Bob Ross by Stuart Maue - The Monday Morning Memo

“You have to write dialogue in a rhythmic way because human speech is rhythmic. If you listen to people having a conversation, what they’re doing is creating a rhythmic poetry. They’re filling in the pauses and capping each other’s speech in a way that is rhythmic. Shakespeare wrote in Iambic Pentameter because that’s the rhythm of everyday English speech. ‘I hate to see the evening sun go down,’ is iambic pentameter. ‘Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’ is iambic pentameter. ‘I’ll see you Sunday if it doesn’t rain,’ is iambic pentameter.”

“If you see a couple across the restaurant, you can’t hear what they’re saying, but you know what they’re talking about. Because you can tell from the rhythm, how they cap each other, how they come on top of each other, how they cut each other off. And so if you can write that, the actors know it and they love it, because it’s natural, because they don’t have to fight the current of a clunky line.”

- David Mamet, screenwriter

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