Writing Compelling Dialogue for Film and TV

The Art & Craft of Raising Your Voice on Screen

Loren-Paul Caplin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000203196
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Writing Compelling Dialogue for Film and TV is a practical guide that provides you, the screenwriter, with a clear set of exercises, tools, and methods to raise your ability to hear and discern conversation at a more complex level, in turn allowing you to create better, more nuanced, complex and compelling dialogue.

The process of understanding dialogue writing begins with increasing writers' awareness of what they hear. This book provides writers with an assortment of dialogue and language tools, techniques, and exercises and teaches them how to perceive and understand the function, intent and thematic/psychological elements that dialogue can convey about character, tone, and story. Text, subtext, voice, conflict, exposition, rhythm and style are among the many aspects covered. This book reminds us of the sheer joy of great dialogue and will change and enhance the way writers hear, listen to, and write dialogue, and along the way aid the writers' confidence in their own voice allowing them to become more proficient writers of dialogue.

Written by veteran screenwriter, playwright, and screenwriting professor Loren-Paul Caplin, Writing Compelling Dialogue is an invaluable writing tool for any aspiring screenwriter who wants to improve their ability to write dialogue for film and television, as well as students, professionals, and educators.

Part One

On dialogue

Part One is devoted to expanding the entire subject of dialogue, dialogue writing, and its various forms within film and television. This includes introducing various terms and concepts that are commonly used when discussing dialogue writing. Beginning with the basics, dialogue’s function and purpose is about gaining a deeper understanding of the numerous qualities that are innate to functional and viable scripted conversations. These qualities are among the more subtle aspects that current screen and television writers must constantly gauge. Tone, style, and subtext are among the concepts covered. There is also a thorough analysis of monologues, voice-overs, and other forms of characters’ intoning on screen. Part One also explores the dynamics of character and how dialogue can inform the most complex aspects of personality. Fictional narrative writers are invariably tasked with the job of being psychologists as they lead their characters through their story’s permutations in a cogent, even if bizarre, journey. In Chapter Two, “Illuminating Characters through Dialogue,” the notion of dialogue as a key method for externalizing characters’ inner lives is thoroughly discussed. The basics covered in Part One are the bedrock of understanding dialogue and what is required in writing dialogue successfully.

1
Understanding dialogue

• Introduction: Understanding dialogue
• Function and purpose
• Defining better dialogue
• Tone
• Text and subtext
• Voice
• Conflict
• Exposition
• Style

Introduction: Understanding dialogue

Let’s start at the beginning. Way before “In the beginning was the Word,” there were biological entities that reacted to their environment. The purpose of this “reaction” was to aid in the survival of the entity. The biological entity needed specific resources and conditions in order for it to survive. To say that they wanted these basic resources is likely incorrect since there’s little evidence that minimal-cell biological entities have consciousness, agency, or even choice. They are alive, act according to their genetic codes, and react to their environment in the service of surviving. But would it be too much of a stretch if we posited the idea that all biological entities are in communication with their environment? After all, there appears to be a back and forth reactivity; there certainly is an ongoing connection between the entity and its surroundings. Isn’t this communication?

I’m hoping that you know where I’m going with all this talk of biology. In dramatic writing, and in the process of theatrical acting, the exact same notions are at the root of understanding and creating character: wants, needs, choice, agency, consciousness, reactions, actions, survival, and communication. These are among the terms and concepts that we think about regarding understanding and building characters. And it follows, what’s on their minds – and what they might speak about: dialogue.

Function and purpose

In broad terms, the function and purpose of dialogue in film and television is to move the story along, illuminate character, and/or be entertaining. The domain of building story and plot lies within understanding the story-writing process. However, here we are focusing on understanding and writing the dialogue that helps that process.

When we think about dialogue, we think about communication. Usually this entails two or more poles or terminals: the sender and the receiver. Sending connotes information, data, emotion, interest, and even physical material. Even though a terminal can be both a sender and receiver, when we think of two poles interacting, they are usually sentient and conscious entities. But it doesn’t always have to be two conscious entities, or even a two-way communication. Isn’t it possible to communicate with nature, with a tree, the ocean, the sky, or a teddy bear? One can communicate and emotionally connect with an inanimate object or a less conscious entity, like an animal in a one-way flow by just sending. So it seems, that of the two poles, the sender appears to take precedent, has greater agency, and can even act independently. Animals and humans send and seek information by way of sounds, language, body language, body sensors, and gestures. And most of this information has to do with survival, wants, and needs. This brings us to humans and word language, as opposed to body language and gestures.

Dialogue comes from the Greek root dia (“through,” “between,” or “across”) and logue (“discourse” or “speak”). The idea of speaking through, between, or across something parallels our basic biological entity communicating with and through its environment. This concept of communicating and being in communication with one’s environment is at the heart of why we, as humans, talk. Dialogue, the way we’re using the term in this book, is human communication expressly spoken in a scripted space. Spoken communication in its scripted version is dialogue. Dialogue is how characters verbally engage with the world.

Scripted dialogue includes monologues and voice-overs, but in film and TV, not unlike in life, when characters engage with the world outside of themselves, this means primarily engaging with other characters. I’m stressing here the importance of not being confined to film and TV examples when we think about scripted characters and how, what, and why they speak to each other. In thinking about dialogue, its function and purpose, it’s wise to think beyond the artifice of scripted material. As we consider what makes great dialogue, we need to also consider what makes great talking among friends, intimate conversation between lovers, and all verbal communication outside of the scripted dramatic arena. There are indeed often differences, but the essence is the same: connection.

But let’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Fade in: Introduction
• PART ONE On dialogue
• PART TWO Tool kits for improving your dialogue
• PART THREE Exercises for better hearing and voicing your characters
• Fade out: Conclusion
• Index