When the dramatist, Arthur Miller, remarked that he couldn't write a character until he could hear a character he articulated what is probably the single most important insight concerning the nature of mediumistic storytelling: the process of discovering character — of entering a character's inner life, and allowing your life to be entered by it — is and always has been, in essence, an aural experience.
Every character worthy of the name has a voice. The voice, like breath itself, comes from deep within — a kind of aural fingerprint with its own, unique timbre, pitch, pace and rhythm.
In saying this I do not mean to imply any devaluation of image. Cinematic images are not voiceless — a tree creaks; a city hums; the bush screams; one listens to the silence because one can always hear it.
But in the development of character-driven drama, a screenwriter's most pressing challenge is to enter the life of the characters, and for this to occur s/he must enter into an intimacy that is nowhere more potent or profound than in the interplay between speaking and hearing.
Tribal people have always recognised the pre-eminent power of the voice. When we — the so-called educated masses — understand something we say: "I see"; whereas in tribal cultures understandings are conveyed by the expression: "I hear you". In Australia, among the Western Desert group of languages, for example, the Pintupi/Luritja word for "to understand" (kurlinu) is the same word as "to hear". One of the worst insults is simply to tell someone: "nyuntu pina wiya!" (you have no ears!).
As a poet — indeed, as a performance poet — I have long been aware of the importance of the voice and the ears in the composition and presentation of verse. When one writes a poem on paper one fills a space; inches, indents, punctuation are all seemingly significant. However, the real poem is also being written in time — not only on the page, but also in the invisible management of energies with their metres, pauses, and tonalities. It should ring in one's head, and beat with a heart that is peculiarly its own.
Like music, poetry and dramatic screenwriting move within a time continuum; they are time arts, and if one is not sensitive to the way that a poem or a script moves in time, the way in which their movement contains and conveys the emotional meaning of the language in which they are dressed, one may very well sabotage or dilute their potential and the emotional impact that is their reason for being.
Compelling, character-based storytelling is — like poetry — also grounded in orality. Though I had had an intellectual understanding of this, I never fully grasped or appreciated the catalytic power of "hearing voices" until one evening during the 1987 National Screenwriters' Conference in Queenscliff (Victoria, Australia). During one of the late-night sessions, I developed a growing revulsion for the fawning admiration my fellow Aussie screenwriters were showering upon the British TV dramatist, Troy Kennedy Martin, and the mesmerised eagerness with which they were prepared to embrace his naïve enthusiasm for the tele-visual possibilities of micro-drama, Having had my fill of this latest version of Australia's infamous "cultural cringe", I got up and left. It was already quite late when set out for my room at the Ozone Hotel, so I was surprised when suddenly I heard a strange, distinctive voice cry out: "A brackish tribulation!"
The words came out of the darkness and swirled round me like some lucid dream — close enough for me to imagine that the speaker was right behind me.
I stopped and turned, expecting to see someone — a friend maybe, emerging from the shadows — but nobody was there... so I resumed walking, and the words came again — "A brackish tribulation!"
I repeated the phrase under my breath as if to verify I hadn't said it myself, and set off in greater haste for the hotel. As I walked, I heard it again... and again. Alone with a voice, a lone voice. I was more curious than frightened, but also more anxious for the sanctuary of the hotel, so I picked up my pace and bounded up the stairs to my room, two steps at a time.
Shutting the door behind me, I realised it had followed me into the room. Looking in the desk, I found a single sheet of hotel letterhead. Even though you tell yourself you'll remember in the morning, you never do. So I wrote it down. "A brackish tribulation!" — and as soon as I did, the voice came again, only this time it said: "inconsequential no doubt, but beyond compare", trilling the "r" with a bardic, Yeatsian kind of tone.
I sat at the desk, writing down everything I heard. As I wrote down one sentence I'd hear another, and as soon as I'd written that down, another. It went on like this for maybe an hour, until my roommate arrived back from the conference, full of false enthusiasm for the possibilities of micro-drama.
"What have you been doing?" he asked.
"Writing," I said; somewhat absently. Then I read it to him — a long dramatic monologue that ends:
Never the proposals that get in the way,
only the stupid questions and
inattention to answers;
the blind assent to speed:
the headlong rush into untried truth
because he said this and she said that,
so long as everything is quick,
so long as everything is sweet.
As if life could be conceived and born
in a night's sleep;
toddling by breakfast;
high school on the way to work;
college and a perfect marriage by noon;
old age for lunch; and a palsied decline
in time for tea.
Setting for an early hour
the alarm clock by Death;
and Heaven: another sleep.
So how is it that Men and Women
make it through another day
with such velocity,
with so little deliberation?
[beat]
Freedom is a wishbone
caught up in the hand of a child who
believes in magic and cannot speak,
for speaking does not make wishes happen.
What is closest to us must always remain a secret,
and there is tragedy in this.
Syntax cannot change this room.
Something more is required...
or something less.
Courage: the rudimentary ingredient.
Better to reflect the world without a word
than talk ourselves to death.
But make no mistake —
this is no theatre of ideas, only lucid dream.
In here, the passing show
lacks the usual requisite action,
but should do in any case.
The anticipation of a long journey
is still possible,
even when there is no horizon.
(Read the complete play at http://stoneking.tripod.com/cgi-bin/16).
