8 Rules for Writing Film Dialogue

8 Rules for Writing Film Dialogue

• Enter late, leave early. You don't need to show every character entering or exiting a location. ...
• Remember what characters DON'T say. ...
• Use long speeches or monologues sparingly. ...
• Use dialect sparingly. ...
• Avoid redundancy. ...
• Stay consistent. ...
• Make your characters distinct. ...
• Read your script out loud.

8 Rules for Writing Film Dialogue

Writing smart, compelling dialogue is one of the most challenging parts of screenwriting. But crafting the perfect line can make your film live on in viewers’ minds forever. Below are eight essential rules (and examples!) to help you improve the dialogue in your screenplay or pilot.

1. Enter late, leave early

You don’t need to show every character entering or exiting a location. Come into the scene when it’s already in progress, skipping the “hello” or “goodbye” pleasantries that generally take place at the beginning or end of the conversation. Think about what the true purpose of the scene is and eliminate small talk that isn’t essential to this purpose.
This is not to say that all scenes need to be brief; the lesson is that all film dialogue should be specific and serve a purpose. A loaded “hello” between exes could be compelling, but many greetings are not.

2. Remember what characters DON’T say

People generally don’t say exactly what they’re thinking and feeling. You can imbue your scenes with tension, subtext, and nuance if your characters demur, change topics, and avoid talking about things directly. Let your characters struggle to communicate. They may need to employ multiple tactics to get information out of each other.
In some scenes, the characters don’t need to say a single word. Remember the final scene of The Graduate?

You can also effectively build up to direct, powerful confrontations if previous dialogue is less direct by comparison. For example, take a look at the final sequence of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in which the characters finally confront their feelings for one another.

3. Use long speeches or monologues sparingly

Many films feature memorable speeches or monologues, but too many of them can slow down your screenplay’s pacing and make its dialogue feel less natural. Remember that people often speak in choppy, incomplete sentences and interrupt one another. Check out this scene between Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in The Post:

4. Use dialect sparingly

This is a matter of taste, but you don’t need to write all lines of dialogue in dialect that’s specific to a period, location, or culture. Too much phonetic or slang spellings and pronunciations can give your script a tiresome quality and make it feel like you’ver over-directing your actors.

5. Avoid redundancy

Focus on efficiency! Don’t write lines of dialogue that repeat information the reader already knows, either from previous lines or from action and description. Similarly, you can also trim away lines that set up future scenes that don’t require explanation. Sometimes setting up a ticking clock such as “the game is on Friday” can give your script momentum, but a character doesn’t necessarily need to say “Meet me at Joe’s Pub on Friday at 8? The address is 324 Main Street.”
If you cut to a scene of two characters having a drink together, we won’t be confused about how or why they got there. Think about whether your world is one that needs a lot of explanation (like a futuristic sci-fi world on another planet) or one that lets us make assumptions (like a group of friends who hang out at a bar).

6. Stay consistent

Use the same style of film dialogue throughout the script. If your script is meant to be vulgar and R-rated, you don’t want to use tame language for the first half and then drop in a lot of swear words, for example. Similarly, aim for authenticity within your script’s world or period. Would people in this workplace or era speak this way?

7. Make your characters distinct

That said, don’t aim for so much consistency that all your characters sound the same. (And they shouldn’t all sound exactly like you, either!) A character might make a joke that another never would. Let dialogue reveal specific and unique things about each character. See how Jesse Eisenberg and Rooney Mara have different speaking styles in The Social Network.

8. Read your script out loud

You won’t know what your screenplay’s dialogue sounds like until you hear it. Read your script out loud! You may feel silly, but reading aloud will help you hear clunky film dialogue that needs to be rewritten. You can also ask a group of friends or actors to read your script out loud so that you can listen to the script’s rhythms and see how others would interpret your words.
Finally, keep practicing! If writing film dialogue doesn’t come naturally to you, keep studying your favorite films. Ask yourself what’s said as well as what isn’t said. Ask yourself why certain lines are funny or powerful. You can also eavesdrop on people in real life for inspiration!

How to Write Dialogue in Film

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Zeke

It can take many years—even decades—to master the art of writing dialogue. Good screenplay dialogue can be as multi-faceted and complicated as the real-life human relationships and interactions that inspire stories to begin with.

While we can’t possibly hope to cover every aspect of how to write dialogue in film here (it’s a topic that can fill an entire screenwriting school program let alone a blog post), we are going to tackle a couple of the biggest stumbling blocks with which new and experienced writers alike struggle.

Today, we’ll be covering an overview of exposition (and how to solve it), as well as how to begin your screenplay with a bang…

…literally.

Solve Dialogue Problems with Non-Dialogue

Ever feel like a character on-screen isn’t really talking to another character, but is instead lecturing you as an audience member?

That’s what we call heavy exposition, and there’s nothing more amateur to a screenplay than a character who constantly describes everything that’s going on for the “benefit” of the audience.

So how to write dialogue in film to get around this? What’s the best way of getting facts and tricky concepts across to the viewer?

Having a character who is not aware of what’s going on (thus creating a plausible reason for another character to explain key plot points) can be a good way of delivering information to the audience, but this needs to be handled carefully.

The main dangers here are:

1. A) You might make the “clueless” character who needs everything explained to him immensely dislikable
2. B)A heavy-handed approach can be a glaringly obvious ploy to the audience and might even bore them, especially for those who have already figured it all out for themselves.

If you’d like a bit of homework that will reinforce this, re-watch Inception and count the number of times Ellen Page’s character has the “rules” of the dream worlds explained to her at great length. At numerous points, it borders on a lecture to viewers and grinds the pace of this otherwise great movie to a standstill.

A far better approach—and a real golden rule in writing dialogue—is to show, not tell. In fact, it’s more of an anti-rule of dialogue, since you’re aiming to give the audience information without having a character overtly state it.

Let’s say you want to get across the fact that a character has a serious drinking problem. There are two possible ways you could do this:

1) John Doe is in the middle of an argument with his wife. While John storms away from the dinner table, Jane yells after him, “You’re always like this when you’ve been drinking!”

2) John Doe glances out of the window to see his wife has come home from work early. He hurriedly screws the top on a half-drunken vodka bottle, places it into a plastic bag, ties a knot in it, and hides it in the toilet tank.

In both screenplays we get the same idea, but we aren’t forcibly beaten over the head with the information in the second scenario.

If in doubt, a good rule of thumb is simply to assume that the audience is a lot more switched-on than you might give them credit for.

Consider Beginning In Medias Res

In Medias Res translates as “in the middle of things,” and the literary technique is exactly that.

If you’re starting out with narration in your screenplay, you might want to consider using this technique to hook the viewer right from the very get-go. Let’s take a look the opening of a story told in two very different ways:

1) “My name is Officer Mick Zerco. I’m standing at the foot of a building in downtown LA. My wife and kids are somewhere in there. In two minutes, I’m going to have to go up to the top floor and disarm the bomb that’s about to go off.”

2) “All I can hear above the ringing of my ears is panicked screaming. Half the block is in rubble, and my wife and kids are among it. Officer Leeroy must have rushed in first and botched the disarmament of that damned bomb. My name is Mick Zerco, and if you’re listening to this recording…I have failed.”

Both openings cover the same details, except one takes place right in the middle—or moments after—the main action, whereas the other starts a few minutes before. Which one grabs your attention more?

Don’t worry about wasting those precious few introductory minutes setting up every detail of the screenplay before you allow action to happen. A little mystery as to what’s going on can create insatiable intrigue and reel the audience in—you can always use flashbacks or other pacing techniques to deliver more exposition after you’ve got them hooked!

In short, always attempt to write with the golden rule in mind:

Show, Don’t Tell.

Happy writing!