Tag Archives: scene

Re: Rewrites (Part Two)—Toronto Screenwriting Conference 2014

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Chitlik_2

In Part One of this post, we examined Paul Chitlik’s approach to reviewing the structural elements of a story, including the idea that a screenplay is actually comprised of four stories: The plot-based Main Story, the relationship-led Emotional Story, the protagonist’s internal Personal Growth Story, and the humanizing Antagonist’s Story.

 

Dissecting character

To truly understand your main characters, Chitlik recommends building something of a character profile that you can use as a steady reference while examining how the character acts and speaks within the screenplay. This is critical, Chitlik says, because often when you start writing a screenplay, you really don’t know your main characters and as you write, they will become more defined.

For assistance and more insights, Chitlik highly recommends Lajos Egri’s book The Art of Dramatic Writing.

 

Protagonist

Physiology – develop a sense of what your character looks like even if you don’t incorporate it into your story (something beyond “tall man in his mid-20s”)

Sociology – imbue the character with a social history: family life, school, jobs, etc.

Psychology – how does your character think and respond to his or her environment? Here is where the personal flaw comes to the fore

How is the character reflected in his/her dialogue? – in how he sounds, the word and grammar he uses, and how he acts

What is your character’s defining line? – Think Dirty Harry, a battle-weary cop with a strong moral center who is begging the criminal to make him shoot “Go ahead, make my day.”

 

Antagonist

Physiology

Sociology

Psychology

Human quality – what makes your antagonist more than a 2-D character? Why should we empathize with him or her?

How is the character reflected in his or her dialogue?

What is the antagonist’s defining line? – Think Terminator and “I’ll be back.”

 

Dissecting the screenplay itself

Chitlik then lifts his view slightly higher from the page, offering ways to dissect the screenplay in a more technical manner from its content to the paper itself.

 

Seeing the Scene

Each scene has all 7 of the structural elements of your story, so be sure you can identify them, although be aware that some elements may not occur within the lines of the scene but rather are implied or referenced within the lines.

Does the scene have any/enough/appropriate conflict? Chitlik finds conflict to be the #1 problem of new writers, which leads us to a discussion of goals

He is adamant that every character within a scene must have his or her own goal, however prominent or minimal to the plot. The conflict, he suggests, comes from the points at which these goals thwart or oppose each other.

Also, look at the emotions of the characters within the scene. Do you maintain them throughout the scene or when they change, do they change when something acts to cause the change?

And for emphasis, re-examine the conflict of the scene.

 

Looking for Cuts

Chitlik suggests he has never read a screenplay that couldn’t benefit from cutting about 10%.

He suggests you start by looking for scenes that lack conflict, don’t move the story forward (treading water) or fail to illuminate one or more characters in some manner.

Either eliminate these scenes or find some way to incorporate the missing ingredient.

Then look to cut off the heads and tails of scenes, starting later or ending earlier. An example he gives for the tails is leaving the scene when the final challenge arises or is issued, and he points at the work of David E. Kelley in this regard. The resolution of the challenge, he argues, can easily be worked out by the audience through the start or context of a subsequent scene. You don’t have to always spell things out.

 

Presently Presentable

This is the challenge of first impressions. Chitlik gives the example of a former student who sent him a screenplay she wrote and on the title page, she misspelled her own name. This, he says, did not bode well for what was to be found inside.

Chitlik describes this as the Mercedes Benz theory of script presentation. If you are going to spend $100K on a new Benz and you are presented with two cars—one that is absolutely beautiful and immaculate and one that is dinged up and dirty—which one would you choose to spend your money on?

Look at the pages of your screenplay and ask yourself how much of the page is black and how much white. Before looking at a single word, readers will be repelled by heavy screenplays with long descriptive sections or heavy dialogue. Find ways to break this up to leave more white space on the page.

Chitlik’s other cautions are: Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar.

 

The Rewrite Plan

Chitlik’s plan is straightforward and iterative:

  1. Write a biography of the protagonist in his/her own words/language
  2. Write a biography of the antagonist in his/her own words/language
  3. Reread the screenplay, making notes on the above topics
  4. Create a new beat sheet of the screenplay, adding new scenes that help your story play out and cutting old ones that don’t work or aren’t necessary
  5. Write new pages and rewrite old ones from the beginning
  6. Go back to Step 3

If it sounds like a lot of work, it is, but Chitlik promises that with each iterative run, the work gets easier and the outcome improves.

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Re: Rewrites (Part One)—Toronto Screenwriting Conference 2014

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Chitlik

One of the definite highlights for me at this year’s TSC was the rewrite session offered by screenwriter, director and producer Paul Chitlik, who is now also a professor of screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University. For me, the practical sessions resonate much longer than the advice or adoration panels.

If there was one disappointment with Chitlik’s session it was that the 90 minutes apportioned to him were not nearly enough for him to really explain his process, try as he might. Thus, in many respects, the session was more of an appetite whetter for his book Rewrite: A Step-by-Step Guide to Strengthen Structure, Characters, and Drama in Your Screenplay.

 

Stages of review

For Chitlik, a good rewrite means taking 8 separate passes at your screenplay, which include:

  1. A review for structure
  2. A review for conflict
  3. A review of descriptive paragraphs
  4. A review of the protagonist’s dialogue
  5. A review of the antagonist’s dialogue
  6. A review of the supporting character’s dialogue
  7. A review of cuts that can be made
  8. A review of the presentation of the screenplay

According to Chitlik, this iterative review process causes many of his students to groan, but his attitude is that if you don’t like your script enough to read it eight times, you seriously need to rewrite your script or you need to throw it away and work on something else.

 

Structure: The main story elements

Before starting his specific rewrite techniques, Chitlik took us on a bit of an overview of the main elements of the main story, acknowledging that this number will vary depending on who you read or to what storytelling philosophy you ascribe.

His main points or pillars are: Ordinary life, inciting incident, end of Act I (goal or plan), midpoint, low point, final challenge, return to the now-forever-changed normal life.

In the ordinary life, we find our protagonist impressionable and naïve, and from Chitlik’s perspective, our first visual of the protagonist should give us some clue as to his or her character flaw. This is where we see the character in context and how the person’s flaw interferes with his or her normal life.

With the inciting incident, something external to the protagonist impacts his or her world, changing the world forever and forcing the character to take action. Chitlik acknowledges there is a lot of debate on where precisely within a screenplay the inciting incident should occur. He actually prefers later (toward page 15) to give us time to get to know the protagonist.

By the end of Act I, the protagonist has had a chance to reflect on the inciting incident and formulate a response. This is where the story really begins as the protagonist takes the lead. Chitlik acknowledges that this isn’t always the case, however, and offers the example of Thelma & Louise where Thelma doesn’t really take control of her world until the midpoint.

By the midpoint, the protagonist has been pursuing his or her goal but an external force spins the story on its axis, leaving the protagonist to come up with a new goal or plan. For Chitlik, the protagonist should also learn something new about him or herself when this happens.

By the end of Act II, though, the protagonist reaches the low point, ideally triggered by his or her flaw, where all is lost and the goal seems completely unattainable. As Chitlik notes the cliché, the dark night of the soul.

At some point, an external force triggers the protagonist to engage in the final challenge. Here, the protagonist must overcome his or her flaw, and often repairs a relationship. Chitlik notes that while this final challenge is often large and dramatic (e.g., a battle), it can also be quite small and subtle, but it must involve the protagonist overcoming the fatal flaw.

The protagonist then returns to the new normal. Life often moves just as it did in the beginning, but the protagonist’s approach or viewpoint is forever changed in some way.

 

Chitlik then suggested that the story is actually four stories, each of which has its own version of the 7 story elements, but are ideally intertwined with each other:

The Main Story included the basic plot points or challenges the protagonist faces

The Emotional Story describes the central relationship of the protagonist, whether with the antagonist, a love interest, or some other form

The Personal Growth Story shows how the protagonist comes to face and then overcome his or her flaw

The Antagonist’s Story highlights that the antagonist has his or her own goals in life (wants and needs)

Chitlik adds that we may never see the antagonist’s ordinary life and instead of a flaw, we want to show his or her human quality, which makes the antagonist both more empathetic to the audience and a bit more chilling.

 

In Part Two of this post, we will look more closely at Chitlik’s advice on dissecting first your main characters and then the actual screenplay itself.

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The Throw – Austin Film Festival (part two)

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Terry Rossio, Pirates franchise

In Part One of this post, we talked about Terry Rossio‘s comments at the Austin Film Festival regarding the different kinds of cuts in films: storyline cuts and storyteller cuts. But how do you establish these cuts?

With the throw, which Rossio divides into two categories (a fixation, it seems): the strong throw and the soft throw.

[Added note: Rossio provided a film clip to demonstrate each of these throws but I was only able to record so many in my notebook…hopefully, you’ll be able to figure them out for yourself.]

Strong throws can be very obvious and are used for a variety of reasons. He offered the example of the movie Slumdog Millionaire, where a strong throw is used to set up a flashback. Alternatively, a throw can be used to convey story information so that the audience can discern the link between two scenes. Rossio quotes someone from Pixar who once suggested: “Give the audience 2+2 and they will love you forever.” Throws can also be used to move us through a montage, where each snippet is linked in some way.

Rossio described the discovery throw, where one scene is the answer to the question raised in the previous scene. As an example, he offered the scene in Aladdin where Jafar and Iago complain they will need a new victim to attain the lamp, “a diamond in the rough”, at which point, we move to Aladdin running across a roof with guards yelling “Stop thief!”

And he described the comic throw—also known as the Gilligan cut—where a character repeatedly comments on something (e.g., refusing to wear a dress), only to see the character immediately in that situation (e.g., Gilligan in a dress).

And finally, Rossio suggested strong throws can be used to set up reversals in a story, where we see characters moving a story in one direction, only to see the exact opposite in the next scene.

Soft throws, Rossio suggests, are much more common in film and are by nature more varied and artistic, providing a greater range of effects.

Such throws can provide a promise of things to come for an audience, such as in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy remind his partner what a cautious fellow he is, only to then grab a gun from his desk and head into the fray. Alternatively, such throws can also imply that the next events will be really boring in this scene and that something is more interesting elsewhere. The example he gave was from The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke is leaving Hoth for Dagoba, a long boring journey, and so he tells R2D2 “I’d like to leave it on manual control for a while.” A signal that we’ll kill time here, so let’s go watch Han and Leia run the blockade.

Such throws can also be used to cut off a scene before key information is revealed, creating a sense of mystery and a promise of an answer to come. Rossio warns, however, that this type of throw can feel very manipulative to an audience. The example he gives is again from The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke is in a hurry to leave Dagoba to rescue Han and Leia but Yoda and Obi-Wan’s apparition try to hold him back. As Luke leaves, Obi-wan says “That boy is our last hope.” only to have Yoda correct him, “No, there is another.” Is that Leia in Cloud City?

Rossio describes these throws as connective tissue in a film or screenplay, unifying disparate elements and speaking to the audience in a subliminal, symbolic or subtextual manner.

There is the intentional misdirect throw, to keep the audience from figuring out what’s going on too quickly, and the throw to set up a passage of time, often so characters can have sex, Rossio quips. The train entering the tunnel.

Soft throws can also help set up a change in the state or tone of the movie or to introduce a new character. Rossio gives the example of the movie Key Largo, when the suspicious guests of a Florida fishing resort reveal themselves to be mobsters who take the other guests hostage. A second later, we meet the mysterious boss (Edward G. Robinson) upstairs. The mood of the story has changed, for the worse for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

These cuts can also be used as an internal cut within a single scene to cue the passage of time in a scene that would take too long to play out and would bore the audience. The cigarette that is lit and rested in a clean ashtray, only to be followed seconds later by another cigarette being placed in a full ashtray—ah, the 70s.

As Rossio explains, whether strong or soft, the throw allows the audience to fill in the gaps within a movie. He offered a quote that suggested “Filmmaking is giving the audience the experience of completing the image.” And he added the idea that no scene should be complete except for the last one. There should always be something that prompts the audience to move willingly from this spot to the next one.

He then offered a self-deprecating moment by presenting a quote that suggested a very popular use of throws is to give a movie a sense of consistency or connectivity when in fact the story makes little or no logical sense at all. The quote was referencing a movie that Rossio wrote and acknowledge had a plot that was all over the place.

In the Q&A session afterward, someone asked Rossio if throws were something for which you should aim in the first draft of a screenplay and his answer was basically no, that it was something you added in later drafts. His thinking was that in a first draft, you don’t really know if your scenes are in the right places and if things will need to move around for the sake of the best story.

You only look to incorporate a throw once the story is pretty much set, he says, adding that not every scene abutment requires a throw and you should never simply add one for the sake of adding one, if it will look arbitrary or out of place. The throw, he says, should smooth the transition between scenes, not highlight them by standing out.

 

(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission for a sense of continuity.)

The Throw – Austin Film Festival (part one)

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Terry Rossio on AFF panel

One of the sessions I was determined to attend this year was The Throw given by screenwriter Terry Rossio, the man who brought us Aladdin, Shrek, the Pirates of the Caribbean series and The Lone Ranger (okay, so nobody’s perfect).

Rossio is a legend at the Austin Film Festival; his The Rewrite session being one of the many highlights. But last year, he went one step further with The Throw, which this year, the folks at AFF decided to put in a hotel ballroom rather than a side meeting room.

For the uninitiated, Rossio explains, the throw is that thing designed into the end of the scene that sets up (or throws to) the next scene. It is a connective element that suggests the two scenes belong side-by-side at a level beyond plot or story.

It can be a visual to visual cue, such as the famous scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the victorious ape throws the bone club into the air and as it spins end-over-end, it turns into a space station.

Alternatively, the throw can be verbal to visual, such as in the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones has made his way into the Nazi camp and learns that the Ark of the Covenant is being shipped out on a truck. Indy’s response is “Truck! What truck?” and the very next second, we watch a truck move through the Nazi camp, onto which Indy has somehow hidden himself.

According to Rossio, there are two ways to organize the narrative structure of a movie or screenplay: using storyline cuts or storyteller cuts.

Storyline cuts emerge from the events of the story, seeming natural and seamless. For example, the storming of the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, where we see the soldiers move from one section of the beach to another.

Storyline cuts, Rossio explains, maintain the tension and keep the audience immersed in the story. It is a way to maintain and build story momentum while asking for minimal effort from the audience. It is much like a series of dominoes.

Another example Rossio offers is the end of the tornado scene from The Wizard of Oz, when the house finally stops spinning and Dorothy moves from the sepia tones of Kansas into the Technicolor world of Oz. She even states, famously, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Storyteller cuts, in contrast, imply there is a grand design to the story or an author, who is choosing what you see and when rather than simply presenting events as they happen. This is common in ensemble films such as Love, Actually and American Graffiti.

This sense of a grand design can be comforting and reassuring to an audience, says Rossio. It creates a distance between the audience and the story, with the less immersive story being seen as a creation.

These types of cuts often support a narrator or guide who practically sits alongside an audience and takes them through the story. The guide can appear on-screen or perhaps as a voiceover. Think Morgan Freeman’s character in The Shawshank Redemption.

According to Rossio, storyteller cuts are also very good at renewing a story’s momentum, jumping to new locations or situations before a prior scene’s energy drops and thereby re-engaging the audience.

But how do you establish these cuts? With the throw, which Rossio divides into two categories (a fixation, it seems): the strong throw and the soft throw.

(See the next post for Part Two, which actually goes into the different throws and how you would use them.)

(Images is property of owner and is used here without permission, because I don’t give a toss.)

Two’s company, three’s a story

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As I read through a lot of early-stage screenplays and stage plays (including my own), I have noticed an interesting trend: Any scene that only involves two characters is boring.

No matter what the posturing, no matter how violent or loving, no matter whom the characters are, a scene with only two characters quickly loses steam for me. The dynamic peters out, and I find a lot of writers try to overcompensate for that by simply making the characters’ gestures larger. As though they believe talking louder to someone who does not speak your language will make you any more intelligible.

I speak for the trios: Turns out there may be some behavioural psychology behind this…at least, if you’re a rock hyrax—no, no, not “Lorax”.

Last week, a research paper was published in the journal Animal Behaviour that looked at the dynamics of triad relationships between these small creatures living in the hills of Israel, and the results were fascinating.

In a dyad relationship (two individuals), the authors say, you cannot make any predictions about the future other than friends will likely remain friends and enemies will likely remain enemies. With a triad (3 individuals), however, a social power dynamic is established that can morph in any number of directions, although some directions are inherently more likely and more stable than others.

The researchers found plenty of examples of the standby relationships, such as the friend of my enemy is my enemy (+ – -) or the friend of my friend is my friend (+ + +), and found that these relationships were highly stable in that they were likely to remain unchanged from year to year for any set of three individuals.

Enemy mine: What was fascinating, however, was that the seemingly unstable and counter-intuitive state of the enemy of my enemy is my enemy (- – -) occurred a lot more often than expected by chance and that it could be quite stable from year to year. This completely flies in the face of the standard that the enemy of my enemy is my friend (- – +).

From a story perspective, however, it can make complete sense. What if all 3 of you are vying for the same objective? As one of the enemies, you have to be constantly wary that any effort to thwart one enemy will provide an advantage to the other enemy.

Friend of a friend: What was also interesting was how gender played a role in the evolution of the unstable triad the friend of my friend is my enemy (+ + -). In females, this triad tended to morph toward (+ + +), while in males, it tended toward (+ – -), suggesting the need for female cooperation in raising young and male competitiveness in breeding. Typical men, eh?

From a story perspective, though, consider the power of (+ + -). What if the friend of your friend pushed them to do something contrary to your desires? This would make them your enemy—whether you’re being altruistic or selfish. A much more interesting dynamic as you may inadvertently push your friend into making a choice between the two opposing forces.

Dynamite dynamics: Regardless of the way your scenes play out, the triad dynamic gives you so much more room to play with emotionally and socially than a dyad. At any given moment, one of the trio can switch poles and the dynamic changes. With a dyad, the sudden switching of poles better have a good rationale in your story or it won’t be believable. That brings me to my next point.

Two characters: Now, before you go out and scrub all your two-person scenes from your screenplays, novels and stage plays (because yes, my hubris states I am that influential), let me remind you I said two characters, not two people.

Environment, situation and unseen third parties can also be characters in a scene between two individuals. It is those subtextual elements that convert a vomitously dull scene into one that sizzles. The challenge is in making sure the reader/viewer knows it’s there through carefully selected word choice and narrative (NOT exposition).

Two friends meet, but one hides a secret from a previous conversation that muddies their exchange in ways unexpected by the ill-informed (- + – or + + -) (e.g., plot to every spy movie ever made).

Two men with diametrically opposed viewpoints have to set aside their differences to deal with an external threat (- – -) (e.g., Hooper’s shark to his Quint is his enemy), which turns into (- + -)).

So, when you find yourself creating a scene with only two people, ask yourself who or what is influencing this scene aside from the two people and remember to incorporate them or it into the dialogue and narrative.

As Jed Barlett said to Sam Seaborn while playing chess in a scene from West Wing, “Look at the whole board.”

Didn't want to play your silly games, anyways

Didn’t want to play your silly games, anyways

Penny Penniston at Toronto Screenwriting Conference 2013

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Not Just Talk: How Writers Think About Dialogue

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Many people come to screenwriting because they have a good instinct for dialogue, but it is important to look beyond the instinct and understand the theory behind dialogue. If nothing else, this understanding is useful in helping the writer communicate with other artists so that you can articulate why you wrote a specific line a certain way, rather than simply standing there scratching your head saying “I dunno”.

Dialogue vs. conversation: Most people think writing dialogue is easy, Penniston says, because they are under the delusion that dialogue and conversation are the same thing. They are not. In comparing words to the keys of a piano, she loudly showed that conversation is noisy and discordant, while dialogue is musical, it is precise and crafted, it presents voices and themes.

Dialogue gives clear direction to the artist interpreting it, but it also gives the artist a chance to interpret the words in his or her own way, to show off his or her talents.

Like music, you have to develop something of a muscle memory for dialogue through repetition; however, understanding the theory behind dialogue will allow you to step back and analyze your writing with a certain distance.

Using visual cues, Penniston suggested that your story is much like an aerial shot of the Grand Canyon, with long, sweeping turns and deeper and shallower canyons. Dialogue, however, is more like someone kayaking through white water, experiencing the eddies and whorls of the currents and avoiding the rocks where possible.

Forces: Characters, she says, are very lazy. If left to their own devices, they won’t do anything. We need to get them to move and we do that by applying a force on them, which in physics has both a direction and magnitude. You can use physical forces, evolutionary forces (e.g., against death or for sex), cultural or societal forces (e.g., need to conform), or psychological forces (e.g., need for love or respect).

And these forces should be defined in very specific ways, again offering a sense of direction and magnitude. The strongest of all the forces on a character will drive your scene, but she stresses, the other forces are still important. This landscape of forces, she says, is the character’s situation in a scene.

Text and subtext: You want to be sure you put your characters in interesting situations with a network of multiple forces pushing and pulling your characters in different directions. You should always feel that your dialogue is adjusting and moving as these forces shift in strength and direction. A good line of dialogue, she says, manifests the sum of all of the forces acting on the character at a particular moment (e.g., personal baggage, setting, other characters).

In text, only one force acts on your character. In subtext, however, more than one thing is happening at one time. Subtext, she warns, is not the result of something being left unsaid but rather that so many things are trying to be said, but aren’t. It can manifest itself as an odd word choice given the superficial context or self-interruption and rephrasing.

When the forces converge and cancel each other out, she suggests, the character remains silent, unable to communicate anything. The character will look static, but he or she is not. It is a moment of paralysis (in physics, potential energy). And the line after a lengthy silence can be very interesting, she argues, because it is the first sign of which of the forces won. At the same time, she warns that we should look for lengthy pauses within our screenplays that do nothing for the scene or the drama. Those pauses aren’t based on reactions to forces.

Story beats: For Penniston, a story beat transitions when the balance of forces in a scene shifts, and for as a writer, you want to be very clear about the point at which this shift occurs. You should be able to point to the specific line in a scene.

Memorable lines, she says, come when the tension of a beat breaks. She harkens back to the Rule of Threes, suggesting the scene beat should occur in three steps: establish the tension, heighten the tension, and break the tension.

And wonderfully, she suggests, with change, you get an opportunity for surprise, such as the punchline of a joke. These lines can’t come out of left field, however. They must fit the context of the scene, but they can still be unexpected.

Writer Tricks: Create interesting situations in which your scene plays out. Pick a discordant place, person or circumstance. And avoid beat repetition. A specific combination of forces should never occur twice or you’ve just gone back to a previous beat and eliminated the reasons for everything that occurred between them.

Find interesting things within your situation. Add and/or explore details within your scene. Assign random elements and figure out how to make those elements work within your scene. Get insights from others and look for opportune moments to create truly memorable lines that encapsulate your character or the situation.

Tell your story as clearly but as efficiently as possible to avoid distractions. Only add narrative if it is revelatory or adds something new, and don’t direct. Although, she says, if you’re writing for studio readers, you may want to err on the side of too much narrative to make sure your story gets across.

(Aside from being a professor at Northwestern University, Penniston is also a playwright and author of the book: Talk the Talk: A Dialogue Workshop for Scriptwriters)

Toronto Screenwriting Conference – Day Two Highlights

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Personal highlights or take-aways from Day Two of the Toronto Screenwriting Conference:

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Darlene Hunt – Masterclass (creator, showrunner for Showtime’s The Big C)

Take your time responding to questions: When someone is asking you about a specific line or scene, whether in meeting on or set, give yourself time to think about it, because you may not remember exactly why you wrote that scene that way. At the same time, even if you can explain why you went that way, make sure you remain open to new interpretations or new ideas that may work better.

Bob Kushell—Anatomy of a Pilot (creator of BBC series Way to Go)

Pilots suck: All pilots suck to one extent or another and he explains why using the analogy of an approaching tornado. You’re living your life when suddenly you hear that a tornado is coming. Quickly, you run into the storm shelter with several other people and try to prepare for the coming storm. At the same time, as each of you goes about your tasks, you remind one of the people about that time she ran over your cat, which is why you don’t like her. But hey, you love the fact that another individual’s here despite those awkward feelings after that drunken fling at the cottage. Oh, but you still need to prepare for the coming tornado.

Within an ever-shortening time span (now around 21 minutes), you need to fill in useless backstory that everyone in the show should know (it’s their backstory) and still manage to tell a coherent plot that somehow illustrates the show’s premise.

Penny Penniston—Not Just Talk: How Writers Think About Dialogue (professor at Northwestern University)

Dialogue is not conversation: If words were keys on a piano keyboard, then the difference between conversation and dialogue is the difference between noise and music. Dialogue is precise and crafted, gives voice and describes themes. It gives clear direction to the artists interpreting it and a chance for them to show off. And like learning to play music, learning to craft dialogue takes practice to develop muscle memory, but at the same time, understanding the theory behind dialogue will allow you to step back from your work and find the good and bad things about it.

Aaron Korsh – Masterclass (creator and showrunner of USA Network’s Suits)

Understand your scene’s goal: Reading a scene out loud can be very helpful when it comes to determining if it’s working, as some scenes may read well, but something goes wrong when it becomes audible. And if the scene isn’t working, it’s often because you haven’t really established what the scene’s dynamic or purpose is.