Why This is Good

Another dialogue problem, expository dialogue is when you use dialogue to tell us things about the story or the characters in an unnatural way. For example, “Have a great day at work in the hospital, dear.” Assuming this is a spouse or talking to another spouse, we can also assume that they already know where they work, it sounds phony and unnatural to state it, and it’s clearly done just to tell the audience that the person works in the hospital.

Or “Your sister, Beth is at the door.” Most people know the name of their sister. This sounds more like an introduction. Or, if speaking to a close friend or family member: “Hi Mary, I had a hard day working at the train station today. My boss, John, was riding me all day.” A close friend would know where the speaker worked, and probably the boss’s name. Most people don’t call people by their first names on a regular basis either. A more realistic line would be: “Work was tough, John was riding me all day.”

Expository dialogue is a common problem and will almost always be present to some extent in first drafts. It is important to review your script to make sure your dialogue sounds natural, realistic, and like something your characters would actually say. Paying attention to how real people talk, and always listening when you are out around others will help you develop an ear for natural, realistic dialogue and help you write accurate dialogue that improves your story.

Screenplays are not plays, they rely on visual images to tell a story. Dialogue is a vital part of the storytelling process, but it should not dominate the script. Whenever possible, it is better to show, not tell. Use the visual medium for its intended purpose. Screenplays are often dialogue heavy because characters talk about something that happened rather than showing that as a scene. Whereas in a play this is often necessary because locations, sets and special effects are limited, in a film you can show anything, happening anywhere. There is no need for the characters to talk about something we don’t see, just show it. Equally irritating are characters discussing something we have already seen. Unless it’s pertinent to the story for a character to relay the details of an event to another character, don’t include recaps. Those that are necessary should be very brief, or cut away during the telling, so the audience isn’t bored with hearing about what they just watched.

Much of first draft dialogue is repetitive. This is easier to spot on your second draft, or if you have your script reviewed by someone else. Read the dialogue out loud. Are the ideas repeated over and over? If so find a concise, natural way for the characters to say what they mean, and move on. Often less dialogue is more powerfully able to convey emotion than pages and pages of introspection.

Dialogue is perhaps one of the most challenging components of screenwriting. Most writers rely far too heavily on dialogue to move their story forward. When you do write dialogue, it’s often difficult to get it to sound natural, and individualized. I often find myself telling writers that their dialogue all sounds the same. It’s very hard, especially in early drafts when you yourself don’t even know your characters, to write dialogue that sounds different for each character, but this is a vital part of a successful script.

In the first draft, write out the dialogue that comes to you-it won’t be good, but you’ll put down what needs to be said and when. Then go back, re-read, and revise. The next step should be having it read aloud. If you are part of a writer’s group, have actor friends, or just friends who like hearing themselves talk, have them help you. Read the scenes aloud, with different people reading each part. Hearing it read by other voices will help you hear what works, and what doesn’t. You’ll notice things that sound phony, cheesy, or hackneyed when you hear it aloud, versus seeing it on the computer screen.

Make notes during the read, and get input from the people reading. How did they feel about their part? Were there things they felt sounded odd, or out of character for that person? Revise again based on these notes.

In your daily life, make sure you listen to people talking all the time. Take those earbuds out and observe as much conversation as you can everywhere you go. It’s especially important to observe when you’re writing characters with different backgrounds from yours, or the opposite sex, or people much younger or older than you are.  If there’s a 13 year old in your script and you write the slang that was cool when you were in junior high, it will be instantly recognizable as phony to the parents of teenagers, and the teenagers themselves. And you don’t have to go lurking creepily in school yards to eavesdrop on kids (you definitely should not do that). Kids and teenagers are everywhere, and you’ll hear them if you listen, at Starbucks, in the mall, at and fast food restaurants. You’ll also hear elderly people, people from other parts of the country, people with different accents, all different types. Listen to how they speak, the words they use, the length of their sentences, the way they phrase things. Write it down, and pay attention to how you can capture their cadence and tone with words.  Just opening your ears to other people will make a world of difference in your dialogue, and greatly improve your screenplays.