I got into an argument with some friends the other night over one of the things which truly, truly, truly crawls up my craw about lazy scriptwriting: when a character in a performed text sees something happening in front of him, something which the viewing audience can clearly see happening as well, and says out loud what it is that he’s seeing.It’s insulting, it’s condescending, and it’s lazy, lazy work on the part of the writer who might otherwise have to, you know, think of something actually interesting or intelligent for the character to say. How much easier it is to have them walk into a room and turn on the lights and say, “There, now the lights are on.”
I call them “avalanche lines” after the first almost physically painful one I noticed back in the 1980s. Sometimes these things just sink into your brain and you can’t get them out. Since it’s an entirely personal memory and many, many other films and TV shows have done the same thing, I won’t pick on this particular program by giving its name, but anyway, in this episode, MacGyver was caught up in an avalanche, and some distance away, his friend Pete hears a thundering noise and turns to see the entire mountainside pulling away and pouring down itself. “An avalanche!” he gasps to himself.
There’s nobody there for him to tell this to, he’s not talking on a telephone, there’s no good reason for him to say out loud what he’s seeing, and we can see right there, on the screen, right before our eyes, we can see what is happening. Why did the writers think they had to spell it out?! Tonnes of snow are thundering down the mountainside, what the fuck do you think we’ll think it is? A turnip? A yarmulke? A herd of stampeding albino wildebeests? The Parliamentary buildings of French Guiana?
The crew of the Enterprise has answered a distress signal to find a crashed Borg shuttlecraft. The signal is still being sent from the Borg ship. One of the Borg crewmen is brought on board. The crew of the Enterprise are on high alert, watching for any sign of Borg in the system. Then their sensors pick up a ship entering the system. Their sensors indicate that the ship is cubical in nature.
“It’s the Borg,” says Riker.
No shit.
One of my favourite pieces of writing occurs in Terry Pratchett’s novel “Mort,” but as I don’t have it right on hand I’m going to have to paraphrase slightly. After the lead character escapes from three muggers in the Shades, the most dangerous part of the city, two of the muggers get into a violent argument. The third, still trying to figure out where Mort has vanished to, walks past them to examine the wall he apparently walked straight through. Behind him there is the sound of a scuffle, some wet gurgling noises and a couple of thumps. The third mugger eventually realises his companions aren’t responding to him, turns around and looks down. “‘Oh,’ he said. Slow as he was in some ways, he was quick enough to realise two things: he was in the Shades, and he was alone. He ran for it, and got quite a long way.”
Short and sweet and simple, and everything significant happens in the words which aren’t used. Now that’s beautiful.
Avalanche lines. Hate ‘em, hate ‘em, hate ‘em. Honestly, they happen so often that I don’t really notice them that much unless they’re blatantly obvious or I’m actively out looking for them, but don’t try to defend them to me; don’t you dare. I might recently have been exposed to a burst of gamma radiation, and we don’t want to go there.
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