The questions added at the end: (1) What would I want at this moment?, (2) What would I say?, (3) What would I do? evoke (1) each speaker's motivation for the scene, (2) the dialog he or she would be likely to say, and (3) the gestures, movements and body language each person might use.
Here is the scene that came out of my preparations. Notice that very little of what is contained in my lists ended up in the scene, except as subtext:
"You're lucky, you're rich," I said. At age eight I'd become aware of such things.
"We're not rich."
"Oh no? Look at your house compared to mine."
"We're not rich anymore. We're so poor now we have to eat dogfood."
"I don't believe you." I wasn't going to give Timmy the satisfaction of pulling my leg.
"You can come look in the pantry yourself. My mom says it's all we can afford since Tilford went."
I'd never heard Timmy call his father "Tilford" instead of "Dad" before. My mother had said Timmy was allowed to stay two entire weeks with us because his parents were separating for awhile, though during the whole time Timmy had barely mentioned them. Perhaps more was going on than anyone was telling me, but I still thought Timmy was exaggerating.
"O.K., if you really eat dogfood, what does it taste like?" I asked.
"Hash."
"Do you cook it like hash?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes we eat it on sandwiches."
"Then you have bread. Why don't you just eat the bread?"
Timmy shoved his shoulder against the car door to get out. I saw his fists were clenched as he ran towards his teenaged sister who was coming out the front door of the house.
The next dialog scene I wrote in this autobiographic story jumps forward in time eight years. Rather than rewriting the Steppingstone lists for myself and Timmy, I reread what I had done in preparation for the first scene and added items to bring myself into the point of view and voice of each of us at age sixteen:
TIMMY AT SIXTEEN
If my mother shot and killed my father
If my mother was tried for murder
If my mother got off on appeal because she said she shot him in self-defense
If we moved into an apartment and never saw anyone from our old life
If my mother has told me not to talk about what happened
If I am sixteen years old
If I am always polite
If I go to Notre Dame
If I did not know I would see Tristine when I volunteered to be in the play at Immaculate Heart
If I understand how she feels that her father did not come to see her in the play
If I want to make her feel better
If I am going to be a priest
If we are sitting in the high school parking lot in the front seat of her Chevy
What would I want, what would I say, what would I do?
ME AT SIXTEEN
If my parents argued over Tilford's death
If my mother took Pat's side and if my father took Tilford's
If my father divorced my mother
If I argue with my mother and I think she is too strict
If I love my high school
If I was the lead in the school play and Timmy was my boyfriend in it
If I still love him
If we are sitting in my Chevy
What would I want, what would I say, what would I do?
Out of these preparations I wrote the following dialog:
... I waited for Timmy to make his move. His arm lay casually over the top of the front seat. But he didn't move. Finally, I asked,
"Don't you want to kiss me?"
"Well, I do, but I shouldn't, because I'm going to be a priest."
I did not take it as a personal rejection. I took it as a challenge. With patience I could show him that there were different kinds of women in the world, loving women, women who didn't believe in marriage, either. In time he would begin to trust again, to trust me.
"Is that what you really want, or what you think you should do?"
"I want it. It's all arranged for me to go into the seminary when I graduate."
"What a waste." That made him smile. I thought he looked tempted. "You know you should enjoy your freedom now, because you won't be able to later."
"That's not the way I look at it."
"Are you afraid it would be a sin if you kissed me?"
"No, but it would be saying I'm not serious about my vocation. And I am."
"You have a calling?"
"Yes."
"When did you get it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well I never got a calling. Did you get a vision?"
You just know."
The stubborn note had entered his voice; I decided to change the subject. "Sister Eulalia told us in Morals it's not a mortal sin to kiss a boy unless you use tongues. Is that what they tell you at Notre Dame?"
"They say it's still a venial sin."
"I don't care about venial sins."
"A sin is a sin."
"But she also said kissing isn't a sin at all if you don't get excited." I got excited saying that, and my voice softened like vanilla pudding. "We could kiss without feeling anything."
He blushed, "I don't think I could do that."
Did that mean he was so attracted to me that he couldn't kiss me without getting excited?
He seemed to be thinking deeply, staring straight ahead. I realized I might not be able to change him and that meant I would lose him again. Amazed at my own daring, I leaned over. My nose touched his cheek bone as my lips felt a light stubble. I pulled back and waited as he continued to stare ahead, lost in his own thoughts, perhaps in silent prayer. I was praying, too, please, please, let him kiss me back. Finally, he turned to me and put his hand on the place where my lips had been. "Thank-you."
It is worth saving your Steppingstone Lists. Instead of redoing the entire list you can simply add items to bring your characters into the moment of the subsequent scene.
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