I’m not sure why, but all of a sudden I’m seeing a lot of screenplays with long blocks of dialogue divided into paragraphs, instead of just writing them out as one contiguous block of text. For instance, instead of this:
BILLY
I love you somethin’ terrible, Martha. I can’t
imagine life without you. Before you came along,
my life weren’t nothin’ but a dang disaster. Now
you done gave it meanin’.
imagine life without you. Before you came along,
my life weren’t nothin’ but a dang disaster. Now
you done gave it meanin’.
People have been writing this:
BILLY
I love you somethin’ terrible, Martha. I can’t
imagine life without you.
imagine life without you.
Before you came along, my life weren’t nothin’
but a dang disaster. Now you done gave it meanin’.
but a dang disaster. Now you done gave it meanin’.
Actually, I've never seen anyone write those words, thank the screenwriting gods.
The problem is likely that too many people are writing too much dialogue, so they don’t know how to make it look less like a huge block of text running down the length of the page without breaking it up arbitrarily. The best possible solution is to write way less dialogue and way more action. It’s okay to have one or maybe two monologues in a script, but any more than that and you’re almost certainly overwriting.
Try to limit your dialogue to no more than three or four lines; fewer would be better because that's how most people actually talk. If it’s absolutely necessary to write a longer string of dialogue from one character, you can divide it into two blocks by sticking a line of action between them, such as, “Billy gasps for air after realizing that he’s been talking for two minutes straight." Or perhaps something less on-the-nose.
This is a great blog Phil, thanks for sharing (and please keep 'em coming ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Gregglegend!
ReplyDeleteThat may be how people actually speak, but not all screenplays are based in reality. I don't see a problem with big blocks of dialogue in a heavily stylized script.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure no one spoke in poetry in Shakespeare's time, yet there it is.
In a heavily stylized script, sure. Knock yourself out. But in a standard spec script, I'm just letting you know that you will get dinged if you have a lot of long speeches. Monologize at your own risk!
ReplyDeleteI wanted you to know that I now have a hankerin' to write a script for the sole purpose of including your sample dialog.
ReplyDeleteThat's great! I only ask that you do not credit me in any way. :-)
DeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteWhat are your views on using dialogue similar to the example above, like somethin' and meanin', to convey how a character speaks? Is there a better way? Thanks!
I'm not bothered by that kind of dialogue in moderation. If it's overwhelming or makes the dialogue hard to understand, then it would be good to tone it down a bit.
DeleteAnother thing you can do is, when you introduce a character, write that he speaks with a thick Texas drawl. You might want to remind the reader of this throughout the script by throwing in a few extra apostrophes and using "fixin' to" as a future tense helping verb, but you shouldn't try to mimic every speech affectation in your dialogue. The actor will do fine with that because of the character introduction you wrote.
Thank you, that's helpful. This character has a lot of dialogue and says things like:
Delete"Yer gonna hafta" and uses -ing words with an apostrophe on the end. I'm not sure if that's necessary if I can explain that he's not a very articulate person. Think Deliverance back country style. I certainly want my script to read smoothly while maintaining this character's speaking style and having faith in the actor.
Your blog is full of so much useful information, I have read it almost all the way through. Thanks for sharing.
To me, introducing BS action to break up dialog is horrible. I'd rather paragraph. I've been complimented for it by actors, two readers and several producers.
ReplyDelete