Shhhhhhh

The other day I was walking down the street, when I saw a large, scruffy-looking man sitting on the curb, loudly talking to himself. I averted my eyes; if I learned anything from my years of working in Times Square, it is not to make eye contact with the crazy people.

As I moved by him, I risked a subtle corner-of-my-eye glance. And I realized that he had a really small headset on, and that he was talking into it. He wasn't crazy, he was doing business.

There are occasionally times when I talk to myself out loud. Usually it's when I kick the leg of my coffee table. But I don't speak in long, expository sentences, telling myself what I'm thinking.

Because if I did, I'd be nuts, right?

But I'm constantly reading scripts, in which characters talk to themselves. Out loud. Alone.

I understand that there's a theatrical tradition of this, of monologues and talking aside to the audience, though even that nutty Hamlet was likely missing a few smaller nouns from his bigger noun (insert your own creative Danish historical metaphor here). Hamlet would have been a fun blogger.

In movies, there's a talking-to-the-audience device too, and when it's well-done, it's forgivable. It works in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But even then, he isn't talking to himself, he's talking to the audience.

And obviously, if your character is crazy (or really, really drunk), they are allowed to talk to themselves. Because that can be a signifier, that they are not right in the head, or that the suspicious pile of Jack Daniels bottles in the corner of the shot might well have their fingerprints on them.

But what makes me crazy (and yes, sometimes it even makes me talk to myself) is when a writer has a character talk to himself, not because they are crazy, or because they are talking to the audience, but because the writer can't think of any other way to express what is going on in the main character's head.

It's the expositional explosion of contrived dialogue, that happens way too often. And it's awful. It's like waving the amateur flag.

I wish I had an example. I've been waiting for an example, but I've been buried in books, and in books we're inside the character's head, so it isn't necessary.

(So now I spend fifteen minutes looking for examples, without success. I need to save more really bad things, like American Idol does).

So I'll make up some examples:

JANE
Oh my God. She's his sister!
John really does love me!

or

JANE
Oh my God. Crenshaw is the killer!

Okay, those are awful. I'm really bad at writing bad dialogue. Hopefully that's a good thing.

But the point is that I see this stuff all the time, and it really isn't necessary. There are always other, better ways to do this (and some probably-even-worse ways, including dropping voiceover into that one scene, or having us suddenly be able to read the character's mind, or having the character suddenly burst into on-the-nose song).

One way is simply to put someone else in the scene, for the character to talk to. Dr. Watson hangs around just so Sherlock Holmes will have someone to tell about what is bouncing around in his head. Gay men in romantic comedies should charge the main characters by the hour.

Some writers cheat by having the main character talk to a pet. Usually it's a woman, and usually it's a cat. The point of it is generally just to have the lonely woman say that she's just as happy hanging out with a cat and a pint of ice cream -- which of course, can be brought across just as easily by simply showing her with the cat and the pint of ice cream. Or the dog and the Pop Tarts. Or the pot-bellied-pig and the really big vibrator.

(Male readers, you have 10 seconds to picture it in your heads. Okay. Moving on...)

The best way is to simply trust the audience. If you've fleshed out your main character, if they are reacting to information the audience is also learning, the audience is going to know what the main character is thinking without going to the dreaded "blurt". If it's something weird, find them someone credible to talk to.

But if you run into a scene, where you need to get information across to the audience about what is in the character's head, and you think the best way is just for them to say it, even if there is no one listening?

There's always a better way.