Lesson 7 Reflections and Notes.
December 10, 2006
Reflections.
Weeks 7.
Today for lesson, we had a test first and than we had a normal class. The test was short and sweet, the kind I like. By the end of lesson, I began to ask myself, “ How do you make a story believable?” and this was inspired from the true or false assignment that we had to do for this weeks lesson. Now, I’m not just saying this to show I was able to reflect from class, but it was a serious question that kept ringing in my mind. A person could write a story that is true yet it may seem unbelievable and vice-versa but I guess it takes someone skilled to write something that is not true yet make it believable.
I thought about it and it would actually be pretty easy to make a fake story believable if it contained simple happenings that could actually happen in everyday life to anyone, but how do you write about something that is somewhat out of this world or seemingly outrageous or totally out of the norm and yet make the reader believe it? If I wrote a story about me marrying a penguin, for example (a bad one I know), how could I make it sound believable? I guess there’s a line that divides what may actually be believable and what really can never be made to sound believable. How about including believable characters in unbelievable stories? Does that make sense? Are fictional stories with very believable characters better to read than outrageously out of this world characters? Am I making any sense, help me out here Monsieur Ryan.
Notes.
Functions of dialogue.
-To express characters personalities.
-Communicates emotions
-tells of past or future event
-reveals new information,twists to the audience
-Express culture
Elements of dialogue.
Dialogue reveals character
- A character talks about himself or herself
-other people talk about 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.
Dialogue communicates faces and information to the audience.
-It conveys essential exposition
-characters will talk about what happened establishing the story line.
Note: It is plot based information that should be given to your audience.
Dialogue ties the script together.
BAD THINGS about dialogue!
- Tell to much
-tell everything instead of showing
-corny dialogue!
TIPS!
-use dialogue sparingly
-never telling the aduience what they can see for themselves
-Dialogue is no substitue for action
- Dialogue should match conventional speaking, “real talking”.
- Never tell to much.
help from Monseiur Ryan:
Woody Allen once adapted the self-help manual “Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Sex…but Were Afraid to Ask.” It’s a strange choice because there’s no plot in the book. It’s basically 350 pages of questions and answers about sex. But Woody Allen does it in this bizarre comedic way.
One of the questions is, “How dangerous can extra-marital affairs be?” So Allen turns it into a short film about a veternarian who falls in love with one of his patients, a goat.
I don’t know why that came to mind, but when you mentioned marrying a penguin it’s what popped into my head.
Where am I going with this? I believe the realistic nature of the characters is generally less important than the tone of the film. If the tone if true to itself and to the audience, we’ll believe any characters. Why do we have no trouble believing in elves in LOTR? What about witches in Potter? Within the world of the story, anything is possible.