Sound Research - Dialogue Decomposition

Dialogue is almost second to none in level of importance in a film. The dialogue of characters is what helps drive the story, display the personalities of the characters, and draws audiences attention. If your able to both write and place audio well in your film, your film will end up with the best chance at success. However that's easier said than done, and there are several key things to pay attention to when writing and adding dialogue to a film.

When writing dialogue, you first want to strive to make your characters talk like real people. An issue that many writers find is that they write to pass information and move the story along. They loose the real feeling of what people talk like, their varied pauses, mannerisms, and rhythms. A good way to circumvent this is just listen to people talk. Listen for how they vary their speech, what words they use and how they use them, listen for how much they overlap and cut each other off. These are things we humans do when we talk, and putting these in your dialogue will make it feel much more natural

After that, what's next? Well we need to make sure to understand what characters we're writing for. Is the character more meek or more assertive? Are they more of a airhead or are they really aware? How knowledgeable are they on what the discussion is? What is the relationship between the characters talking? These character traits change how people talk to each other and should be implemented in your character's dialogue.

Some of the many character traits that can change how writer's need to write their dialogue

One key aspect that goes with writing is keeping dialogue condensed. Most people don't talk to each other with an over explanation of their thoughts. People condense their thoughts and feelings and use specific words and tones, and do not take a long string of words that can be said in 4. This segment of "Write better dialogue in 8 minutes." by Standard Story Company expands on this with a clear example of how it improves character dialogue.

The Windbag segment of "Write better dialogue in 8 minutes." by Standard Story Company

Character writing is a complex yet simple process, as you have so many things to think of yet you have to keep it simple. Once you have your characters and overall theming, you need to make sure to keep the dialogue simple and quick to feel like a real conversation.