Dialogue

In my opinion, dialogue in film must be natural. Characters must talk the way people talk, if not, the atmosphere becomes synthetic and consciously fictional. Excluding some cases, such as the strange language in Kubricks' A Clockwork Orange, if the speech between characters doesn't feel 'real,' neither with the film.


My inspirations for dialogue are usually Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino. Edgar Wright finds a way of contrasting his intense action worlds with petty, argumentative character speech that makes the whole unrealistic scenario seem somewhat more realistic, whilst creating a comical effect. Most Zombie Apocalypse films don't feature an argument about which vinyl you should and shouldn't throw at the living dead.

Quentin Tarantino on the other hand, has his characters do what most people do every day of their lives, talk about nothing. He creates an interesting or trivial or comical conversational, and injects it with lots of subtext. For example, the character of Colonel Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds puts on a friendly and smiling performance, talking about strudel which is seemingly innocent. However, the audience know that there is something so sinister lying underneath the trivial conversational, which is hinted to us when he tells Shosanna to 'wait for the cream,' showing he has complete control over the situation.

He utilises the dialogue to tell us important things about the characters implicitly, rather than via dull exposition or explicitly.

Phil Parker's pointer on good dialogue in storytelling from The Art of Science and Screenwriting, will be good rules to refer back to:

1. It has a clear dramatic function.
2. It relates to the visual aspect of the moment.
3. It is character-specific.
4. It is economical.
5. It reflects the style of the narrative.
6. It delivers only what the action and visuals cannot.
7. It is speech, not prose (real).

Also a good reference point is Raymond Frenshman's list of don'ts from Teach Yourself Screenwriting:

1. Avoid 'passing-by-the-time-of-day' dialogue: greeting, polite nothings, goodbyes etc.
2. Don't repeat information in dialogue that has already occurred elsewhere in the dialogue.
3. Avoid dialect and writing phonetically: put information about a characters accent and way of speaking in the description, script readers and actors don't like having to read phonetic representations of voices.
4. Never italicise dialogue in order to create emphasis. The same with exclamation marks.
5. Not every question in dialogue needs to be answered. The use of silence, a reaction or non-reaction can be as or more powerful than dialogue.