Task #9: REWRITE THE FIRST PART OF YOUR SCRIPT AND ADD SOUND
Refine the language of your scene and incorporate incidental music.
Review your script to make sure that your characters say and do everything needed to build a dramatic situation and to establish fundamental character qualities and relationships. In addition, make sure that every word serves the action of the play, is appropriate for the character speaking, and clearly expresses character thought.
Secondly, and this may be difficult, review your script for words, lines, speeches, and beats, that are not needed and cut them. While including everything that is necessary for understanding the play, excessive language obscures meaning and leads the audience astray.
Make sure that your language has a melodic quality. Use character voices to establish variety of tone and originate organic melody through phrasing and punctuation. Create tempo through the pace of lines to build dramatic tension. If you feel the emotions of the characters as you express their thought, this will aid tempo, rhythm, and melody.
Line by line dialogue that leads to longer speeches can build suspense, heighten dramatic tension, quicken the tempo, and induce an interest in emotional outbursts in longer speeches. Also, line by line dialogue is easier for actors to memorize.
SOUND AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC
Read through your script once with the idea of adding sound or music where appropriate. Sound and music can aid the story by creating mood and atmosphere, help create illusions of time and place, and characterize. For plays, use sounds that naturally occur, for example, an off-stage party or a car driving off. A character that turns on the radio or plays a CD can insert music, just remember to have them turn it off later.
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