Thread by @fringeblog

Dialogue should sound like everyday speech without it being boring like everyday speech. Every word should do double or triple duty in conveying character's traits, desires (what they want in scene) but without saying it outright. Dialogue needs to dance around the subject.

Dialogue must feel natural while being highly stylized. It should be nuanced/subtle but chock full of meaning.

The best dialogue is conversational and yet carries characters and plot forward in a powerful current--so it must be objectively goals-based (what the character wants)

& must be subjectively artistically rendered--not simply be on the nose.

Good dialogue is going to be words you can IMAGINE people saying in real life if they were always their best versions of themselves.

But good dialogue is NEVER going to be the way people speak in real life.

Real people don't talk like Juno, or Jules from Pulp Fiction, or Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross.

BUT WE WANT TO.

You can express an idea any number of ways, and it should contextually make sense for that character. So a sarcastic character will approach it sarcastically. A diva will make everything big. A coward will avoid and whine and wheedle. A braggart will talk bigger than life.

What's more interesting:

JACK
I need to get a job or I won't be able to pay my rent this month.

or

JILL
Who's got two thumbs and no way to make rent? THIS GIRL!

Not a great example, but you get the idea. Jack is straightforward, boring, tells us nothing about him. And it's never going to win any awards.

Neither will Jill's, but we can gather a lot about her from how she says she's broke. So dialogue REVEALS character and expands our

understanding of a character's needs.

When Andy Dufresne says "Get busy living or get busy dying" he's saying SO MUCH MORE than if he'd said "I need to make my escape from prison tonight or I'm not going to be able to take it anymore."

But his intent is hidden in the symmetry

of "busy living" and "busy dying." The words are about how you respond to adversity, and by inference about who Andy is. When he's in a low place, it makes us wonder if he's going to commit suicide. Then we later realize he was really talking about taking his life back.

Good dialogue is LESS. If your characters take 5 lines to say what they could say in 2, you may be overwriting... there are always exceptions--maybe your character is a motormouth. But in general, less is more. A character doesn't say they're sad or mad. They sulk or rage.

So aim for clarity, forward progress, goal-intention revealed through subtlety and inventiveness in your dialogue. You'll find it begins to breathe its own rhythms and your characters will find their pace as you figure out their voice.

#writingtips #wracgroup #screenwriting