How do I decide what should go in the dialogue and what should be put into the action?

Q. Here's a question about screenwriting no one ever answers with useful information. After you've outlined your movie (event by event of plotline), and you have the scenes turning, the thematic content worked out, and an idea of character ... how do you decide what to put into action and what should be included in dialogue? Give me something tangible that I can apply to universal situations.

A. Yeah, my guess is no-one ever answers it because it's a really hard question.

OK. There's a couple of factors to consider.

Firstly, there is no absolute, universal solution. It differs according to taste, genre, whether you're writing for TV or movie, your own taste as a screenwriter, the taste of the producer/director, the mood you're in when you're writing (how expansive, how playful you are feeling, or need the tone of the piece to be.)

Secondly, I fight a continual battle with the studios I work for here in the UK. There is an increasing tendency for some of them want what seems to be to be a crazy, excessive amount of on the nose dialogue. They think I am a terminal underwriter who misses squeezing all the emotion from the scene. I strongly disagree - I prefer to do stuff in a look if it can be done that way, and try to keep things as subtle as possible.

We have long, loud, sometimes, animated, arguments.

OK, so what do I really do? In general, I run the scene in my head. I get myself into a frame of mind where I can actually see the action as it happens. The characters will move round each other to get what they want in the scene - at some point it will become glaringly obvious that they can't get what they want without sign language or speaking in one way or another. Those are the points I start to work in the dialogue. But always compress, compress, compress.

Another method is to absolutely forbid yourself stage directions when you start to write a scene. See how much of it you can do in dialogue, bearing in mind you are always trying to write as little as possible. Go back over it and fill in only the absolutely crucial stage later on.

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