by Steven Haas
SIDE NOTE: You really can't go wrong with a verb that ends in “ate.”
And since verbs are sledgehammers, don't forget the name of the doctor who fixed your rotator cuff so you can swing these sledgehammers:
Dr. Thesaurus.
The thesaurus is your best friend. The thesaurus lends you strength. The thesaurus lights the way and leads you when you stray from the path.
Let's look at an example:
Now imagine 120 pages of that. Snoozefest. So let's consult our sage and mentor, Dr. Thesaurus. And from the gospel of Thesaurus, our screenplay reads:
I hope I've made my point.
DIALOGUE
Most writing teachers will tell you that writing enticing dialogue is not something that can be taught. You either have an ear for dialogue or you don't. This is, of course, completely untrue.
As with anything writing related, it is possible to improve with practice. So do not worry just because using words to convey ideas is an area of writing you struggle with.
And the ability to improve as a craftsman is ESPECIALLY true with dialogue because the type of dialogue you are writing is “good” dialogue.
The dilettantes of the screenwriting world will recommend honing your ear for dialogue by becoming an observant listener. And this would be a great suggestion if you were trying to write realistic dialogue. You are not. You are writing good dialogue.
What is good dialogue? It is dialogue with rhythm and flare and pizzazz and energy and intrigue and a number of other adjectives that in no way describe how human beings speak. In fact it is the very opposite of realistic dialogue. Take your last phone call with your aunt. Was that realistic dialogue? Yes. Would any functioning human being pay $13 to listen to it? Of course not. Many would pay to not have to listen to it.
So who writes “good” dialogue?
Aaron Sorkin is one example. His technique is fast banter. To capture some of the fast energy of Sorkin, read your character's dialogue with a metronome ticking at 170 beats per minute. Is the dialogue clear and understandable? If yes, rewrite it with bigger words.
Remember: Engaging dialogue is not always meant to be understood. Don't put too much pressure on the meaning of the words, let the syllables do the work. It's like jazz. It's the words you don't comprehend.
Take Quentin Tarantino. Django Unchained was nominated for writing awards before the movie was even released into theaters. That must mean something. For lessons on writing in a voice like Quentin, read his screenplays aloud or pretty much any unproduced screenplay written between the years of 1995 and 2003.
Larry David's work on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm proves he is a comedic force to be reckoned with. Consider going to your local deli and finding an elderly Jewish man to argue with. If the bickering feels repetitive, you're on the right track. When typing out the dialogue, use the Copy/Paste function on your computer to save time typing.
These are simply examples of other writers' styles. As an unestablished screenwriter, it is not always best to veer too heavily into stylistic waters. Which brings us back to the original question: how do you write “good” dialogue?
The answer is to write towards conflict. Dialogue is action in the form of words. A line of dialogue is a razor sharp attack. Your character is throwing ninja stars at whoever they are speaking to. Good dialogue is combative, aggressive, emotionally charged. Words are bullets and your character's mouth is an M16 attached to a uranium bomb.
For the sake of argument, let's look at an example of “realistic” dialogue:
There's some realistic sounding dialogue.
Now let's inject Claire and Jessica with some conflict...
Which movie would you rather be watching?
There is another important rule of dialogue to learn from the above example and in order to address it I will pose this question: What is your favorite movie speech?
A great monologue or speech is often what is remembered from a great film. From Patton to Scent of a Woman to Independence Day. So how does that affect aspiring screenwriters?
It means you never write speeches.
Speeches are remembered from “films.” They have a beautiful actor speaking with conviction that is often complemented by swelling, emotional music in the background.
Have you ever read Patton's speech in text form? Here it is:
PATTON: Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you've heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war is a lot of horse dung. American's traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Now, an army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post don't know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating. Now, we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. You know, by God, I actually pit those poor bastards we're going up against. By God, I do. We're not just going to shoot the bastards. We're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken-out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that was a moment before your best friend's face, you'll know what to do. Now there's another thing I want you to remember. I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We're not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto them by the hose and we're gonna kick him in the ass. We're gonna kick the hell out of him all the time and we're gonna go through him like crap through a goose! Now, there's one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you 'what did you do in the great World War II?' You won't have to say 'well I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' Alright now you sons-of-bitches, you know how I feel. Oh, I will be proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle anytime, anywhere. That's all.
There it is. Did anyone read the whole thing? I know I didn't. I copied and pasted it from the internet.
Full disclosure: I didn't even have the patience to proofread it.
Now imagine how a reader is going to read your speech. There are going to be no dramatic pauses, no annunciation, no emotion. If you want to get a good idea how it is going to sound in the reader's head: speed read it, skip every few words, and do it in Dick Cheney's voice.
This is the 21st century. F. Scott Fitzgerald is long dead. Poetry in writing has been replaced with brevity. Get on board.
Everything in your screenplay needs to read fast. Fast banter. Fast dialogue. Quick. Short sentences. Like this. Fragments. Easy. No thought.
The reader is going to breeze through your fast dialogue and if they manage to finish your script with a few minutes still left on their lunch break, they are going to say it is the best goddamn thing they've ever read.
However, your characters do occasionally need opportunities to express themselves and say how they feel. In those rare cases, remember the Twitter rule:
No speeches over 140 characters.
Twitter nailed the attention span of the 21st century. This isn't
Shakespeare's day when your choice was listen to an actor deliver a soliloquy or go back to shoveling horseshit. Millennials are constantly bombarded with opportunities for entertainment. “Busy” doesn't mean “I have work,” it means “I have too much entertainment to get to. And I haven't updated my Instagram in 36 minutes!”
So let's go back to the Patton speech. How can it be adapted to a 21st century screenplay? Well let's set the scene:
Now there's some dialogue the reader will thank you for.
SIDE NOTE: Adverbs generally hurt you as a writer. Adjectives too. Prepositions and conjunctions can likely go as well.
There is one other major concern when writing dialogue and it has to do with creating good yet believable dialogue.
Let me ask this question: what percentage of screenwriters do you think are male?
I did a survey of my own network of peers and found that, in fact, 100% of screenwriters are male.
SIDE NOTE: A study on Wikipedia say 72%. So it may be somewhere in between.
It makes sense. Screenwriting is a solitary activity that allows the socially retarded to express themselves creatively without any labor intensive work (AKA filmmaking).
And since most screenwriters are male, a common difficulty for these writers is to write for female characters, sometimes referred to as “women.”
SIDE NOTE: Women also have trouble writing for women. They just won't admit it.
So how do you solve this?
First you must understand the role of women in the story. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it is detrimental to have a woman as your lead. What I will tell you though is that having a female lead is no different from making an art-house film or casting Tim Curry. What you're making is called a niche film.
The default appearance for characters is white, early 30's, average looking, heterosexual, middle class men. If you don't believe me, write a screenplay with the main character PAT and do not give the character any descriptions. Ask a friend to read the script and then quiz them on Pat. They will describe him as I just did. Go on, try it.
But I'm getting off track. The point is that movies with female leads are aimed only at women. Just like movies with muppets are aimed at children and movies with Tyler Perry are aimed at the mentally deficient.
Movies with male lead characters appeal to both men and women and therefore a male lead doubles your audience, your ticket sales, your revenue, and, therefore, your project's viability in the marketplace. If this truth is difficult to swallow, I recommend taking a deep breath and asking yourself this question: “What world is this?”
It's the real world. Welcome to the real world. Quit being a baby.
So if your female character isn't the lead, what role is she going to play in your film?
Anything except the lead.
She could be the sassy sidekick, the love interest, the sexpot, the techno geek, the sexpot, the mentor, the student, the sexpot.
The possibilities are endless.
Now that we've established the role of your female character, how do you write for her? What should she say? How does she react to situations?
Good question. And, unfortunately, the answer is different for every character.
If any of you male writers are reading this thinking “but most of the women I talk to sound the same.” Well I don't know you so I won't call you chauvinistic but for the sake of my argument, do your best to pretend women don't find you repulsive.
Let's look at the opposite of women: men.
Men are simple. Men want sex. Men pursue sex. Sometimes a man identifies something as a means to have sex and then he pursues that. Some of you may have even taken up screenwriting to get rich and famous in order to have sex. For additional examples of the male brain in action, read any history book.
Women are like men except instead of sex, no one knows what they want. Which is great for you as a writer because it means you can make them want whatever you want them to want. Even sex.
And the best part: no one knows what women want so they cannot argue with you. You can make your woman character want anything, nothing, everything, it doesn't matter!
Let's bring this back to dialogue. If you can make your female character pursue anything, you can make her say anything as well. So don't be afraid of writing for women. Writing for women is easier than writing for men. There's no way to fail!
For the women reading this, I hope what I've just said is not off-putting. You may be thinking “women just want to be loved and cared for and respected and challenged and happy and--” you've lost my interest.
Remember what a story is: A character pursues a goal.
Remember what a story is not: A character pursues 17 different half thought out desires in the hopes of maybe being a little happier or making her friends jealous.
And that is why it helps to have a main character who is male. Because males focus on one thing at a time: Sex. Or something they believe will lead to sex.
SIDE NOTE: I think I may have gotten off track. Just don't worry about writing for women.
Now that you've learned how to write good, terse dialogue for both genders, let's discuss how dialogue should look on the page. Remember that dialogue is, by default, going to be read without emotion or annunciation. To hear how your dialogue will sound to a reader, imagine HAL 9000 after he's had eight cups of coffee.
But you do have some control over dialogue thanks to the magic of... punctuation.
Let's start with the comma. One of the most essential forms of punctuation in the English language and I imagine also popular in other languages.
But what does a comma do? When should you use it? Who invented it? Is there a Mister Comma? What about a Mrs. Comma? How are they doing? And why did they make it such an ugly word when said in a Midwestern accent?
I could tell you how to use commas by reciting everything you don't remember from high school English class but that isn't what we're talking about. Using a comma according to the “rules” means you view literature as a science rather than an art.
And literature is an art so we're gonna use commas however, we, goddamn, please.
In the case of dialogue, use a comma whenever you want the reader to pause for a quarter of a second. Let's use this line of dialogue as an example:
“I'm going to the docks Diane and I'm not coming back.”
You could simply write it like that. But what if you want to really emphasize that your main character is not coming back:
“I'm going to the docks Diane, and I'm not coming back.”
What if you want to make it clear he's speaking to Diane:
“I'm going to the docks, Diane, and I'm not coming back.”
Now you're making some progress. Let's introduce a couple more tools for dialogue:
The ellipsis: …
Three dots that indicate incredulity, or a longer pause as the character considers his or her words.
And finally: - -
The double hyphen to stop a character mid-sentence. Let's have some fun with our new dialogue tools:
“I'm going-- I'm going to the docks, Diane... and I'm not... coming back.”
What if your character is a Christopher Walken type?
“I'm going, to the docks, Diane, and I'm not... coming back.”
What about William Shatner?
“I'm, going-- to the, docks-- Diane, and I'm not-- coming back--”
If you put a comma after every word it kind of sounds like Stephen Hawking's robo-voice:
“I'm, going, to, the, docks, Diane, and, I'm, not, coming, back.”
So yeah, if you're doing a sci-fi that's how you're going to want to write the robot.
But let's take our discussion to the master level by introducing a few other tools for dialogue:
Bold Words and Underlined Words
Utilizing these functions on your computer will indicate to the reader that you are a serious craftsman. But what do these specific fonts mean for dialogue
?
Well they mean the same thing. Bold words and underlined words tell the reader to PAY ATTENTION!
Are the docks important? Why not write:
“I'm going to the docks Diane and I'm not coming back.”
Bold/Underline tells the reader that these words are the important ones. Readers like this because it indicates which words they really can't afford to skip over. Be careful not to overuse the bold and underline because if you bold a word and it turns out to not be important, the reader is not going to read anymore of your bold words.
And lastly, let's not forget about italicized words. Italicized words tell the reader that something strange is going on. Let's look at an example:
“I'm going to the docks Diane and I'm not coming back.”
Why is “the docks” italicized? I'm not sure but since the writer italicized them on purpose... I guess there's something interesting about the docks.