Dialogue Flow Quotes

I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.

The best, most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any particular point and have to question yourself; but normally, dialogue writes itself.

I'm terrible at story and structure, but I'm not so bad at writing dialogue.

I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.

The first thing I do in the editing room is the 'radio edit,' where you listen to the dialogue and don't even look at the visuals. The rhythm, the music of the comedy, has to work.

Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out.

In dialogue, make sure that your attributives do not awkwardly interrupt a spoken sentence. Place them where the breath would come naturally in speech-that is, where the speaker would pause for emphasis, or take a breath. The best test for locating an attributive is to speak the sentence aloud.

With some writers, the script looks beautiful on the page, but nobody actually speaks like that.

And dialogue, I'm good at it, and it's because it's the only thing you have to work with in TV writing.

If you think before you speak the other guy gets his joke in first.

I'm a great believer in conversational rhythm. I think in terms of rhythmic dialogue. It's so easy, you can talk naturally. It's like peas rolling off a knife. Take the great screen actors and actresses, Bette Davis, Eddie Robinson, Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy. They all talk in rhythm. And rhythm and movement are the life of the screen.

During script narrations, if I feel the screenplay mood jumping abruptly, I tell the director, and they work on it.

From the very beginning, I always tried to make dialogue flow comfortably; I always did that to make it seem more authentic.

You change the rhythm of the talk and respoonse and you change the rhythm between the talk and the response.

When the song is part of the action and working as dialogue, even two minutes is way too long.

The hook is a word or an idea spoken by one character which gives the next character something to hook onto when he responds or, like a trapeze artist, gives him something to swing from on his way to another point of view.

I find that dialogue is bad in most scripts. I just think there are very few writers that can capture the natural way people talk.

I look for the essence of a story and a human angle that I think audiences can relate to. I also look at how the dialogues flow in the film as a whole and between the characters, and most importantly I always consider what I can bring to the character from a creative point of view.