That screenwriting teacher was right about my dialogue being too on-the-nose

I spent six months writing a fantasy novel and every conversation sounded like characters explaining the plot to each other. This guy Gary who teaches a $40 workshop at the local library told me my dialogue was 'functional but not real.' I was annoyed at first because I thought I was being clever with all that setup. But then I recorded my sister arguing with our mom over the phone and wrote it down word for word. People talk in fragments, they interrupt each other, they say the opposite of what they mean. So I went back and cut 80% of my dialogue tags and let characters talk past each other. Now my scenes feel like actual people in a room instead of a play where everyone waits their turn. Has anyone else had to basically unlearn how they thought conversations worked?

2 comments

2 Comments

hill.david9d ago

My buddy Dan rewrote his whole play after his kid told him "Dad, nobody talks like that" during a reading. Changed everything to how his kid and their friends actually text each other and suddenly it won a small festival grant.

benlewis9d ago

Is a festival grant really the best measure of good writing though?