Speaker 1: What is great dialogue?

Speaker 2: Great dialogue is Aaron Sorkin. That's a little theatrical, but it's great dialogue. Is. Spare. It's in a lot of cases, you'll listen to big monologues, you know, like Quentin Tarantino loves a big monologue, you know, and it fits that style of moviemaking for me, dialogue reveals character. So it should reveal something about your character. We didn't know and it should push the plot forward. They're the two main functions. Can it operate outside of those? Sure. Why not? But the minute you start subscribing to, for me, creating dialogue outside of those two functions too much, you will slow the pacing of a script. And so dialogue is almost, you know, to put it extremely, it's a last resort. You know, when you when you you we're watching a visual medium. So tell we're telling a story visually. So when a character speaks, it's because we need to know something that we can't tell visually at that point, or we're revealing something about them or a relationship that's going to become important, which is pushing the plot forward. And for me, that's that's that's the importance of dialogue. You know, the other thing that I see a lot in dialogue is a lot of characters will sound the same. You know, you can't separate whose voice is whose. And and so it's being very careful to craft things like slang in the way we use colloquialisms, speech impediments, that kind of thing. You know, who is your character and who are these characters that are speaking? You know, one can be brash. One should one might be a little more silent and not speak very much. So it's really knowing each one of those characters and how they speak.

Speaker 1: Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking of swingers for some reason. So Vince Vaughn and just how there was no mistaking, I'm sure, when you when you looked at the script, that it was that character.

Speaker 2: Right. Hannibal Lecter. Very little doubt about who's speaking in the script when you read it and where where it's Hannibal Lecter and very character specific dialogue. So you're not just looking at colloquialisms, you're looking at intellect. You're looking at, you know, their profession. You know, how does the doctor speak? If you're going to have a character as a doctor, as a character, you have to research how they would speak. What do they know in those certain situations? And I think that's mistakes I see a lot is that they can't just speak like an average, you know, Joe on the street there. There is an elevated there is an elevated detail to how they speak. And so it's spending time really sweating that usually in the rewriting process, but really crafting that character dialogue that way.

Speaker 1: Their Ph.D. in poetry or something, maybe.

Speaker 2: Right. There might be a doctor. Yeah, right. In which case that will become obvious in your character development as well. So, yeah, I think that that's that's the important thing with dialogue. For me, you usually find that when you're developing a screenplay from the studio side, once you have all the pieces and you've got your plot and it's tight, you'll then hire someone to polish dialogue. And that's exactly what they'll focus on is you might pay a specialist and a lot of, you know, a lot of agencies and management houses will have dialogue specialists who will be hired to polish dialogue and do dramaturgical work based around character that way.

Speaker 1: What about bad dialogue? What is it? What is it?

Speaker 2: When two characters meet and they say, hi, how are you? I'm good, thank you. It's nice to meet you. What are we revealing there? There's nothing revealed from that kind of dialogue at all. You just wasted half a page. And I think that getting to the point with dialogue, bad dialogue, it just goes back to what I said. It doesn't reveal anything about the situation. There's no conflict. You know, when a character enters a scene, they want something. Right. They enter that scene. We talked about super objectives not long ago, but when a character enters a specific scene, they want something. They come in wanting something and they've come from somewhere else. Right. So the dialogue has to not just reflect the conflict, but also what they're bringing with them. You know, what's the mood they've just come from room to room with? You know, if you've got a sequence that has to be reflected not just in their actions, but how they're talking. They might be loquacious, you know, but now they're rattled in this scene and they'll speak differently. And so it's being aware of that, that where they come from from scene to scene.

Speaker 1: Well, just as you were sort of reciting that and it sounded like this sort of, you know, believable, but robotic in some sense. If we took the scene where they were coming from, let's suppose it's an ex-husband and the new husband or the ex-wife and the new wife. And it's very tense. And let's suppose they have to have a discussion about something that would probably convey an accurate feeling of like, I don't really want to be here with this person, but I'm going to have to be adult and be nice. And so, hi, how are you? Oh, I'm great. How are you? Not going to work.

Speaker 2: So I think you're looking for that and you're looking for, you know, screenplays aren't just a three act structure. They're made up of scenes which which make up scene sequences, you know. And so there are different segments to that. And the way a character travels through that sequence and what happens to them, they have to carry into the next scene. And that will affect dialogue. It will affect action, you know, will affect how they behave. And I think that's some mistakes that you do see in in dialogue is that it's not reflective of that character journey.

Speaker 1: How do you work with your students on dialogue and how easy is it for them to grasp not just their main character, but side characters?

Speaker 2: Side characters and characters that you discover while you're outlining or in the screenplays themselves have to function the main point of that of a function regarding the main point of view. They're either they're a character type. You know, they're either there to set up an obstacle in some way or they're there to be a mentor character or, you know, another character type is a best friend or that kind of thing. The way that I like to do it is, again, I always start with character development. How do they speak? I'll interview them and let them talk in from the very early beginning. So I'm not just developing the character. I'm developing how they might talk. I might even create a scene within that biography of them interacting with someone I invent. How would they speak in that situation? There are exercises like that that I do. Also, I'll do some sometimes once they have their first act, I might do a live writing exercise where I'll take their script of the brave ones who will let me and I'll rewrite it live to show them the function of that, to show what they don't need. You do find in dialogue they'll say a sentence and then they'll say the same thing again, but in a different way. Don't need both of those sentences. Cut one. Right. So that that's a common trait. Being able to identify those and then show the students live. This is the beauty of Zoom teaching for Zoom, right? Is that I can share my screen, take a final draft copy and just show them how to restructure description or show them the interaction between those two characters and why this doesn't work and why it does.

Speaker 1: Well, in The Exorcist, it's very clear the dialogue of Linda Blair as the as the young woman and Linda Blair with the entity coming through her.

Speaker 2: Very different. Very different. Because they are different characters essentially in the one body. And I think that that has to be in the delineation of that is very important and tricky. And that's very tricky. It's also, you know, if you watch Ellen Burstyn's character, you know, Mrs. McNeil in their beginning, she speaks very differently than when she when her character goes through that arc in the end. There is a lot more belligerence, you know, so your your dialogue has to reflect the tone and feeling of where your characters journey into and where they've come from. And that stark difference will help us also identify the character's arc as well. And so dialogue is very important to that.

Speaker 1: How does a writer balance dialogue and action in a scene?

Speaker 2: This takes me back to the theater, actually, because it's very similar. When the when a character when there's no more time for words, sometimes a character will act. And it there's a vice versa aspect to that, too. One of the common problems that I see with screenplays is a character will often say something. In dialogue that we've already just seen them perform, so we're getting the same meaning from the action as we are from the dialogue, like a redundancy. And I think that that's something to watch as well. But again, it's very much centered around an individual scene and how that's structured and what the required action is. And you're also tapping in again to that character's wants and needs. You know, even though you have a super objective, you have a whole lot of micro objectives along the way for a character trying to get what they want in specific scenes. And so, you know, it might be that they come in acting a certain way. And when it doesn't work because of the conflict with someone else, they have to speak. Or it might be the same. It might be reversed where they come into a scene in a bluster, trying to get their point across verbally. And when it doesn't work, they act. It should never be there. They're using dialogue or speaking about how they're acting. Because we get we're getting the same message through dialogue as we are through action. I always fall back on that, that same, you know, if we can tell it visually, you know, it's show, don't tell. But if you can tell a story through character's action and reveal their character through action rather than dialogue or being told how good they are, show us how good they are. You know, and so I try to take that into what I'm what I'm teaching as well sometimes is, you know, try it without dialogue. Write this scene without dialogue and just see what happens. Or write this, write this scene just with dialogue. See what you get and then try to marry the two. But I think it's staying true to that idea of, you know, what is the conflict? What does your character want in this moment? And what's the best way for them to get that?

Speaker 1: What was the first movie you saw in the cinema?

Speaker 2: Star Wars. This is in Australia. Yeah. I used to live about 40 miles from the nearest McDonald's, if you can fathom that. But I did not live anywhere near a cinema growing up at all. I lived on a farm in regional Australia. And so going to the movies was a big event. My grandparents lived in Sydney and Star Wars, you know, was a big event. It was billed as being a huge event. And it was the first one we went that I went to see with my grandparents and my parents and everybody. It's no wonder I'm I'm working in movies, really. And I still love it to this day. It's such a it's a it's a special series of films. I wouldn't call myself someone who's glued to the Mandalorian or anything like that. I'm not necessarily that way about it. But it is it's special because it was probably it was the first film I saw. It was the first cinematic experience I had.

Speaker 1: Was there a line of dialogue that just takes you back that you remember?

Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, it was just probably more the world. You know, I was I was really blown away with the world and how big it was, you know, and how big the ideas were and the sophistication of the visual effects back then. Not like it is now, but but not necessarily a line of dialogue, I wouldn't say, because it was visual for me.