How do you portray two characters talking simultaneously, especially when they are not saying the exact same words (i.e.: in unison)? What effective means gets this across in dialogue (i.e.: in a novel)? And also, how is this properly done in a script? As an example, let’s say I want two to have characters…one says “yes” and the says “no” simultaneously.
Of course, I am sure I have come across it in my leisurely readings, but I guess I never stopped to notice how the technique(s) is/are done effectively. - Jinx
If they’re saying the same thing, it’s usually just written together, as:
Bob & Carol: Help!
I’ve also seen several scripts where simultaneous dialogue is written in two (or more) columns on the page. I tried providing an example, but I couldn’t get the formatting to work in this post. I’ve seen this used chiefly when specific timing is necessary to the scene.
And finally, a lot of it is done just with stage direction notes. Before the relevant dialogue, a note will simply state “Bob & Carol say their next speeches simultaneously”.
Anyway, those are the main ways I’ve seen it done. hopefully, your dialogue is better than mine.
When I was a senior in HS I was assigned in drama class to do a bit from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. One of the arguements between Big Daddy and Brick and it took me forever to figure out that we were supposed to be talking at the same time.
It looked something like this.
BD I never should have-
The playwright Caryl Churchill has developed an entire new method of writing that covers this, and many other, eventualities (e.g. a character retaining the original ‘thought’ while making an aside, then returning to the thought). The result - if done well - is onstage dialogue onstage that is more realistic anything else I’ve ever observed.
One great example you can flip through in a bookstore is David Ives’s All In the Timing, specifically his spoken-word operetta “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread”. It is amazingly complex; the four readers each get a column of the page, and read down their own column. Where two readers share dialogue, that dialogue is centered in their columns. The script alone is masterful for how it communicates to the actors; the play is a mockery of Philip Glass’s minimalist and repetitive style.
While you’re reading that compilation, you should check out “Variations on the Death of Trotsky,” because it’s funny, and one of the characters gets a mountain-climber’s axe buried in his skull.
Cool, jjimm and jurph, I’ll have to check both of those things out.
It’s neat to see what lengths writers will go to to communicate their intentions to the reader, and perhaps more specifically to the actor. I have a friend who’s a playwrite that crams his scripts full of ‘directions’ for the actors. He can barely write a sentence without throwing in a ‘spoken angrily’ or a ‘sotto vocce’ note.
Of course, other scripts I have read have almost none of that. Shakespeare is the classic example. There are very few ‘stage directions’ in the Bard’s scripts, save ‘enter’ and ‘exit’. And of course ‘exit, pursued by bear’. The result is endless debate over text and subtext interpretations.
So, I guess the OP has to clarify for themselves what they want to communicate by having two characters speak at the same time. Is it the timing of the speech? The emotional content? The effect it has on the listeners?
Different intents will probably be better served by different styles.
