The 7 Deadly Dialogue Sins, as explained by David Trottier in The Screenwriter's Bible, gets to the heart of things: Remove blatant exposition, don't overwrite, don't exaggerate character emotions, just say no to everyday pleasantries, stop repeating information, leave room for subtext, and avoid cliches.
“Did you remember to stop by my mother's house? She said she had something for us.” “No, I didn't remember to stop by your mother's house. I didn't remember that she said she had something for us.”
Convoluted plots, yawning narrative holes, generic characters, grating dialogue, nonsensical plot devices – these are just some of the elements that can be considered bad writing.
Cooperative. The core underlying principle of conversation is cooperation, the shared purpose that helps people understand each other across verbal gaps. ...
In the dialogue typology of Walton and Krabbe (1995), there are six primary types of dialogue: information-seeking dialogue, inquiry dialogue, persuasion dialogue, negotiation dialogue, deliberation dialogue and eristic dialogue.
Dialogue is a conversation between two or more people • Dialogues have action words that indicate what the character is doing or feeling • Reveals character and plot in every line • Distinguishes each character • Reveals tone, setting and time period • Reveals character.
Even with dialogue that is clearly attributed, start a new paragraph with each new speaker. The reader shouldn't have to wait until after the dialogue is spoken to understand who is saying it. Readers form ideas and draw conclusions as they read.
If you had to boil everything down to the bone in the realm of the art, craft, and business of screenwriting, you'd be left with three core elements — Concept, Character, and Conflict. Those are the three essential elements to successful screenplays, teleplays, movies, and television series.
The three most important elements of a screenplay—or any story for that matter—are theme, character and plot. The theme drives the character through the plot. If you get these three elements working smoothly with one another then you will get a good story.
