I once read a script that was about a party and the first half of the script was about introducing all the characters at the party.  One person arrived and the writer gave us his name and backstory and why he was there then moved to the next person who arrived.  This is boring when [...]

Your characters’ relationships to one another should be evident in dialogue and action.  You should show what they mean to one another in how they are with one another.  You don’t necessarily need to call it out and say ‘he’s my boyfriend’ but even if you do, it should be evident in how they relate [...]

Continued from yesterday Awkward, Unnatural Dialogue We’ve all read scripts or seen movies where we thought, “Nobody talks like that.”  It takes us out of the scene, ruins the moment for us.  Sometimes it’s the result of exposition, but sometimes, it’s just awkward phrasing.  New writers are so eager to get stuff down on paper, [...]

Part II will address points 4 & 5 and be published at 10AM tomorrow. It’s one thing to be told to write sizzling dialogue, but quite another to recognize when the dialogue you’ve written doesn’t.  There are essentially five reasons your dialogue is flat: on-the-nose: describes exactly what’s happening in the scene no subtext: character [...]

I watch these shows about how actors got their big breaks and in one episode, they interviewed Sean Connery.  About his Oscar Award-winning role in The Untouchables, Connery said it was the dialogue that appealed to him; it’s not often an actor gets great dialogue.  When you want to attract A-listers like Connery, you not [...]