Dialogue Improvement Quotes

My experience is, I do a table reading, and it's literally like it's written in colossal neon lights what's wrong with the screenplay.

Hell, I ain't paid to make good lines sound good. I'm paid to make bad lines sound good.

I love involving actors at all levels - and they have to know that I want to hear their contributions, with dialogue, with story suggestions, with script changes, whatever.

To this day, I get rewrite offers where they say: 'We feel this script needs work with character, dialogue, plot and tone,' and when you ask what's left, they say: 'Well, the typing is very good.'

Laurence [Fishburn] helped redo some of the dialogue [in John Wick 2], he and Keanu [Reeves] workshopped it. And he couldn't have been more respectful couldn't have been more brilliant on set. I said, "look, I'm gonna have to work you a little bit here cause I only get you for three days." He never left set, was always engaging, always working on his lines, it was awesome.

He took me from not being able to write a word in terms of writing screenplays to being the king of wooden dialogue.

Trust doesn't come haphazardly. It really has to be built over time. And that trust has to happen really at times when there isn't a crisis. That's why I think having regular meetings and conversation when there's no crisis, when you can build trust and a friendship and a relationship that allows for better dialogue and far more consequential deal-making can occur when a crisis does come up.

I'd be the first person to say I can't write dialogue. My dialogue is very utilitarian and is designed to move things forward. I'm not Shakespeare. It's not designed to be poetic.

I'd like to work with some of the videogame companies for the simple fact that they obviously need some sort of writer's help. I play videogames, and lately it's hard for me to enjoy them because I'm spending all my time cringing at the corny dialogue, thin characters, and glaring plot holes.

I am encouraged that there's going to be much better dialogue between the federal government and the state of Arizona. I mean, I hope that's not wishful thinking.

We taped all this and then got it transcribed and picked the best lines or ideas or ways to take a scene. I've done that many times, and it can improve the script but also wreck a perfectly good scene.

We write and write and write until we think, 'If we have to shoot this script, we'll be happy, and it's going to be a great movie.' I meet with all the actors two weeks before, and I ask them, 'What lines don't work? What is uncomfortable for you? What jokes do you think aren't good? If you're not getting it, here's what the joke is.' You fix it.