I am now gonna bore the fuck out of you with a piece of writing advice from a William Goldman book that I use nearly every day.
Goldman adapted his own novel MARATHON MAN into a film of the same name. He was on set during a confrontation between Laurence Olivier's villain and another character played by Roy Scheider. Goldman scripted an exchange between Olivier and Scheider as follows:
SCHEIDER: I know that sooner or later you're going to the bank.
OLIVIER: Perhaps I already have been.
The director, John Schlesinger, was trying to get Olivier to bounce back with his line immediately, to remove a tiny pause he was doing right after Scheider's line.
OLIVIER: Perhaps I already have been.
The director, John Schlesinger, was trying to get Olivier to bounce back with his line immediately, to remove a tiny pause he was doing right after Scheider's line.
Olivier was having trouble removing this pause. Finally he turned to Goldman and requested that Scheider's line be changed to "I know you're going to the bank sooner or later."
He explained that by rearranging the line this way, his character would have a second or two to process the word "bank" and plan his response while Scheider was saying "sooner or later." That way he could cut the pause and respond immediately like Schlesinger wanted.
Goldman agreed immediately, and thought so much of this request that he put it in a book many years later. I think it's great too, indicative of what a natural listener Olivier could be as an actor. Ever since I read that...
...when writing dialogue that involves one character interrupting or responding immediately to another (which is most of my dialogue), I always put the idea the second character is so abruptly responding to about 5 or 6 words **before the end of the first character's line.**
Those 5 or 6 words, to me, give the interruption a tiny-but-crucial extra bit of authenticity that suggests the characters are listening to each other, not reciting lines they've memorized.
Now yes, technically this is Olivier's advice, not Goldman's. But Goldman was the one who took a bit of offhand Olivier craftsmanship on set, absorbed it as a piece of writerly advice, and put it in a book so many other writers could benefit from it.
That's writing-advice at its best: lessons learned in the field, passed along in that spirit, and no one saying "You're not really one of The Elect if you don't do this." </end>
Two afterthoughts:
1) I totally wasn't being disingenuous w/that first tweet; I expected this to be a pretty boring deep-in-the-weeds thread. I'm delighted it wasn't.
2) Maybe writing advice also works best when it's nuts-n'-bolts like this, rather than big global declarations.
1) I totally wasn't being disingenuous w/that first tweet; I expected this to be a pretty boring deep-in-the-weeds thread. I'm delighted it wasn't.
2) Maybe writing advice also works best when it's nuts-n'-bolts like this, rather than big global declarations.
Several folks have confirmed for me that this was specifically from Goldman's memoir ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE. If this kind of thing is of interest to you, definitely get it and read the whole thing; this anecdote barely scratches the surface of the goodies therein.
