SILVER ARROWS: SCENE NOTES
Why do we need to write so many scene notes?

We write extremely detailed notes about what will happen in a scene before we begin writing the dialogue, the actual lines. Often these notes will be longer than the final scene. We need these notes so that we can examine and think about everything that should and could happen in the scene to develop the story design and the characterisation. We cut and change things in the notes, where we can plan the shape of the scene as well as play about with ideas. Having them to hand allows you to concentrate on writing good dialogue line by line when you finally write the scene, without having to worry about everything that needs to be in the scene, where it is going, etc.

Here are some very basic notes for a scene that could sound deceptively simple and be quite short, yet a lot of characterisation and sub text has to be conveyed, the story design has to be pushed forward in that Dick and Erica will establish a relationship. Character development will be pushed forward by things being revealed about each character through what they say – or don’t quite say …

Backstory
(Doesn’t need to go into the notes) the scene is halfway through a play and you just need to know this for the exercise).

Erica Popp, 18, an aristocratic German heiress whose father is the managing director of BMW (already part of Hitler’s war machine) has watched dashing English aristocrat Dick Seaman win the 1938 German Grand prix, then the greatest motor race in the world at the greatest track, the Nurburgring in the German mountains. They have only met once before, though they were ‘quite bowled over’ by one another that time.
(It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel interested in motor racing – it is the sort of world they move in).

Dick drives for the Mercedes team, which is personally sponsored by Hitler, and is doing so despite the fact that most of his ‘gung ho’ chums in England are joining the RAF ready to fight the Nazis as war looms. Dick is torn between his ambition to be the best driver in the world which means driving for the Nazi sponsored team, and his natural upper-class English’s. He is head over heels in love with Erica.

Erica loves the glamour of the racing, but is unhappy about the Nazi influence everywhere at the track (her family are very upper class German and very anti Nazi) and is terrified that Dick will crash. She is head over heels in love with him.

We pick them up as they meet ‘across a crowded room’ at ‘drinks’ to celebrate Dick’s win.

Notes

• Dick enters. A babble of congratulations. Dick sees Erica. Who speaks to who?
• They are obviously fantastically attracted to one another but also v. polite. This must break down as scene progresses and they become more intimate and relaxed.
• Dick removes Erica to one side. This becomes a scene within a scene, a two hander with a background party that might occasionally break in. Left alone they are less formal, more honest, more youthful, excited, with Dick on top of the world.
• Their excited exchanges, attraction for each other (she feared for him when she saw his car sliding, etc.) mingle with details of the race provided by Dick: the danger: the cars run with 100 gals of alcohol-based fuel on board with a tank actually wrapped round the driver in the cockpit. He describes what it is like to sit in a racing car at 200 mph.
• People keep calling Dick over – he puts them off.
• Their language is that of the 1930s upper classes think appropriate phrases, nouns and verbs. A 200 mph slide could be ‘a bit sticky’, Erica commenting on the dress of someone calling to Dick as being ‘quite the thing’.
• Balance their quite formal, quite jokey way of talking with the sub text – Dick wants a date, wants to know if she a desirable and young woman would wish to go out with a dashing foreigner in a country where foreigners are increasingly regarded with suspicion.
• They must mention the threat of war growing daily. Erica hates the idea.
• Erica also wants to respond positively to a request by Dick to know her better. She is educated, confident and enthusiastic but also young and this vulnerability must be allowed to peep through.
Now write the scene the dialogue between them plus any other characters that have minor contributions. Play with ideas. If you find things working that take you away from the notes or add new things to them, that’s fine, but check back to ensure that everything in the notes is included somewhere.