Characters and Dialogue with Steve Coombes

Monday 3rd October 2016

Today we learned about characters and dialogue from writer Steve Coombes. Starting with dialogue we were told about 'gold watch dialogue'- this means that the dialogue is really good but for a play and not a film or television.

Dialogue:

When writing scripts you can have good dialogue but it doesn't necessarily mean it should be in your script. We had some tips for scriptwriting which were:

• Dialogue is the least important part of the screenplay
• If it doesn't further the plot then it doesn't ned to be there
• Don't be too formal with dialogue
• Talk how the characters would talk
• Don't have both characters speaking at the same time
• Don't be too artistic
• How polite are they?
• Don't use the character names too much.
• Read the dialogue out loud
• If it isn't speakable then it isn't dialogue
• Don't be too dramatic
• Make it sound like humans are talking
• Real life dialogue is too boring - make it sound like real dialogue than writing it
• Don't do long speeches/3 sentences than break
• Not everything has to be dialogue
• Subtext
• Be aware of accents/put in little touches and put in the script which nationality i.e German
• Don't give too much information
• Most important - the denial in dialogue
• Think about most extreme work your characters use and it will take you to other words your characters will use.
• Don't make the characters a mouthpiece for what your script is about

Character:

• You should know the characters in your script as well as you know your own friends. They are like your imaginary friend and all their vulnerabilities should be known to you.
• Write dialogue until you know the character
• Good characters are flawed people who fall short of their own expectations, they normally look up to the world than down and minor characters usually look up.
• A character can have tells and it is normally best to do this early on and visually.
• Melodrama - all characters are wrong
• In good drama- all characters are right
• Need to decided whether characters know their flaws.
• A front story is better than a backstory.

Thinking of my own script I feel I need to know my characters a bit more, I will try some character exercises such as writing 10 truths and 10 lies and answer some questions about them. hopefully this will then give me more of an understanding about who they are. I also will not be using much dialogue in my script and to help me whilst writing this I will look at scripts with little dialogue in for reference.