I apologize now if there's already a thread like this.

i've always been a person who focuses on Story first and dialogue second. i can forgive a lot of bad dialogue movies if the story is there (IE Star Wars 1 2 3)

with that said one of the things that irks me most about a lot of movies is when the dialogue talks down to the audience. however as a writer myself, i have found that i too often time fall into the same trap of underestimating how smart the audience usually is.

how do you guys handle this problem?

It obviously depends on the type of story you're writing. Try writing your scenes first with absolutely no dialogue, then plug in just enough to add character and achieve the goal of your scene. You'll find a lot of what you want to convey can be done so through visuals alone. IMO you should always look to convey information in a visual way, then plug in dialogue to support it.

Swajack

Dialogue is important to your screenplay story as much as the action descriptions in your scenes. Dialogue can provide essential conflict between characters and at the same time used as a sub-textual device to give snippets away of the unfolding story narrative and or subplots.

Dialogue, in my opinion, should always be rooted in the context of the story, it should act as through-lines so anything said be related to character, characters arcs and conflict. If a line of dialogue mentions a thing in the early scenes which appears unrelated then this must be resolved as a through-line by being referred to in a later scene.

If a character has his or her own sayings, such as for example a Detective Cop when he says "Why do they always do this?" On the surface this line of dialogue appears throw-away, something anybody in real-life may say but if rooted as a through-line as part of his detective investigation it can be repeated at the end of the story to confirm the futility of his findings. This would also reinforce the audience's understanding of the line spoken in an earlier scene.

A good example of this is CHINATOWN. The word is spoken by a lot of characters as part of dialogue in various scenes but as a place Chinatown is not shown until the final scenes in ACT III. The reversal leads the story into Chinatown where all the characters converge until Chinatown is revealed as a place where bad things happen and these they do. The last lines spoken by an assistant to Jake Gittes, "Forget it Jake, its Chinatown" is a perfect example of this device and it also acts as a kind of resolution to the whole proceedings.

We start with the title CHINATOWN. The place is mentioned and discussed many times throughout the film without even a scene within Chinatown until the very last scenes which unravels the mystery of why stuff happens in Chinatown. The film is a self-fulfilling prophecy, it mentions the place "Chinatown", gives the set-up that bad things happen there and then delivers said promise by revealing a tragedy in that very place. All roads lead to "Chinatown", including those given through dialogue. Kind of smart if you ask me.

This is what screenwriters should strive for, "through-lines" which are like a play on words, these are directly linked to the narrative and its characters within a screen story. Dialogue is part of and directly related to the overall unfolding narrative of a screen story. The hardest part is to disguise this so it is not too obvious but at the same time is integral to the whole and equally be related to any subtext which relates back to the whole and appear seamless..

CHINATOWN by Robert Towne is a very good example of great dialogue used to perfection within a screen story.

Kevan

Quoted from Martin You'll find a lot of what you want to convey can be done so through visuals alone. IMO you should always look to convey information in a visual way, then plug in dialogue to support it.

Hey Martin,

That reminds of that little exercise you organized back in February. The no dialogue one. I learned a lot from that. I really like the OWE, but the one you did was an exccellent learning experience because it was really like a lesson in some screenwriting class. It was an excersise in the craft of screenwriting.

It had a huge effect on me and I still think more visually than I did before that. You don't happen to have any more of those types of challenges do you?

Pia