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I recently watched Aaron Sorkin's Masterclass on screenwriting. One frustrating section of it (overall it's quite good, IMHO) is about dialog, and Sorkin says that dialog is important, it can't be ...
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T08:08:10Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/33738 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Todd Wilcox
·
2019-12-08T08:08:10Z (almost 5 years ago)
I recently watched Aaron Sorkin's Masterclass on screenwriting. One frustrating section of it (overall it's quite good, IMHO) is about dialog, and Sorkin says that dialog is important, it can't be taught, and it is music. To be precise, he first says that dialog is _like_ music, and then says that dialog _is_ music. One other thing that he says, which makes perfect sense, is that you can't write dialog that reflects how people "actually talk". There is definitely a discernible style of screenplay dialog, with different screenwriters having their own sub-styles or related styles (David Mamet is particularly distinct). **Can we characterize that style beyond Sorkin's terse "it's music"?** He does analyze some of his own dialog from _The West Wing_ and I think he's talking about rhythm and meter. In my own beginning attempts at writing dialog for the stage, I have noticed that making it deliberately metrical seems to bring it closer to the "screenplay dialog style".
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-02-23T20:42:43Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 3