I’m an oral historian as well as a writer, so I’ve always been fascinated by how people speak and how they interact with each other through dialogue. I soon realized some of the ways spoken language differs from written language and began exploring those differences. When I started writing, the dialogue came fairly easily, but this was deceptive, as I wasn’t being rigorous enough–I wasn’t making the dialogue really work for the script. So, I’m always trying to get better at that. I’ve had over 60 scripts performed on stage, radio, and screen, but I still gobble up books about speech and dialogue–there is always more to be learned.
I enjoyed this book because it made me re-examine how I write dialogue. Kempton emphasizes how dialogue should reveal rather than state, which I found a helpful reminder.
There are many exercises which I found extremely useful and the author frequently refers to her own experience as a writing coach, dealing with the real problems faced by writers, so I loved its practicality.
When should your character talk, what should (or shouldn't) he say, and when should he say it? How do you know when dialogue--or the lack thereof--is dragging down your scene? How do you fix a character who speaks without the laconic wit of the Terminator?
Write Great Fiction: Dialogue by successful author and instructor Gloria Kempton has the answers to all of these questions and more! It's packed with innovative exercises and instruction designed to teach you how to:
• Create dialogue that drives the story • Weave dialogue with narrative and action • Write dialogue that…
I loved the clarity of writing in this book. Mckee is famous for his best-selling Story, and Dialogue lives up to this standard. It is a little prescriptive in places, but it is also sharply analytical.
The chapters on flaws and fixes in particular were really helpful for me, and the 6 varied case studies were each long enough to really take you into exactly how the dialogue works in each script, which I found tremendously useful.
The long-awaited follow-up to the perennially bestselling writers' guide Story, from the most sought-after expert in the art of storytelling. Robert McKee's popular writing workshops have earned him an international reputation. The list of alumni with Oscars runs off the page. The cornerstone of his program is his singular book, Story, which has defined how we talk about the art of story creation.
Now, in Dialogue, McKee offers the same in-depth analysis for how characters speak on the screen, on the stage, and on the page in believable and engaging ways. From Macbeth to Breaking Bad, McKee deconstructs key scenes…
Do you freeze up when your characters drift into the bedroom? Are you puzzled about how much to say and how to say it? What to call the body parts that bring us so much pleasure and so much anguish?
If you’re writing a novel and there’s a sexual encounter…
I love the straightforward style of this book. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the silent or near-silent character, which helped me with a script I was writing at the time.
I also loved his emphasis onlisteningto dialogue before you can ever write it. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘Don’t talk. Listen.’ He tells the reader to train themselves to be a ‘conscious listener’ and to use overheard dialogue as starting points. Great advice.
Whether you're writing an argument, a love scene, a powwow among sixth graders or scientists in a lab, this book demonstrates how to write dialogue that sounds authentic and original. You'll learn ways to find ideas for literary discussions by tuning in to what you hear every day. You'll learn to use gestures instead of speech, to insert silences that are as effective as outbursts, to add shifts in tone, and other strategies for making conversations more compelling. Nuts and bolts are covered, too - formatting, punctuation, dialogue tags - everything you need to get your characters talking.
I loved the voice of this book–it’s the voice of Stephen King, clever, yes, and a brilliant novelist, of course, but also absolutely down-to-earth. King is a perfectionist, continually going back through his writing to hone it–a useful reminder to all of us not to be satisfied with a first or second draft.
The book shows how, in the best writing, both dialogue and plot arise out of character. And I particularly valued his emphasis on cutting, cutting, cutting–dialogue and everything else. He’s made me do that more than ever!
Twentieth Anniversary Edition with Contributions from Joe Hill and Owen King
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S TOP 100 NONFICTION BOOKS OF ALL TIME
Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King’s critically lauded, million-copy bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.
“Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the…
Do you freeze up when your characters drift into the bedroom? Are you puzzled about how much to say and how to say it? What to call the body parts that bring us so much pleasure and so much anguish?
If you’re writing a novel and there’s a sexual encounter…
What I love about this book is how it relates dialogue to all the other aspects of writing for the screen. I found the sections dealing with various approaches to ‘realism’ particularly useful, as I was writing a non-naturalistic script at the time.
The book is academic but also easily readable—an unusual combination! Books on film tend to focus on the visual aspects of the medium, so this is a refreshing change. It shows how central the words are in a script for the screen. I particularly appreciated the chapters on dialogue and genre.
Since the birth of cinema, film has been lauded as a visual rather than a verbal medium; this sentiment was epitomized by John Ford's assertion in 1964 that, 'When a motion picture is at its best, it is long on action and short on dialogue'. Little serious work has been done on the subject of film dialogue, yet what characters say and how they say it has been crucial to our experience and understanding of every film since the coming of sound. Through informative discussions of dozens of classic and contemporary films - from "Bringing Up Baby" to "Terms of…
This book is about how dialogue works in scripts for stage, radio, and screen, although many of the points also apply to the writing of novels or short stories. Starting with how dialogue functions in everyday conversation, it’s then packed with a huge variety of script examples, explaining why some dialogue really works, and some of it just doesn’t.
It looks at characters’ agendas, naturalistic dialogue, not making the dialogue work too hard, going beyond the literal, heightened naturalism, tone, pace, and conflict, highly stylized dialogue, character narration, comic dialogue, documentary dialogue, and advice on re-working the script. So it’s comprehensive. Continually, the effectiveness of the dialogue is put into the context of all the other elements of a script.
