Quantum Storytelling

I watched Glengarry Glen Ross again the other day to refresh myself on the dialogue, as its some of the snappiest dialogue from which you could hope to draw an example.

After refilling the dialogue inspiration well, I fired up good old Wikipedia and dialed in David Mamet just to see what they had to say about him, in the hopes maybe they could shed some light on his process for writing snappy banter.

Here are some things they had to say:

“He often uses italics and quotation marks to highlight particular words and to draw attention to his characters’ frequent manipulation and deceitful use of language. His characters frequently interrupt one another, their sentences trail off unfinished, and their dialogue overlaps.”

Colorful and realistic, if perhaps hyperreal. The quick comebacks and witty nature of every character is somewhat superhuman. Where is the much more realistic example of someone being insulted and only thinking of a good response after the situation as passed? Ah, but yes… reality is boring. And we still haven’t learned much, so I perused some more;

“Mamet dedicated Glengarry Glen Ross to Harold Pinter, who was instrumental in its being first staged at the Royal National Theatre, in 1983, and whom Mamet has acknowledged as an influence on its success, and on his other work.”

Ok, so I felt it necessary to fire up Harold Pinter in the search;

“Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution. Pinter’s drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theatre, but has later more aptly been characterised as ‘comedy of menace’, a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations. In a typical Pinter play, we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by entrenching themselves in a reduced and controlled existence. Another principal theme is the volatility and elusiveness of the past.”

To write on the nose dialogue is to have one of your characters say, “I’m angry.” I remember reading about one of the tricks Donald Westlake uses, which is to “write around the emotion without actually stating it.”

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Do you mark progress in finished work, or in your process? I know I’ve brought it up before, but what do you use to measure your improvement?

A few days ago I was waiting for sockets to heal where my wisdom teeth used to be, so I went back to a pile of index cards representing a plot I crafted in in 2006. After surveying the ’story’ (shameful to call it that) I re-plotted it using Jeff Kitchen’s Sequence, Proposition, Plot technique, and made it exponentially better. Direct contrast, old plotting method vs. new plotting method. Light years difference.

“But the story isn’t done, so how does that help? Come on, we want to read something! Publish or die!”

When I started this blog in 2005, I didn’t even really know how to tell stories. 2004 - 2007 were a three year crash course in storytelling for me. Soldiers have to go through boot camp before they get sent out on the battlefield. There is a minimum ramp up period for any skill set or endeavor.

At this point, it would be stupid to measure my progress by the number of pages written. I consider it good fortune and fortitude that I survived churning out an embarassing draft and a half via the good old fashioned method. I consider it a minor bullet point next to the improvements in my process — the things I’ve learned about how to put a story together. I’ve never needed to know how to write. It seems to come quite naturally to me, as I hope this blog is partial evidence.

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I’ve been using 3×5 note cards for a while now. The biggest benefit is being able to distill scenes or ‘beats’ onto individual cards, forcing me to work in manageable chunks and not get distracted by other parts of the story. Note cards are also easy to shuffle.

But there is one downside that I’ve been fighting; Note cards require a lot of space to lay out flat and get the bird’s eye view of the story. It is also physically difficult to cross-reference characters, places, or historical events within your note cards without the use of stickers, highlighters, or some system of special markings. Managing note cards and their associated materials becomes a task in itself.

This means when you set aside time to work on your story, and begin laying out the note cards it’s more like a big event — out come the stickers, highlighters, pencils, erasers, extra note cards. It’s like dumping out your basket for a full blown craft session. If you enjoy that kind of exhaustive ritual, more power to you. But if you’re like me, you value space, efficiency, and effective use of time not spent wrangling all these physical materials then you’re in luck.

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