Dialogue reveals character.

• A character will talk about yourself and other people will talk about him.
• You know yourself best/HUGE ASS EGO.
• We talk about someone who’s different.

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/alternate POVs.
• This helps to create and sustain the element of CONFLICT between characters.

Good effective dialogue will move the story forward.

Dialogue communicates facts and information to the audience.

• It conveys essential exposition.
• Characters will talk about what happened, establishing the storyline.

Dialogue comments on 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 IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR ACTION>

European market, everything spelled out.

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 decisions by telling us that: “It’s how the character speaks.”
• Students tend to create radio shows with images.

GOOD dialogue is not somebody’s ability to write authentic speech as heard in real life.

• If that was all these is to it, you can just push a button on the tape recorder and then go collect your Oscar.

Bad dialogue – cheesy, unfocussed, inappropriate tone/lang, long winded.

GOOD dialogue is the illusion of reality.

• You’ve got to know how to edit what people say without losing any of the spirit.

<FILM IS A VISUAL MEDIUM>

A SCREENPLAY IS A STORY TOLD IN PICTURES.