Writing Dialogue That Does the Work

What good screenplay dialogue accomplishes beyond conveying information

The Multiple Functions

Good screenplay dialogue simultaneously: conveys information about character, situation, and relationship; advances the story by changing what characters know, want, or plan; reveals character through what the character chooses to say and how they choose to say it; and creates the specific rhythm and sound of the fictional world. The dialogue that does only one of these functions is dialogue that is doing less than it could.

The Specific Failures

The specific dialogue failures that development executives identify most frequently: on-the-nose dialogue that states what the character is feeling rather than revealing it through what they say; expository dialogue that exists to inform the audience rather than to communicate between characters who already know the information; and dialogue that sounds like writing rather than speech.

Screenplay.biz Coverage

Screenplay.biz covers dialogue craft because it is the screenplay element most immediately visible to the reader and the element most frequently cited as the differentiator between the writer who gets hired and the writer who does not.

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