Advanced Playwriting: Perfect Dialogue

"In this clip we're going to cover tips to perfect your dialogue. Now you know that each character is going to speak a little bit differently from each other based on their background, who they are, their personality. But when you take one particular character, that one character is also going to speak differently based on other people that he's encountering. So look at you yourself, say you're talking to your three year old nephew; your neighbor who backed into your fence and won't pay for it. Think about how you'd talk to your grandmother. Now another factor is what your character wants from another character. So maybe your character wants his or her son to do better in school. Maybe your character wants to borrow money. Maybe your character wants to put someone in line and tell them off. Maybe your character wants to ask someone on a date. In each example, he wants something very different. So his approach and the way he talks will not only be different based on who the person is, but what he wants from the person, what he expects from them. Now another important factor is simply setting. So if a person is standing there in small claims court ready to defend themselves, that's very different from if this character were out at the lake, sipping a beer on vacation. Setting often has a lot to do with that. Now other changes in the way your character might speak are based simply the way they feel. So let's say we have a couple in a restaurant and the wife has had an exhausting day and the husband's had a really productive day. And he's upbeat and he's gotten plenty of sleep where she hasn't, so he might be talking one certain way and she is just exhausted so there might be more sounds as she's looking over that menu, that kind of thing. And then, let's say they get a call from their kids, Susie and Billy who say, 'Hey have a great night at the play tonight. And they say oh, Susie and Billy calling. Great!' That sort of perks them up. But say the babysitter calls and says 'Hey, Susie just fell down and hurt her leg.' So what they're probably going to do is, the husband's going to go 'What? The kids?' Something like that and usually in times in crisis, the dialogue will be faster, more clipped. One more thing you can think of that will really add depth to your play is the idea of subtext. So let's say what the person is saying is the basic text, and what they're really feeling inside is the subtext. Now a lot of people are very up front and honest so whatever they're thinking comes out and the subtext and the text are the same. But a lot of people maybe, say you have a fellow going over to see his girlfriend's apartment for the first time, and he walks in and it is an absolute disaster, I mean, it's a health hazard. And he looks around, and the subtext is 'Gosh, I can't believe, how can she live in a place like this? I can't even stand it in here.' But he says, 'Very cozy. Yeah.' So he says something completely opposite. People often say something totally opposite from how they're really feeling. So use this to your advantage to make the dialogue even richer. So as you can see they're many many factors that can change the way a character feels and speaks so keep this in mind when you're writing your dialogue."