Lesson 4

[Anna Maganini]

MODULE 8 – LESSON 4 – SUB TEXT IN DIALOGUE – PART 1 – COVERUPS

MY VISION – To write cutting edge, unique, human, soul-inspiring, Oscar-winning scripts that have commercial success and producers line up to buy to make into multi-million dollar movies. Which makes me a Force in the Hollywood Entertainment industry -as a writer, actor, producer, and director.

What have I learned doing this assignment – At first, this assignment confused me. I thought we already were supposed to have subtext and deeper meaning, so I wasn’t sure why we were supposed to take it away. I had some kind of disconnect about it. But I started working anyway, and figured what it meant was still have the sub-text and deeper meaning, but bury it even more sub-textually (????!!) It ended up having a good effect in that sometimes I over write dialogue, and this made me take out more things that weren’t really needed, and the dialogue still hinted at the deeper meaning. I felt I already had sub-text, but once in a while I would throw in a new strategy, like silence where before the person was screaming very obviously about something – or I’d add a joke, or make the action incongruent with the words, and it made it more interesting. One scene really changed a lot. It was an awkward scene and it wasn’t working because it was too on the nose. So I had them talk about a different subject that wasn’t really the subject and it worked much better – it was kind of like using a metaphor, which I didn’t realize was in the next lesson. Important thing is it improved the dialogue.