EPISODE DESCRIPTION:
One essential element of a great story is the ability to write great dialogue. However, it’s actually difficult to consistently do this well. Over the next few weeks, we will unpack the essential ingredients of great dialogue and learn clear and easy techniques as to how to write great dialogue in a story. But first, a few key foundational principles need to be laid.
1. We need a clear Definition of Dialogue.
According to John Howard Lawson, “Dialogue is a compression or extension of action.” Story is not so much about what a character says as about what he does, what he says being one aspect of what he does. Speaking is part of a character’s action. We should think about dialogue as being something that happens as a character pursues his or her goals. It is used to achieve objectives.
2. We need to understand the various Types of Dialogue.
Authentic – this is how people sound on the street.
Stylized – (Cohen Bros., Gilmore Girls; Sopranos; Shakespeare)
Naturalistic (a combination of the two).
The challenge is to come up with naturalistic dialogue that has the illusion of being spontaneously created in the mouths of the characters.
3. There are a number of essentials to writing good dialogue, but the foundational premise is that any written dialogue must be essential & crucial to the story (otherwise why?). It is essential and crucial to the story if it:
a. Advances plot (gives us essential story information/ exposition)
b. Shows us essential character relationships
c. Helps us understand scenes
d. Reveals character
e. Reflects Theme
UP NEXT
Next week, we will go over more essential ingredients of good dialogue, and we’ll learn a few tricks and techniques to help us learn how to write better dialogue more quickly. Don’t miss it!
QUESTIONS OR TOPIC REQUESTS?
If you have a question or a specific writing related topic that you would like Zena to consider addressing in a future podcast, click on the link below to leave a voicemail recording with your problem, question, or issue.
https://www.speakpipe.com/ZenaDellLowe
SPECIAL THANKS
The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe would like to thank composer Carla Patullo for the original music she graciously permits us to use in the intro and outro of this podcast. To find out more about this amazing talent, go to www.carlapatullo.com
Tags: Artist, Artists, Dialogue, How to write dialogue, characters, Writing tips, Writing, Writers, Story, Storytelling, Storytellers, Zena Dell Lowe, Mission Ranch Films, The Storyteller’s Mission, The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe
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Ep. 29 - Dialogue Foundation
Thu, 10/1 4:54PM • 15:47
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
dialogue, story, character, podcast, essential, crucial, stylized, voicemail, sound, talk, zena, speaking, ums, reflects, writing, understand, authentic, theme, action, types
SPEAKERS
Colin McGuire, Zena Dell Lowe
Zena Dell Lowe 00:00
TOPIC INTRO: So a couple of weeks ago, I received a voicemail message on the podcast voicemail that I have available on the website. And the whole purpose of that voicemail is for people to be able to leave me a message and let me know what they would like to hear about on this podcast. So if there's a particular area that you're struggling with in your story, I want to know about it, so that I can help provide the tools or the techniques or the information that you need to be able to overcome that hurdle, and proceed with your story with excellence. To that end, one of our long standing listeners left a message on that podcast voicemail. And here's what he had to say:
Colin McGuire 00:49
Hey, Zena. This is Colin McGuire. Would love to hear a podcast around your thoughts on dialogue and how to effectively write within the context of a story I know it might be hard based on the variants of character, but just curious because it's one thing that I at least struggle with is writing from the point of view of multiple different characters, maybe, you know, a female character, writing you know how a certain person would talk in a certain situation and how to effectively integrate that into the storytelling process, so it's not making things grind to a halt or seeming like out of order. That'd be great.
Zena Dell Lowe 01:29
So the issue in question then is dialogue. As a result of this voicemail, we will now be launching into a series on dialogue, which is terribly important to storytelling. In fact, dialogue makes or breaks a story. If you've ever read a novel, where the story is pretty good but the dialogue is terrible, it almost ruins the experience. So dialogue is a key ingredient of the storytelling process. You cannot tell a good story, generally, without dialogue. However, It's actually difficult to write dialogue well. Over the next few weeks, we're going to cover two primary areas in terms of dialogue. We're going to cover the essential ingredients of good dialogue. What must dialogue have in order to be considered good? And that's true across the board, whether you're writing a play, a screenplay, or a novel, what are the essential rules of good dialogue that we need to have in order to qualify, in order for our work to qualify and for it to be good?
Zena Dell Lowe 02:37
But in addition to that, I want to provide you with some tools, some techniques, so that you can actually fulfill the essential requirements of good dialogue. However, before we get into that, there's a couple of things we need to talk about. I have to lay a foundation of three primary things.
- First will be the definition of dialogue.
- The second is the type of dialogue that we're striving for.
- And the third is the foundational principle of what makes dialogue essential and crucial to the story.
So let's dive right in.
Zena Dell Lowe 03:14
DEFINITION OF DIALOGUE:
I first want to give you a definition of dialogue that I think is crucial for our understanding of how to use it well in story. Now I'm taking this definition from a gentleman named john Howard Lawson, and he writes, "Dialogue is a compression or extension of action." Now what does that mean? Well, it means that a story is not so much about what the characters say as about what they do; what they say being one aspect of what they do. Speaking is part of a character's action. It's an extension of action. So what happens a lot of times when I read some of the work that people ask me to read, is that dialogue becomes a separate entity. It's not integrated into the characters overall action. It's like all of a sudden, they stop their action and they start speaking. But we need to understand that dialogue is an extension of action. When a character speaks, it needs to be because that's the action that is appropriate for that point of the story. The character only speaks when they have to, as part of their action, as part of pursuing their goals.
Zena Dell Lowe 04:35
TYPES OF DIALOGUE:
Now, with that definition in mind, the other thing we need to talk about are the types of dialogue. Alfred Hitchcock is famous for saying that a good story is life with all the dull parts taken out. But I would like to say that the same is true for dialogue. Good dialogue is when all the dull parts are taken out. Because the truth of the matter is there are different types of dialogue and we need to understand what type we're dealing with, because that is going to color the kind of rules that we're working with. So I'm only going to present three types of dialogue.
Zena Dell Lowe 05:13
One is authentic dialogue. This is how people really sound on the street. If you had a tape recorder, this is what people would sound like. Most of us are probably writing naturalistic stories. So, because we're writing naturalistic stories, we typically want our characters to sound authentic. The catch is we don't actually want them to sound authentic, because when they're authentic, they say a lot of "ums" and "oh's". If you were to even take this podcast and transcribe it, it would probably sound bad if you put it in dialogue form for somebody else because there'll be too many ums and ohs and hems and haws, whatever. So the key is we want something that sounds authentic, but isn't necessarily authentic because we're going to use Alfred Hitchcock's principle. We're going to take out all the boring parts.
Zena Dell Lowe 06:05
So the second kind of dialogue, then, is called stylized. This is when it's highly stylized. It's not meant to sound naturalistic per se, or if it is, it is meant to be in a stylized form.
Zena Dell Lowe 06:36
So for example, in the Gilmore Girls, they had more pop cultural references in a paragraph than most of us use in our entire lives. The Coen Brothers often have a very stylized type of dialogue. In Sopranos, they have these gangsters talking like poets. It's so beautiful. It's so stylized, the way that they're speaking. The most obvious case of stylistic dialogue would be Shakespeare, right? We don't actually go around speaking in iambic pentameter. That's highly stylized.
So the bottom line is that, for us, we're probably doing some sort of combination (naturalistic). We're probably not doing something like Shakespeare, or even Gilmore Girls, for the most part. That is a unique thing that would be accomplished once in a while. Most of us are trying to do a combination of authentic and stylized. It's the combination of those two things that makes us sound natural, but actually, it's been highly crafted, and that's what we're going for.
Zena Dell Lowe 07:38
Okay, so now that we understand a good definition of dialogue, and we understand the types of dialogue and the kind that we're kind of going for, now we can dive into what are some of the essentials of good dialogue.
Zena Dell Lowe 07:54
Well, the number one essential of good dialogue is that the dialogue that's being spoken is essential and crucial to the story. Otherwise, why do you have it? If it isn't relevant to the story, if it doesn't play into the story in some way, then it needs to be cut. However, here's the thing. There are five different ways that you could use dialogue in a story to make sure that it is essential and crucial to the story. Now, before I break down these five sub categories of what makes it essential and crucial to the story, the one thing you should know is it might not do all five of these things at once. In fact, that would be rare if it was able to do all five, and yet it might do more than one at the same time. So what are these categories?
Zena Dell Lowe 08:46
Well, it is essential and crucial to the story if it A.) advances the plot.
Zena Dell Lowe 08:53
What do I mean? Well, this means, where we have essential story information, exposition or even foreshadowing of things to come. Somehow, it is playing into the actual narrative, it's helping advance the plot. We're understanding, for example, that, "Oh, here is the blood that's been spilled on the floor and now we can get a DNA sample and see if this is the bad guy and blah blah blah blah blah." That helps advance the plot.
Zena Dell Lowe 09:22
However, it doesn't always have to just advance the plot. It is also essential and crucial to the story if it B.) shows us essential character relationships.
Zena Dell Lowe 09:33
Now, this is something that a lot of people haven't mastered yet. There are times in your story where you might have a dialogue exchange between two people that has nothing to do with the actual plot. It's just showing the dynamics of the characters themselves. For example, in Pulp Fiction, when there's the whole conversation in the vehicle about what they call a Big Mac in France. That whole dialogue exchange doesn't really play into the narrative specifically, and yet it shows us who these characters are, and it shows us their relationship. And we are very much interested in what they have to say, even though it seems like it doesn't have anything to do with the story. But it does, because it has to do with the characters. And by the way, Quentin Tarantino is a master at that. Sometimes he has dialogue, where you're like, "What in the world? How does this play into the story?" And maybe it doesn't, but it plays into who the characters are, and so it's still relevant. It is still essential and crucial to the story.
Zena Dell Lowe 10:47
Now, It is also essential and crucial to the story if it C.) helps us understand the scenes. Sometimes we just need dialogue that's gonna help us understand what's happening in the scene.
Zena Dell Lowe 11:02
Let's say you have two detectives who are surveying the crime scene, and one of them says, "Oh, look at this," and they pick up a shell casing. Okay, maybe that is just there to help us understand the scene. So that would make it essential and crucial to the story.
Zena Dell Lowe 11:20
But it is also essential and crucial to the story, if it D.) reveals character.
Zena Dell Lowe 11:25
Who can forget the opening scene in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Bastards," where we have the German Nazi visiting the little farm, drinking a glass of milk, carrying on a conversation essentially with himself. There was so much tension. There was so much uncomfortableness in that scene, and that entire speech ultimately reveals who that character is; what he is really like. And it's brilliant. That opening scene is worth its weight in gold. It's worth the price of admission.
Zena Dell Lowe 12:08
So sometimes you have characters speaking specifically for the purpose of revealing who they are, revealing their true character. We get to see inside their souls because of the things that they say. Now, we have to be careful with that because we can't be "on the nose." We can't be overt, and that's where we'll get into how you do that, later, when we get into the techniques or the tools. Nevertheless, it still would be essential and crucial to the story if it revealed true character.
Zena Dell Lowe 12:43
And the final category for whether or not it is essential and crucial to the story is E.) it reflects the theme.
Zena Dell Lowe 12:52
Now, again, this is hard to do. It's hard to do well because we have a tendency to, when we have people talking about the theme, we easily transgress into message driven agenda where we're beating people over the head. And that is something we want to avoid. However, there are times when a character is going to say something that truly reflects the theme, but it still works organically into the story. For example, the most classic one of all that I can think of, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." That absolutely reflects the entire theme of that film and of a generation; the mentality, the thinking, the psychological hang ups of this particular time in our culture, in our society. I mean, it really reflects what that whole story is about. "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." But it works for the story on a number of levels. Even though it reflects that theme, it doesn't feel agenda driven, it doesn't feel like it's beating us over the head.
Zena Dell Lowe 13:58
EPISODE RECAP:
So the number one ingredient of any good dialogue is that it is essential and crucial to the story, and it is essential and crucial to the story for five reasons.
- A.) it advances plot;
- B.) It shows us essential character relationships;
- C.) it helps us understand the scenes;
- D.) it reveals character, true character, and;
- E.) it reflects the theme.
Zena Dell Lowe 14:27
UP NEXT:
Now, next week, we're going to talk about more essential ingredients of good film dialogue, but this is our foundation. This is what is launching us off into this particular area. And I hope you will continue to join us. I hope this has been helpful to you.
Zena Dell Lowe 14:43
CALL TO ACTION:
If you have found this to be helpful to consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the podcast app of your choice? And if you have a question about story that you would like to see addressed in a future podcast, you can actually go to the notes section of this podcast and click on the link that will take you to that podcast voicemail, where all you have to do is hit click and leave a voicemail message for me. And then I'll know what you would like to hear in future episodes.
Zena Dell Lowe 15:15
OUTRO:
Thank you so much for joining me today on The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.