DGWG Tip: Dialogue

 Dialogue is not just "what characters say." Dialogue is subtext in motion. The words are the surface. Subtext is the thing underneath the dialogue that isn’t being spoken. It’s the 99% of the iceberg, whereas the written word is the 1% sitting on top of this subtext.

The six functions of dialogue (and a line should do more than one):

1. Reveal character — not who they are, but how they think. Word choice, rhythm, what they won't say. That's character through dialogue.

2. Advance plot — a line that changes what's possible next. Information transferred, a decision made, a door opened or closed.

3. Create conflict — two people in the same scene with different objectives, talking at each other, not to each other. The tension lives in that gap.

4. Establish relationship — power dynamics, history, love, contempt. Two lines of banter can tell you more about a 20-year friendship than a page of exposition.

5. Control rhythm and pace — short lines accelerate. Long speeches slow. Interruptions fracture. Silence redirects. Dialogue is music: you're composing, not transcribing.

6. Carry theme — your characters argue about the play. Not abstractly, but through the specific drama of their scene. The philosophical conflict dressed as personal conflict.

THE CRAFT PRINCIPLE

Write the way you talk or think. And then revise with these principles. 

One-function dialogue is what gets cut in the room. Two-function dialogue is competent. Three- and four-function dialogue is what people remember. Five- or 6-function dialogues are the lines people quote years later in their dreams or when they're drunk. Dialogue that makes its way to bumper stickers. You don't want a script filled with these moments, but sprinkled throughout an entire movie or play and you're cooking.

(IMO 3-function dialogue is the happy middle most lines can achaieve: advances plot, reveals character, AND one more thing: underlines theme, creates rhythm while delivering information, etc.)

“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!” 

Explosive dialogue carefully positioned at the climax of A FEW GOOD MEN that accomplishes all 6 functions with 5 words. It’s character (rude, cocky officer), plot (getting Jack Nicholson to blow up and lose), conflict, establish relationship, rhythm and pacing (look at the lines that build toward this moment. It’s designed to build up to this moment) and carries the overall theme of a military coverup. 

"Get busy living or get busy dying."

-a call to arms in SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. It launches the story forward into the ‘living’ part after so much abuse and torture. It feels like the story turns a corner on this phrase.

"Fuck"

In “THE WIRE” there’s a famous scene where 2 detectives -Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) and Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce)- investigate a crime and only use one word: fuck. The dialogue is in the intonation, rhythm, rapport between the 2 detectives. It’s a writing challenge to the extreme degree that is all about tone, pacing, character while advancing the plot of the investigation. 

"Gurl"

SNL repeated the same challenge later on with the “GURL” scene as 2 blk women engage in a whole discourse with one describing her man and the friend responding with different intonations of ‘girl, gurl…gurrrrrrrl.’ 

"What IS a weekEND?"

-a lifestyle and worldview all in the phrasing and rhythm of 4 words. 

"To Be Or Not To Be"

-stalling. Hamlet knows what he needs to do: avenge his father’s death. But he’s stalls with the most famous interior monologue about how to we, as humans, should make decisions.  And he weighs the dilemma of human existence. It also has great rhythm flow, underlines the themes of the play, speaks to Hamlet’s character and establishes his relationship to the world.