Russell T. Davies on Dialogue–Part 2

A few weeks ago I posted an excerpt from the book DOCTOR WHO: THE WRITER’S TALE: THE FINAL CHAPTER, wherein former Doctor Who show-runner and principle writer, Russell T. Davies, talks with journalist Benjamin Cook about his last season working on Doctor Who. In the course of their email exchange, Russell discusses the writing process. We are in the middle of a discussion on dialogue. Let’s return to it. (You might want to go back and re-read the last part to get the context.)

BEN COOK:

We’re talking about ourselves… and yet our instinct is to guard our inner selves, sometimes even from those we love. Wouldn’t you have thought those two ideas are mutually exclusive?

RUSSELL T. DAVIES:

The opposite of exclusive: they’re the same thing, in a way. We think of ourselves, but reveal ourselves through what we say. I think ‘reveal’ is the crucial word there. We don’t actually say what we’re thinking, not deliberately, not consciously. We’re revealing and guarding at the same time. You hear it, every day, in the way people say other people’s names. If someone fancies someone, but hasn’t said so out loud–and might not even be hugely conscious of it themselves–the way that they say that person’s name just gives it away. More importantly, the number of times they say that person’s name every day. Oh, don’t you just love people, for all their transparency and hopelessness?

That’s what dialogue is: it’s tapping into those tides and urges, revealing glimpses of it, though never revealing any one final truth, because there isn’t any one final truth; we’re many things, to many people, and a great unknown to ourselves. I love that bit where you say that we guard ourselves ‘sometimes even from those we love.’ I think it’s especially from them. All the time. Or maybe I’m a cynic. But I don’t think ‘love’ is the cure-all, the great honesty; it’s the most complicated area of the lot. Hence, thousands of years of love stories. It’s the centre of fiction, with no sign of exhaustion.

It really is crass to use Captain Hardaker* as an example, because he’s hardly the finest fictional creation ever (though I look forward to presenting the annual Hardaker Award), but he is doing what we’re talking about. ‘It’s an old ship, full of aches and pains’ is talking about himself both physically and–if you want to get wanky–morally. But he’s not saying, ‘Actually, I’m going to kill myself.’ Revealing and guarding at the same time–don’t we always? I don’t actually imagine that Hardaker is thinking, aha, I’ll talk about myself metaphorically. It’s more of a mood than that.

I might post the next segment next week, because they get into an interesting discussion about how naturalistic dialogue should be. I probably won’t post any more after that–I don’t want to get into copyright trouble. But I seriously recommend this book to you, whether or not you’re a fan of Doctor Who. The insights into the writing process from one of Britain’s best scriptwriters are priceless.

* Captain Hardaker was a character in the Doctor Who episode “Voyage of the Damned” which was written by Russell T. Davies. Hardaker captained the spaceship S.S. Titanic. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, hadn’t long to live, and was paid a large sum of money by the story’s antagonist (which would go to Hardaker’s family) to crash the ship into Earth.