Dreaded Dialogue

One of the things that baffle young writers is how to make dialogue sound real, not stilted or boring. I've struggled with that as well. I still do, but in my own writing practice I was fortunate enough to be asked to be part of a fiction-to-film project. I took a scene from my novel and wrote a script.

The thing about script writing is that everything written has to be seen or heard. There is no interior monologue. I couldn't write what my characters were thinking. I had to only express it in gestures and dialogue, things that could be scene on a stage or a movie screen.

I don't know if I've been accepted to participate in the program, but the mere act of writing that way made me rethink the conversation my characters were having in the seen and make it that much stronger.

So, give it a try. Turn a scene from your fiction into a movie script and see how it fleshes the characters' own words out.

Happy write:)