Get your characters talking, and discover where they lead you
About 25 years ago, I was staying with friends in Ireland for a week, and another houseguest was Quentin Tarantino. One night at dinner, someone asked Quentin how he writes, and he said something like this, demonstrating with the available props:
“Let’s say you have this fork and this spoon and you think that what the scene is about is you want them to go over to the wine glass. So you get them talking. They’re talking and they’re talking and they start heading over to the salt shaker! And you know, that’s where they’re going, and maybe it was just your bullshit idea that they should go to the wine glass to begin with.”
“Your bullshit idea . . .” In other words, the writer doesn’t decide what the characters should do. The writer’s job is to bring them alive, and let them do what they do.
Paul Johnson wrote this intriguing dialogue in 10 minutes in our Writing Prompt of the Week gathering on Zoom, to the prompt of an alchemical image. We don’t know who these people are, but we can tell they have lives and demons and frustrations and excitements. There’s tension, friendship, dark humor. Who knows where the story could go from here—so many possibilities!
[a third dialogue]
5: come on over, have a seat
6: thanks bud
5: nice night
6: a bit cold
5: hence the fire
6: that new?
5: yup
6: that’s an interesting, uhm, chiminea
5: my wife wanted something atypical
6: goal achieved
5: we haven’t sacrificed a child into it yet
6: but it would seem appropriate
5: any day now, I'm sure
6: you have enough of them; doubt you’d miss one or two
5: or three or four
6: (pause) it’s kind of freaky to sit in front of this thing
5: it reminds us to keep it tame
6: keep what tame?
5: our fights
6: you two can have some doozies
5: counseling wasn't working quick enough, so i figured this would incentivize
6: is it working?
5: so far
6: been a cold winter
5: cold temperatures also keep our tempers down
6: contempt can be a brutal thing
5: the second horseman of the apocalypse
6: or so the research says
5: withdrawal, contempt, escalation, and false beliefs, right?
6: that’s what I remember
5: ah, relationships
6: if it ain’t one thing, it’s another
5: so what’s on your mind; why’d you come over?
6: yeah, thanks, so, yeah—it’s about kate
5: your sister is something
6: nice non-contemptuous way of putting it
5: what’s she done now?
6: something at work
5: I heard something was up
6: a couple of guys got stuck in one of the new contraptions
5: so?
6: so somehow she’s involved
5: here’s my surprised look
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