David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
Okay, chew on this for a bit...
There are some things that work well when spoken, but not so well when written. A few examples come to mind.
Here where I work we have a canned disinfectant spray labeled 'Staph Kill'. I hold it up to show somebody, and say "Wait a minute! I'm the STAFF!" It gets a yuk once in awhile. (Not a great joke, I know.) But it would NEVER get so much as a faint smile in print. It only works when spoken.
Here's another. A riddle that works when SPOKEN, but not when written or read. Try it. "Name a 4-letter word where the last THREE letters are E-N-Y." Now, seeing "eny" in print, you can easily tell what the word is. But SAY that to someone and many people will never be able to guess that the answer is "DENY".
I mention those to lead in to this stickler. Say I'm writing dialogue for a character. This character is meeting several different people, at different places, over the course of an evening. He's telling a friend about this. I want him to be able to use a variation of the word 'rendezvous' -- a plural that, while completely incorrect grammatically, is used all the time in common conversation. I want him to be able to say "rendezvous" with an 's' on the end -- pronounced like "RON-day-vooz". Get it? (The actual plural of 'rendezvous' is 'rendezvous'.)
So now.....how do I want to write that in the dialogue so the actor knows the desired pronunciation?
I could write it phonetically, like I did above -- "RON-day-vooz". But whenever I see something written phonetically like that in dialogue, it always seems to me like the character is supposed to be exaggerating the word in order to be comical or to sound like a hick. I don't want either. I just want him saying the word straight, just like a normal person would.
So what would YOU do?
There are some things that work well when spoken, but not so well when written. A few examples come to mind.
Here where I work we have a canned disinfectant spray labeled 'Staph Kill'. I hold it up to show somebody, and say "Wait a minute! I'm the STAFF!" It gets a yuk once in awhile. (Not a great joke, I know.) But it would NEVER get so much as a faint smile in print. It only works when spoken.
Here's another. A riddle that works when SPOKEN, but not when written or read. Try it. "Name a 4-letter word where the last THREE letters are E-N-Y." Now, seeing "eny" in print, you can easily tell what the word is. But SAY that to someone and many people will never be able to guess that the answer is "DENY".
I mention those to lead in to this stickler. Say I'm writing dialogue for a character. This character is meeting several different people, at different places, over the course of an evening. He's telling a friend about this. I want him to be able to use a variation of the word 'rendezvous' -- a plural that, while completely incorrect grammatically, is used all the time in common conversation. I want him to be able to say "rendezvous" with an 's' on the end -- pronounced like "RON-day-vooz". Get it? (The actual plural of 'rendezvous' is 'rendezvous'.)
So now.....how do I want to write that in the dialogue so the actor knows the desired pronunciation?
I could write it phonetically, like I did above -- "RON-day-vooz". But whenever I see something written phonetically like that in dialogue, it always seems to me like the character is supposed to be exaggerating the word in order to be comical or to sound like a hick. I don't want either. I just want him saying the word straight, just like a normal person would.
So what would YOU do?
