On Stumbling Accuracy

in Dialogue

It’s not very fashionable to admit to liking anything Richard Curtis has written, touched or even glanced at.

Apart from the final episode of Blackadder.

However, the clearest example of what I’m covering today comes from a famous scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral. (30 years old.)

And I think there’s the usual snobbery about romantic comedies, or funny open hearted films in general, behind dismissing Curtis.

He’s really good. He’s sometimes cringe (‘Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.’), but he’s really solidly, learn-from-his-best-bits good. And often much better than good.

This is the scene. After a second one-night stand, after the second of the four weddings, Charles (Hugh Grant) accompanies Carrie (Andie MacDowall) as she tries on a montage sequence of wedding dresses.

They are saying goodbye on the South Bank, near the National Film Theatre, when he decides to declare his true feelings to her.

[Charles comes running after Carrie] 

Charles : Ehm, look. Sorry, sorry. I just, ehm, well, this is a very stupid question and... particularly in view of our recent shopping excursion, but I just wondered, by any chance, ehm, eh, I mean obviously not because I guess I’ve only slept with 9 people, but-but I-I just wondered... ehh. I really feel, ehh, in short, to recap it slightly in a clearer version, eh, the words of David Cassidy in fact, eh, while he was still with the Partridge family, eh, “I think I love you,” and eh, I-I just wondered by any chance you wouldn’t like to... Eh... Eh... No, no, no of course not... I’m an idiot, he’s not... Excellent, excellent, fantastic, eh, I was gonna say lovely to see you, sorry to disturb... Better get on...

Carrie : That was very romantic.

Charles : Well, I thought it over a lot, you know, I wanted to get it just right.

This is cinema dialogue.

All those ehs and I-Is wouldn’t work so well in a novel, but a couple of them, in a similarly hesitant scene, could be very useful.

Although Curtis wrote the lines, Grant delivered them and, in the process, added his trademark hesitations and codified his schtick forever. This — plus floppy fringe and crinkled eyes — was what he was best at, until he developed his parallel line in utter cads. (Again, don’t dismiss Grant. He delivers nuances of English class that most novelists completely fail to perceive.)

The key line, as far as learning goes, is the final one — because it’s a joke but also a truth.

Well, I thought it over a lot, you know, I wanted to get it just right.

Novelists have much more time to think over their dialogue than their fictional speakers do.

Like all of us, characters in fiction are either speaking off the tops of their heads, or — much more rarely — they are delivering, or trying to deliver, speeches that they’ve run over in their heads beforehand.

I’m repeating their heads to emphasise the fact that this is the bit of writing in a novel that is unwritten.

If it has accuracy, dialogue should have stumbling accuracy.

Stumbling, mumbling, grumbling, fumbling, bumbling eloquence.

Or it should come across as stilted but a little garbled, because they speaker wants to get it just right.

You might take Charles’ declaration as an exaggerated comedy version of this.

The mistake to make with dialogue is to write it too well.

Let your characters subtly mis-say or frantically half-say what they want to get across.

Not all the time, but enough for us to feel them as speakers of speech, not writers of dialogue.

Be a little more um, er.