Put More Drama in Your Writing—Using Dialogue to Define Character and Set the Mood

By Chris Mathews

One important way to put more drama in your writing is to understand the language of drama, dialogue.  Fiction and non-fiction can be written without dialogue; drama cannot. We know the story of a play through what the characters say and do on stage.
    

In prose, the writer has the advantage of being able to describe the characters’ motivations, but this can also be a pitfall. Description can deaden writing when it usurps action or tells the reader too much. Dialogue has the advantage of actively engaging the auditor. There are no intermediaries with dialogue. In fact, the reader is the audience in any quality writing, actively supplying the missing pieces of the story. Stories in which the reader is told what happens but not allowed to experience the story first-hand can easily become literary dry-gulches. 

I based my one-act Gargoyles (published by Baker’s Plays in 2005) on an actual event, a high-school Halloween play banned by a school board in a small mountain town. A preacher in the town provided the major push to ban the play Bats in the Belfry, decrying Halloween as “a pagan ritual.” The actual play was a comedy, in my opinion about as innocuous as Bewitched, but deemed “satanic” because it contained a warlock. 

To tell this story, I decided to create characters that could comment on the play-within-the- play (which I renamed Raising Spirits) and lighten up this controversy. I chose gargoyles as my dual narrators because of their traditional role as guardians-of-the-Church. As I wrote I realized the gargoyles were becoming a kind of medieval Siskel and Ebert, speaking in Latin-sounding phrases. Through their banter, I was able to both create a gothic atmosphere and comic repartee. In the opening scene, the gargoyles define themselves, setting themselves up as observers of humankind.

Here is the opening dialogue of the play:

As the lights come up, two gargoyles are perched on a platform flanking a large, gothic door.  Ornate medieval music is playing.

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Stone silence…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    …Mocks mankind’s folly.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Demons dwell in eaves…

SECOND GARGOYLE.     …Caught in granite guffaws

FIRST GARGOYLE.     We outlast your short time

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Withstand your orangutan rantings…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    …Your humanegomania.

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Your acid haze

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Corrodes our veins

SECOND GARGOYLE.    So permit us

FIRST GARGOYLE.    From our lofty perches

SECOND GARGOYLE.    To comment

FIRST GARGOYLE.      To criticize

SECOND GARGOYLE.    To cajole

FIRST GARGOYLE.    To view from afar

SECOND GARGOYLE.    To scrutinize with a looking-glass

FIRST GARGOYLE.    To provide comic relief

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Though these humans provide their own quite well.

FIRST GARGOYLE.   We will be their funhouse mirror.      

SECOND GARGOYLE.   –Grotesques.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    It takes a grotesque to know a grotesque.

 If your characters know what they want  and listen to each other(unless you want them to ignore each other), dialogue often writes itself.   In the next writing, I will look at how conflict works in dialogue.

Put Some Drama in your Writing

By Chris Mathews

As a drama teacher and part-time playwright for thirty-two years, I believe dramatic concepts can be applied to other genres. You can put more drama in your writing by understanding dramatic writing.

The Greek word for drama, translated, means to do. In good drama, action grabs the viewer’s attention, for, at the least, all good writing is interesting.

So what is dramatic action and how can it be applied to other types of writing? First, consider what action in theater is not. Dramatic action is not to be confused with action-packed, the sometimes mindless, extravagant thrills of the movies. Dramatic action has purpose. Characters want something, usually from another character.

A director, in analyzing a script, must analyze all of the characters. Director’s define the action of the play, as well as help each actor find what his or her character wants in the play. Actors choose the most active, transitive verb they can find. For example, Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac doesn’t just feel unrequited love, he wants to ravish Roxanne with his poetry (Roxanne is the object of Cyrano’s affections). If a character is not fully realized in your writing, try filling in this statement for him or her:

He/she wants + to + strong, transitive verb + object.
Cyrano wants + to + ravish+ Roxanne

Actors and directors look for strong actions because actions are playable; feelings are not. Even in short scenes of dialogue, check to see that each character has a strong, clear action. Actors are often told: you cannot play a quality, avoid the verb to be, acting is doing not being.

Show the character’s driving force through what they do, not just what they say, and the writing will engage the reader. If your writing lacks punch, it probably lacks dramatic action. If your story line is faltering, it may be because your characters are not committed to strong action. Make sure your character is doing and not just being or feeling.

In an even broader sense, conflict drives drama. If there are no opposing forces, there is probably not much drama. If your writing lacks punch, make sure there are forces pushing against each other. In theatre jargon, create obstacles, people or forces that thwart a character from getting what he or she wants.

Shakespeare mastered dramatic action. See how Iago plants the seeds for Othello’s destruction, tricking him with reverse psychology into believing his wife is unfaithful in the following passage:

Cassio, my lord! No, sure, I cannot think it,
That he would steal away so guilty-like, Seeing you coming.

Sometimes, writing can be drama-less because the stakes are too low. A teacher teaching a class could be quite boring, but a teacher teaching students who cannot learn because their home lives are in shatters has the seeds for drama (Freedom Writers). Make sure conflict thrives. To summarize, make sure your characters are doing not just saying, and that conflict drives your work.