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  • SCREENPLAY DIALOGUE

    Monday, Sep 7, 2009 11:11PM / Standard Entry / Members only
    8 comments


    I am often asked by audiences and my screenwriting class students on how one writes dialogue. More specifically, almost ninety-nine percent of the time the question is, “How do you make dialogue sound natural and realistic?”

    Like in many things in life, the answer lies in asking the right question. So is this the right question?

     

    “How can I make my dialogue sound more natural and realistic?” My answer is always, “Why do you want to make it sound natural and realistic?” Not “why would you?” but “why do you?”

    It’s not wrong to want something more “natural and realistic” from one’s dialogue, but consider the motivation of the writer who asks this question. Judging from the question, it is fair to assume that the writer feels his/her dialogue is unnatural sounding because the dialogue is being used to convey information.

    Consider the following example from the first scene of a screenplay:

    Woman A:
    I don’t know what to do.

    Woman B:
    What are you talking about? He’s your husband
    who you love very much and Jack is someone
    you haven’t seen in ten years. Remember how
    he dumped you? You were devastated. And
    what about your three kids?”

    There’s nothing wrong with this line of dialogue per se. We do say stuff like that. It’s just at the beginning of a scrīpt, it sounds like information is being shoved down our throat. We take offense. What makes dialogue sound unnatural is that it sounds informational.

    As audience, we do not want information. We want drama. Drama is the Greek word for “do, act.”

    If we see a character or characters engaged in an action that is part of a larger “conflict” then it’s easier to know what dialogue is needed. The simple truth is that the characters will say anything that they think will achieve what they want, not what the writer wants the audience to know. “What the characters want” is the answer to all questions regarding drama.

    Consider this highly unnatural but extremely memorable and powerful speech:

     

    “There’s a passage I got memorized, seems appropriate for this situation: Ezekiel 25:17. ‘The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.’”

    One can ask, who talks like that? Actually, I know someone who walks around quoting Shakespearean monologues and he’s one of the shadiest people I know. That doesn’t give the writer license to write such unrealistic dialogue, especially since Jules, who delivers the speech, is a hardened gangster from Pulp Fiction.

    It’s an exercise in dialogue taken to extreme theatricality. Jules wants retribution. He wants to put the fear of God into this traitor he’s talking to. He wants to make his killing a ritualized, justified act of his conscience, using the Bible. If you asked the writer, he may say it’s all of those things or none of those things. But we the audience are deciphering the motivation of his speech. We accept it because we understand his want. The speech is partly fabricated and partly taken from different passages in the Bible. Tarantino made this speech up which is an even more audacious act, taking this story into the realm of hyper-fiction.

    What we want to ask of the characters is what we want to ask of ourselves: What does he want from her? What does she want from him? What do I want from her? What does she want from me?

    What the characters want is really what we want. If what they want is not what we want deep down, then we can’t relate to it. Sounding natural without the want in dialogue is like the guy who is embarrassed at being naked so he puts on a pair of sunglasses to cover himself up.
     

Entry comments (8)

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  • Marilena
    posted on Saturday, Sep 26, 2009 11:20PM [Report]
    Looks like me when i work :D
  • Etchy
     
    posted on Thursday, Sep 10, 2009 8:41PM [Report]
    totally NOT natural speech! ;-)
  • leomonkey
    posted on Wednesday, Sep 9, 2009 12:52PM [Report]
    fascinating blog. i shall recommend it to a friend of mine who is writing film scripts. he does rewrite after rewrite and the more he writes the more uncertain he becomes.
    an old friend once asked me to write a script for a short film (a comedy, no less). i turned him down flat - i am know writer and i was thoroughly intimidated by the idea. i must admit that i assumed that i would fail at making the dialogue sound natural.
  • kennethbi
    Official artist 
    posted on Wednesday, Sep 9, 2009 12:39PM
    Funny, Lisa!
  • LClem71304
    posted on Wednesday, Sep 9, 2009 6:03AM [Report]
    Great tips. I always love characters say things verbally that in real life would not need to be said.Like two brothers talking... "Dad worked for 15 years for that company, then he got laid off last year!" I want to scream, "Your brother KNOWS That! You all live in the same house!"
  • rottendoubt
     
    posted on Tuesday, Sep 8, 2009 2:54PM [Report]
    they do the informational dialogue a lot in spiderman...
  • wendycheng
    Official artist 
    posted on Tuesday, Sep 8, 2009 2:44AM [Report]
    Descriptive dialogue is definitely the worst and it's good that you brought it into discussion. I think what also makes realistic dialogue tricky is that the way we talk often betrays what is truly underneath. In this sense, I still feel listening and imitating is the most useful, though it doesn't solve the problem of creating a story from scratch...

    As for the Pulp Fiction piece, it's sort of very realistic and unrealistic at the same time. I feel like the gospel is something that you see lots of downtrodden people preaching in the streets (esp. in NYC) and it's not hard to imagine that some of these people might have turned to a life of crime at some other point in their lives. I think Tarantino's genius in that sense is simply to focus on a marginalized group of people and bring it into the spotlight!

    I had no idea "Drama" meant to act in Greek - that really brings it into focus!
  • ching388
    posted on Tuesday, Sep 8, 2009 1:59AM [Report]
    I agree with your per se

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