Yes, it’s been more than 2 weeks since the last post. What can I say other than it’s that time of year. However, I have noticed couple of things about dialogue and action and how to lower the level of one and increase the level of others. I first came upon this when I was doing a recent rewrite for a client, and then it was confirmed yesterday and today when I was reading a script for coverage for a different client. What I noticed about both scripts was that they were both way too heavy with dialogue.
The first rule any screenwriting teacher or book will tell you is, “Show, don’t tell”.
Well, both of these scripts were telling, telling, and then telling some more. When I was doing the rewrite, I knew that I had to cut at least 35% of the dialogue out of the script, but it would have been better if I could cut more. How did I do it? I used these three steps.
1. Show the dialogue
What does that mean? It means that if you have Character A telling Character B a story, show the story instead. Take everything that Character A is saying and put it as the description or the action of a scene. It’s not important if Character B knows what happened. Or to put it another way, it’s not important for the audience to know that Character B knows what happened. It’s important for the audience to know what happened. If it does happen to be important for Character B to know what happened, you come in late to the scene and write 1 or 2 lines where Character A says, “and that’s how I got here”, or something like that. But seeing page after page of dialogue with no action is going to make a reader or an executive or an agent put that script right into the PASS pile.
2. Listen to the voices
All of your characters should have distinct voices through their dialogue. Just as no two people sound exactly alike when they speak, neither should any two of your characters sound alike. Listen to your voices to check if you’re hearing characters stray from their assigned voices. When they do, and they inevitably do, think about what they’re saying in that line of dialogue and decide if it couldn’t be better said another way, or better yet, shown through action. A character that has a hard time expressing himself might try to say things through his actions. He might tell a girl he loves her by showing her that he’s reading her favorite book, even though it’s not something that he’d ever be interested in. This allows the audience to connect the dots, and is a lot more satisfying to see rather than having it told.
3. Action, action, action!
When a director starts shooting a scene, he or she never yells, “Dialogue!” They yell , “Action!” Action is what drives a screenplay. Now, action doesn’t mean car chases or bar fights. It could mean Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) discovering who was behind killing his wife in The Fugitive. He puts the clues together and clearly realizes who the culprit is. It could be Nic (Annette Benning) finding hair that she knows belongs to Jules (Julianne Moore) in the bed of Paul (Mark Ruffalo), and realizes they’ve been sleeping together in The Kids Are All Right. Those are huge moments in those stories that are clearly shown to the audience without one word of dialogue. What’s more is that they are emotionally moving moments in the story, and the audience is allowed to react emotionally because they’re shown emotional reactions by good actors, rather than the actor saying, “You’re cheating on me!” or “Nichols hired the one-armed man!” Similarly to showing the dialogue, creating storytelling scenarios through action is a much more effective way to show the story and is much more compelling for the audience to watch.
Of course, dialogue is a necessary component to writing a script. The problem is that most writers use dialogue as a crutch for giving out exposition when showing is always more effective than telling.
If you can say it, you can show it.
Just write it out as action isntead of dialogue. Your script and the audience will thank you for it.
If you fee like you have a script that is too heavy on dialogue, check out the link below to see how Monument Script Services can help you change that dialogue into action.