STORYTELLING - Dialogue & Character (Lecture)

This afternoon was our second session with screenwriter Steve Coombes. This one was about dialogue and characters in scripts. It was really useful to hear what he had to say as he gave us pointers for our own scripts, such as:

Dialogue
- It is the least most important bit of screenwriting
- Don't be too formal
- Don't have both characters speaking the same/talk how their characters would talk
- Don't be too artistic
- How polite are they?

- Read dialogue out loud. Then get your actors to read it out loud
- If it's not speakable then it's not dialogue
- Don't be too dramatic
- Real life dialogue is too boring - make it sound like real dialogue than writing it
- Don't do long speeches - keep to no more than 3 sentences then break to something else
- Be aware of accents
- Don't give away too much information in dialogue

Character
- You should know the characters in your script as well as you know your friends
- Write dialogue until you know the character 
- Good characters are flawed people who fall short of their own expectations

Character tell - Tells the audience about the character/where its going to go

Melodrama - All characters are wrong

In good drama - All characters are right

At the end of the session we watched a clip from the Diner called 'Don't touch my records'. It showed a husband and wife falling out over the husbands love for records where the wife doesn't care about what order they go in she just wants to hear the music. This short clip alone showed a metaphor for their marriage because he knew what was on the flip side of the records but all she wanted to do was listen to the music. To start with we felt sorry for the wife as he shouted at her but later we realised he really cared about his passion for records and that he didn't see his wife as one of his friends as they did not share the same interests.