Writing Tip: The Challenge of Writing Dialogue

How to be entertaining, yet serve the story by advancing the plot?

This subject arose in a one-week online class I’m teaching on dialogue.

I’m trying to figure out the essential difference between everyday conversation and that of dialogue that is written for a movie. I understand your lessons regarding the purpose of dialogue. But is it fair to say that dialogue needs to stretch beyond the ordinary? It has to be believable (?) and true to the character, but does it need to be more than that?

In the course, we have explored the principle: Dialogue = Conversation with a purpose. Here is my response:

This is a key part of the challenge for screenwriters. Our “real estate” (page count) is so limited, everything has to move the story forward. Actions. Dialogue. Everything. Hence: Dialogue = Conversation with Purpose.

The challenge is to write dialogue which feels natural … conversational … authentic … and yet moves the narrative ahead.

This is where I believe we, as writers, are best served by working with two points of reference to the story-writing process.

There is the Receptive Mode: This is where we live with the characters. We write from a feeling place. We begin every scene by putting ourselves in the “shoes” of each character. Where is each emotionally? Where is each psychologically? Does each character have a goal in this scene? If so, what is it? How will they go about attempting to achieve that goal? All that, but once we put fingers onto keyboard or pen onto paper, we feel our way through that initial draft.

Then we shift into Executive Mode: We understand how this scene needs to move the story forward. How can we take what each character has “given” us in our first pass at the moment, then shape it to make it as effective as possible in advancing the plot? What can we do to massage the actual sides of dialogue so they sound natural and realistic, yet do what needs to be done to move the plot ahead?

Often, we end up going back and forth between the two modes. If the dialogue feels too manipulated, go back into Receptive Mode and live with the characters for awhile. If the dialogue feels too wobbly and off-point, shift into Executive Mode and focus on what the scene needs to accomplish. Each line, each word of dialogue needs to serve that narrative goal.

In actuality, this is not some mechanistic process. Rather, we shift back and forth organically. But our goal, as writers, is to do both: Advance plot and sound authentic.

As I say, I suspect most of us switch naturally between what I call Receptive and Executive Modes of thinking when it comes to our writing. My main point is that we absolutely must be intentional about immersing ourselves in the lives of our characters and part of that is listening to them. If we move to Executive thinking before we have connected with our characters and who, how, what, and why they are, then we run the risk of creating artificial dialogue which smacks of writers convenience (i.e., the only reason a character says something is because the writer needs them to say that thing).

Dialogue may be conversation with purpose … but you must get to the point where the characters are conversing with you. Then and only then step outside the story universe and shape what you’ve got that services the plot.