Screenplay, Review My Work

Josh Bass said:
I was talking more about the idea that "The spoken words are the least important aspect of any screenplay, and further -- they should pretty much never be about what they're about." TV shows of all genres seem to violate this about 90% of the time...
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If you're Larry David or Vince Gilligan, you can break any rule you want to. If you're not, people will assume that you don't know what the rules are. The "Big Sleep" is another example of a script, whose plot is de facto unfinished but Howard Hawks gets what Howard Hawks wants.

silyn said:
"I'd rather get wet in here!"

Love it.

Thanks for posting/reminding.
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A quick bit of trivia - Dorothy Malone, the bawdily bespectacled bookstore owner in "The Big Sleep" is still alive at 91.
 
Josh Bass said:
Wow, really? For something that's an hour long per episode I think it moves faster than just about anything else out there. I like that. I guess if you're not all about the "what's gonna happen next" factor you might not be into it. I'm not saying the dialogue is AMAZING, I just mean 90% of the conversations have a point. . .character conveying something to another character, reveal, etc. etc.
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There are several things about "Game of Thrones" and other similar HBO type content... they were not written for Broadcast TV, and attendant commercial filled programming. So, several things result. You can't 'watch' them by blasting the audio, and clean up the kitchen or other non-watching activities... there are no 'breaks/pauses' allowing for a 'beer' run to the fridge... etc.

Furthermore, the expectation is that you the viewer have actually watched all the preceding seasons and episodes, so the viewer doesn't need a large chunk of dialog to 'fill them in', as is the case with Broadcast TV shows. In the case of Broadcast, the shows are dual purpose... develop a group of consistent viewers, and allow anyone to view one episode and not switch channels. Thus filling the viewer with the really important message... the commercials.

In this regard some GoT and other shows are more similar to BBC shows, where there is less concern for 'commercialization'. There is a concern because now many BBC shows are shown on Broadcast TV in regions/countries where commercials are standard, that is the US.
 
As always there is only one rule: engage your audience. If you do it with a lot of dialogue - go ahead. But if your dialogue brings nothing to the table, you are not engaging your audience. There are really two reasons for excessive dialogue. If you are writing a spec script, or a script someone else is supposed to buy or direct, then sometimes writers overwrite because they don't trust the reader to see things exactly as the writer does and are fearful that the reader may miss things. If you are writing for yourself to shoot, then there really is zero excuse for all those extra words - and in that case it simply means you have not thought through your script, you are not accounting for what an actor can bring to the scene, you are leaving no space for the actor and trying to hem her/him in with too many words, you are not accounting for the director adding meaning without words, you are not accounting for the editor [so much dialogue is unnecessary when you can use this powerful tool - CUT TO:], basically you cannot see the world you are creating, you are stuck on the page and are lacking in trust and imagination. It also means you didn't do your homework, because sometimes writers overwrite because they want to make sure a point is remembered - but you don't do that through mindless repetition, you do it once, but well enough so it sticks - do your homework, don't be lazy and just repeat. This is a problem closely related to stuff being too "on the nose". If you need to tell me - repeatedly - something that should be obvious just by an actor's expression, or a camera angle or is simply logical, then you have failed in all those other things. And a deeper problem yet - you are conveying information through dialogue, partially because you have no sense of dramatic payoff, and don't understand cost/benefit. Every piece of dialogue, every action, every scene has a payoff - or is supposed to have. The biggest problem we see is when the time spent (cost) on the scene is more than the dramatic payoff (benefit) - a scene that drags on, dialogue that brings nothing, an action that we've already absorbed but that keeps grimly going on in zombie-like fashion. All failures of understanding cost/benefit and dramatic payoff. Remember - a scene, a piece of dialogue, an action, all have inherent dramatic value... don't exceed that value by devoting too much time to it - that way lies boredom.

Btw., tons and tons of movies, TV etc. have excessive dialogue. It's a plague. Watch any piece and ask yourself: did we really need to hear that? Cliched exchanges we've heard a billion times - so very depressing, and it immediately brings the whole piece down... ask yourself: why exactly do we need to hear the same kind of "wit" for the billionth time?

Engage the audience. Don't bore them with stuff they've heard or seen a million times before. Make it count. Bring them along. Make them lean forward and at the edge of their seats, don't let them go to the bathroom for fear of missing out.
 
In my experience, the "pro readers", who are usually in a hurry to go through a lot of entries, tend to see what a writer doesn't and miss what a writer does. A writer may have dropped an explanation for a character's action on page fifteen, only for that action to take place on page thirty. A reader may get to page thirty, having totally forgotten what was introduced on page fifteen. C'est la vie.
 
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