Why do directors butcher our dialogue?
“What we got here is failure to communicate.”
By Mark Renshaw
When we share our appreciation for movies and TV, the most popular way is by quoting the zinger lines of dialogue. “Get away from her, you bitch.” sums up Ripley’s entire encounter with the alien queen.
I love dialogue, therefore when I stepped into the magically weird world of screenwriting, it surprised me just how frowned upon dialogue can be. One of the first short scripts I wrote received this note from a reader, “Ugh – talking heads, nope.” (I’ve since optioned that script for actual cash, twice.)
After workshops with actors, directors, producers and agents at various festivals, and my own limited experience producing short films, the main reasons dialogue gets butchered, seem to come down to the following six factors:
1.
Money. Just like everything else in a screenplay, anything deemed non-essential is cut to save time, which saves money. Kill your darlings does indeed include murdering those spoken words you love with your heart and soul, which incur a dollar line item cost. I do understand this and agree, for the most part… it’s just such a shame. Dialogue can add so much depth to a character and story.
2.
Actors don’t like to remember a lot of lines. I was surprised when I heard this, and I’m sure it doesn’t apply to all actors, but it seems to be a major factor behind the massacre of the spoken word in movies.
3.
Flowery dialogue is seen as a sure sign of an amateur writer and an automatic red flag – so the knee jerk reaction is to cut it wherever possible. I’ve heard this from numerous sources. This is a strange one because in 2019 Stephen Follows conducted an in-depth analysis of over 12,000 screenplays submitted to various high profile competitions and found scripts with flowery dialogue, especially swear words, seemed to score higher. One of his key conclusions was readers associated such colourful dialogue with the writer having a strong voice.
I once wrote a script that included a word-for-word conversation I had with my 5-year old daughter after she came to the sudden realisation she and I would die one day.
4.
People don’t talk like that. This one in particular is misleading. When you see a note on the dialogue that says, “People don’t talk like that”, what they actually mean is, “People don’t talk like that onscreen.” In real life, people say all sorts of random bollocks that can be insanely funny or profound.
I once wrote a script that included a word-for-word conversation I had with my 5-year old daughter after she came to the sudden realisation she and I would die one day. I had a note back, “5-year olds do not talk like that” – but my dialogue was a direct transcript of a conversation I’d had. What they meant was that in screenplay land, 5-year olds don’t talk like that.
In real life, every possible combination of conversations can occur. In scripts we are left with regurgitated phrases that are deemed safe, and which are used so often you can guess what the character is going to say next. In real life, you hear gems like, “Put that fruit down. Don’t you know bananas are the instruments of Satan?”
5.
A bit similar to 3, but a lot of dialogue on the page, especially long monologues, just looks wrong and is off-putting for the reader. The perceived wisdom is that you need to leave plenty of white space on the page. If you write fewer words, it really shows you know what you’re doing as a writer.
6.
You should show and not tell. This is one everyone has heard of and as a general rule should be adhered to, but telling, via the extensive use of dialogue, can be compelling.
A Quentin Tarantino movie without flowery monologues full of sweary, funny bollocks isn’t a Quentin Tarantino movie. If characters in an Aaron Sorkin production don’t utter dazzling dialogue at the speed of light, well it just isn’t right. And who can forget the amazing speech at the beginning of The Newsroom?
So, when do creative dialogue and long monologues work? Welcome to Mark’s Dialogue Club. The first rule of Dialogue Club is – well, let’s talk about it…
Click here for Mark’s tips on how to make your dialogue zing.
Mark Renshaw
Mark Renshaw is a writer of screenplays and prose, and producer of short films. He's the winner of the inaugural Inroads Screenwriting Fellowship and co-producer of the short film The Dollmaker, which has over 23 million views on Alter’s YouTube platform.
You can connect with Mark on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter, and learn more about his work on IMDb, Amazon, and his own website.
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