Speaker 1: The best way to learn about dialogue is by studying the good stuff as well as the bad, and that's what we're going to be doing today, so stick around. What's up, guys? My name's Brandon McNulty. I'm a writer, I'm the author of Bad Parts, and welcome to my writing channel. One of my subscribers requested a video on good dialogue versus bad dialogue, and I thought that was a great idea for a topic, because obviously there's a lot of things you can learn from good dialogue, but sometimes good dialogue can be intimidating on its own, especially when it's some of the best stuff out there. Now, on the other hand, when we learn from bad dialogue, not only do we get to see other people making mistakes, but we can have a lot of fun in the process. For today's video, I'm going to be explaining what makes good dialogue good and what makes bad dialogue bad, and I'm going to be having examples of both. I want to start out by explaining what makes good dialogue good, and I think there are three things that help define good dialogue. The first thing that good dialogue does, it sounds natural, and this is going to vary from character to character. Obviously what Marty McFly from Back to the Future says in his movies wouldn't work in Lord of the Rings, and what Frodo says in Lord of the Rings wouldn't work in the world of Back to the Future, so you have to be aware of who is speaking and in what world they're speaking. But regardless of who your characters are and where your story world is, the dialogue has to sound natural. The second thing good dialogue does, it attacks or defends, and that's because good dialogue involves conflict. It involves characters trying to learn something that another character doesn't want to tell them. It involves characters trying to push a worldview on another character who is defending against it. Your characters should always be wanting something in their scenes, and they should be trying to obtain information through dialogue exchanges. And the third thing that good dialogue does, it expresses unspoken meaning or subtext, and this means that there's some kind of meaning beneath the surface. And I think the best way to think about this is that when you have the spoken word going back and forth between two characters, you have to remember that there's got to be some emotions hiding beneath it. For instance, if you've ever seen a married couple arguing about something stupid, you know that what they're really arguing about is much bigger than that stupid thing. They're not arguing about whether or not they're going to have chicken for dinner tonight, they're arguing about some kind of conflict that's going on within their marriage. So keep that in mind, there should be some higher stakes beneath the spoken words in your dialogue. Now we're going to talk about bad dialogue. And for this video, I came up with five specific types of bad dialogue. What I'm going to do, I'm going to go through each type, I'm going to explain what it is, then I'm going to give you an example of the bad dialogue, and then I'm also going to give you a good example that you can use in its place. Now the first type of bad dialogue is on-the-nose dialogue. This is when you state the obvious. It's when you're just stating thoughts and emotions without any subtlety, without any subtext. There's nothing beneath the surface. You are just saying exactly what you're thinking or exactly what you're feeling. An example of this type of bad dialogue comes from Attack of the Clones. It shouldn't surprise anyone that I'm going to be talking about Attack of the Clones today. But in Attack of the Clones, if you remember the one scene where Anakin and Padme are talking beside the fire, and Anakin just completely spills his unfiltered emotions out to her, it's completely on-the-nose. I'll play it for you right now. Now that I'm with you again, I'm in agony.

Speaker 2: The closer I get to you, the worse it gets. I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. You are in my very soul, tormenting me. Believe me, I wish that I could just wish away my feelings.

Speaker 1: And this is, of course, on-the-nose dialogue. It's stating exactly what he feels. It is not natural, and it feels totally cliched. It feels like something that's just coming out of an afternoon soap opera, and because of it, we just, you know, we don't buy into it. It doesn't feel real, and it's just dull because there is no deeper meaning here. He's just saying exactly what he feels. There is nothing to read into. Now, if you want a conversation between two lovers that is a lot more fun, take a look at Back to the Future, the early scene between Marty and his girlfriend, Jennifer. They're discussing their upcoming romantic trip to the lake. I'll play it for you now.

Speaker 3: Does your mom know about tomorrow night? No, get out of town. My mom thinks I'm going camping with the guys. Well, Jennifer, my mother would freak out if she knew I was going up there with you, and I get the standard lecture about how she never did that kind of stuff when she was a kid. I mean, look, I think the woman was born a nun. She's just trying to keep you respectable.

Speaker 1: Well, she's not doing a very good job.

Speaker 3: Terrible.

Speaker 1: Okay, so notice how neither of these two characters outright states how they feel about each other. It's obvious that they're boyfriend and girlfriend, they got this thing going on, they're hoping to hook up at the lake, but the feelings here are all in the subtext. The dialogue itself is just a lot of fun, and it just dances around the subject of the romance, the sex, everything else that's going on here. But it's much better than the Star Wars example because neither one of these characters is outright stating, oh, I'm so crazy about you, I love you, anything like that. It's much more fun when they just kind of hide their feelings a little bit, even though we know what's going on here. The second type of bad dialogue is melodrama, and I've talked about melodrama on the channel before, and what it is, it's emotion that is way over the top. It's emotion that is not earned. Sometimes you'll see stories where two characters are just yelling back and forth at one another, but you don't really care about the conversation. You don't feel the anger, you don't feel the passion or anything like that because it isn't earned. That's what melodrama is. Now for an example of melodrama, I want to take it from one of my favorite video games, Castlevania Symphony of the Night. I love this game to death, but it opens up with a prologue that has some absolutely horrendous dialogue. Now, for context here, the only thing you really need to know is that the guy in blue here on your screen, his name is Richter, he's a vampire killer, and he's going after Dracula. And once he meets Dracula, this happens.

Speaker 4: Hi, monster. You don't belong in this world. It was not by my hand that I'm once again given flesh. I was called here by humans who wish to pay me tribute. Tribute? You steal men's souls and make them your slaves. Perhaps the same could be said of all religions. Your words are as empty as your soul. Mankind ill needs a savior such as you.

Speaker 5: What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets. Enough talk. Have at you.

Speaker 1: Okay, so obviously the voice acting here is bad, but one of the dead giveaways that it's melodrama is the fact that everything Richter says ends with an exclamation point. It's just a lot of yelling back and forth, and this dialogue exists purely to create a sense of conflict that really isn't there, and because of that, it just comes off as laughable because it's just so over the top. So you don't want this type of melodrama in your stories. Instead, try something like what the Castlevania Netflix series does in this next example, and it's a very similar scenario. We have Alucard, who is the son of Dracula, going into a confrontation with Dracula, and they're going to have a conversation here. Pay attention to how different it is from the first example I gave you.

Speaker 6: Father, son, your war is over. As you say, sir. It ends in the name of my mother. It endures in the name of your mother.

Speaker 1: Okay, so notice how the dialogue in this confrontation is toned down and measured out. You can feel the emotion boiling beneath the surface of their words, and that's so much better than what we got in the first example where everybody's just shouting back and forth. In this second example, the two characters are practically restraining themselves from lashing out, and we get the sense of the subtext, the emotion that is underlying it. And also, we get the verbal battle, the back and forth. It sounds natural. Everything about this dialogue in the TV show is considerably better than what we saw in the video game. Now, the third type of bad dialogue is exposition, specifically exposition that involves characters discussing things they already know. And this is often called the as-you-know-Bob exchange. Basically, what it means is that if you have two characters and one of them is named Bob, you might have a scenario where one says, As you know, Bob, the house down the street has been haunted for decades. Or, As you know, Bob, my wife works at the supermarket so she can help your kids get a job. Or, As you know, Bob, we're just saying this so that the audience can understand where the plot is going. That sort of thing. The as-you-know-Bob exchange is not what you want in your stories because it's just a cheap attempt at telling the audience something. An example of this comes from the first Lord of the Rings movie. If you remember the party at the beginning where Bilbo's celebrating his birthday, and Bilbo and Frodo have this exchange here. Pay attention for the as-you-know-Bob moment.

Speaker 7: I'm very selfish, you know. Yes, I am. Very selfish. I don't know why I took you in after your mother and father died, but it wasn't out of charity.

Speaker 1: Okay, so in this example, Bilbo and Frodo are discussing something that they both already know. Neither one of them is really gaining anything from this conversation. It's purely there so that the audience can be brought up to speed on what happened to Frodo's parents. And frankly, it's just lazy writing. Now on the other hand, if you want to explain something through a dialogue exchange, do what they do in John Wick. Now if you remember early on in the story here, Viggo, who is the main villain, he tells his son who John Wick is, and he does it in a way that is very cool and very creative. I will show it to you right now. And the key thing to know here is that Viggo's son is not aware of John Wick's history.

Speaker 8: It's not what you did, son, that angers me so. It's who you did it to. Who? The fucking nobody? That fucking nobody... is John Wick. He once was an associate of ours. We called him Baba Yaga. The boogeyman? Well, John wasn't exactly the boogeyman. He was the one you sent to kill the fucking boogeyman.

Speaker 1: Okay, so this is much stronger than the Bilbo-Frodo exchange because Viggo is telling his son something that he doesn't know. And it's also something that the audience doesn't know. We finally get to learn who John Wick is, why he's such a threat, why people are afraid of him. And one thing I really like about this dialogue here is that Viggo never actually calls John Wick a hitman or an assassin. That kind of thing, if he were to say either one of those, that would be on the nose. Oh, John Wick was a great hitman. John Wick was a great assassin. Nah, that's kind of boring. Instead, he gives this vivid description about Baba Yaga, the boogeyman. He's the one you sent to kill the fucking boogeyman. Those are some great details. The fourth type of bad dialogue is forced poetry. Sometimes you have characters who normally speak like everyday people, and then some kind of event arises in the story. Maybe it's like romantic related, or maybe it's like a big moment in the story. And all of a sudden, they start speaking in flowery language and purple prose and whatever it may be. And it just doesn't sound like them. It sounds totally unnatural. I think one of the most notorious examples of this is Anakin Skywalker's I hate the sand speech. I'll play it for you right now. Okay, so Anakin should not be talking like this. It's way too flowery, and it just comes off as unnatural. Now, this isn't to say that characters who speak like everyday people can't have a poetic moment every now and then. Because you can have characters who are gruff and nasty, and they come away with a line of dialogue that comes off sounding pretty poetic. But the thing is, you have to keep that dialogue grounded in their character. Here's an example from Game of Thrones. It comes from the second season, episode nine. It involves the Hound, who is the head of the Kingsguard. And in this scene, he decides that he is done with the Kingsguard. He is abandoning his army. And in this scene, he has a poetic moment. But it is still something that sounds natural coming out of his mouth. Alright, so that exchange, the fuck the Kingsguard, fuck the city, fuck the king, that is poetic within the context of the Hound's dialogue. That is something that sticks with you when you watch the show. It's something you don't forget because of the way it is delivered, the way that the dialogue is arranged. Yet at the same time, it's not flowery. It sounds natural coming from this character. And then the fifth type of dialogue is wooden dialogue. This is dialogue that is too formal. It's too stilted. It sounds completely unnatural. And one of the best and funniest examples of wooden dialogue comes from the original Resident Evil back on the PS1. And all you need to know in order to understand the context here, Resident Evil takes place during a zombie apocalypse. It takes place inside a haunted house. And the main character, her name is Jill. She is trapped in one of those rooms where the ceiling falls down on you. She's basically like a SWAT team member. And she's calling for help. And one of her friends manages to save her. And after she is saved, just listen to this dialogue.

Speaker 9: Now, let's get back to searching for the lost captain and Chris, shall we?

Speaker 10: Thank you, Barry.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that dialogue is so bad that it's good and it's bad again. Obviously, if you're writing a story, you don't want to write like this. You don't want to be repeating Barry's name four times. You don't want Jill saying things like, why on earth are you here? Like she's ten times her actual age. You want to avoid these things. And what I actually did here, I rewrote the dialogue so that it works and makes sense and fits the character. So here's the rewrite. It's very simple and to the point. You okay? Yeah, thanks. I thought you were headed for the dining room. I got sidetracked. By what? Nothing. Listen, we should keep searching for the others. So with this rewrite, it's very simple. But at the same time, it's natural. You believe that these SWAT team members would say things like this. You're not having them say things like, why on earth are you here? So it's totally natural. And there's also that attack and defend going on here. Jill attacks with that line, thought you were headed for the dining room. Barry, he defends with, well, I got sidetracked. And then Jill attacks again. By what? Barry again defends. He says nothing. And that, of course, puts questions in the reader's head. We're aware that there's some kind of subtext. There's something going on beneath here. Barry is not being honest with her. And that makes us wonder, well, okay, what else is going to go on in this story? So I hope this helps. Question of the day, what is your favorite line of bad dialogue from a movie? Let us know in the comments section below. Thank you guys for watching. If you want to support the channel, please pick up a copy of Bad Parts if you haven't already. Also, be sure to check out my other videos. Hit the like and subscribe buttons for me. Share this video with a friend. And as always, remember to keep on writing.