Screenwriting Tips from a Screenplay Contest Judge
Screenwriting Tips from a Screenplay Contest Judge
Do you realize what you’re saying??
In the theatre, they read plays aloud over and over in the process of script development, and one of the reasons they do this is to hear the dialogue. When I hear dialogue in my head, it might sound very good, but then when I hear a person actually speak it, I often have an impulse to jump in front of a bus. And over and over and over and over, when I read screenplay entries to BlueCat, I am immediately dismayed when the characters start speaking. Excellent everything else, awful dialogue. And I often wonder if the writer has actually heard the lines they have written for their characters out loud. Either read the whole thing aloud to yourself, or even better, get a group of your friends to read it. You do not need professional actors to evaluate dialogue. Just people excited to help. Videotape it. I have
