Writing tip: characters need to talk to each other about things

I watch a lot of movies and among the many movies I watch there are many old movies. I like a classic, I don't know what to tell you. But when you watch a decent amount of classics you discover something interesting. Some of them aren't very good.

I realise art is subjective and people are always going to disagree about whether or not a movie is good, but for the purposes of my newsletter that no one asked me to write, I will be the one in charge of this.

In an example of a classic film not being very good, a few months to a couple of years ago, I watched Roman Holiday. I know people love this movie, I have seen people talk swooningly about this movie, but unfortunately it's only ok and there is a very specific reason for this. The characters never talk to each other about things.

I'm going to spoil Roman Holiday for you now, but that's ok because it's not a great movie. Audrey Hepburn plays the princess of some European principality or other. One night, while on a diplomatic visit to Rome, she runs away from her responsibilities and into Gregory Peck, a journalist who realises who she is immediately, but pretends he doesn't.

They spend the day galavanting about and then they kiss and she goes back to her life. The thing is, apart from the fact that they're both very beautiful and charismatic, there is absolutely no reason to believe they're into each other before they kiss. This is because they have not talked to each other about things.

Making your characters talk to each other (about things) is how the audience learns who they are beyond their most obvious traits. It's how the audience sees how different characters relate to each other. Why they like or dislike each other.

In Roman Holiday no one ever talks about anything except their immediate circumstances. They don't discover what they have in common or what sets them apart from each other, apart from the fact that one of them is a princess.

This is a really common problem. I see it all the time. And I understand it! It's pretty easy to decide upon the broad strokes of a character. Their height and hair colour, their job, and whatnot. And with enough charisma you can get by on the assumption that your audience will care about them because they're the protagonist. That they'll be invested in the happy ever after because you've told them who the romantic interest is. Including their height and hair colour and their job.

If you make your characters talk to each other about things – about movies, or travelling, or food, or philosophy, or whether they prefer swimming in the sea on in a lake, about the weird story they tell themselves about the fox that lives on their block – then you have to make so many more decisions about who this person is. It's harder. But it's those decisions that make a story grounded and memorable.

There's a reason When Harry Met Sally is everyone's favourite romcom. The whole movie is just Harry and Sally talking. To each other. About things. They talk about Casablanca, they talk about underwear, they talk about dates they've been on and sex dreams they've had, they talk about the fact that Sally looks good in skirts.

Nora Ephron is so good at making her characters talk to each other about things that she managed to write one of the only good romcoms where the main character never talk to each other at all. Sleepless In Seattle works because Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks both talk so much to other characters that we can imagine how they will talk to each other.

This is related to the cabbages theory, naturally. Your story needs to be peopled and those people need to do more than just serve the function of the story, or they won't feel like people at all.

Giving your ancillary characters there own shit going on makes your world feel more real. Giving your central characters a life outside the events of the film does the same for them.

This is one of my most frequent frustrations with fiction. A book or a film will be cluttered with events and spend next to no time on people just talking. Just showing us who they are.

I'm not going to care about those events if I don't care about the people they're happening to. So please, show everyone who your characters are.

Make them talk to each other about things.