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Dialogue should convey information
and move the story forward, while at the same time help us understand the characters. Spice it up with slang and
colloquialisms appropriate to their background. The relative sophistication
of a character’s vocabulary, along with the phrasing and cadences of their speech,
can provide clues to their education, upbringing and attitudes.
One mark of a mediocre script is
that the characters confide what's on their minds or in their hearts. In
the vernacular of the trade, this is called being "on the nose."
The subtext, or what a character leaves unsaid, is often more significant than
what he or she says. If your characters keep their
true thoughts and feelings hidden, your story will have greater tension and
emotional resonance.
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Don’t center the dialogue.
Each line should begin at the same column on the page (2.9 inches from the
left edge being standard). |
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Screenplays have their own
unique rules for breaking a page. Rules that your average
word-processing software doesn’t follow. Those rules dictate that,
among other things, dialogue may be broken only between sentences, not in
mid-sentence. While there tends to be more flexibility when it comes
to breaking description, the standard practice is to follow the same
end-of-sentence rule. |
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When breaking a page in the
middle of dialogue, it’s customary to add the word “MORE” (in ALL CAPS and
parentheses, but without the quotes) after the speech at the bottom of the
page. This “(MORE)” appears on its own line at the same margin as the
character cue: |
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FRANK
I wouldn't go poking around in
there if I were you.
(MORE)
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To indicate the speech is
continuing, insert the modifier “cont’d” (in lower case and enclosed within
parentheses, but without the quotes) at the top of the next page, one space
to the right of the character cue:
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FRANK (cont'd)
The roof's liable to cave in.
I wouldn't want that to happen
on my watch.
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If one character addresses
another by name, epithet, or title, that name should be set off with commas.
(“Master Weston, how cruelly you save yourself for the tennis court.”) |
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Spell out numbers when they
appear in dialogue. Avoid using symbols and abbreviations in dialogue.
This is partly a timing issue, to preserve the page-per-minute estimate in
screenplays. |
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If a passage of dialogue
includes some text that a character is reading out loud, this should be
indicated with the word “reading” as parenthetical direction. The text
being read should be enclosed within quotation marks. |
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When a character recites
poetry or song lyrics in dialogue, enclose the lines in quotes. You
may indicate the end of a line by means of a slash (“/”). This is
preferable to ending each line with a hard return, as it does not alter the
dialogue margins |
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When writing dialogue in two
columns to indicate simultaneous speeches, the left margin of the first
dialogue column must be inset slightly. It must not start in the
same column as the action or description margin. |
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Never use ALL CAPS, bold,
or italics in dialogue. Instead, underscore the word or
phrase you wish to emphasize. |
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There is no standard way to
indicate some passage of dialogue is in a foreign language. However,
the most common way is to write the lines in English and enclose them in
brackets. When the first speech in a foreign language appears in the
script, it’s generally accompanied by a note in parentheses: |
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(NOTE: All instances of the Spanish language shall be indicated by being enclosed in brackets. On screen this text will
appear in subtitles.)
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If there are only a few lines in a foreign language, it may be simpler just
to use parenthetical direction with the words “in Spanish,” for example.
 
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