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The dynamics between two characters from different backgrounds and views cannot fail to create sparkling dialogue and great tension in a film or book. The characters’ emotional depth provides the fuel that drives the scene. Stories that contain dynamic scenes include Educating Rita, As Good as It Gets, Pride and Prejudice, Groundhog Day and Ten Things I Hate About You. But this theme goes right back to Beauty and the Beast.
Credible Characters for Scene Writing
Character Chemistry within Dialogue Writing
Without further ado, Josh engages Sarah in his parlor game of ‘teacher and pupil.’ Each game serves to underline his contempt for teachers. In his first lesson, he fools her into saying ‘sorry.’ Moments later, Sarah realizes he was mocking her. In subsequent lessons, he coerces her into saying ‘thank you’ and ‘please.’
Inwardly, Sarah identifies each game in his boot-camp as: Make a Teacher Say Thank You, Make a Teacher Say Sorry, Waste a Teacher’s Valuable Time, Question and Answer, Confuse a Teacher, Mess with a Teacher’s Personal Life, Compromise a Teacher’s Professionalism and Blackmail a Teacher.
Scenes with Two Characters
In the following excerpt, Josh engages her in Make a Teacher Grovel. The game is set up when Sarah expresses her exasperation on Josh's refusal to complete an English test.
Sarah closed the book. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she muttered in frustration. ‘This is for your benefit. Why don’t you at least…try?’
Josh didn’t move. ‘Go on,’ he said.
Sarah bit her lip. ‘Think how good you would feel if you could better yourself, move on from that factory job, achieve something…’ God, she was beginning to sound like her father and she couldn’t stop herself. ‘…You can do so much more than you realize if you would just apply yourself, believe that you can learn something. Prove those so-called experts wrong.’
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘And…and, don’t do it for anyone else but yourself, that’s the best reason. Forget everything that’s gone on before and start with a clean slate. Swallow your pride. You can…you can…’
‘Go on,’ he said.
Sarah stared at him.
‘I want you to beg me some more.’
Another game from his gamut: Make a Teacher Grovel. She pinched her lip between her teeth. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Whatever it takes, I beg you to do this test.’
He raised his eyebrows with a small nod of approval. ‘You’re beginning to learn.’ And he straightened himself up to take the pen and exercise book.
Fictional Character Chemistry
I wanted Josh to be thoroughly abhorrent, but also to cosset hidden emotional depths. Why is he so contemptuous of past teachers? Why is he intent on keeping Sarah at arm’s length? After a while, his game of Teacher and Pupil shows itself up to be a convenient barrier, but which start to break down. Their relationship evolves after Sarah sets him an assignment on erotic art. Of course, their relationship must develop, or there would be no story. This is true of any great play or novel that focuses upon two characters, such as Educating Rita, As Good as It Gets, Pride and Prejudice, and others.
Excerpt from A Hard Lesson by Charles J Harwood
Copyright is asserted © 2012
This novel has also been adapted into a screenplay
Other themes relating to this novel
The trap of group dynamics and family roles
Stories of peer pressure in gangs
Forbidden love of Venus and Mars
The butterfly effect in stories
Interesting psychopaths in fiction
Other articles
Passionless marriage in fiction
References: Classic Film Guide Online resource (2013)
Image details: Deutsch: In the Père Lathuille (1879), oil on canvas, Edouard Manet, Museum of Fine Arts, Germany
Amazing scenes within stories require magic ingredients outlined below and which are evident in some of the films just mentioned:
The tension between the two characters is not resolved too early or too easily. Things build up until the tension is almost unbearable.
The differences between the characters are starkly clear. As the plot intensifies the conflict creates further personality clashes or sexual tension.
The scenes avoid the old beaten track of a relationship development that smacks of a trite version of Romeo and Juliet.
The protagonists' ride is bumpy and difficult. In fact, the bumpier the road, the better and the bigger the payoff is likely to be.
The characters themselves are authentic and possess emotional depth. No behaviors to-order.
The more the audience thinks things aren’t going to work out between them, the better.
Story about Social Class
Consider Willy Russell's Educating Rita (1980). Julie Walters plays Liverpudlian working class Rita wishing to embark an English Literature course to climb out of her social rut. Michael Caine plays Frank, a jaded university professor. Straight away, the two characters contrast interestingly in their backgrounds, education and viewpoints. Frank is impressed by Rita’s fieriness but he also nurses a cynicism about the pretensions of the campus. Tension builds as Rita buys into this pretension. Boundaries become blurred when Frank starts to care too much about his student.
Story of an Arrogant Man
As Good as It Gets (1997) stars Jack Nicolson as a misanthropic writer, Melvin. His counterpart, Helen Hunt plays single mum, Carol with an asthmatic son. The story’s compelling plot is due to the chemistry between Melvin and Carol as Melvin continues to offend everyone around him, except for Carol, the only waitress willing to serve him. Their relationship goes beyond the norm when Melvin offers to pay her son’s medical bills so that Carol would continue to serve his table and not quit her job. What really makes this film work is Melvin’s abrasive manner and Carol’s patience, but her unique ability to tell him straight. ‘Brace yourself for Melvin’ is the film’s tag.
Great Dialogue or Silence?
But characters don’t always have to engage in a verbal rapport to liven a scene, as can be seen in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), where the characters Mia (Uma Thurman) and Vince (John Travolta) share a protracted silence at cocktail bar, Rack Rabbit Slims. Neither is into small-talk or courting rituals.
I wanted to exploit character contrasts for my novel, A Hard Lesson. Sarah is a meek young teacher who is coerced into tutoring her worst nightmare, Josh. Her subject is obnoxious, dyslexic and disdainful of all teachers, having frightened off a string of candidates before her.
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