Today we had a session with Steve Coombs, today he was going to cover Dialogue and Characters. Firstly he detailed the most important things that we shouldn't do when writing pieces of dialogue;
- Pointless Dialogue, don't write something for the sake of it
- On the nose, characters rarely say what they really feel so make sure when writing that it isn't on the nose
- Don't use a lot of formal language
- Don't use the characters name multiple times
- In real life, people talk in a vast amount of different ways, don't have all of your characters talking in the same way i.e. different syntax and vocabulary
- Unspeakable dialogue - if it isn't speakable then it isn't dialogue
- Don't be too grammatical
- Don't make the dialogue to real for example hi - hi - how are you etc
- Every sentence of dialogue should move the story along and/or developing the character, if it doesn't do either of these functions then it is not needed
- Don't give a character more than three lines if possible
- As writers, should try to show the full range of human expression, don't overuse dialogue if you can use other means i.e. hand shake
- Dialogue should not be what it appears to be about
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