[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Are there some simple tips you can give us for writing dialogue?
Jill Chamberlain, Script Consultant/Author/Writer: The most important key to writing dialogue is that dialogue is about intention. It’s about characters in stories want things all the time from the other characters that they’re not getting, all of the characters. That’s what produces conflict. Everyone knows conflict is kind of a necessity of drama. The reason there’s conflict is because we don’t have the things that we want. The best and easiest way to write dialogue is to focus in on what your character wants from the other character. All of the characters have these intentions, it’s not just your protagonist. I tend to know my protagonist intentions pretty naturally because I have a strong sense of the character. I don’t really have to think about it too consciously when I write a scene. Immediately she’ll have a a strong intention. I don’t have to be conscious.
I will have to often be conscious about the other characters because they’re not there just to serve your protagonist or your needs for the protagonist. They also have to have things they want that they don’t have.
That’s the key, that is the simplest, strongest way to write dialogue is to be aware of that is that characters don’t have things that they want. Sometimes they talk about it directly, sometimes they don’t talk about it directly, but the the words that they’re coming out of their mouth are not necessarily related to their want. I mean they may not say it directly but the underlying message is that’s subtext basically. Subtext is what the characters mean by the dialogue as opposed to what they say.
There’s this great scene I love to use my classes in August: Osage County. In the climax of August: Osage County I’m not going to be able to quote it because it is all filled with swearing. That’s one of the reasons I pick the scene. It’s kind of fun when I do it in my classes where but the Julia Roberts character is demanding that her mother eat the fish that was brought for her at lunch. We go through the scene and I ask my my students what were each of the characters intentions? Sometimes (most of the time they don’t) but sometimes people say Julie Robert’s intention is for her mother to eat the fish.
I’m like that is absolutely not her intention. She doesn’t care whether her mother eats the fish. Those are the words she are saying, that’s not the intention. The intention has nothing to do with…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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About:
Jill Chamberlain is the founder of a screenwriting school, a script consultant, a screenwriter, and the author of The Nutshell Technique: Crack the Secret to Successful Screenwriting.
The Nutshell Technique is considered the go-to manual many professionals swear by. It’s on the syllabus at film schools all over the world and has been published in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Italian, and in audiobook format.
As a script consultant, Jill has fixed and fine tuned scripts for Oscar-nominated screenwriters, top television showrunners, screenwriters whose movies have made over a billion dollars at the box office, award-winning independent filmmakers, and for many, many spec script writers.
In 2006, Jill founded The Screenplay Workshop with Jill Chamberlain (Screenplayworkshop.org) where she has personally taught thousands of screenwriters feature film and episodic television writing. Complete beginners to Emmy-winning screenwriters and award-winning producers enroll in her classes.
Find out more about her and her script consultancy at jillchamberlain.com.
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