7   Dialogue

 

CREATING DIALOGUE IS the last step in the screenwriting process. Dialogue writing should not be attempted until the story outline and the character studies have been thoroughly completed.

Writers who attempt dialogue before the story has been planned in detail usually find that the act of writing dialogue is such a pleasant diversion from the nitty-gritty of character study that they forget that story, not dialogue, is the major issue, and they find that the characters take charge of the story and dictate the terms of play to the writer.

It is easy to spot this in a script: writer finds himself boxed into a corner by his unruly characters and, in order to compensate for their behaviour, the writer simply adds a new character in ...

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