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Why there is no such thing as a dialog problem!

Why there is no such thing as a dialog problem!

April 19, 2023

When you create a script are you sometimes satisfied with its characters, plot, and the ideas that the story is dramatizing, but feel that the dialog just doesn’t cut it? That your dialog doesn’t convey a unique and intriguing person in a believable and dramatic way? Since dialog in script can easily be fifty percent of the story content that’s a big problem that can really hurt your story and writing career. The solution?

Let me state bluntly:

Most if not all dialog problems are not fundamentally problems with the actual dialog. What are most often called dialog problems are really the logical expressions of a deeper problem. These could be theme or lack-of-research related issues, for example. But the major cause of flat, cliched, functional – that is boring – dialog is that the writer has not developed three dimensional characters. It is characters who speak! When your characters are properly created, they will sing. And in the words and attitudes of dramatic individuals who just won’t shut up. And they will be palpably believable.

But how do you create characters who speak layered and compelling dialog?

Actionable Creative Takeaway

There are many ways to create three dimensional, realistic, and motivated characters who speak engaging dialog. In this article, I will briefly mention two of them:

Attitudes

Human don’t speak tonelessly like a computer. We have attitudes. We speak in ways that express our personality, our own individual traits and value reactions. For example, Hans Gruber speaks with an urbane superior attitude. James Bond with a cool wit. Hercule Poirot with a French accent often indicating his own genius. So, when you are building your characters you must develop their traits and attitudes. Doing this will help make your characters talk as real and layered individuals.

Expressions

As noted in this post by novelist Ayn Rand, good characters have their own little expressions and ways of saying things that reveal their personalities. In the example Rand discusses, the female character uses the expression, “Well, I never.” Rand then notes that these three words reveal, “surprise, and rudeness, and a woman who talks in bromides.”

Also consider that Hercule Poirot uses French expressions such as mon ami, pouf!, voilà, and voyons! He also uses the catchphrase, “these little grey cells.” John McClane has his own particular expression “Yippee-ki-yay”, James Bond likes his vodka martinis “Shaken, not stirred.” Sherlock Holmes enjoys stating, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” All these expressions help reveal these characters. Of course, a character’s expressions don’t have to be trademark ones like those from famous characters such as Bond and Poirot. They can be small "incidental" ones that equally reveal what these characters are.

When you are therefore creating your characters give them attitudes and peculiar individual expressions to speak. These will help make your characters more individualized real people who speak layered and revealing dialog. And that will help make your story more dramatic and memorable.

In short, when creating or fixing your dialog don’t focus concretely on the dialog, but on its cause. Dialog begins with character. And dialog reveals character. Characters speak, not writers.

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