Writing Dialogue
The seeming need for smoke and mirrors.
Writing Dialogue
For someone such as me who tends to agonise too long over every word, I love this description of my father's fluency and his method of disguising it.
A lesson I soon learnt about writing dialogue on the floor at Elstree Studios was that one should never do it quickly.
Go into a corner, scribble the necessary line, bring it straight back and one could be pretty certain neither the director nor the artist concerned will think much of it.
Retire to one’s office, lock the door, scribble down the same line, doze or read a paper for half an hour before staggering back to the set, haggard and brow-mopping with a gasp of ‘I’m sorry! But I’m afraid this is the best I can do!’ and one will receive sympathetic pats on the back and assurances that this is ‘just what I wanted, my dear chap!’