Screenwriting note to self #8: The drama is not in the dialogue being spoken. The drama is in the desires and goals underneath the words. If the characters don't have specific desires or goals, they can say many interesting things. But it won't be dramatic.
One advantage of having now spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on TV sets. After I write a scene, I imagine myself having to tell the actors and actresses what their character wants to have happen in this particular scene.
If my description of their motivation is nothing better than "you're here to provide a set-up question for the lead actor's zinger," then I need to keep working on that scene.
Among the many advantages of working on LONGMIRE for five seasons as my first gig: as the seasons accumulated, I began wanting to (however low-key) give any regular or recurring cast member in a scene at least *one* moment, however minor, to look forward to performing.
This could be a moment where they got a little verbal punch in on Walt, or showed a moment of unexpected grace, or gave a little callback to a previous moment, or gave a hint of some previously hidden backstory or off-camera element of their character's life.
Again, these were modest little moments. Sometimes it was just trying to make sure they had a line in the scene that wasn't just pure exposition. But hopefully they accumulated to give a kind of texture and lived-in-ness to some of the scenes.
You want the scenes to work dramatically and structurally: sometimes a character's desire is simply to impress the other character, or to protect their own feelings, or to get them out of the room.
But if you end up lucking into a show that has a decent run, you also want the viewer to feel like they're getting to know the characters more and more as the series goes on.
Maybe my favorite thing about writing for LONGMIRE was doing stories set on the Cheyenne Reservation and getting to explore Henry Standing Bear more deeply, and to explore Mathias and Jacob Nighthorse as more than plot obstacles and more as self-directed fleshed-out individuals.
This is getting free-associative. But I wonder if in some multiple season shows or longer narratives, one of the underlying desires of supporting characters is to *become known* to the other characters. That desire in and of itself can bring life to an otherwise static scene.
Screenwriters are told not to direct on the page. And if you're breaking in, you probably shouldn't be describing camera moves and shit. (You want your viewer to imagine the movie in their head.) But...
I do think it can be helpful to imagine yourself actually on set with actual professional actors & directing each of them: telling actor A that he wants to get out of the room without causing a stir, telling actor B that he desperately needs actor A to confess a sin, etc.
I often try to imagine myself doing that on set directing, then I make adjustments to the. written scene in order to make my "directions" clear: I cut out dialogue that muddles that direction, I put in actions or descriptions that support that direction, etc.
Sometimes just introducing one new element can bring a scene alive. On a recent TV episode I produced (but didn't write) there was a scene that I thought was dramatically a little inert because it was pure exposition without conflict or feeling. All necessary, but not dramatic.
In the prep stage, I made a small change to the scene: I simply had one character (the boss) place a small vase with a flower on the desk of the other character (his secretary) as an unwanted gift as they spoke.
The dialogue was still all simple exposition, but now the scene was about their body language and eye contact and how they regarded that unsolicited gift. In my opinion, it gave this expository scene a little life, and some stakes, and more than a little tension.
The words didn't have to change to bring drama to the scene. Because words don't provide the drama: the desires and motivations and goals provide the drama. And since you're writing for the screen, you don't have to rely on just words to dramatize those desires, goals, etc.
