Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Apr 13, K. This book is a gold mine. It offers incisive secret after incisive secret to creating stellar dialogue—in either a screenplay or a novel. It does suffer from some shoddy editing typos and outright repetition , but these are small flaws to deal with in the face of the overwhelming amount of great information crammed into this volume. William C. Recomendo fortemente! Aug 31, Peggy Miller rated it it was amazing.
Must read! I write novels, but the information found in This book is invaluable. Many of the tips and notes can be applied to anyone writing. Read all the Blue Book series and all the other books by Mr. I love this guy! I've read a number of books on creative writing, many of which just layer-on platitudes and generalities. I was tempted to apply the adage "Those who can't, teach.
Martell, an accomplished screenwriter, is engaging, funny and full of wisdom. Rather than just lapsing into abstractions, his book is full of real-life examples that drive home his message. If you aren't a screenwriter I'm not! This is the second book I've read of William Martell -- and this is just as great as his previous one. This is part of a "Screenwriting Blue Book", which I gather used to cost more in the print edition.
This book is a gold mine It offers incisive secret after incisive secret to creating stellar dialogue in either a screenplay or a novel It does suffer from some shoddy editing typos and outright repetition , but these are small flaws to deal with in the face of the overwhelming amount of great information crammed into this volume. Um dos melhores e mais pr ticos livros sobre como escrever e melhorar di logos de roteiros As dicas tamb m servem para escritores William C Martell um experiente roteirista, com d cadas de trabalho em hollywood.
O livro tem dicas e exerc cios pr ticos de como trabalhar di logos Martell fala de como colocar subtexto nos di logos, de como di logos tem que ser trabalhados para soarem reais sem ser reais.
Ripka [FLq. Rae [fso. Martell [IJ4. Meeske [ImW. Bohart, Karen Tallman [JTm. Koomey PhD [Kha. Marc Breedlove [l0v. Orlik [lGr. Watkins [Npc. Pinger [NVR. By Lisa A Romano [o4f. Kelly [ohP. Ho MD [Olj. Weiss [OlV. Loveless [pUe. Gregory [qYi. Hay [R Anderson [RaM. McMillan [SQl. Long [UBR. Griffith, Katherine Pratt [uYZ. Neidhardt [v1l. Simon [vIp. Always try to find a way to say the same thing in an original way.
The more common the sentence, the more you need to make it unique. Better to save yourself the embarrassment and start with original dialogue. I once read a screenplay where every single funny line was obviously from a joke book, and I asked the writer about this He thought that's where jokes in movies came from I had to tell him movie jokes are created by the screenwriter for the film — and aren't recycled from some other film or a joke book.
Write your own jokes, folks! We don't want common dialogue, we want extraordinary dialogue that people will remember after the movie ends, or after they have read your script and are writing up the coverage that will leads to a sale or assignment or a pass. Sometimes dialogue isn't dialogue at all.
Re-read the scene in "Of Mice And Men" when Lenny is talking with Curley's Wife, neither is talking about the same subject, yet the dialogue intersects.
It meshes. Each person is either talking to or about themselves — but each line seems to spring from the other person's line. We'll take a look at a scene from "Psycho" which illustrates this tip in action in the supplemental section. It's the key scene from the film, and was part of the very first version of this Blue Book but cut for space the following year when I added a new article. Now it is restored In Shane Black's "Lethal Weapon", Riggs is a young suicidal loner who will take any risk to catch the bad guys.
Murtaugh is an older family man who always proceeds with caution. If you made a list of every one of Rigg's character traits, they'd be the exact opposite of Murtaugh's. The contrast between the two characters creates the friction which leads to comedy and suspense.
This is also brought to the surface in their dialogue — each character uses words and phrases and has an attitude that reflects their character. The more contrast and conflict between characters the more difference in their dialogue and the more conflict and humor can be produced in conversations when they rub up against each other.
Though this is part of story and plotting, remember to pair your character with the person least like them. If you have one cop who plays by the rules partnered with another cop who plays by the rules, you have boring interactions and a boring screenplay. If you have two characters who do nothing but agree with each other, that's not as interesting as two characters who completely disagree.
Accentuate the differences in your characters, and let it simmer to the surface through dialogue. Your Assignment: Make a list of character traits for each one of your characters and make sure they are in the opposite corner from the character they will spend the most time with.
This will lead to humorous banter we hope! He is constantly making fun of Beverly Hills society! Every "polite" situation he is thrust into sets him up for a joke or a witty line. Characters can react to each other, but also they can react to their environment. But Beverly Hills is unusual to Axle, and when a character is surrounded by things they find unusual they are likely to comment on them Instead of observing the world he is used to, Coogan observes a strange world where characters do unusual things.
Part of this story is that Coogan has to figure out how to get what he wants in this strange world, and that means changing his methods He is straightforward and violent, but New York has rules. This creates some great dialogue exchanges. It's like these people are speaking entirely different languages! When you are coming up with your script idea, you can have "built in" humor or interesting dialogue by looking for contrast between characters, between characters and environment, or between characters and situations.
All of these can lead to witty dialogue or just interesting dialogue that allows us to see more of each side by using the tools of conflict and contrast. Your Assignment: Your character is a ballet star: make a list of three interesting locations for stories with this character, guaranteed to bring out some great dialogue exchanges.
Your Assignment: Your character is a garbage man: make a list of three interesting locations or venues for stories with this character, and a couple of dialogue exchanges with someone in those worlds. If your hero's in the middle of a shoot out when the love interest calls on his cell phone, having him say "This isn't a good time - can I call you back? Understatement automatically improves dialogue because it acts as a counterpoint to the situation.
In one scene Matt Damon has just been released from a Mexican prison where he was involved in a violent knife fight and almost died - he is bruised, his face is scarred, he looks awful - but he refers to his incarceration as "his recent difficulties".
Lucas Black says he's fired a gun before Understatement is especially effective when the events are larger than life. When the FBI surrounds the hotel he's staying in, he is almost killed before having breakfast or even his morning coffee Um, soon the FBI will find him! Finally he gets a ride, but the people dump him in the street Understatement is probably some cousin to irony in that it is dialogue at odds with the situation.
It can be used to show a character is world-weary or clever or unfazed by the situation. It's a great dialogue tool to show character The big problem with Woody Allen movies is that all of the characters sound exactly the same and tell exactly the same style jokes Woody could use the voices of real people instead of his own. Your characters should all use different styles of humor, which will be an aspect of their character. One character may be sarcastic, another may use innuendo, another might have great zingers.
A "Chandler line" had a much different style of humor than a "Phoebe line". Liebman is the master of the last minute reversal. She makes a statement, then tacks on a couple of words that change the meaning of everything she's said so far. Her humor is based on a twist at the end of a sentence.
I write checks. Mostly fiction. I needed better glasses. I was raised by her understudy. You'd never know it to look at it. I think I've forgotten this before. Black begins speaking calmly and then gets so steamed up by his stories he can hardly contain himself.
His humor is all based on how really stupid the world can be. Each of these comics requires a different kind of joke. You couldn't swap their material - their delivery and persona are based on a specific type of humor. Each of your characters needs a sense of humor that fits their persona, their character One of the most popular film comedy teams of all time is the Marx Brothers, because each supplied a different kind of humor. Zeppo Marx was the group's straight man — usually the romantic lead in their films.
Groucho Marx was the verbal wit — the king of the one liner. He had a clever zinger for everything. A master of wordplay, he could joke circles around any character. Harpo Marx never said a word — his area of expertize was slapstick, physical humor and visual humor. Chico Marx had a completely different kind of humor based on malaprops and misunderstandings. The great thing about the Marx Brothers was that no matter what kind of humor made you laugh — it was represented by one of the brothers.
If you didn't find sight gags funny, wait a minute and Grouch will come in with some clever wordplay! If you are writing a comedy film or any other genre make sure each character has their own distinctive style of comedy so that everyone's funnybone can be tickled. One of the reason why we're writers is that we come up with a great response line So we get a chance to look brilliant on the page by zinging that line back immediately.
Sometimes the "set up" is so complicated we're still string to figure it out and miss the witty response. Make sure your "set ups" are short and concise. If a witty response requires a complicated or obvious "set up", it's not a good line. Get rid of it! No matter how funny the response is, if the audience has to WORK to get to it, they aren't going to laugh. One culprit in bad "set ups" is exposition - you're "Laying pipe" in the most obvious way. Instead, turn the "set up" into a conversation - giving each participant a smaller piece.
You aren't supposed to be steering the dialogue, the characters are supposed to be coming up with these lines spontaneously! That important piece of information or twist or big reveal needs to be at the very end of the sentence. Often the most important part of a line of dialogue comes in the middle, and the rest of the line just kind of peters out.
That sentence could still use some work, but it's much stronger. Make sure you put the stinger in the tail — that you aren't burying the impact in the middle of the sentence so that it just peters out. You can spice up lines like this by putting conflict right in the sentence.
You might have a character say he "hates loving" his girlfriend. The words contradict each other, and show conflicting emotions within the speaker. This brings a spark of life to the line, and leads to some very memorable lines. This is an element of irony — but kind of super-sized. Your Assignment: Let's have some fun by coming up with phrases that combine two opposites Why would there ever be such a rule? Well, first of all — there are no rules. All of these are just tools to help you improve your screenplay.
But any character speaking for more than three lines without being interrupted? Not realistic at all! In real life people jump in the moment they think they know what you are saying which is not the same as actually knowing what you are saying so dialogue ends up being like a ping-pong match. More than three lines without some character jumping in is probably a speech - and that's often exposition! Breaking up a speech into three line segments with some action or some passive character saying a word or two in between isn't solving the problem, it's just disguising it.
There will be times when it makes sense for a character to just shut up and listen — but most of us try to get a word in edge-wise and your characters shouldn't be any different. Your speeches have to be brilliant! That good. Tarantino can write a speech! The problem with speeches on film is that they kill the back-and-forth of editing. When two people are having a conversation the camera will cut between them and that will give us a regular change of image and also create a rhythm and pacing in the scene.
So the speech has to be so brilliant makes up for that. If it's just someone talking, it's not good enough — it needs to be the kind of speech that people will be quoting a decade after the film comes out!
Those are difficult to write Speeches are like the nuclear weapons of dialogue — you don't use them without reason. If you are going to write a speech, I suggest you study several to see how the rhythm works. But isn't that rude? And how do you do that in a screenplay? Well, the rudeness thing — hey, isn't it rude to just drone on and on and monopolize conversation? Oh, you wanted to know about the script part, didn't you?
And you use a dash or double dash to show that the line is cut off. Three of them. Though I have seen four used when the trail off is also the end of the sentence, though that's kind of confusing to me But you're just another voice in Bill's head!
Don't be afraid to interrupt dialogue and don't worry that the reader won't get what's happening. If the dialogue will play on screen — and the audience will understand - then it will play just as well on the page. Give us the feeling of real dialogue, and the illusion that it's coming right out of the character's mouths I know the characters well enough to know what they would say and how they would say it, and slip into character when I write their dialogue the same way an actor might slip into character before stepping onto stage.
I can write scenes that have nothing to do with my story, I can put together two characters from different screenplays in a situation and have them speak to each other. Nobody cares how you write a great script, all they care about is that it is a great script.
So distinctive dialogue will probably take some work in order to look effortless and spontaneous. I often create a character sheet for each of my characters with a story-specific biography along with favorite words and sentence structure and attitude and some vocabulary choices. But as I did with my Detective in my assignment, I can also add distinctive dialogue and character in a rewrite as well.
Sometimes characters change when you are writing the screenplay, and you need to conform how the character used to speak with how they ended up speaking.
Your Assignment: Just for fun, cover the character slugs in your screenplay or some other screenplay and see if you can tell who is speaking based on what they say and how they say it. The basic use of Wrylies is to tell an actor how to deliver a line Often new writer's screenplays are littered with Wrylies, and usually one or more of three reasons is behind this: Basic confidence — new writers often worry that readers won't understand what they mean and try to spell out everything.
They get it! Trying to fix a bad line — sometimes a writer will try to make a defective line work by adding a parenthetical to explain what they meant to say. The problem here is that the parenthetical doesn't actually fix the line at all, it's kind of a Band-Aid. The best thing to do is make sure all of your dialogue works and is understood without the parenthetical. If the line isn't clear, work on it until it is. The writer doesn't want to leave any room for interpretation or change.
Film is a collaborative medium and everyone involved is some form of artist. The sum is greater than the parts. They have a creative contribution to make to the film and want to be able to make the decisions that deal with their particular discipline.
Yes, people will tell us how to do our job and that sucks, but we can't expect someone else to like it when we tell them how to do their jobs! The trail leads to auto mechanic Claude Akins, and Marvin interrogates him. Akins isn't cooperating, pretends he doesn't know anything So Marvin ramps up the threats — and you know the line was written to be in anger. It's the sort of line that accompanies a pistol whipping. But Marvin makes an interesting delivery choice, and leans in close to Akins, whispering the threat in a calm, quiet voice The words are exactly the same — but the quiet, intimate, whisper makes it more powerful.
If the writer had written shouting and Marvin had delivered it that way, I wouldn't be telling you about the scene now. It would have been the scene we were used to seeing instead of the scene that stands out. Let the actors do their jobs! Let the directors do their jobs! But why do they have 'em if you can't use 'em? If you think the line will be confusing without a wrylie — use one. Sometimes without joking or sarcastic someone really might completely misread the line.
Now, some of this can be done just with the introduction of the character — if they are a jokester, the reader will figure out the line isn't serious. But when you have a character who isn't established as someone who might joke or use sarcasm says something that we misinterpret, you need to use a wrylie to make the meaning clear. So you may end up with a handful or so in your screenplay. That's cool — there's no rules saying exactly how many you use Sure, part of it was breaking the "rules" as a stunt, but without the subtext would you have thought "Can I cut you a piece of cake?
Something like this — where every line has a wrylie - is a fun read, but the script never made and I don't even remember if it sold. Usually whether a character speaks in an accident is part of the character, and ends up being a decision made by the director or the actor.
This carried over into Cold War movies sometimes Even though Connery is from Scotland, it seemed more pronounced than when he played James Bond — so maybe that was a decision. Usually just noting in the character description that the character speaks with an accent is sufficient, but if you want to add the flavor of their accent to the characters dialogue know that a little goes a long way. Remember, your goal is to have the reader understand your dialogue without having to stop and wonder just what the heck that word is supposed to be.
We'll look at subtitles in the supplemental section later in the book. We all hope that our scripts will eventually end up on screen. That our words will be spoken by actors and our images in our imagination will be realized in Technicolor.
For most new writers, writing is theoretical rather than practical. The story is anchored in our imagination with little or no thought to how it might work in the real world Dialogue that plays on the page may not "play on the stage".
This is often true with dialogue that looks fine If possible, you should always try out your dialogue with a reading of some sort. Playwright Sam Shepard says, "A good actor always sets you straight. If you've written a false moment and thought it was probably pretty great, the actor's gonna show you whether it it's great or not when he gets to that moment.
They are the great test of the validity of material. Listen to how your dialogue really sounds, and identify any problems while you're still in the script stage. The higher your script moves up the ladder of production, the more likely it will encounter someone who knows how it will play on screen. Readers often have no experience with how a script will play on screen, but directors and producers know what works Eventually those lines that won't work on screen will be discovered, so let's try to solve the problem before anyone notices it exists.
Here are some common dialogue problems that only appear when the script goes to screen. A Long sentences that don't provide any place for an actor to breathe. B Tongue twisters or lines with similar sounding words that might be transposed by an actor. C Word combinations that accidentally form puns - If a character in a bathroom says "You're in! Some sentences look perfectly innocent on the page, but when you read them out loud they provoke laughter. D Homonyms back-to-back like "They're there!
E Multi syllable words that just don't fit in an actor's mouth like, well, mutisyllabic. Similar to tongue twisters, these words are easy for an actor to trip over. F Words that create facial expressions at odds with their meaning. This is one that you may miss in a reading. I had a story meeting on one of my scripts where the development exec wanted me to change a line of dialogue.
My lead character didn't want to get involved in a situation where he might be killed and said, "It looks dangerous. Instead of the lead being afraid, he would end up looking as if he were happy to walk into danger. She didn't understand what I was talking about until she said the line while looking in a mirror G One sided conversations where the other person just stands there. That may look okay on the page, but on screen that other actor has nothing to do.
In my script "Dark Salvage" I had four main characters saying "shit" at sometime in the script. When they were dejected, or mad, or frustrated, or hurt, or any of the other places where people us foul language.
They all four used the same four letter word. This was a red flag. It's MY favorite swear word, not the characters! So I came up with three alternative swear words and gave each character their own form of cussing - based on their character. My favorite new cuss-word was "kitty crap". It became really funny when it was plugged into some of the sentences.
It took normal lines and gave them character. Every time I come across a word or phrase used by more than one character, I find alternatives that help display character Your Assignment: Come up with some interesting and unusual swears.
The last one is the most difficult. You have to go over every line, and try to find an amusing or unusual way to say it. That's the hard work part. Usually the first line that comes to mind is the most obvious and dull, so you have to "mine" the line - dig until you come up with a clever or witty way to say the same thing. Every line should be a "I wish I'd thought of that! Of course, some lines will work and others will be "just okay", but you have to try to make them ALL gems, or you'll end up with some "just okay" lines and the rest not very good at all!
Push yourself to do the best every step of the way! It all takes work! Writing isn't easy! Film is character in action. Instead of having his characters say what they think, they dance around the subject. The two fall in love before they get their orders - Alicia is to sleep with a Nazi in Rio De Janeiro to learn what he's up to. This puts a damper on their relationship She can't understand why a man who loves her would order her to sleep with another man. In this scene whatever was left of their relationship dissolves.
When she meets Devlin on a park bench, both are hurt by each other's actions. Neither knows that the Nazi Claude Raines has discovered that she's a spy and is slowly poisoning her! Devlin has been waiting impatiently when Alicia weaves to the park bench and sits on the opposite end. Rio can be a very dull town.
Nothing yet. Hang over. You look all mashed up - must have been quite an evening. Go on. Have fun. No reason why you shouldn't. Fresh air isn't as good for hangovers as I thought. So much going on between the lines! Devlin believes she's fallen off the wagon and is back to being a "party girl". Her "chores" are sleeping with the Nazi - Alicia wants Devlin to show how much he loves her by taking her off the case.
But the line backfires - it hurts him to think that she's sleeping with the Nazi. When he tries to show his concern, it comes off as if he's scolding her - which pushes her away. When Alicia asks him if he finds Rio hard to take, she's talking about their mission But Devlin suppresses his emotions. He thinks he'd be a fool to fall in love with a drunken slut and says there's no reason why she shouldn't have "fun" now there's a euphemism!
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