How do you write dialog?

I usually try to make it so that one person is talking, like with words.. and then sometimes another person responds with more talking, also via words. Stringing words into sentences seems to be best, but some situations call for just a single, powerful word.

But seriously, I think writing dialogue that doesn't sound forced or just plain "off" is one of the hardest things to do. Or I just lack that talent. I think a lot has to do with finding the right rhythm, knowing where your characters are coming from, making what they say feel 'true' to that character

I'm sure those guys from the would-be screenwriters thread will be here soon to give you actual advice, I'm just the warm-up act

One trick I use is to try to condense what the character is saying into as few words as possible, unless for some reason (exposition, whatever) they need to go on and on about something. I mean, if you're trying to write a "realistic" conversation between two people, they're not going to slow down and draw out what's being said so it's obvious not only what's being said but what's being implied.

For example, something like:

"Aren't those birds over there lovely?"
"Yes, they sure are lovely birds."

Would become

"Lovely birds."
"Mmm, lovely birds."

You get the idea.

As an aside, Tim O'Brien is masterful at writing dialogue. Read him if you get a chance.

Another thing that might be worth practicing is to write as suggestively as possible, and by that I mean write dialogue in such a way that you don't have to stop-start with references to body movement, "stage direction," etc.

So:

"Do it this way," Tom said with apparent frustration.
"Okay," responded Dan, the tension growing in his voice.

would become:

"No, no, do it like this for chrissakes."
"Yes, fine, I got it, I got it. No, hands off, I got it."

I guess the point is, and maybe it's overly basic to even say it, to not be afraid to transcribe peculiar speech patterns. You don't want your dialogue to be too formalized. Write stutters, write stammers, write pauses. Write physically, you know?

Two things: David Milch, creator of Deadwood and one of the absolute modern masters of writing dialogue, said that when he was starting out as a writer, he would write a scene a day of characters talking. No stage direction, no parentheticals, just people talking. But keep in mind that David Milch is smarter than you and me and probably the entire population of CHUD combined.

Other guys who are great at writing dialogue: Mamet. Richard Price. Anyone who's ever written for "The Wire." Lawrence Block. Elmore Leonard. You can tell I read a lot of crime fiction.

However, you know who the two biggest influences on me were, that totally changed my way of thinking completely about how I write dialogue (because I'm definitely a "talky" writer)? Aaron Sorkin and Stephen Sondheim. You want to write great dialogue, study Sondheim. Study the way he makes music sound like conversation. Study his rhythms, his patterns, his phrasing. Musical theatre is one of the best places to think about dialogue, because a lot of it, especially the early stuff, is about conveying plot, character, etc, through rhythm and music.

And then look at somebody like Sorkin (or Milch for that matter) and see how that translates to actual dialogue.

This all can be summed up in a great quote I read recently from Billy Crudup (who, Mission Impossible 3 aside, is really one of our great, under appreciated actors) in a wonderful book called "Actors at Work:"

Kenneth Lonergan would be someone else to look at.

Also, Noah Baumbach and Whit Stillman. But those are just modern guys I love.

Mamet's a really interesting case because he writes dialogue in such a specific way. It has that unique (and often wildly profane) pitter-patter that I love, but at the same time it's used to mask a very specific emotional throughline. It's what some pretentious people say about jazz - what's important isn't what you hear but what you don't hear.

Man, this could be a really interesting thread.

Dialouge is one of the few things I do well, I feel. I usually act it out, peform it to myself, try to play the part of the characters and see what my reaction would be in that specific situation. Acting and improv classes don't hurt because you begin to get a feel for the back and forth rhythm. I tend to prefer naturalistic dialouge, overlapping, ums, uhs, because that's what I'm usually most interested in.

Whenever I think of or hear a random exchange or one-liner that I find interesting or funny or odd, I try to write it down in a text document on my computer. Sometimes even odd phrasing like (to use an example from my text document) "I'll not die." makes me laugh. Even if the lines don't fit in the scene, reading them can open your mind up to other ways people communicate, get you thinking in different directions, so your sentence construction or syntax doesn't get boring.

You may feel silly "playing pretend" all by yourself (I know I always do) but it works for me. I dunno what you're writing for, though, so maybe you're trying to avoid overly naturalistic dialouge. Regardless, read everything you write out loud. Sometimes something as simple as too much alliteration can make a line be more troublesome than it needs to be.

Sparingly.

This doesn't sound like it's a problem for you, but my natural inclination is to overwrite "snappy" dialogue in the Whedon/Smith/Sorkin vein (not that I'm comparing them in talent, just that they specialize in witty characters). My simplest method for curbing it is to write an entire exchange and cut the last comeback off the end. Keeps things sounding a little more naturalistic.

I second the "write physically" suggestion, too. If you don't do it already, start writing in ums and stammering. If nothing else, it's a rudimetary way to encourage you to look for ways to have the dialogue say things about the characters that the characters aren't saying, if you take my drift.

Do this too.

Do you mean for a story, though, as opposed to a screenplay? The thread's grown more expansive, but I think the original question had to do with stories. I only point that out to say that in a story, I tend to prefer dialogue doing all the heavy lifting. Mostly because I think it's a better filter for exposition, and also because you don't have to keep going between description and direct interaction with the characters.

In a film, I dunno, I guess it depends on the film.

The most important thing to me is ensuring that characters not all sound like the same person talking. I have this problem with both Mamet and Kevin Smith.

Banks brings up a great point about Mamet and how what's not being said is as important as his snappy patter. Schwartz gets into this too -- the idea about the tip to cut off the last exchange is a keeper. (One thing that I really like experimenting with stylistically is not writing the big moments where a character dies, or a secret is revealed, but the moments right before and right after. That's where the real drama is.)

I have to disagree with Hammerhead, though, about Mamet. I think one of the reasons he's so great is that each character has a distinct way of speaking yet he manages to make it seem like it's part of a similar whole. I think part of that also comes with the fact that Mamet's characters all seem to live in similar, related worlds, (i.e., the guys in Glengarry aren't too far removed from the con artists in House of Games), and so it seems like there's overlap. But I think that, to use Glengarry as an example, Levine talks differently from Moss talks differently from Roma talks differently from Alan Arkin talks differently from Jonathan Pryce and so forth and so on, but everybody says fuck so it blends together. A lot of that has to do with the acting, though.

I'll agree with Patrick that not only is having some basic familiarity with acting processes important (and acting classes is something I'd like to do myself), but I'd argue that it's essential, even if you're writing a short story or a novel, to hear your work (or, as I like to refer to it, your shit) read aloud. In the case of films/television/plays, performed, even if it's by close friends who are actors. Doing so can let you know if what you are trying to convey comes across on the page (I'm a big fan of the Atlantic and other more modern schools of acting, which say that the text should be your primary source for all information), not just in terms of rhythm, but emotion. If you don't have actor friends, get some.

Two examples:

1. Yada yada yada I wrote and directed a movie. I'm like Schwartz in that I go for the musicality of the thing, like Mamet or Sorkin or even Whedon*, but I'm not comparing myself to those guys, either. However, my shit does have a distinct rhythm, I hear the phrasing as I write them, and it was really fascinating on set to see who automatically picked up the rhythms, and who struggled with it. There were people who got it instantly, pauses and all, and there were others who would throw out lines and make shit up instead. The ones that I would kill to work with again, though, are the folks who got the rhythms (and the majority of them actually had Atlantic** training), but were still able to make it sound fresh and new. It also sold me on the benefits of rehearsing, really rehearsing, before showing up to shoot.


2. Yada yada yada I wrote a podcast radio drama, first episode is online, blah blah blah fishcakes. Writing this may come back as this discussion continues, as it's all aural, being radio, so there's a much, much greater reliance on dialogue. Anyway, in the first podcast, there's a moment at the end where a character says goodbye to another character. Two words: "Bye, Mandy." But what she's doing is she's acknowledging that she's sending her friend off to her death, and saying goodbye to her to the last time. When I wrote it, I wrote it like this:

DIEDRE (to herself): Bye, Mandy.

How was it delivered? A very flat, very simple "Bye, Mandy." Which, when I heard it, didn't convey the emotion I wanted at all. I spoke to the other actor who was playing Mandy (and was in the room at the time it was recorded), and she said she felt that the emotion was conveyed during the recording. She also mentioned that the actor in question was an actor who did a lot of physical things, and not necessarily vocal ones.

Whose fault was this? The actor's? The director's? Maybe -- but I think that it was my fault. In film, you're told never to give an actor direction about emotion (parentheticals) unless absolutely necessary, and in theatre/radio, you see a lot of stage direction, a lot of "as ifs..." You need to -- you need to assure that the dialogue is being delivered with its intent, especially if you're writing something (as in theatre) that's going to be performed in productions you have no creative control over. So that's something I keep in mind as I continue to write episodes of this series.

But each project is different, and so what may require clever Sorkin-esque dialogue one time may require Altman-esque naturalistic dialogue another. It depends on the characters. In which case: see figuring out how those characters talk.

Wow. That was really rewarding. Great thread.

*I recently completed a short screenplay in which a college-aged Joss Whedon and Michael Bay team up to learn about movies and fight crime, and one of the joys of doing that was being able to ape Whedon wholesale. Not exact dialogue, mind you, but writing Joss Whedon talking like a Joss Whedon character was a lot of fun.

**The Mamet/Macy school.

I assumed film. Very few people write convincing "talky" dialogue. More is seldom more. My favorite films tend to not be dialogue heavy.

No. It was written very quickly (about two weeks), and I wasn't trying to imitate Whedon per se, but more the Whedon style. (It's basically half an episode of Buffy, half a Michael Bay movie.) I've watched enough Buffy interviews to know that the characters on that show, and Xander especially, are how Whedon "talks," so I skimmed through Xander's greatest hits to get in the the right mindset. But as I wrote, I found that it was exceptionally easy to write like that as I'd spent far too much time watching Buffy and Angel in my misspent youth.

billylove, not sure if you'd feel comfortable doing this, but I'd be really interested to see what comes of your exercises if you're interested in posting the results.

I also write dialogue with a "ue" on the end.

When I'm writing a script, I just try and make it sound like real people talking; naturalistic...but that's just me. I don't like to draw too much attention to the dialogue, because I think it can get in the way of the story a little.

That's an interesting thought. What role then does dialogue play in your writing? (Not baiting here, just curious)

Write like Cormac McCarthy he said.

Why?

I don't know. I guess ye can write however ye want. Foller your own intuition he said.

Are you sure?

Yes.

And I don't need to use quotes?

No.

Or punctuations?

No.

Why not?

Shut up.

If you want to write good dialogue, start by listening to people talk. Take the iPod buds out of your ears and listen to the conversations in the subway. Eavesdrop in restaurants, too. Study human interaction and you'll start writing much better. The rest of the advice in this thread is good, but it'll only help you refine and stylize your dialogue. Without a good foundation in understanding what makes people tick you're just blowing smoke.

There is no way I can have any less experience with writing dialogue but I was just about to make the same suggestion as Devildoubt. The first thing I would do is listen to as wide variety of people as possible. Yeah, kids are pretty illiterate but there might be a certain rhythm and reason behind the words they use that can be of some possible benefit.
I'm just bullshitting here but maybe something interesting to try is to mix in certain speaking patterns from different social circles and regions to make something a little distinct.

When I went to film school (and I'm not advocating going because I think they're a scam in hindsight), one of the best and most important compliments I got was in screenwriting class.

We had to make up a scene during class and had 10 minutes to write it. When it was my turn to read what I came up with, alot of people agreed I had the most natural dialogue out of the group. Up until that point I was nervous about my writing and wasn't sure if my dialogue worked. I felt it was boring, but I just wrote the way people spoke. Apparently it was a strong suit.

I've been writing screenplays since I was 16 (12 years now), and the role it plays in my writing is...well I'll put it this way. I've tried writing Tarantino-esque and it's not that I was bad at it, it was quite good and got compliments, but the story was taking a backseat to how cool these people were talking and I didn't like that.

I tend to write thrillers, science-fiction, and supernatural screenplays...and it's important that people believe the characters actually exist in those crazy kind of stories. It's similar to the Spielberg-endorsed "ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances" way of telling stories. My dialogue is the ordinary in that equation and it helps the audience get into the movie more.

To be honest, I'm still nervous about my dialogue and think it comes out a little too ordinary...but that comes from the natural desire to want to show off a little more, but I know it's not correct for my type of stories.

EDIT: To add to the comments above, listening to people speak while you're out is a good idea, but try not to get to attached to it. Your brain absorbs most everything whether you're paying attention or not. All it usually takes is a carefully thought out story and characters. Your subconscious brain is formulating things even when you're not actively thinking about it. I tend to just get two people in a room and have them start a discussion and I never think much about the people I saw at the supermarket carrying on a conversation that day. But it never hurts to pay attention to that stuff.

Listening to how people talk is essential, sometimes there can be a turn of phrase that's not intentional but turns out to be quite pretty, or memorable. It's also just as important to see how authors that are good/great at taking real dialogue and turning into written dialogue do such a thing. In which case see: Price, Block, Leonard, etc., etc., read something other than crime fiction Rath.

There's a lot of wonderful suggestions in here, folks. Much appreciated by someone who always hates the dialogue I write. No matter how good someone else may say it is, I usually can't stand it. I'm always worried that it's stilted and worse of all boring.

It can be physically painful to hear lines of mine spoken. No matter how "great" the people who are performing it say it is, I still wince at certain lines.

Usually I'll write it out. Let it sit for a month. Re-read it. Hate it. Give up.

Then try again in 6 months.

Repeat.

I was going to respond with something similar to your original post, actually. I totally agree that it's important to listen to the rhythm of actual conversations to familiarize yourself with their shape and form, but at the end of the day you're telling a story, and the dialogue has to serve an important function outside of sounding a particular way. In one sense it's driving much of the story forward, and in another it's informing it at the same time. That's why I have to disagree with what you said earlier about some of the previous comments being more about style than substance. My aim was to mix the two. Few things are as tedious as overblown dialogue, but if it's done right it can serve every master of the story - plot, characterization, style, etc.

William Goldman wrote in one of his books about the fact that dialogue was one of the least important aspects of a screenplay, how structure is far more important. A major example he used was TITANIC. He couldn't understand why Cameron got so lambasted for his screenplay because he felt it was so impeccably structured. I always found that interesting, the push and pull of dialogue and structure, how one can be considered without the other. But I guess you do have movies and stories where one works despite the other. DA VINCI CODE (the book) obviously worked. Most of the mass paperback stuff works because of structure and not dialogue. Or you might have something that sounds great but plays for shit.

This may sound like a terribly reductive approach, but I like to set conversational ground-rules for my characters. Personality A never asks direct questions; Personality B never gives direct answers; Personality C always answers his own questions; Personality D always changes the subject, and so on.

When I started my first so-called screenplay back in high school, I was influenced by Japanese animated TV shows-- the more formulaic the better. The color-coding of characters fascinated me: the guy in red was always hotheaded and impulsive, the guy in blue always cool and rational. The guy in yellow was dependable and strong, and in more dramatic stories he died first.

Then I saw Kurosawa employ those very tenets in Ran, while John Hughes did something very similar with The Breakfast Club. "Archetype" is a word that gets overused a lot but once you know what a character stands for it's easier to imagine what they're going to say.

I wrote this in The Mist post-release thread: (SPOILER)

And that's why I don't do this:

Now this is just me, I'm in no way putting down this method of writing, because as Goldman says, "nobody knows anything."

But if character a, b, and c only do certain things, it gets in the way of the plot...unless the plot has been worked around this conceit (which is hard to do and keep the story interesting and on track). But I don't see how to structure a story when the characters say whatever they want. When I write--and I generally write with a bare outline, so the story is going in a certain direction, with a few detours of course that can't be helped--I always know where the story is headed, whether I'm consciously thinking about it or not. Characters say what I want them to say, because they serve the plot...they each have a separate personality, but it's always within the confines of a carefully laid out structure.

Let's say character D always changes the subject. What if he can't change the subject, because I need him to answer something directly in order to get to the next plot point. I could swap character D for another person, but switching characters around arbitrarily in order to preserve their personalities would make the story feel uneven I think.

I have written scripts where I had no outline and let the characters do the plotting, but this always ended in disaster, and I wouldn't get past page 60 or so because there was no plot...it was just a bunch of people talking.

A better solution would be to write and outline simultaneously, and many writers do this, but personally I like to have it all worked out before hand. The script I just finished started with a basic outline, but I only used the first half of it, ditched the rest and let the characters lead...and it's some of the most interesting work I've ever done. I've written about 13 scripts, so maybe it just takes alot of practice on my part.

Not all of us ran out and rented the Mist right away. Jesus.

When writing dialogue, I always imagine three different line readings. For example the line

"I was at the store today, but they were all out of milk."

is a perfect example. Bold will represent emphasis.

1) "I was at the store today, but they were all out of milk."
This indicates that the character is frustrated that they went out for nothing.

2) "I was at the store today, but they were all out of milk."
This shows the inherent stupidity -- a store with no milk!

3) "I was at the store today, but they were all out of milk."
In this case, this shows antagonism against those who run the store, foreshadowing deeper issues.

Any director worth their salt will have every line prepared at least three different ways in order to pull the most profound meaning from a scene.

What the hell are you talking about?

We're discussing how to write dialogue, not how to say it...that's the actor's job. Any line can be said several different ways, that's not news pal.

Stop being a fucking troll before you get banned.

Not to mention the fact that if you actually set out to write with that kind of elasticity, 1) the piece itself is doomed to fail, 2) you're going to waste a lot of time, and 3) you'll lose emotional specificity.

Let the audience (or the performer) run with the meaning.

Writing a script is like writing a grocery list. Fill it with specifics. You don't say you need to pick up a beverage, you say you need to pick up Diet Coke. If you change your mind later, so be it, but if you don't start with details, why make a list in the first place?

This of course is different if you're writing a novel/short story/etc. Then you better have a clear idea in mind.

Also, it's not your job to tell the actors how to do theirs unless a) you're specifically the writer/director, and even then, keep that shit in your head, for the most part, and b) the line in question has a specific meaning that is not accurately conveyed through just the line.

Example:

KATE WINSLET
How's your career been, Billy Zane?

BILLY ZANE
(sarcastic)
Oh, it's great.

WINSLET
I heard Jason Statham kicked your ass for stealing his girlfrined.

ZANE
...No.

I took a screenwriting class once, and I noticed (not that I'm the be all to end all judge of such things) that people fell into one of two traps: They either made the dialog too cliche, too "smart", filled with things that no human being would ever say, or they would fill it with the dullest, half-hearted, boring ass back and forth that, unfortunately, is what people really DO say ("Hello, how are you today?" "Oh just great, and yourself?" "I'm good.")

It's a tight-rope: you want your dialog to sound realistic, but you don't want it to be boring. And yes, you have to realize that most real world conversations are very, very trite and boring. So it's tricky.

You nailed. It is a tightrope. All good dialogue has to ring true to the ear; but it can be stylized, or else why write it? This is why I suggested the first step in writing good dialogue is listening to people. Once an ear is developed, then you should study how other writers do it, to hone the craft. No matter what, it all starts with listening. Like music, you need to develop an ear for how people communicate. Once you do that, you're unstoppable.

You want to know how to write good dialog between a lot of people with different personalities bouncing back and forth? Watch 12 Angry Men.