Okay, it’s time for me to be… how to I put this nicely?
Parental.
I still love you but I have to teach you a couple of lessons.
I’ve noticed a good chunk of excuse-making in the comments section about why writers aren’t keeping up.
One of the biggest reasons is: Not enough time.
My response to that?
B.S.
And I can hear your resistance already. The anger is bubbling. You can’t wait to get down in that comments section and explain to me why YOUR situation is DIFFERENT from everyone else’s and how you actually truly seriously don’t have enough time to get your pages written.
B.S.
B.S. with a capital B and a capital S.
The only way you don’t have enough time to finish your pages is if there is an anti-screenwriting terrorist in your home pointing a gun at your head all 24 hours of the day and telling you that if you write anything, he’ll shoot you.
Unless that is going on, you have time.
If you are operating by the 2-Week screenwriting principle of not judging your writing, you can write 8 pages in 2 to 3 hours.
If you’re still convinced that you don’t have enough time, post every hour of your day and what you were doing during that hour in the comments section. I’m certain that the intelligent Scriptshadow community can help you rearrange some things to find two hours to write.
And if your excuse is that, sure, you do have the time, but you’re stuck and you don’t know what to write next – KEEP WRITING ANYWAY. I don’t care if you write a redundant scene or a scene that feels pointless. As long as you keep writing! Because when you write, you’re more likely to come up with ideas, and when you come up with ideas, you’ll have reason to keep writing.
“But… but… but… but…”
No buts. You know it’s true. You have time to write. Now stop making excuses and just do it.
On to something I’ve noticed a few of you having trouble with – dialogue.
Here’s the dirty little secret about dialogue.
Are you ready?
DON’T WORRY ABOUT DIALOGUE.
That’s it.
That’s the only thing you have to know about dialogue at this moment.
Why? Because there’s never been a script where more than 10% of the dialogue from the first draft made it into the final movie.
Dialogue is the most re-shaped component of a script and that’s because a) it’s easy to rewrite, and b) the more you learn about your characters over the course of a project, the better you understand what they’d say and how they’d say it. Not to mention plots are constantly evolving in rewrites, which means a lot of scenes are getting chopped, which means all those hours you spent obsessively slaving over that dialogue turned out to be for nothing cause the scenes no longer exist.
How insignificant is dialogue in the grand scheme of things? Remember how we talked about the Safdie Brothers writing 160 drafts of Uncut Gems?
Even WITH THOSE 160 drafts, they still did scripted takes AND “say whatever you want” takes with their actors. In other words, they knew that dialogue, while important, isn’t as important as your actors believing in and emotionally connecting with what they say. So after ten years of rewriting a script to death, the finished product still consisted of a ton of dialogue literally made up on the spot.
Yes, everyone, I understand that the Safdie Brothers are writer-directors and don’t need their dialogue to shine on the page. But still: dialogue should be one of the last things in the script you perfect. Once you’ve got your structure down (which usually takes about 6-7 drafts) and you therefore know you won’t be cutting many more scenes, that’s when your focus is going to shift to dialogue.
In the meantime, there’s two types of dialogue you should be writing in your first draft. Functional or fun. Functional dialogue when you’ve got exposition to convey to the writer. And fun for everything else.
So if you have a scene like in Jurassic Park where the characters are explaining the rules of the dinosaurs or how the theme park works, just get that dialogue down. It doesn’t have to be entertaining. You’ll make it entertaining in future drafts. Right now, it doesn’t matter if it’s dryer than sand. You just need to get it down.
And if you have a scene where two characters with some sexual chemistry are on their way to the next big set piece, have fun with their dialogue. Be outrageous, witty, silly, clumsy. You’re not trying to hit a home run your first at-bat. You’re trying to get a general feel for who these people are and the things they might say. These scenes can be twice as long as they’ll end up being in the final draft because you’re in exploratory mode.
With that said, I know that writing a good dialogue scene makes you feel good. And when you feel good, you want to write more.
So here are a couple of tips. One, try to have at least one dialogue-friendly character in your script, someone who likes to talk, has a lot of opinions, is clever, is funny, or all of the above (think Tony Stark, Harley Quinn, Oscar Isaac’s character in Ex Machina). Just having that character around will up the quality of your dialogue 30% without you having to do anything.
From there, look to dramatize scenes. Create some element of conflict within the scene. That conflict will force your characters to interact with dialogue that’s more fun to listen to.
For example, here are two scenes. You tell me which one is more likely to result in good dialogue.
The objective of the scene is to set up a pandemic virus that’s emerging so that the audience understands it for plot reasons we’ll explore as the movie goes on.
In our first version of the scene, Joe tells Sara why the virus is so dangerous. Sara, eager to learn, asks a lot of questions. “Where did the virus start?” “How many people have died so far?” Joe answers all the questions and when he’s finished explaining everything, Sara thanks him.
We’ve achieved what we’ve set out to do. The audience now understands the virus at the center of the movie.
Now here’s a second version of the scene. In this version, Joe and Sara have two different mindsets about the virus. Joe gets a lot of his news from conspiracy websites. He’s up to date on the latest unfounded theories. Sara, meanwhile, only trusts official fact-based data that’s been reported through official channels. The two debate each other on what’s real and what isn’t.
Note how, dramatically, this is a much more interesting way to talk about the pandemic than a simple Q & A session. The main difference is that there’s conflict between the characters and whenever you have conflict, the scene is more charged, and when a scene is more charged, it’s generally better.
This isn’t the only way to write good dialogue, of course. But it’s an example of where your mindset should be to set a stage for the most interesting conversations. You want to create a situation that has some dramatic value and isn’t just characters saying what you need them to say to set up the plot.
But don’t get too wrapped up in that. You don’t need to focus on dialogue in the first draft. You need to write the darn script. So whatever you do, keep writing. And stop sabotaging yourself. You have the time. And as long as you don’t judge your writing, you will get your 8 pages. Trust me. You just have to sit down and do it.
