1) Fear of getting your idea stolen – Fear of getting your idea stolen is so synonomous with being a beginner that it’s a dead giveaway to your newbie-ness (the second I see a copyright number on the title page I know FOR A FACT that the script will not just be bad, but one of the most terrible scripts I read all year). You have to realize that in Hollywood, people are exchanging thousands of ideas all day long without worrying about those ideas getting stolen. Why? Because what’s the alternative? Keeping your ideas to yourself? Is the goal to have your idea die with you so you can brag in your will, “Haha! No one got their hands on my great movie idea!” The only way that anything is going to happen with your idea is if you get it out there, someone hears it and says, “Ooh, that sounds good, I want to take a look at that.” Otherwise, you’re hoarding an idea that probably isn’t as amazing as you think it is in the first place for no other reason than you’re irrationally petrified.
2) Dialogue – We talked about this the other day. Dialogue isn’t nearly as important as THE SITUATION that dictates the dialogue. Set up a good scene and good dialogue will flow. The exceptions are genres that celebrate dialogue, such as rom-coms, teen movies, and quirky character pieces.
3) Getting an agent – An agent cannot do ANYTHING for you if you’re not ready. In fact, an agent will even have trouble helping you if the last project you sold was a year ago. The only time an agent is good for you is when you’re desired by production companies that are coming to them with offers for your services. Once you are making an agent money, they will help you find the best project, send your scripts out with confidence, even get you onto projects you weren’t initially considered for. But let me stress that you first must MAKE THEM MONEY on a consistent basis for this to happen. If I had a dime for every time I heard a repped writer tell me their agent won’t return their calls, I could buy my own agency. Always be your own content generator and marketer first. When the buzz on your writing gets big enough, the agent will find you.
4) An emotional obsession with others’ success – There is this obsession by a large swath of screenwriters with any project that has been purchased, developed, produced or done well at the box office that they think “sucks.” I want to say this as gently as possible: WHO THE FUCK CARES!!?? If you’re so concerned with what everybody else is doing, you’re not putting your energy into what really matters, which is your own content. Listen, I hate that Transformers is a major franchise too. But how does that help me become a better writer? It doesn’t. It’s wasted energy is what it is. So stop worrying about it. Yes, you want to be aware of what’s doing well from a strategic point of view. But don’t let it emotionally encroach upon your screenwriting.
5) “Good writing” – Who the freck cares if your script is well-written? I don’t. And neither does Hollywood. All anybody cares about is IF YOU’VE WRITTEN AN ENGAGING STORY. I always ask writers, what story would you rather hear? A homeless person give you a rundown of how he just witnessed the president get assassinated? Or Stephen King tell you how he spilled his coffee on his new pants this morning? It doesn’t matter who the writer is if the story is weak. Whoever has the best story stands the best chance at engaging the reader.
6) The Nicholl – This antiquated contest is way past its prime. It celebrates non-marketable winners in an industry that’s obsessed with marketability. And while a few winners have gone on to have successful careers, not nearly enough do for a contest that has the highest number of submissions. What the Nicholl IS good for is seeing where you rank amongst your peers. It tells you what percentile you ranked in, which is typically accurate, and therefore allows you to gauge your progress as a writer. But as far as what the contest can do for you if you win, so many other contests have risen up over the years that give you much better industry access if you come out on top.
7) Talent – Talent is important. Don’t get me wrong. But it is NOT the most important factor for success. I’ve read lots of writers with talent who never went anywhere because they overestimated the importance of their talent and didn’t do the other things necessary to find success. I specifically remember a conversation a year ago with a recent Ivy League grad who was a talented writer. He shared with me his struggles. “I just don’t understand it,” he said. “I’ve succeeded in every aspect of my life. Why is this so hard?” Hmm, I thought. Well, for starters, you’ve been at this for all of SEVEN FUCKING MONTHS. Maybe that has something to do with it. But I didn’t say that out loud. What I did say was that the important components to screenwriting success are hard work and perseverance. This is the most technical of all the writing formats, which means it’s the least dependent on raw talent. You have to learn how to navigate the limited and awkward format that is screenwriting before you even have a chance at telling a good story. Work hard. Keep learning.
8) Features – I love features. I will continue to pimp them from now until the day I die. But if you’re not aware of a changing industry dictated by a young generation seeking entertainment on more platforms than ever before, you’re limiting yourself. Specifically, TV offers writers an amazing opportunity. You can still tell big stories, but now actually have the TIME to do them justice. Westworld, The Night Before, Stranger Things, Fargo. These writers are telling 6-12 hour movies here, not lame procedural TV shows like they used to make 15 years ago. Take advantage of this, guys. Did you know that the TV industry FREAKED OUT this pilot season because there wasn’t enough content being pitched to them? Keep writing features but don’t rule out television.
I hope these were helpful and feel free to add your own “overrated” observations in the comments section!
Genre: Drama/Dark Comedy
Premise: A young man attempts to recreate his suicidal sister’s failed high school prom, with the belief that it’s the only way to save her life.
About: This script finished on the low end of the 2014 Black List. The writer, Chai Hecht, hasn’t landed any major assignments yet off of his Black List finish, but has gotten a couple of his short films produced.
Writer: Chai Hecht
Details: 111 pages
So I was talking to a professional reader the other day and the conversation quickly turned to recent script reads and how most scripts fall into two categories.
The first is the Polarizing Category. These are scripts that create a reaction. Now that reaction may be positive OR negative. But at least it’s a reaction.
The second (and much bigger) category is the Safe Category. These are scripts that can also be perceived as good or bad, but the reaction isn’t strong.
Take the script, Lore, which I reviewed last month. I could appreciate the execution. I liked the overall story and understood why a studio would find it marketable. But it was all done in a very blase “Screenplay 101” way and therefore wasn’t polarizing.
On the flip side is “Deeper” by Max Landis. I didn’t like the script. But I have to admit, the thing took chances, it was different. It made me mad at times. And I still remember all the major story beats three months later. That was a polarizing script.
A good analogy is singers. Almost every singer that becomes extremely popular does so because they create a polarizing reaction. The people who have opinions on them have really strong opinions, good or bad. Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Kanye.
The funny thing is, even if you hate one of these artists, you can’t deny that the opinion you have of them is strong. I’ve never heard anyone say, “Kanye West is decent.” It’s either, “He’s a genius!” or “I fucking hate that guy.”
That’s what you’re aiming for when you write. You want people to have strong reactions. And for people to have strong reactions, you need to take chances in your story. You need to let your voice come out. You can’t try and please everybody or write “the technically perfect script.” Part of writing a great screenplay is being brave enough to go to strange places where you don’t know if it’s going to work. And really, that’s true for any artistry.
The reason I picked up In Real Time is because it seemed like it would be a script that, love it or hate it, I’d have a strong reaction to. Let’s see if I was right!
Oscar (or “Osc” as he’s known here) is a 28 year-old piece of shit. Well, maybe “piece of shit” is a strong term. He’s a con artist who pretends to be a door-to-door salesman and, once he gets inside the home, takes whatever looks valuable. Actually, yeah, he is a piece of shit.
Osc hasn’t seen his mother, Lauralie, or sister, Agnus, for a decade. But that changes when he learns that Agnus just tried to commit suicide and is being held in the hospital for two weeks on precautionary measures.
Osc zips back into town and rushes to see his sis, who he loves more than anyone in the world. He realizes that the second Agnus gets out of the hospital, she’s going to complete the deed, and therefore he needs a plan to save her life.
He runs into his old flame, Nicole, the most beautiful girl in town, who still loves him dearly. Nicole is trying to bring awareness to illegal jaywalking by jaywalking back and forth across major streets.
The two investigate what could’ve made Agnus suicidal, and Osc remembers Agnus said the last day she was happy was June 15, 2003, her senior prom.
Osc and Nicole believe that everything went great on that night up until Agnus’s date didn’t kiss her. So Osc plans something spectacular. He’s going to recreate the prom and get her old date to kiss her at the end of the night.
All of this is complicated by Osc’s mom being a nutjob who wants to do things her own way and also by the fact that Osc doesn’t have any money to pull this off. But Osc will stop at nothing to save his sis’s life. Even if there’s no guarantee of success.
I was hoping for In Real Time to be a biting dark comedy in the way that Charlie Kaufman might have treated this. Instead, I got something akin to a John Greene collaboration.
We’ve got a girl who’s going to die (a girl always needs to be dying in a John Greene novel!). We have a quirky romance brewing on the side. We have a strange attractor driving the narrative (the prom recreation).
From a screenwriting standpoint, the foundation is here. GOAL: Recreate Prom. STAKES: His sister’s life. URGENCY: 2 weeks (the second Agnus gets out of the hospital).
That was actually the most clever story point. I admire when a writer can organically insert urgency into his story. “A man must rid his house of a ghost in under 24 hours!” is a typical example of how you can force false urgency onto a story.
Being held at the hospital after a suicide is a real thing. So it felt organic.
But the rest of this script felt like the typical “quirky romance script” every writer writes early on in their career. No judging. I wrote one too. We all do.
The problem with these scripts is that they all scream out, “My early career quirky romance script!” The star isn’t the engaging story. It’s the quirk. And when you make the quirk the priority, it never works. I mean the jaywalking thing is the perfect example. Never in a MILLION YEARS would a real person ever do that.
Then how has John Greene managed to pull off his career? I don’t know. I haven’t seen either of his films. But I did read Nuestadter and Weber’s adaptation of his book, and I can tell you that their focus was not the quirk, but rather the emotion. They didn’t want to gimmick you. They wanted you to fall in love with these characters. And I didn’t see that priority here. This gimmick was definitely the priority.
And that’s important to note. Because when you “gimmick” the reader, you focus on the wrong things, especially in a talky script like this. You’re keen on “cool” or “quirky” dialogue rather than exploring the emotion in the scenes.
The emotion is always what the audience connects with the most. They might not say that. They might even outright tell you they don’t want it. But their favorite movies are almost always movies where they connect with the characters on an emotional level.
And that’s not to say there isn’t an attempt at emotion here, but it’s misguided or something. Osc seems to be battling something within himself but I was never sure what it was. Is he battling the fact that he’s a fuck-up? That he left his family? It’s never clear, so I don’t know what I was supposed to be emotional about!
And the most emotion-potent story thread, that between Osc and his sister, is neutered by the fact that we barely spend any time with his sister! She’s cooped up in this hospital room so we never see her. This puts the bulk of the emotional weight on Nicole, and Nicole just isn’t that interesting (probably because there was so much emphasis put on the quirk – the jaywalking stuff – rather than making her a real person).
So which category does In Real Time get left in? I’m afraid the second one – “Safe.” It does take chances, but those chances never feel organic. They seem forced on the story. Therefore, when the best part of the story arrives, the prom, it’s too little too late. We’re not as invested as we should be. It’s too bad. Cause this concept had potential.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Never let the quirk be the priority. That’s not to say you shouldn’t take chances or go to unique places. But choices shouldn’t be made so you can say, “Look at how unique I can be!” Choices need to first stem naturally from the story for the quirk to work.
Congratulations to everyone who finished their screenplay and entered it into the Scriptshadow Screenplay Tournament! The competition starts Friday. Good luck to all!!!
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: In the near future, a widowed husband flies to an AI-controlled space station to avenge the murder of his wife.
About: 21 Laps is doing some really good things in the entertainment world at the moment. They produced Stranger Things at Netflix and they produced the upcoming sci-fi flick, Arrival, which everyone’s buzzing about. They bought Sovereign, which finished high on the 2013 Black List. The project has been stuck in development hell since, but looks to finally be coming together. Expect some casting announcements in the coming months. Geoff Tock and Gary Weidman used the buzz they received from this script to get some TV jobs, most notably becoming writers on CBS’s Limitless.
Writers: Geoff Tock and Gary Weidman
Details: 106 pages
You hear that record scratching?
That’s me. It’s time to preach the same old shit one more time.
What do I tell you guys? Find a popular movie-type and come at it from a fresh angle. Today’s script could’ve easily been “Taken on a space station.” But instead of this being a nuts and bolts action thriller, it’s more of a psychological action thriller, with our lead character battling his mind just as much as he’s battling his adversary.
Which leaves us with a script that doesn’t feel like anything else out there.
It’s the near future, and 30-something Dmitri Roman is in a good place. He’s got a hot wife, Aly. They both work at one of the biggest companies in the world, which is putting the finishing touches on a space station called the Logos Project. Not only that, but Aly’s just been promoted. She’ll be going to the station to install its artificial intelligence.
Roman isn’t too keen on that. His bosses, The Advisor and The Director, seem like they like Aly for more than her abilities, if you know what I mean. But in the end, he knows he must support his wife and this opportunity she’s getting.
Bad move, Roman. Bad move.
Aly is murdered by the very AI that she installs. And to add salt to the wound, The Advisor comes around to let Roman know that if he goes to the press with this? They will come after him with their billion dollar legal team.
That’s okay. Roman has bigger plans. He spends the next 3 years developing a poor man’s Iron Man suit that will allow him to go up to Logos and kill the thing that murdered his wife. He catches a ride with some low-rent rocket enthusiasts, enters the station, and that’s when we meet… Ivan.
Ivan is “Hal” if Hal had an evil twin brother. I didn’t know dudes without bodies could be this ruthless. Ivan unleashes every robot and death-inducing obstacle he can find onto Roman. The thing is, Roman helped build this station. So he has a few tricks up his sleeve.
As Roman gets closer to the center of the station, Ivan realizes that a different tactic may be in order. And so he starts fucking with Roman. He taunts him. He teases him with what really happened to his wife. If Roman doesn’t hurry up, he may defeat himself before he’s able to defeat Ivan.
Sovereign did not start well for me. It’s written in that horrific format that I detest with all my being – the one where there are no spaces between lines. So you had 106 pages of this:
He leaps.
Grabs onto the nearest coil.
Climbs the quickest he can.
But it immediately starts changing color. Blue.
He keeps climbing.
Red.
His HUD glitches like crazy.
Flashing yellow.
Still Roman climbs.
Then jumps back to the wall.
FWOOM.
The white energy pulses through the coils.
The surge much bigger this time.
He has to hug the wall.
The next one will kill him.
I could go into an entire rant here. But my main point is this: whenever you do something that readers aren’t used to, you’re making them work harder. Now if there’s a story-relevant reason for your choice – something you believe will enhance the reading experience – I’m fine with that. But if you’re being different to be different, that’s a mistake. And this feels like it’s being different to be different.
It’s a testament to the script itself, then, that Sovereign is still good. And I’ll tell you the exact moment I jumped onboard.
We build up Aly leaving for the station. It’s 10 pages maybe. He’s worried about the motives of her bosses. He doesn’t like this. But he knows he has to let her go. Then, right after he makes that decision…
…we cut to Aly’s funeral.
What a clever cut!
So many writers take the long way home when maybe they never had to leave the house in the first place. That hard cut from her being alive to – BAM – her funeral, impacts you in a way that having seen her go up on the station and die couldn’t have achieved.
But the real prize is that it allows for a more interesting narrative once Roman gets up to the station. Because once we get up there, Roman’s pursuit is intercut with flashbacks. These flashbacks fill in the mystery of what exactly happened to Aly. Now normally I don’t like flashbacks, but I liked them here. And I’ll tell you why in the “What I Learned” section.
I also dug the way villains were treated in Sovereign. I’ve read a few amateur scripts recently that have had, shall we say, “Villain Problems.” What I mean by that is that the villains are only bad because they’re villains.
Savvy screenwriting vets know that good villains act evil out of motivation. So here, we have The Advisor, who seems like he’s making some moves on Aly. And maybe, if he can get her up on that station, away from Roman, he can have her. So already, we don’t like this guy. But what really makes us hate him is when he threatens Roman not to disclose to the media what happened to his wife or they will sue him into oblivion. What. A. Dick.
However, The Advisor isn’t doing this to fulfill some “villain” quota. He’s doing it for the company. If the media were to pick up on this, his career, his life, would be over. Ditto for Ivan. Ivan is killing people on the station not because this is a movie and that’s what villains are supposed to do. He’s killing people because they threatened to turn him off. In order to survive, he had no choice but to kill.
The last thing I wanted to note about Sovereign was how the format cleverly allowed for an ongoing dialogue despite there being only one character. You see, usually when you write these scripts, you want at least two people going after shit. Because otherwise, you don’t have any dialogue. You’ve seen this lately with Hollywood moving away from the single-hero dynamic to the “ensemble” infatuation. The more people there are pursuing the goal, the more banter that can be thrown around.
But with Ivan being able to communicate with Roman everywhere he goes in the station, we can have an ongoing dialogue despite there being only a single hero. I thought that was clever.
So this was good stuff. The freaking formatting drove me insane. But I love that they found a way to do a Taken movie with brains. Very cool.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Flashbacks work better when you have a fast-paced story. I realized this while reading Sovereign, which relies on flashbacks to fill in some character and plot backstory. See the problem with flashbacks is that they take the reader IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, which leads to impatience. So if you’re writing a slow drama and you SLOW IT DOWN EVEN MORE with flashbacks? We want to kill you. But in a script like this, where the pace is so quick, flashbacks are almost welcomed. We need that break to take a breath before heading back into the line of fire. So feel free to use flashbacks in your fast-paced stories.
Okay everybody. When I originally set this deadline, I forgot about the long Labor Day weekend. So I’m EXTENDING the deadline for the Scriptshadow Tournament (go here for submission rules) by 1 day. That means everyone has until Monday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time, to get their script in. And let me assure those who submitted today and are thinking of resubmitting their script tomorrow, there is NOTHING you can do in a day that’s going to make your script any better than it is now. So trust in your writing and be content.
Here’s how this is going to work (rules are subject to change because this is an experiment). Starting next Friday, every weekend, 5 scripts will compete for your votes with the winner being announced Sunday evening. We are going to do 8 rounds of this (2 months). That means there will be 40 scripts chosen for the tournament in total. 8 of those scripts will go on to the next round (the quarterfinals). From there, two scripts will battle it out each week which will take us through the semifinals, and then, the final round.
Voting will be up to you guys and I encourage everyone who follows the site to vote. But, as we know, there will be writers who try and rig the voting. A fair warning. The Scriptshadow crowd is keen on cheaters. It’s pretty obvious that when a script not a single known Scriptshadow contributor votes on magically gets 30 votes from people who have never commented before, something is up. I do expect there to be more voters than Saturday Showdown because of the tournament. But if anything looks suspicious, I’ll be making the final judgment call on which scripts move through.
Looking forward to this. Can’t wait to find a great script!
So in my most recent group of consultations, I got this question a lot: “What about my dialogue?”
I remember when I first got into screenwriting, I came across an interview where a professional screenwriter was asked, “How do you write good dialogue?” His answer: “Dialogue is the least important part of a screenplay. Learn everything else first.”
I subsequently discarded this screenwriter as insane, refused to watch any of his movies, and wrote a handful of e-mails to him explaining everything that was wrong about his proclamation that I never sent. But over time, I realized there was some truth to his statement. I mean how else do you explain writers rewriting dialogue the day of shooting a scene and coming up with something perfectly suitable?
What you eventually learn is that it’s the structure of the scene that enables the potential for good dialogue. Good dialogue rarely emerges on its own. For example, if a director came to you with a structure-less scene and said, “I need new dialogue here,” you’d be fucked. You could try and write some clever Quentin Tarantino shit with some Diablo Cody witticisms and a Paul Thomas Anderson monologue about milkshakes. But no matter what you did, it would be a mess.
However, if the director came to you and said, “Here’s the scene. This wife is about to cheat on her husband, and while he doesn’t know that yet, he’s suspicious of her recent behavior. This is their phone call. I need you to rewrite the dialogue,” now you have something to work with. You have some underlying tension in the scene. You have subtext. You have conflict.
With that setup, you could have a hundred screenwriters come in and write your dialogue and most of them would come up with something good. Why? Because there’s an underlying STRUCTURE to the scene that is built for dialogue. And that was the inspiration for today’s lesson. I wanted to look at the three big elements responsible for good dialogue.
Before we get to that, though, I want to make something clear. None of this will help if you don’t have the basics down. You can’t have a bunch of on-the-nose dialogue. You can’t have a bunch of melodramatic dialogue. The dialogue can’t be robotic. It’s got to sound like real people talking to one another. Ironically, there should be a slightly heightened quality to movie dialogue, yet not so heightened that you look like you’re showing off. And finally, like all of writing, there can’t be any laziness. Come up with a better word, a better sentence, a better analogy, a better turn-of-phrase. You have to try hard. When you’ve done all that, you’ll be ready for the below.
1) DIALOGUE FRIENDLY CHARACTERS
Last week a writer asked me, “Why does my dialogue suck in this scene?” I re-read the scene which took place between “the boring friend” and “the quiet guy.” In other words, of course the dialogue sucked. Neither of the characters was built for dialogue. If you want to write good dialogue scenes, you need characters who are good at talking. It’s no different than sending a couple of socially awkward introverts into a bar and telling them to pick up women. Their personalities aren’t built for that.
If you look at Pulp Fiction, one of the reasons the dialogue is so memorable is that the movie has a dozen characters who are dialogue-friendly. If you look at Deadpool, one of the reasons the dialogue rocked was because it starred the most dialogue friendly character of the year. Jokesters, anybody opinionated, motormouths, philosophical potheads, people who “just tell it like it is and if you don’t like it, fuck off,” really smart people who love to hear themselves talk, really dumb people who who love to hear themselves talk, weird people who have weird views of the world, idiots, the list goes on. If you want more good dialogue scenes, this is something you should be thinking about during the character creation stage. “Is this a character who’s going to say interesting things?” If you don’t have at least one of these guys, your dialogue is going to suffer.
2) CONTRAST
Many of the best dialogue scenes come from a contrasting dynamic. Two characters who are on different ends of the spectrum. Take one of the best dialogue movies ever – When Harry Met Sally. Harry was brash, opinionated and pessimistic. Sally was reserved, thoughtful, and optimistic. It was no wonder their dialogue was fun. Clementine and Joel in Eternal Sunshine. She was extroverted and a motor-mouth. He was introverted and chose his words carefully. 500 Days of Summer. He wanted to make it work badly and she didn’t. Silence of the Lambs. She was timid and scared. He was brilliant and manipulative.
What happens when you don’t have contrast? Let’s look at Mad Max: Fury Road. Great movie, right? But do you remember the dialogue? Did it stand out in any way? No, it didn’t. Why? Maybe the fact that Max and Furiosa were essentially the same person (alphas who did things their own way) contributed to the lack of interesting conversation. There wasn’t enough contrast in their dynamic. Not to mention, neither was dialogue-friendly. It should also be noted that “contrasting” can be momentary. It doesn’t have to be built into the characters from the get-go. For example, two characters who are similar may enter a situation where they disagree. In that case, the contrast is momentary, but it’s still contrast. It still enables the potential for good dialogue. With that said, it’s beneficial for your key characters to have a contrasting dynamic, since they’re going to be in the most scenes together. If they’re too similar or agreeable, you’ll have a lot of sub-par dialogue scenes.
3) THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT
Now this is a working theory so it’s not 100% there yet. But what I’ve found when I’ve broken dialogue down is that in almost every circumstance, the dialogue gets better when you introduce a NEGATIVE ELEMENT. The example I always like to use is a couple (NICK and LISA) talking at a diner. If all Nick and Lisa do is talk, that’s boring. But if we know that Lisa plans to dump (NEGATIVE ELEMENT) Nick at some point during the conversation, you now have interesting dialogue. And even if she dumps him at the start of the conversation (NEGATIVE ELEMENT) you’re going to have interesting dialogue.
Or maybe, for whatever reason, you want Nick and Lisa happy in the scene. That’s fine. But if you want to keep the dialogue interesting, you need to introduce the NEGATIVE ELEMENT somewhere else. For example, maybe Lisa’s abusive ex-boyfriend shows up (NEGATIVE ELEMENT) and sits a few tables away. I guarantee you the conversation between Nick and Lisa is going to get a lot more interesting, even if neither acknowledges that the ex has shown up.
Likewise, let’s say Nick’s just joined the army (I guess Lisa dumped him). If you write a scene where, when Nick gets to the base, he sits down with another soldier and the two discuss where he came from and how he got here, it’s going to be boring. But if the second Nick gets there, he’s thrown onto a Humvee to go check out an IED explosion, and the route they’re taking is laced with insurgents (NEGATIVE ELEMENT) and THAT’S when Nick is asked where he came from, the dialogue’s going to be a lot more interesting.
The negative element could also be subtle. Let’s say we’re following Nick and Lisa (he survived his tour of duty and they’re back together) to a concert. She’s been looking forward to this all week whereas he doesn’t want to be here (NEGATIVE ELEMENT). We’re more likely to get good dialogue out of that than if they’re both happy and excited to be here.
And it’s important to note that you have OPTIONS once the negative element’s been introduced. For example, Nick can be transparent about not wanting to be at the concert OR he can keep his feelings to himself. Either scenario will lead to some interesting dialogue. The idea is that a negative element creates conflict, and conflict necessitates resolution, or at least an attempt at resolution. So there’s more curiosity on the reader’s part on how this situation’s going to end.
Finally, just like there are characters who aren’t built for dialogue, there are genres and movie-types that aren’t built for dialogue. Dramas are one of them. You rarely come out of a straight drama going, “Wow, the dialogue in that was amazing.” It’s the same with Thrillers. Since they’re always on the move, you don’t have many long conversations. So it’s harder to write memorable dialogue.
For those types of movies, you want to place less focus on dialogue-friendly characters and contrasting dynamics and more on the NEGATIVE ELEMENT. As long as you’re introducing negative elements into your scenes, whether they be from the characters themselves or from outside forces, it should lead to better dialogue.
Negative Element Theory reminds me of Rashomon both in its simplicity and complexity. Feel free to comment on it, as well as offer your own dialogue tips, in the comments section.
