Issue 48
Dynamic Dialogue

Welcome!

This month, we offer an All Exercise Issue in Playwriting. How do you write specific, vivid and dynamic dialogue?

In This Issue

• INTRODUCTION
  What goes into writing dynamic dialogue?
• CHARACTER SPECIFIC
  The more specific the character, the more vivid the dialogue.
• SENTENCE STRUCTURE
  All playwrights should love punctuation.
• SOUNDING NATURAL
  The aim of every playwright.
• LAST BUT NOT LEAST
  A final tip.
• STAY CONNECTED
  Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
• FREE RESOURCES
  Some amazing (and free!) resources for drama teachers.
• THEATREFOLK BLOG
  Theatrefolk talks!
• CONFERENCE ALERT
  Meet us in person.
• IN THE NEXT ISSUE
  What you can expect next.
• STAY IN TOUCH
  How to reach us.

Introduction

Plays are aural. Your dialogue can't just look right on the page, it has to sound right too. The aim of a playwright is to keep their audience engaged and focused on the world of the play. 

If your dialogue doesn't sound natural, if it isn't character-specific, if characters yell at each other for no reason, if it sounds like the playwright is trying to talk through the dialogue, rather than the play showing the story, then the play won't work. The audience will start asking questions or thinking about their laundry. And that's something no playwright wants! Unless they're writing a play about laundry.

There are three elements to writing dynamite dialogue and keeping an audience engaged.

• Character-specific
• Sentence Structure
• Sounding Natural

Character Specific

The first step to making your dialogue leap off the page is to focus on how your characters speak. You can enrich your dialogue by making it character-specific. Each character must have their own unique way of speaking. Be aware of the language they use, their background, their education, their occupation, their location, their age, their environment. All of these things lend to character-specific dialogue. This is particularly important to keep in mind when you have characters of a similar age and background (e.g. a group of friends, all of whom are the same gender.) What makes each character's dialogue unique and specific? 

In Their Element

Nothing tips an audience off faster to fake dialogue than characters who speak out of their element. A pompous brain surgeon has to sound like a pompous brain surgeon. A young New York rich socialite must sound at home on 5th avenue. Do characters speak out of their element? Sure, all the time. You can have a surfer dude who is also a doctor. But it must be purposeful and there must be a reason. As long as there's a reason you can do anything! But when just starting out, strive to create characters who speak within their element. Follow the rules before you break them.

Exercise: 

A: I had my first meeting with him yesterday. He was....different.

Take the above line of dialogue and re-write it so that it sounds like it comes from the following character types. Be very specific with each type. Use words that they would use. Use slang that they would use. Would they use contractions? Create the image of each character type through the way they would say the line.

• A fifteen-year-old cheerleader. 
• A seventy-year-old cattle farmer. 
• A five-year-old child. 
• A twenty-year-old New York socialite. 
• A forty-year-old math professor. 
• A sixty-year-old pompous brain surgeon.

Three Dimensions

Writing character-specific dialogue is more than writing to certain types. You don't want to fall into the trap of creating stereotypes. Audiences want to connect to the people they see on stage (whether to love them, hate them, laugh at them) and in order for that to happen, your characters have to be three-dimensional.

The best way to ensure multi-dimensional characters is to create character profiles for them. Fill the profiles with the small details about your characters: who are the members of their family, likes/dislikes, favourite foods, fears, secrets, memories. Human beings are made up of little things, a multitude of tiny details. Think about what's important to you in the day-to-day. What you can't live without. What you'd never eat. Give these elements to your characters and they will become real to you. And that's when you can really get into writing specifically for them!

It's especially important not to treat the character profile like a joke – if you're writing a comedy it's tempting to write a 'funny' character profile. This doesn't help create dimension, it enforces a stereotype. Always strive to create a real human being.

Exercise: 

You're going to write a scene between two characters: A high status character and a low status character. Put them in a specific location. Before you write the scene, create the following profile for each. How does learning about the characters help to write the scene? How does the profile make the character's dialogue specific?

• Name/Age/Gender
• Who is in their immediate family?
• Where and how do they live?
• Where did this character live as a child? Does this character love or hate where they come from?
• What's under their bed?What's in their bedside table?
• What does this character fear?
• What does this character love to do more than anything else?
• What would this character's dream job be?
• They have to make dinner for someone, what do they do?
•  What's in this character's ipod right now? If they don't have one, why not?
• Name their favourite movie.
• Who does this character respect?Who does this character hate?
• Describe their favourite memory.
• Describe their least favourite memory.

Sentence Structure

When I say sentence structure, I'm talking about everything that goes into the makeup of a sentence that isn't the content. The use of contractions, punctuation, sentence length, proper grammar, slang. (You'll soon learn my feelings on whether or not dialogue should be grammatically correct.)

All these components are important tools to creating vivid dialogue. They are character development clues. They build tension. They enforce pace. 

Exercise:

To clearly show the impact of structure, use the following scene exercise:

Click here for a excerpt from my play No Horse Town. It is highly dependent on structure to show character, location and tone. Have students read the scene as it is in the play.

Next, click here for the same excerpt but with a completely altered structure. Same story, but vastly different characters, location and tone. Have students read this scene.

In groups, have students discuss the following: 

• The differences between the two scenes. 
• Have groups pick out specific structural differences and how they influenced their impression of the scene.
• Ask students where they think the original scene takes place, and if the altered scene happens in the same place.
• Ask students if the characters in the altered scene could be played by either gender, and if the characters in the original scene could be played by girls.

Exercise: 

Write a monologue in which a nerdy nervous guy practises in front of his mirror how he's going to ask a girl to the dance. First discuss what sentence structure elements can be used to show the character and his emotional state. (e.g. lots of ums and ers, sentence fragments, pauses, run on sentences, trying to use words that he doesn't usually use in order to be cool)

Part Two: Now write the same monologue but the character is a super-confident football player. Discuss how to show the character and his emotional state through the structure.

Punctuation

Punctuation is key to creating dynamite dialogue. If you're not punctuating your sentences, how will an actor know how to emphasize their lines? Punctuation acts as a direct line of communication between playwright and actor. With punctuation, you can tell an actor when to breathe, when to pause, when to plow right through. You can tell an actor that the character you've created is crisp and straightforward, or ditzy and lost in thought.

You have to be careful, though, the opposite to not having enough punctuation is having too much. And the worse abuse of that is the exclamation point. To often, playwrights think that an intense moment needs to be emphasized with Every! Line! Of! Dialogue! Ending! With! An! Exclamation! POINT!!! That often ends up in characters yelling at each other for long periods of time. Audiences hate to be yelled at. They hate hearing people yell at each other. Audiences turn off when there's too much yelling and that's the last thing you want in a scene.

A good rule of thumb is that you get one exclamation point per page. That's it. That's all. One. Explore other ways to create intensity in your dialogue.

Exercise: 

When you change the punctuation in a scene, you change the intention of the characters, you can change the personality of the characters, you can change the pace, you change the tension.

Click here for an excerpt from my play Body Body. Have students read aloud the original dialogue and discuss how the characters come across.

Click here for another version of the scene with altered punctuation. Have students read the altered scene and discus how the new punctuation changes the characters.

Exercise: 

Write a conversation using as many exclamation points as possible. Go crazy. What kind of characters would speak this way? What would be the situation? Now go through and take out all the exclamation points but one. Which is the most important line to emphasize with an exclamation point? 

Write a monologue with as few periods as possible. Make the sentences as long as you can. What kind of character would speak this way? What would be the situation? Now do the reverse. Re-write the monologue so the character speaks in very short sentences. How does that change the character and the situation?

Write a conversation where one of the characters is lying. How do you show that in the punctuation?

Sounding Natural

All writers want their dialogue to sound natural. That's the aim. The problem is that dialogue does have a job to do, it has to get out information about character and story to the audience. So how do you impart information without sounding informational? How do you make your dialogue sound organic and not like the playwright is speaking to the audience?

Show Don't Tell

The best way to make information sound natural is to show, not tell the action. Never have a character say they are angry, show the emotion through the character's action. If you have a character who is a mechanic, never have a character say to another – 'So, you're a mechanic.' Always show, never tell.

Exercise: 

Write a conversation between a brother and a sister. Give each character a specific job. Find a way to show each job in the scene, without ever saying what the job is. You can certainly talk about aspects of the job, but it's the action and interaction between the characters that lets the audience know the actual job.

Write a conversation between an ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend. Show the relationship without ever saying that they used to be a couple.

Efficient Writing

Unnatural writing is often wordy writing. You want to use the least amount of words to get your point across. Practise efficient writing by limiting the number of words you use.

Exercise: 

Create a character, place them in a specific location, and decide who the character is talking to. Give the character a want that will change the character's life immediately. Write a one page monologue. Now, re-write it to half a page. Then re-write it to cut out five more sentences. Re-write it to one sentence. And finally, write down the most important word of the monologue.

Create two characters and put them in a kitchen. Write a conversation between the two characters in which they are limited to a maximum of five words in a sentence. Re-write the conversation so that the characters are limited two three words in a sentence. Re-write the conversation so that the characters are limited to one word per sentence. Discuss this last conversation: how hard was it? What comes across when you're limited in your words?

Grammar Keep Out

When we write dialogue, it's more important to write the way people talk rather than grammatically correct. Very few people speak 'correctly' and if you write dialogue that way it won't sound natural. Practise writing naturalistic dialogue by using real conversations as a base.

Exercise: 

Go to a food court or school cafeteria. Eavesdrop on a conversation between two people. Write it down – (make sure you're subtle so you don't have to explain why you're copying their conversation!) Bring it back to class and read it aloud. What do you notice about the conversation? Does the conversation sound grammatically correct? What slang is used?
Continue the conversation. Write out ten more lines of dialogue staying in the style and sound of the original conversation.

 Sit nearby someone on a cell phone. Record their side of the conversation. Continue the conversation. Write out the other side of the conversation. Who are they talking to? If it's not clear, make it up. Make it work with the initial dialogue you overheard.

Last But Not Least

One last tip. When you're working on a play and you're at a point where you're happy with it on the page, arrange to hear the play read aloud. It's vital to hear the dialogue not just read the dialogue. And make sure you're not one of the readers – you won't be able to fully focus if you're trying to read at the same time. It's amazing what you'll learn about your dialogue when you hear it. Sometimes it'll be exactly the way you imagined it, and other times completely different.

Stay Connected

We’ve got big plans for this year, including giving away some free plays through our Twitter and Facebook pages. Now would be a really good time to friend us up!

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Free Resources

Did you know we have a page full of free resources for theatre teachers? Check it out here!

Conference Alert

Here's our upcoming conference schedule. If you're attending, please drop by and say hi!

• NCTAE - North Carolina Theatre Arts Educators Fall Sharing 2010 Monroe, NC
  Sep 18, 2010 to Sep 19, 2010
• Educational Theatre Association,Annual Conference New York
  Sep 30, 2010 to Oct 4, 2010
• FATE Conference
  Oct 16, 2010 to Oct 16, 2010
• CODE Conference Niagara on the Lake Queens Landing
  Oct 29, 2010 to Oct 31, 2010
• Texas Thespians
  Nov 18, 2010 to Nov 20, 2010
• Missouri Thespians
  Jan 5, 2011 to Jan 9, 2011
• 2011 TETA Conference Houston, Texas
  Jan 27, 2011 to Jan 31, 2011
• Florida Junior Thespians
  Feb 11, 2011 to Feb 12, 2011
• Florida Thespians
  Mar 16, 2011 to Mar 20, 2011

In the Next Issue

Next month we feature what's new at Theatrefolk. 

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