Writing Dialog for a Play

Writing Dialog for a Play
In this segment we are going to cover how to write good dialog. And I have brought you out to our quiet, out of the way location because with dialog the best thing is to hear it instead of sitting and writing it in your head. Sometimes if you say it out loud that works a lot better. Now an important starting place is to realize that if you are writing a novel or if you are writing articles or even poetry those are the end product that are meant to be read. Now on the other hand if you are writing a play or a screenplay you are simply writing a blueprint that is to go to producers and directors and actors to breathe life into it and that production is the final step. So you have to think you are not writing the dialog to be read you are writing it to be spoken. Now you see in some plays and even on TV. sometimes all the characters talk exactly alike. The exact same infliction, excitement, but people are not like that. People are all different and it is important to breathe life into each and every character and one way to do it is the way they talk. Can you picture some kid coming in with his skateboard looking down at a spill and going "Good land." But grandma might come in and come up to this spill and say "Oh, good land." The dialog fits the character. It is not just all the same and it is not how you or I as play writes would say it necessarily. We give it to our characters to say. With my play "Ticket to Paradise" for instance, I have a man behind the counter and I have characters coming in asking to buy a lottery ticket. Now, it would be easy just for a play write to have each one go "Hey, can I have a ticket, please?" But if you can make different dialog or even something so trivial as asking for a lottery ticket it can help really establish those characters more. So the first person we have in is a CEO and he is going to say "Yeah, I want a lottery ticket. Now how come you guys don't have the percentages posted?" Something like that. Then maybe a woman will come in who is a little more wealthy and well-to-do and she is flirting with the counter guy a little bit and says "I think I will have a, give me some Clove cigarettes," and she is looking around. "And I'll take a lottery ticket." That kind of thing. Then you might have a let's say a blue collar worker come in and ask for a lottery ticket. And instead of intellectually thinking, "Now how would he ask for a ticket?" Actually, we are out here in the middle of nowhere so we can sort of get into this character and see how this guy might kind of talk like this "Yeah, yeah give me a, yeah, give me a couple tickets there. Give me a lottery ticket there. Hey, you got any beef jerky too?" You know maybe something like that. Just anything that will give you an idea to latch onto where their dialog is not all the same. And even the simplest things will make that character stand out. And all of those things together will help the play move along and help your characters become so much richer. Now just because you are writing dialog does not mean you need to write as much as possible. I mean unless of course the character is a chatty type character. But sometimes it is best to say as much as you can visually. Like for instance, say I am walking in, someone is sitting here on the bench, I am sitting here. I will walk up and I am a guy who is kind of bitter and hates all the pigeons. So I will come up, sit down, look around and say I hate these pigeons. Somebody ought to clean these up. Why isn't the city doing something about this?" I can go on and on and on and then my conversation with this fellow starts. Better yet, what if I came in and put my arm around the bench and just got my hand in some pigeon droppings and "Pigeons!" And then I begin the dialog with this character here. I got the same thing across with fewer words and that meant more and you see that it is more real than just talking. So as much as you, can get reality and make the dialog more precise and express something visually the better.