Why This is Good

In addition to the differences discussed yesterday, dialogue in novels and dialogue in screenplays must be written differently. The reason why becomes apparent when you look at what each medium is. Novels and short stories are meant to be read, usually by a single person. Reading a novel is primarily done silently, so the dialogue is generally not spoken aloud. Because of this, dialogue in novels is often more formal than dialogue in screenplays. The dialogue in a novel can be long, drawn out, and flowery because it will rarely be spoken aloud.

Dialogue in a screenplay is ultimately meant to be read aloud, and because of this the screenwriter, unlike the novelist, has to take extra care to make sure their dialogue sounds as natural as possible. Many first drafts are full of dialogue that is stilted and formal because the writer neglects to use contractions, and doesn’t think about how people really speak. Most people rely heavily on contractions, including words that aren’t commonly seen in print because they aren’t really words, like “gonna” for “going to,” “dunno” instead of “don’t know,” “lemme” in place of “let me” and “wanna” for
“want to.” While English teachers permit the use of only the accepted, properly spelled contractions: don’t, won’t, can’t, I’d, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, etc., these new abbreviations aren’t really words, and won’t show up in most novels. In screenplays, however, it is perfectly acceptable to use these types of words, as they clearly represent a more natural, casual form of speaking that everyone recognizes as sounding realistic. Do not, however, go so far as to spell out accents and dialects phonetically. This gets much too tedious and difficult to read. Better to note if a character speaks with a strong accent in a parenthetical or a character description.

The screenwriter also faces another challenge when crafting dialogue that the novel author does not. As discussed yesterday, a screenwriter has to rely almost completely on the dialogue to reveal what each character thinks and feels, because unlike the novelist, they are unable to delve into the characters thoughts, and must convey emotion via the dialogue. While the novelist can have dialogue interspersed with long paragraphs describing what the phrase or word meant, how the character felt about saying it, how the other character felt upon hearing it, and then spend pages examining what these feelings mean, the screenwriter is left with only the dialogue. And of course, they must express their character’s inner thoughts and emotions while keeping their dialogue from becoming too expository or on-the-nose.

A fine line is walked by the screenwriter because while dialogue is the only tool they really have to express emotion (the actors, of course will express much with their skill when the script is turned into  a film, but the writer doesn’t have that tool at this stage), it still needs to sound real, and real people don’t generally wear their hearts on their sleeves, nor do most people even fully comprehend, let alone reveal, how they really feel in any given situation. Subtlety is the rule here, and psycho-babble laden, overly introspective speeches on a character’s emotions are a sign of a poorly written first draft by a newbie.

Emotions, feelings, and thoughts must be revealed slowly, naturally, and with as much left to the imagination as possible. The dramatic, extremely emotional scene in Chinatown when Evelyn reveals to Gittes that she has been the victim of incest is not dialogue heavy. Evelyn does not sit down and explain, in long-drawn out story, all of the pain she carries after having been raped by her father, she doesn’t get into how it happened, how it made her feel, what she thought about it then, what she thinks about it now. She does nothing but utter the few, memorable words, after much prompting from Gittes, “She’s my sister and my daughter.” This simple explanation conveys the emotion and pain behind the revelation much more effectively than if that scene had read like an hour long therapy session in. She does explain a little, but it is still relatively terse and succinct, given the nature of the event, and this works much better than pages and pages of overly revealing dialogue.

Citizen Kane expressed all of his longing for his childhood and lost innocence in a single word that had the other characters guessing and investigating what he meant. Imagine how much less powerful would that film have been if he had murmured instead the on-the-nose dialogue: “I’m sentimental about my childhood and longing to go back to a simpler time when I felt young and free and innocent.”