Listening for dialog: don’t forget you’re a writer when you’re not writing
So many amazing things are said daily. Usually, amazing in a bad way. But amazing’s still amazing.
For instance, in a class the other day, to prove a point about cave paintings, the professor said that in the 18th century the world was only around 7000 years old, but now, we know it’s billions of years old. And he even went on to say that because of the scientific research we’ve gone from the religious tenet that these paintings couldn’t possibly be 10,000, or even a million years old, and must be more recent– therefore not such a dramatic discovery. A girl a couple rows behind me said “That doesn’t add up. If it was only seven thousand years old before, how can it be so old now?”
Now, it’d be hard to get to the line of dialog in the same way, about cave paintings, but there are plenty of other reasons to explain the difference in ‘creation’ dates between cultures, and if you have a character you want to showcase as not the smartest peanut in the turd, merely by paying slight attention to those around you, you’ve got a ready-made scenario. Give it a shot.
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:58 am
It is one of things I can never understand … how people can think that way. It’s so illogical that it can only be based upon moronity.