Dee Rees on How to Use the Triple Bumper Theory to Create Subtext in Dialogues

American filmmaker Dee Rees has made a name for herself with her two feature films, Pariah (2011) and Mudbound (2017) that showcased Rees talent to portray humans that feel oh-so-human. Rees, who wrote Pariah and adapted Mudbound from Hillary Jodan’s novel (and I can’t recommend enough When She Woke by the same author) gave a Screenwriting Lecture at BAFTA that goe straight in the Top 3 of the best BAFTA Lecture.

Rees doesn’t lose a minute and in a packed 30 minutes gives three strategies she keeps in mind to create better characters and better dialogues.

The first one she gave is one I had never heard of and I found so strong, I had to share it back here. After all, we all chase the good dialogues that will hold space for tension, progression and/emotion. Which is much easier said than done.

Meet the Triple Bumper Theory

Rees uses a technique taught by one of her professors, Michael Casale, called the Triple Bumper Theory. She explains perfectly what are the traps attached to writing straight-forward dialogues, what question to ask yourself as a writer to avoid the traps, and how to use the Triple Bumper Theory to create subtext:

“People in real life rarely say exactly what’s on their mind or exactly what they feel, and they do this for a number of reasons. Either they’re protecting themselves or they’re protecting the other person. And so it’s really weird in cinema when people give this full-on heartfelt emotional monologues that are expositional and saying exactly what they think because that’s not really how it goes in life. I had this great writing professor, his name was Mick Casal, and so his idea was this thing called the Triple Bumper Theory and this was the idea that whatever someone really feels, back off of it three times and then you’ll get to the thing that maybe should be on the page. So, for example, a love scene, girl meets girl, they’re in love. The thing that is meant is: “I love you.” But you wouldn’t say that because there’s a risk, you might be rejected so maybe you back it off and say “I love your sweater.” But even that feels too risky so you could back it off again and say “Where’d you buy that sweater?” And then if you want you could back it off again and say “I heard there’s a sell at Topshop on sweaters.” But then as a director, the subtext that I hear to the sell at Topshop is really “I love you”. And then that comes across in the scene, the audience is smart, the audience gets it. So as a writer, you don’t want to put it exactly on the page that way so there’s that buffer there. For you the writer, when you’re writing dialogue there are no consequences, so there’s a temptation for your characters to be this avatar, this kind of courageous defender that goes off and says the things that you want to say. But keep in mind that for the characters there are consequences, there are very real consequences and they would protect themselves from that. So rather than let characters be your champion, you have to understand the consequences that they’re in and protect of them with the dialogue. (…)

People say things or don’t say things either because they want to avoid something or because they want something to happen. So when you’re writing, what are your characters avoiding?“

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This whole text up there is told in the first 5 minutes of the Rees’ lecture. After that, she proceeds in illustrating this technique with a scene from Pariah. I highly recommend you to watch the full lecture, that lasts 30 minutes and where Dee Rees shares two more techniques.

Enjoy (and watch Mudbound):