Lengthy Dialogue

I feel your pain.

I got told off by my Film Studies tutor for paragraphing my long sections of dialogue.

I've been advised to break it up by adding small actions. I wrote an emotional scene where, in a flashback, a young couple are sitting in a private area talking to each other. The young woman then launches into an emotional dialogue about her past, her problems and why she is the way she is.

I was told to break it up by putting things such as, 'She wipes her eyes and sniffs loudly' or 'She wrings her hands nervously and avoids eye contact'.

If you have someone doing something then I guess you could try adding smaller less significant actions in to help it flow better. Alternatively you could try changing shots.

Rob.

break the dialogue up with action done by the character speaking or action done by the one listening. if your characters are sitting in 2 chairs facing each other know that this is dull and boring.

the action should factor in somehow: ie - is the one speaking about to cry? upset? angry? packing her clothes? washing dishes? is the one who is listening intrigued? or bored and constantly checking his watch? looking for a place to break in the dialogue? trying to keep from laughing?

are there other people in the room interfering with their intimate conversation? like a waiter in a restaurant? or a grocery clerk?

notice there are some instances where lengthy dialogue is more acceptable. it depends who is speaking and the intensity/importance of the speech.

The issue is that films are different than plays. Plays and long soliloquies
go hand-in-hand, but that's because it's just more effective with the limited resources a play has available to it to just tell how the character is feeling, and they work given the emotional investment the audience has in the character.

However, they don't work in a medium where you aren't limited to a stage. In a medium where you are supposed to show rather than tell, they just don't work, especially when you realize that a few small gestures work so much better than a long, boring speech. Shakespeare may have been able to make them work (and his soliloquies work well in film, but that's because he has so much fun with them, and they cover so much territory), but he is the exception, not the rule.

FR

If it helps, BTW: I cheat. If I run into a piece of dialogue that needs to be long, I break it up by throwing actions into it.Yeah, I do some basic blocking for the actor, even if I know that it'll be redone, just to break it up a bit...

FR

Yeah, pro writers can get away with anything, the rest of us have to avoid those big boring chunks of dialogue, how fair is that?!

It's tough to make suggestions without knowing the characters and the context of the scene...

If this were a romcom then (just as a random suggestion) maybe he'd be staring at an attractive woman passing by... the speaking woman's dialogue fades to an indistinct murmering while he's totally distracted. Then just as the distraction vanishes her voice rises again in time for him to hear, "God, I've never told anyone about that before, it's such a weight off my shoulders. Thanks for listening, it really means a lot to me." Hold on his horrified expression.

But you say this is important later so maybe it's a more serious drama? You could use a less comic distraction, e.g. they're in a restaurant, the waiter brings them their meal, she's talking, fade her voice, then show the plates with the meals eaten to denote passage of time, and fade into the end of her story. Or cut outside to watch the pigeons in the square for a moment, then return to hear the end of their conversation.

If that doesn't fit, ignore me.

-Derek

NikeeGoddess said:

break the dialogue up with action done by the character speaking or action done by the one listening. if your characters are sitting in 2 chairs facing each other know that this is dull and boring.

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It's only dull and boring if it's dull and boring.

The Sopranos?

As crazy as this may seem, have the characters do something.

There's nothing wrong with having someone talk for a long time, but I'll bet you in those movies where they talk for awhile, something else is also going on.

The secret to writing large blocks of dialogue is write good dialogue. Good dialogue is NEVER boring. This advice of breaking it up with character actions, like 'she wipes tears from her eyes' is bull***. Do you really think you need to break up the large blocks of dialogue in Pulp Fiction with miscilanious (sp.?) character actions to save the dialogue and makes it interesting? Or the opening dialogue to American Beauty? Look at your dialogue and consider why it's there? What is it doing? What is its function? I would suggest often long sections of dialogue are used to tell the story and this is the fundemental mistake most people make in using dialogue because that is exposition. Tell your story with the story and not in dialogue. Breaking up dialogue used inthis manner with character actions will do nothing to improve the dialogue. And advice from people in the industry that tell you to throw in character actions is the problem with taking advice from a non-writer. He/she doesn't know what he/she is talking about. They may have identified a problem with the dialogue but they have no idea what it is or how you should go about fixing it. But that won't stop them from giving you advice. As David Mamett once said, "You have to ask yourself, do you require the good opinion of fools?"

I wrote a script once that OPENED with a page and a half of solid dialogue. The Head of Development for the production company that I submitte it to describe it as "the best first thirty pages to come through the front door."

That's the problem with industry wisdoms like this. Often, it's all the person who is reading your scrit knows. I would suggest if that person pointed out the dialogue there is something wrong with the dialogue. (Its use, its placement, its function, its writing) and breaking it up with character actions are not going to improve it or save it one bit. The problem is deeper than that and a recommended quick fix like the one suggested will do nothing fot you.

ricetalks said:

Good dialogue is NEVER boring. This advice of breaking it up with character actions, like 'she wipes tears from her eyes' is bull***.

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i mostly agree with you, but i think the reason many novice screenwriters include bits of action between large blocks of dialogue isn't because they think it's boring. they just don't want to discourage a possibly lazy studio reader from skimming over the blob of black ink just to finish his stack, even if the dialogue is good on its own.

i think filler actions are extraneous, especially because actors or directors are going to improvise them. but from a spec script perspective, i think they are appropriate, as long as the actions are suitable and necessary for the scene.

Stargazer said:

I was told to break it up by putting things such as, 'She wipes her eyes and sniffs loudly' or 'She wrings her hands nervously and avoids eye contact'.


Rob.

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If the dialogue is doing its job, it should convey all the emotion that any half decent actor can work with. And they'll decide how to play it, with a little prompting from the director if need be.

Let's say your script's gone as far as pre-production and you're attending a read through with the actors. At this read through someone will be narrating the action, normally one of the production crew, even the writer in some instances, and then imagine s/he breaking the actor's monlogue with 'she wrings her hands nervously' or 'she wipes her eyes and sniffs loudly.' This would not go down well at all.

Although this example is in itself a bit of a moot point, because if your script ever does get that far in development you'll already have been advised to lose the superfluous action as recommended by your film tutor.

El Mariachi said:

I have always heard that it is bad to have big blocks of dialogue in a script. I am not sure why. I have seen tons of films where the main character goes on and on for a while. Here is my question, since the dialogue is possibly not essential, but, what is said is, how can I write the following:

Two people are talking, a man and a woman. She is telling him a situation that is important in her life, and is necessary for later in the script. How would I write the dialogue, then have a break in the dialogue, and then return as she is finishing up?

Hope that makes sense, because just reading it back, even I am confused. Thanks.

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Well, what you said above suggests that there could be a "time break" of some sort. That is, the the scene between the two characters could start at one time and then end at a different time -- presumably because more might be said that wasn't particularly necessary for us to hear.

If that's true (and if I'm reading you correctly) then might it be possible to have not simply a time break, which is rather awkward -- to cut away leaving two characters talking in a room and then cut to the same two characters talking in the same room -- but to have a time and *location* break.

Maybe the conversation begins in the room and ends with them out on the porch or walking together or whatever.

The change in time and location would also give you the opportunity to give the other character a line or two, if only to prompt the first character to continue talking.

As far as the "rule" about monologues (because that's what you're talking about -- a monologue, not dialogue), this is my take on the subject.

If the monologue is very good, then it doesn't matter. You have that long, long Christopher Walken Monologue in Pulp Fiction about the watch up his ass that's virtually the entire scene. Was that too long? No. Because it was a great monologue.

But it has to be great. It can't simply be "necessary."

The fact is, it's never *necessary* for somebody to sit on their behind and give an uninterrupted twenty or thirty or fifty line speech in order to lay out some expository bullshit.

If that's why you're doing it -- don't.

NMS

I'm going to piggyback what NMS said....

nmstevens said:

Well, what you said above suggests that there could be a "time break" of some sort. That is, the the scene between the two characters could start at one time and then end at a different time -- presumably because more might be said that wasn't particularly necessary for us to hear.

If that's true (and if I'm reading you correctly) then might it be possible to have not simply a time break, which is rather awkward -- to cut away leaving two characters talking in a room and then cut to the same two characters talking in the same room -- but to have a time and *location* break.

Maybe the conversation begins in the room and ends with them out on the porch or walking together or whatever.

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And say this...

If there's a time break, why not juxtapose the scene with some other scene with some other people?

Why not go somewhere else, to something else with perhaps less dialogue, if you need to break this up?

Of course, my disclaimer would be: Don't juxtapose for no reason.

nmstevens said:

If the monologue is very good, then it doesn't matter. You have that long, long Christopher Walken Monologue in Pulp Fiction about the watch up his ass that's virtually the entire scene. Was that too long? No. Because it was a great monologue.

NMS

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And on a par with this (although not quite as lengthy) was Dennis Hopper's monologue as delivered to Christopher Walken in True Romance, just before Walken blew him away.

The beauty of this wasn't only in the writing and Hopper's delivery, but also Walken's subtle reactions as he listened to Hopper degrade him within the subtext of his speech; a raised eyebrow, a ghost of a smile, supressed laughter, a grudging respect for the man, the contained fury always threatening to explode from behind the mask.

This was two fine actors working with a sublime monologue.