How to Write a Radio Serial Drama for Social Development- PDF

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106 Chapter Seven: Writing for the Ear 7. PAUSE (TELEPHONE IS STILL RINGING). 8. JOE: (OFF) Hello... Who... (SOUNDING DOUBTFUL) Oh yes, officer... what can I do What Oh, God, no... 9. JILL: What is it John What’s wrong 10. JOE: (OFF) It can’t be... but he... yes... yes, officer... yes, I’ll come. 11. FX. TELEPHONE IS HUNG UP 12. JILL: (TERRIFIED) John... John... what’s wrong END OF SCENE That scene demonstrates an extreme change in pace and mood. Not all scenes will be as dramatic as that, but the pace of the dialogue should quicken whenever excitement rises in a scene. This is best accomplished with short speeches and quick interchanges. 5. Use characters’ names in dialogue. The scene above also illustrates one slightly unnatural feature of radio drama dialogue: the characters use each other’s names more often than they would in normal conversation. This helps the audience identify who is speaking to whom. The use of names is particularly important in the early episodes of a serial when the listeners have not yet grown accustomed to the voices of the actors who portray the characters. 6. Avoid the use of soliloquy. A soliloquy is a speech in which the character talks to himself or herself, in effect, thinking aloud. On radio, where the character cannot be seen, it is difficult to make a soliloquy sound convincing. It is almost always better to have the character speak his or her thoughts to someone or something else. In the following scene, Bongani, who has just been jilted by the girl he loves, expresses his misery to his dog. EXAMPLE 1. FX. DOOR CREAKS OPEN. CLOSES WITH A BANG. 2. BONGANI: (SIGHING) Hi, there, Jojo. What are you wagging your tail about 3. FX. DOG PANTING, WHINING HAPPILY. 4. BONGANI: It’s all very well for you. You can find a girl friend whenever you want one...you don’t have to care if she loves you or not. But humans are different, Jojo. I can’t believe she’d do that to me. I mean, we were going to be married and everything. I love her. I THOUGHT she loved me...I’ll bet there’s someone else. 5. FX. SLAPPING DOG ON NECK. 6. BONGANI: Yeah, but who Hey, you know what, Jojo, maybe I’ll go away somewhere...South Africa maybe. Then she’ll be sorry...when I’m not here anymore. ETC.
Chapter Seven: Writing for the Ear 107 As this excerpt shows, characters can speak to animals or even plants to reveal their feelings. In countries where trees are thought to house spirits, it is natural for people to speak to the trees. Alternatively, a mother can speak her thoughts to her young baby, who cannot respond but who can be, quite naturally, the object of her mother’s heart-felt outpourings. Creating Word Pictures Creating good radio dialogue requires the writer to think in pictures, to become the listeners’ eyes, and to see the world as the listeners would see it if they were present at the scene. Throughout the entire serial, the writer reveals mental pictures of characters and settings subtly, almost coincidentally, as part of the dialogue. While it is essential for radio writers to create word pictures as part of the dialogue, however, this does not mean using the figures of speech and poetic style often encouraged by writing teachers. Radio drama must be written to reflect the way real people speak. Creating pictures in the minds of listeners is best accomplished with dialogue that refers to familiar sights and situations. For example, listeners will understand immediately when a character announces, “The wind was so strong it nearly blew me over.” Employing an unfamiliar simile—“The wind was as strong as a turbo engine”—would only confuse matters. Similes and Metaphors The radio writer should be extremely careful about using similes and metaphors in dialogue to create pictures of people and places. A writer should employ only figures of speech that would be used naturally by the characters in the story. Similes are likely to be heard in everyday speech in many cultures, for example, “He’s as strong as an ox,” “She’s as pretty as a flower,” or “It’s as hot as a furnace today.” Unfamiliar expressions, however, no matter how beautifully written, will make the dialogue sound less realistic. The following speech creates a vivid picture of the setting, but it is hardly the type of language the average person uses—although it might be used by a character who is a poet. “Look, Thabo, we have arrived at a magnificent sweeping plain. It is an enormous magic carpet spread before my feet. Just as Adam must have felt on first beholding the Garden of Eden, so I feel as I view this plain.” Below is a more typical response to the sight of the plain, which uses the same simile, but combines it with excited exclamations: “Wow, Thabo. Look at this plain. It’s huge! It goes on forever. Wow. I feel like Adam discovering the Garden of Eden. It’s magnificent.” This kind of word picture is more effective for radio drama than the figures of speech created by poets and novelists, because it employs language that the audience understands and that the characters in the drama would use naturally. The writer always should choose language that is suitable to the character and comfortable for the audience, not language that the writer finds personally attractive or that demonstrates his or her writing ability. 7
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How To Write a Radio Serial Drama f
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Using This Book This book is a prac
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vi Contents Chapter Two 13 Writing
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viii Contents Chapter Seven 99 Writ
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x Contents Chapter Thirteen 181 The
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xii Prologue 1. Individual-level co
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xiv Prologue Source factors are the
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Chapter One Introduction to the Use
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Chapter Two Writing Begins: The Wri
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Glossary This list defines the word
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Glossary 211 Four Ts of Teaching FX
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Index of Script Excerpts and Other
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Bibliography/references 217 Bibliog
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