Thursday, November 23, 2023

There is a lovely scene in The Witcher tv series, Season 3 episode 4, where Geralt and Yennefer get back together after some time. They have an argument, forgive each other, and kiss.

I imagine the writers, Rae Benjamin and Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, wrote a draft of this scene, and got bored. This is an obligatory scene -- you can't really move the plot along without seeing how they feel about each other after being apart. But the viewer can probably guess everything they're going to say. But they have to say it. But it's boring to write, and probably boring to watch. 

They hit on a brilliant alternative. We don't hear what Geralt and Yennefer are saying to each other. But the scene isn't silent. Instead, Jaskier and Ciri are watching it... and they begin saying what they think Geralt and Yennefer are probably saying to each other, with Jaskier, of course, voicing Yennefer all girly, and Ciri doing Geralt's deep growl. 

So we get all that dialogue out, and get to see Geralt and Yennefer reconcile, but the scene is funny, and we also get to see how well Ciri and Jaskier are attuned to Geralt and Yennefer.

You don't always need the protagonist to voice their feelings. Someone else can do it for them. In To Have and Have Not, Humphrey Bogart's Steve asks Lauren Bacall's Slim to walk around him. "No, Steve," she says. "There are no strings tied to you. Not yet."

That's much richer than having Steve say he doesn't like having attachments, because it communicates that emotion, but also shows that Slim gets it... and mocks him for it.

There are obligatory scenes. In S2 E1 of Rome, Julius Caesar has been murdered, and Antony has to give a speech. The problem there is, someone has already written a very famous version of this speech. You may have run across it. "Friends, Romans, countrymen! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him," wrote Shakespeare.

Only a fool tries to top Shakespeare. Bruno Heller is no fool. We don't hear Antony's speech. Instead we have a pleb in a bar recount seeing Antony's speech. He describes a bit of business Antony does with Caesar's bloody toga. We don't need to know what Antony said. We already know what he said. "But Brutus says he was ambitious! And Brutus is an honorable man. So are they all, all honorable men." What we get instead is new information:  how the speech went down with the crowd.

Dialogue by proxy is a great way to mix it up. It's a great way to communicate what a laconic character is thinking or feeling. Or a character who, in the circumstances, wouldn't want to say what they're thinking or feeling. It's a good way to communicate, as well, what another character thinks about the laconic character. 

And it can be an awesome way to dispose of an obligatory scene. 

9:58 AM

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