This article will show you an easy way to help train yourself to write great dialogue (a crucial skill that not many writers are good at).
Writing dialogue is one of the most essential skills when it comes to writing a great screenplay. It’s also one of the hardest skills to master.
While I worked as an agent I used to get screenplays all the time from screenwriters who had put together excellent stories that were well structured, interesting and had excellent narrative description. But there was something missing… something important… you guessed it, the dialogue just didn’t work.
The dialogue was bad. It didn’t flow and it was stilted. Stilted dialogue is one of the main problems that screenwriters must overcome if they want to get their screenplays out into the world. And nothing sinks a screenplay faster than bad dialogue.
Can Dialogue Be Taught?
A lot of people say that great dialogue can’t be taught. Many experts claim that you either have an ear for dialogue or you don’t. Just look at writers like Quentin Tarantino, Elmore Leonard and Aaron Sorkin who are famous for their hard-hitting dialogue.
Now you might not like their dialogue, but not one can disagree that it stands out and it works in the context of film. Whether you’re Tarantino or Sorkin, all great movie dialogue has one thing in common. That is, it’s movie dialogue and it sounds natural and engaging when you’re watching the movie.
Movie Dialogue Isn’t Like Real Dialogue
It’s important to remember that movie dialogue isn’t like real dialogue. I knew one screenwriter a couple of years ago who insisted on writing authentic “real” dialogue in his screenplays. He would fill his scripts with “ummms” and “ahhha” and long winded speeches where the characters rambled on and the conversations went nowhere and hit dead-ends.
Movie dialogue must be the opposite. Great movie dialogue strips away all the “ummming” and “ahhhing” and rambling, long winded dialogue and it gets straight to the point.
Movie dialogue has direction and purpose. Now it might feel like movie dialogue is natural and interesting when you’re watching a movie on the screen, but great movie dialogue is anything but natural. And this is where writing great movie dialogue comes into play.
The Best Way To Learn Dialogue
I’ve read many books on the subject of writing great movie dialogue and not one has ever mentioned the technique I’m about to describe to you, a technique that I learned from one of my screenwriting clients who was a master of dialogue and a very successful screenwriter in his own right.
He told me that the way he learned to write great dialogue was to watch movies. I bet you’ve heard that before. But there’s a twist to the process and it’s quite simple.
First, you have to watch a movie, then you have to put the movie on again, but this time you don’t look at the screen. You simply listen to the characters speak the dialogue without the visuals to direct you.
Then something amazing starts to happen. You’ll notice straight away that when you do this the movie dialogue starts to sound unnatural and strange. People don’t really speak like that.
Sometimes the dialogue will sound stupid and exaggerated. At other times the dialogue will sound unnecessary and overly dramatic.
Welcome to the world of great movie dialogue. It is dramatic and it is exaggerated. That’s the difference between movie dialogue and real dialogue.
After you’ve gone through this process a couple of times, you will start to train your ear to identify great movie dialogue and writing it from this point on will become that much easier.
I have never found a technique that is more effective than simply sitting down and listening to a movie without actually watching the visuals on the screen. You can’t see the actors, you can’t see where they are, all you can do is hear the words…
This is a really great technique and I guarantee that if you try it out it will take your dialogue writing skills to the next level.
*Jennifer Sloane has worked as a screenplay agent in Los Angeles and Nashville for the last five years. Jennifer loves good movies, music and animals. A former television and movie executive, Jennifer currently heads business development at Script Mailer (a company that connects screenwriters with agents and producers in Hollywood).