ELEMENTS OF DIALOGUE
dialogue reveals character
- a character will talk about himself and other people will talk about him
dialogue establishes relationships between characters
- once you have established your main character’s POV, you can use dialogue with other characters to show that they have other attitudes, creating opposite/alternative POVs.
- this helps to create and sustain the element of conflict between characters
- good effective dialogue will move the story forward
dialogue communicates faces and information to the audience
- it conveys essential exposition
- characters will talk about what happened, establishing the storyline
dialogue comments on the action
dialogue ties the script together
- it is one of the devices that you, as a writer, can use to expand and enlarge your characters
“If you can see it or hear it, don’t write it.”
- Neville Smith
dialogue should be used sparingly
- never tell the audience what they can see for themselves
- dialogue should not be substituted for action
eg. In Hollywood, when they look at a page and it’s got too much black, too much ink on the paper, they say: “Shit! It’s freeze the camera time!”
common mistake:
- students sometimes never achieve a level of competence as they tend to reproduce conventional spoken language, long statements of “real talking”, and defend their decision by telling us that
“It’s how the character speaks.”
1. good dialogue is not somebody’s ability to write authentic speech as heard in real life
- it is not cheesy (eg. “i’ll be your dairy queen if you be my burger king”)
- it is appropriate to the the genre
- if that was all there is to it, you can just push a button on the tape recorder and then go collect your Oscar
2. good dialogue is the illusion of reality
- good storytellers are good liars, they are able to recreate things
- you’ve got to know how to edit what people say without losing any of the spirit
- change what people say but keep the content the same
common mistake:
- students tend to create radio shows with images
- film is a visual medium
- a screenplay is a story told in pictures
