What’s important in a scene is what both characters want and how they go about achieving it. With that in mind:
1. Interject action lines
Novice writers tend to write T-shaped pages—a few lines of description and then fill the rest of the page with dialogue. Professional writers break up their dialogue with action lines.
Two characters will exchange some words and then someone does something or reacts a certain way—the dialogue is broken by an action line, often revealing an emotion.
Film is all about constant visual activity. The viewer soon becomes restless with line after line of dialogue and no action.
2. Three Lines or Less
Read professional scripts and watch films, paying particular attention to how much each character says at once. It’s really not much at all.
Ruthlessly edit your own script’s dialogue. There is no time for small talk unless there is also subtext. Every line should advance the plot, characters and hopefully the theme.
(The exception to the rule is during a showdown scene if one character needs to give a mini speech.)
3. Minimize parentheticals
There’s nothing an actor hates more when reading a script than being told how to act—when to pause, when to turn, where to look etc.
Maybe a handful of parentheticals are okay per script, but that’s it. Only use when absolutely necessary, as when the dialogue completely contradicts an action. Too many parentheticals makes a script look amateurish.
Go through your script right now and remove all instances of “beats”, “looks”, “turns” etc. in parentheticals. Give the actors a chance to breathe with the material and add their own touches.
The same goes for underlining and capitalizing in order to put emphasis on certain words. Leave it to the actor.
SEE: ScriptReaderPro.com
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