When Do Writers Let Protagonists Talk Nonsense For Suspense?

Oh man, gibberish scenes are some of my favorite little puzzles — they look silly on the page but they sing when you find their rhythm. I usually start by hunting for the emotional spine beneath the nonsense. Even if lines read like 'blargh fleep zonk,' there's almost always an intention: frustration, triumph, confusion, seduction, or comic timing. I pick an English verb or image that fits the emotion and let that drive the pitch and pacing. For example, if the underlying beat is 'mocking,' my consonants get sharper, my vowels stretch, and my breaths happen on the off-beats. That trick turns nonsense into something with direction. Technique-wise I lean on physicality — jaw position, tongue placement, tiny lung pushes — to get a variety of textures. Sometimes I invent a private dialect rule (hard 'g' always lands like a cough, long vowels become airy), which helps keep the gibberish consistent from take to take. When a director references shows like 'Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo' or the chaotic energy in parts of 'FLCL,' I know they mean playful elasticity rather than pure noise. Also, layering in post-production — subtle reverb, pitch shifts, or a doubled whisper track — can sell nonsense as otherworldly without changing the performance's heart. Doing this feels like composing a tiny song; once the music is right, the nonsense reads as perfectly meaningful to the audience, and that always makes me grin.

On a busy set I've hung around, the way directors handle extras talking nonsense is a tiny kind of choreography — nothing random, all intention. Extras are usually given 'intent' rather than precise lines: 'argue about a taxi,' 'complain about the coffee,' or 'brag about a party last night.' That lets people riff in a believable way without stealing focus from the principals. You'll see the director or AD call for 'murmur' or 'playful bickering' and the extras will invent scraps of dialogue that fit the scene's energy. In comedies they might be encouraged to be louder and more specific; in dramas the order is often 'keep it low, think of a memory,' so the background sound feels organic but doesn’t dominate the frame. Sound teams then shape whatever is recorded. On-set production sound captures ambience and anything usable, but most of the time those non-specific lines are replaced or reinforced in post with what the industry calls 'walla' — groups of people recording layered, nonsensical background chatter in a booth. Loop groups create multiple tracks of murmur, snippets, and crowd reactions that editors can mix, pan, and EQ to sit just under the main dialogue. For wide crowd scenes, directors will sometimes stage small beats (a cheer, a gasp) to match the action, then rely on editorial timing and sound design to sell the illusion. It looks messy but it's a precise craft, and when it works you barely notice the work behind the chaos.

I love how a sidekick can turn a tense scene into pure comic relief with just the wrong word at the right time. For me, it’s about contrast: the hero is often precise, dramatic, or morally upright, and the sidekick provides friction by being linguistically off-kilter. Writers build that by giving the sidekick a consistent logical flaw — a habit of literalism, malapropisms, or obsessive tangents — so when nonsense pops up it feels like character, not a gag plucked from nowhere. Think of a line that derails a speech with an unexpected concrete image or a bizarre analogy; that interruption creates laughter because it breaks the noble rhythm. Mechanically, timing and rhythm matter a lot. In scripts you see beats and pauses (a well-placed ellipsis, a stage direction like “beat”), while prose leans on sentence length and punctuation to create the same comedic pause. Repetition and escalation are also favorites: a harmless oddity repeated becomes a running joke, and when the sidekick later doubles down in an increasingly absurd way the payoff hits harder. Wordplay techniques — malapropism, spoonerism, invented idioms — give nonsense a surface pattern so readers can anticipate the comedy. Also, writers often make sidekick nonsense a mirror to the plot: literal misunderstandings that reveal truth, or nonsensical metaphors that illuminate a character’s emotional state. I love when authors let the sidekick occasionally turn their bumbling into wisdom; that mix gives depth to the gag. If you’re trying this yourself, pick one or two linguistic tics, imagine how they’d clash with your protagonist’s tone, and then let escalation and callbacks do the heavy lifting. It keeps the humor feeling earned rather than cheap, and I always enjoy spotting the little threads that pay off later.

Man, I love when sitcoms let characters ramble into delightful nonsense to skewer something bigger — it’s like watching a social scalpel with a joke attached. In shows like 'Seinfeld' the entire premise is built on conversations about nothing: the characters riff on tiny social rules until the banality itself becomes the satire. Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer will split hairs about elevator etiquette or the correct way to eat a muffin, and suddenly you’re laughing because their ridiculous logic mirrors real people you’ve met. The nonsense there is conversational and observational, not surreal. Then there are shows that lean into absurdism as a weapon. '30 Rock' and 'Arrested Development' explode into rapid-fire non sequiturs and running gags that make the world feel slightly unhinged on purpose. Tracy Jordan yelling a completely unrelated anecdote or Michael Bluth’s family making bizarre leaps in logic turns nonsense into a mirror for corporate and family dysfunction. Animated sitcoms like 'The Simpsons' and 'South Park' are even freer — they’ll let characters spout blatantly illogical takes to mock politics, consumerism, or pop culture, often in ways live-action can’t safely push. If you want to study how nonsense works as satire, watch a mix: a 'Seinfeld' bottle-plot for conversational absurdity, an 'Arrested Development' cold open for tight callback humor, and a 'South Park' episode for full-tilt topical provocation. Paying attention to cadence (how timing makes nonsense land), escalation (how jokes get more extreme), and target (who or what is being mocked) will teach you why nonsense can cut so effectively. For me, the best part is spotting the truth buried in the ridiculous — it’s the reason I keep rewinding favorite scenes.

I get a kick out of how what looks like nonsense can actually be a secret shorthand in a script. Sometimes characters jabber on about odd, half-baked things and it seems like the writer lost the plot, but more often it's deliberate: the dialogue is doing work beneath the surface — showing a character's brainstorms, deflections, or emotional spillover. In films or shows where people are nervous or trying to hide something, speech fragments, tangents, and non sequiturs feel authentic because that's literally how we talk when we’re uneasy. I’ve sat in cafes eavesdropping on conversations that went nowhere and realized that same scattershot quality is gold for making scenes feel lived-in. Another reason is rhythm and tone. A string of bizarre lines can set a mood — comic, eerie, or surreal — in ways tidy exposition cannot. Think of the odd talk in 'Twin Peaks' or the aimless banter in 'Seinfeld'; those moments create texture and let the audience breathe instead of hitting them with information. Sometimes writers use nonsense to mask exposition: characters talk in circles while the camera reveals clues, or the gibberish itself becomes a red herring. There’s also stream-of-consciousness and poetic approaches where literal meaning is less important than emotional truth. Finally, technical choices matter. If a line seems nonsensical on the page but lands in the actor’s delivery or the edit, it can become iconic. Table reads, rehearsal, and trusting actors to shape the gibberish into subtext are all part of the justification. If I had one tip from my own scribbles and late-night script swaps, it’s this: keep the nonsense that reveals something — a fear, a lie, a relationship — and kill the rest. The weird lines that survive tend to be the ones that make you sit up, not just scratch your head.

Tavern gossip that sounds like babble actually does a lot of heavy lifting, and I love that about fantasy. When an NPC mutters something that reads like nonsense, it often means the author is letting the world breathe — giving it odd corners, half-heard superstitions, and the kind of local color that makes a map feel lived-in. In my reading, those scraps of 'nonsense' are shorthand for culture: dialect, folklore, or a historical trauma that characters accept without theatrical exposition. It’s a softer, more immersive form of world-building than an info-dump, and I usually appreciate the trust the book places in me to piece things together. Sometimes that babble is practical craft. Authors sprinkle mysterious phrases as hooks — little seeds for later revelations, side quests, or thematic echoes. Games like 'Skyrim' and novels like 'The Name of the Wind' have NPCs who rattle off half-truths; they create a milieu where the player or reader feels like an archaeologist of meaning. Other times it’s deliberate misdirection: unreliable narrators, propaganda within the world, or characters deliberately obfuscating knowledge to preserve power. Even the sloppy, random line can reveal something about the speaker — their education, their caste, or a joke only locals understand. So I don’t mind the nonsense; I treat it like a puzzle piece that might click later, or just a bit of texture that makes the world feel stubbornly real, messy, and entertaining in its own right.

When dialogue goes bizarre and the reader frowns, that's the red flag I look for. I cut lines that make characters talk nonsense when they actively damage clarity, pacing, or the emotional truth of the scene. If a line forces readers to stop, re-read, or guess wildly about who a character is, it's doing the wrong work. There are exceptions — deliberately surreal bits, unreliable narrators, or intentional non sequiturs in a comic like 'One Piece' or a dream-sequence in 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' can be voice-defining — but those need to have a purpose beyond being quirky. My practical litmus tests are simple: read the line aloud, ask what the sentence is accomplishing, and imagine the scene without it. If the line doesn't reveal character, advance the plot, or deepen subtext, it probably deserves trimming or a rewrite. I also consider tone: a flippant, nonsense remark in a tense interrogation undercuts stakes; the same silliness in a bar scene might enhance atmosphere. When in doubt I defer to the scene’s dominant emotional beat — the line should either heighten that beat or provide a meaningful counterpoint, not derail it. Collaboration is key here; I’ll flag the line for the author with a clear note rather than snipping blindly. Ultimately I try to preserve the author’s voice while protecting the reader’s immersion, and I keep a soft spot for weird lines that actually earn their strangeness.

As someone who balances a hectic schedule, 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running' by Haruki Murakami resonated with me on so many levels. Murakami’s reflections on running and writing aren’t just about the physical act but about discipline, perseverance, and the solitude that fuels creativity. His candidness about the struggles of aging and maintaining passion is both humbling and inspiring. I found myself nodding along as he described the mental clarity running brings, how it’s a metaphor for life’s marathon. The way he intertwines his journey as a novelist with his love for running makes the book feel deeply personal yet universally relatable. It’s not just for runners or writers—it’s for anyone who’s ever pursued a passion relentlessly. What struck me most was Murakami’s honesty about failure and self-doubt. He doesn’t romanticize the grind; he lays bare the exhaustion, the boredom, and the occasional despair. Yet, through it all, he keeps lacing up his shoes, showing up for the run, and, by extension, for life. His musings on the Boston Marathon and the toll of time on his body added a poignant layer. This book is a quiet celebration of resilience, a reminder that the journey matters as much as the finish line.