Styles of Dramatic Dialogue

My previous two posts (here, and here) have examined dialogue techniques in one scene of one episode of Mad Men, using analytical framework suggested by screenwriting instructor David Freeman in his description of "naturalistic" advanced dialogue techniques. Today I want to pull back from that a bit, and do more work to place those particular techniques in context.

I often work best by examining juxtapositions, and to that end spent several hours yesterday watching scenes from the fifth season of Northern Exposure. I was curious to what extent NX used "naturalistic" dialogue, and if so, how it combined that dialogue with its offbeat characters, use of symbolism, use of magic realism, and its philosophical/spiritual concerns.

That exercise led me to devise a matrix of different styles of dialogue writing. In my current thinking it has a diamond shape and contains four styles that can be defined with some precision. Points in the middle of the diamond would define mixes of techniques, because different episodes and series use different mixes of  techniques in their storytelling, although some may predominantly use one style or one unique mixture. Here's a scan of my sketch, and I'll talk about some examples below:

At the top of the diamond I'm placing the category of dialogue techniques that create direct, articulate, heightened emotional exchanges between characters. These are the most fundamental bread and butter techniques in drama of all kind, and you can probably think of numerous examples and variations. For the sake of clarity here, I'll summarize them as techniques in which a character is articulate enough to put his or her feelings into words, says what she means to say, and is understood by her conversational partner. Additionally, these are dramatic exchanges, not plot exposition. In the vast majority of these scenes, the characters will have some sort of emotional conflict (which is what makes it drama) or will show the characters in some sort of emotional synch (again, for dramatic purposes -- the set-up or resolution of a story arc).

When I say these kinds of exchanges are fundamental and common to drama, I don't mean to suggest that they are less artistic than other techniques. They are the foundation of drama on stage and screen, and even those dramas that predominantly use other techniques also use direct dramatic exchange. For a totally random example, I walked over to the bookshelf and selected Death of a Salesman assuming this sort of dramatic exchange would be on nearly every page. Opening at random to page 16, early in Act One, Willy Loman and his wife Linda argue about their adult son Biff:

WILLY:	Biff is a lazy bum!
LINDA:	They're sleeping. Get something to eat. Go on down.
WILLY:	Why did he come home? I would like to know what brought him home.
LINDA:	I don't know. I think he's still lost, Willy. I think he's very lost.

I flipped through other movie and TV scripts for more examples, but I don't think there's a need to belabor the point -- in this kind of dramatic exchange characters express their emotions and express what they mean. The dramatic situation, which we understand to be either out of the ordinary or emotionally heightened in some way, provides narrative complexity and maintains interest in the emotionally direct dialogue.

I think its safe to assert here that television in general and serialized drama in particular, too much directly expressed and emotionally heightened dialogue begins to feel unrealistic because we spend so much screen time with the characters. How much is too much? That's subjective, right, but we can probably agree on the extremes -- the long-running soap opera couple who faces all manner of tribulation and marries, divorces, re-marries, etc. -- or to pick (perhaps unfairly) on a show I don't know that well -- how many times can Jack Bauer be placed in life or death situations as he tries to stop terrorist plots in 24 hours.

The other 3 points on my diamond diagram represent ways to deal with that dilemma of dramatic realism over long narrative time and provide complexity, nuance, and realism to the basic dramatic conflict while keeping viewers engaged over time. (Ensembles are another part of the solution to this same problem -- dramatic conflict is parceled out over multiple characters who can take turns coming to the foreground with A stories or dropping back with less prominent stories.)



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Moving clockwise on the diamond, there's a category of dramatic exchange I call high-stakes prompted emotional admission. Most of the workplace "adrenaline" dramas use these techniques -- ER, West Wing, Homicide, NYPD Blue, etc. -- and there are two important characteristics. The first is that the work itself provides a regular source of dramatic tension -- the protagonists have to save a patient, investigate a crime, deal with a political crisis. The work itself is in a setting that realistically provides drama, and the personal lives and romantic dramas of the characters are secondary. Secondly, this kind of dramatic exchange is used sparingly.

I've set this category across the diamond from indirect emotional expression because the characters who reveal heightened emotion in these kinds of scenes are the same characters who are the most indirect or guarded at other times. This often takes the form of characters speaking passionately about work but communicating more indirectly with romantic partners, and seems to be a useful tactic in dealing with long-running romantic subplots on these kinds of series.

As one example, late in the fourth season of ER, in an episode called "Of Past Regret and Future Fear", Carol Hathaway and Doug Ross have resumed their romantic relationship but little screen time was spent in having the characters speak directly about where they stand with one another. In this episode, Carol treats a dying man who wishes to see his estranged daughter before his imminent death. This prompts Carol to reveal elements of her back-story to the patient about her relationship with her own father. After the man dies, she and Doug have an unusually open and direct conversation about the way her unresolved emotions about her father affect her feelings for Doug, ending in this exchange:

CAROL:	I say I want time, but the truth is I'm scared to death of losing you.
DOUG:	Don't be.
CAROL:	I'm so sorry, Doug.
DOUG:	Don't be.

Lines that would be melodramatic in another context, or if repeated too often week to week, gain realism and retain impact because they are relatively rare, and supported by the drama of the work storyline.

As another example of the way the indirect emotional exchange techniques balance with the high-stakes admission, consider the episode "17 People" from the second season of The West Wing. At this point in the series, the romantic subplot between Josh Lyman and his assistant Donna Moss has been largely conveyed indirectly and remained secondary (if somewhat confused with) their work relationship. This episode uses the work plot of a late night spent attempting to work on jokes to include in the President's speech to the Correspondent's Dinner to reveal back-story about Josh and Donna's relationship and prompt Donna into a rare admission of her true feelings.

First, a portion of the indirect exchange -- Josh has sent Donna flowers to mark the anniversary of their work relationship. Donna is upset by the gesture but has been trying to cover it in front of the other staffers, who are joking about it. In this exchange Josh and Donna are alone in a White House corridor:

JOSH:	Do you know what I sent them?
DONNA:	I know why you think you sent them.
JOSH:	It's our anniversary.
DONNA:	No it's not.
JOSH:	I'm the sort of guy who remembers those things.
DONNA:	No, you're the sort of guy who sends a woman flowers to be mean.

To someone who doesn't know the characters or the situation, this dialogue may look like a direct emotional exchange, but for these characters it is indirect. Most importantly is the confusion of the personal and work relationship -- Josh won't admit his romantic interest and sends flowers for a "work" occasion. Donna is annoyed that he would do something with a romantic overtone when she works hard to keep her feelings in check. In this scene both characters display what Freeman calls "own track", holding on to their own interpretation of the meaning of the anniversary without adjusting to the other person's view. The "work" anniversary, in turn, is both a symbol and false target. It is something they can talk about because they can't talk about their romantic feelings for one another.

By act four Donna comes to the conclusion that the tiff over the flowers should come to an end. Although her decision in not strongly motivated before the scene begins, it is tied thematically to the much more dramatic A story in the episode where President Bartlet makes an uncomfortable admission to another staffer. In this scene, Donna decides to tell Josh the truth about aspects of her relationship with a boyfriend back home that led to her decision to re-join the Bartlet campaign. This exchange follows the story:

DONNA:	Does this make you feel superior? Yes, you're better than my old boyfriend.
JOSH:	I'm just saying that if you were in an accident I wouldn't stop for a beer.
DONNA:	If you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for red lights.

As with the ER example, this admission from Donna is the most direct admission of her actual feelings for Josh until the end of the series, several years later. The combination of workplace drama, indirect exploration of the inter-personal drama, and the very rare direct emotional exchange allowed the relationship arc to stretch for seasons.



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At the bottom of my diamond, I placed symbolic and metaphoric dialogue techniques. Northern Exposure uses these kind of techniques more than most series, and uses several different kinds of these techniques. Most of my examples today seem to focus around long-arc romantic subplots, and that is true for two examples from the fifth season of NX that I want to discuss. Unlike a workplace series, NX is focused on the life of Cicely, Alaska and episodes often revolve around events that affect the whole town. Joel Fleischman, the main protagonist, is in Cicely against his will, paying off medical school debts as the town doctor. His character arc traces his slow evolution as he comes to feel that he is at home in Cicely in some way (although that decision is ultimately reversed when he leaves in season six). As part of this arc he becomes romantically involved with Maggie O'Connell. Their relationship at different its different stages is also a metaphor for his degree of comfort with life in Cicely and its metaphysical implications.

In the episode "First Snow", the C story follows Maggie's progress in redecorating her cabin before winter. She purchases an antique arm chair in Juneau that she loved, but has second thoughts about the purchase. Goldilocks-like, several of her male friends sit in the chair over the course of the episode but find that it is not a good fit. At the end of the episode, Joel sits in the chair and it is a perfect fit. From this description alone, you might find the chair a rather slight metaphor, but it connects with the A & B stories in a way to make a more profound statement. In the A story, Joel has been struggling with the fact that one of his elderly patients has decided that it is time to die, although he can find nothing medically wrong with her. It disturbs his rational, scientific worldview that his patient can feel it is time to die, and that her family and friends accept this irrational belief.

When Joel arrives at Maggie's cabin, his patient has just died. The part of their scene that discusses the patient (Nedra) is extremely indirect:

MAGGIE:	Fleischman.
JOEL:	Hi. I was walking around and I saw your cabin and I don't know...You're probably busy....
MAGGIE:	No, no. Come on in. I heard about Nedra. I'm sorry.
JOEL:	Yeah....

As the scene continues they discuss her new goldfish and Joel sits in her new chair. Again, the dialogue is indirect, and all of the dramatic weight of the otherwise mundane exchange is carried by the symbolic meaning of the chair for them both:

MAGGIE:	What?
JOEL:	This is nice
MAGGIE: (wary)	What do you mean?
JOEL:	It's comfortable.
MAGGIE:	You really think so?
JOEL:	Yeah.

Northern Exposure is quite overt about the meaning of its use of symbols in storytelling. In the B story of the same episode - which crossed over into magic realism - Shelley literally believes that her nose is growing because of a lie she told. She approaches Ed, a native American film-maker and shaman in training, to ask if he can provide the sacrament of confession as her priest might. Ed responds that shamans "sometimes use stories to help people", makes a connection to Biblical parables, and makes a connection to an old film.

In this example, they combine indirect and naturalistic language with visual symbols, metaphorical and thematic connections between story arcs, and magic realism to heighten the complexity and drama of an otherwise ordinary story.



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So where does Mad Men fit on my diamond -- what mix of these styles of dramatic dialogue does it use in its storytelling? I believe Mad Men's mix is unique in a number of ways.

First of all, as we discussed here, because it is not a workplace drama in the same way as West Wing or ER, it does not use the heightened drama of high-stakes crises as often as those kinds of series, although it does occasionally. It also uses the high-stakes drama of Don's hidden past in the same way, but only in key episodes.

Most episodes seem to land between the top and bottom left of my diamond diagram, mixing direct emotional exchange with the kinds of indirect, naturalist dialogue techniques that David Freeman ascribes to thirtysomething, and which we discussed in some detail in the last post using the Abe & Peggy scene.

Frankly, one of the most interesting things to me about Mad Men is the way in which they use allusions to  historical events as symbols in very subtle ways. This aspect of the series in some way gets us closest to the large questions about history and social change that we set up in the syllabus. For example, there are episodes like "My Old Kentucky Home" which do very little in terms of moving particular story or character arcs, but instead tie those story and character arcs to a multitude of American historical and cultural symbols.

But they use the allusions and symbols differently than Northern Exposure does -- the symbols have a different storytelling purpose. That is my current hunch, my intuition, but it's going to take some further exploration before I can say something more meaningful on this front, and explain the different purpose with precision.




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We haven't had many comments on this blog, but I want to specifically invite comments on this topic, from any regular readers or people who happen upon this through Google. Does this representation of styles of dramatic dialogue ring true to you? What nuances am I missing? There are lots of other series that I have never watched or don't know well -- what other examples are out there? I welcome all discussion.