How to handle speeches

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  • How to handle speeches

    I'm writing a story that has courtroom scenes featuring lawyers doing summations as well as scenes of people giving lectures or speeches in front of audiences. I know it's awkward to have long speeches or monologues but I'm not sure how to handle them in a non-awkward way.

  • #2
    Re: How to handle speeches

    Break them up with lines describing the reactions of jurors, the judge, the opposing counsel... Perhaps break away to a B or C storyline for a quarter/half a page... Have the attorney have to retrieve an important piece of evidence, etc.

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    • #3
      Re: How to handle speeches

      watch The Verdict. and And Justice For all. and To Kill a Mockingbird.

      there's only two points in a trial when the attorneys are given to uninterrupted speeches: opening statements and closing arguments.

      anything else in between should be conflict between the attorneys and witnesses on the stand, the judge on the bench, or the lawyers themselves.

      real trials are generally boring AF. don't aim for actual realism.

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      • #4
        Re: How to handle speeches

        Another thing to avoid, if at all possible, is to repeat verbatim what we already know or have seen.

        So if we've witnessed the crime first-hand, earlier in the story, why have either attorney repeat it verbatim before a bunch of folks sitting there in a courtroom doing nothing. Even if you-the-writer find that sort of stuff compelling, it's a tough sell to audiences.

        At the very least, it's the chance to give us a different point of view of the crime. This can be through some sort of clarification or statement of "fact" or befuddling of fact that serves as subtext to us, since we may know exactly what the truth is.

        Mind you, I personally hate it when we get those big "surprises" in courtroom testimony that in the normal turn of events would have all come out in pre-trial. They're dramatic, but in my view totally phony.

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        • #5
          Re: How to handle speeches

          We also see many times where they are broken up by montages (the speech is over various images/actions). We see this all the time in movie openings where a scene or speech is over news clips or historical clips to set the history.

          Also many times if the speech is describing something in the past, flashbacks are used to show us what happened instead of hearing about it.
          You know Jill you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month, he must have been a happy man.

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          • #6
            Re: How to handle speeches

            From Pollyanna: (I think Karl Malden had fun with this)

            Death comes unexpectedly...
            "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

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            • #7
              Re: How to handle speeches

              Originally posted by StoryWriter View Post
              From Pollyanna: (I think Karl Malden had fun with this)

              Death comes unexpectedly...
              That's a fun one and a great example of a long speech where all visuals are contained to a single location/scene although it did have lots of characters in attendance to use to give context/reaction to the speech.

              I just watched Justice League with my teenage son yesterday and at the end it has a "speech of sorts":

              https://youtu.be/jMSPZF6_xt8?t=559
              You know Jill you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month, he must have been a happy man.

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