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How do you know what should be done in dialogue, and what should be done in scene description? Here are some solid guidelines. (FREE CONTENT)

When a Newsletter reader asked me this I was stopped in my tracks. It's a deceptively simple question, but it's not easy to answer. Not at all.

I thought about it. And thought again ...

And very quickly I realised I certainly had no universal rule. For me, making those choices, and writing great dialogue rather than soggy rambling with no real point, feels like a real, seat of the pants, fully instinctive thing.

But that doesn't help you. After a lot more thought, I managed to come up with some analysis. The ideas I had are a long way short of anything universal - in fact they are just me groping towards a summary of what I actually do when I write dialogue.

I'm sure different writers have different methods. But what follows here is what I do.

When I am writing a scene, I do spend a lot of time visualising the scene. I play it through in my head, over and over, from the beginning. At some point a character will want something. (If they don't, then I haven't got much of a scene.) It will become clear that my character will want to take possession of an object in the real world, or they will want to make another character feel a particular emotion, or do a particular thing.

If my character can't get what they want through physical action, that's where they have to start speaking and, there - and not before - is where I have one or more lines of dialogue.

Another character in the scene will be opposed to them getting this thing. They will either try to block physically, or through dialogue.

If they block through dialogue, that's where an exchange of dialogue starts.

The battle then is to make this exchange sharp, witty, forceful, concise and energetic.

So the closest thing to a universal principle I have is to make sure my dialogue only addresses the battle and the interplay of wants and desires between my characters - and only the wants and desires of the characters that are important for the story. I always cut anything that hasn't got much to do with this. Really, when I think about it, it's as simple – or as complex – as that.

Now, there are certain caveats to this.

Firstly, your use of dialogue will vary massively on whether you are writing a TV script, or a movie script. TV shows tend to demand much more of the story to be told in dialogue. Movies usually tell stories in pictures, with the dialogue a definite second. Obviously these boundaries shift, depending on the project in hand, but thinking like this is not a bad starting point.

Then it will depend on the actual genre you are writing. A witty urban romantic comedy will have far more dialogue than the latest ‘Die Hard’ movie, as the wants and needs in the comedy will tend to be more subtle, more open to complex expression. And even in TV, some types of show have far more articulate characters than others.

An episode of ‘Doctor Who’ will be far more "talky" than an episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica’.

An episode of the US crime show ‘Homicide: Life on The Street’ will be far more "talky" than an episode of the UK crime show ‘The Bill’.

Fans of the respective shows have expectations about the displayed intelligence and articulacy of their characters, which you have to match when you write.

I know this first hand. I was lucky enough to be writing a couple of episodes of a ‘Doctor Who’ spin off show, and in one of the script meetings Russell T Davies, the showrunner and mastermind of the whole franchise, was giving me notes.

At one point Russell didn't like the way one of my scenes was going. He said to me, very clearly: “This isn't working. You need to tell, not show.”

I was surprised. Obviously one of the all time cornerstones of dramatic writing is "Show Don't Tell" - ie, never ever give us in dialogue what you can give us in pictures.

Russell saw what I was thinking, and said again: “I mean it. Tell, don't show. People won't get it otherwise, and, besides, they love to hear these characters talking.'”

Very, very interesting advice. The way Russell writes, he prefers to carry far more of the story in the dialogue than in the pictures. He likes dialogue-heavy, slightly non-naturalistic
scripts, that have room for characters to play and spar verbally in a heightened way.

And it certainly works for him: his reinvention of ‘Doctor Who’ is the success story of British TV in the last few years.

Russell requires no less than consistently glittering dialogue in a ‘Doctor Who’ script, so I'll gladly allow him his rule breaking, but personally, left to my own devices, I prefer more minimal dialogue, so long as it is embedded in a powerful narrative.

That's just me. People say my writing is 'laconic'. I like that.

But, you know, I do think you can tell a lot about the quality of your collaborators by the sorts of dialogue they want you to write. In general, the better the producer the more they will appreciate, even require, sparse, concise dialogue. They will have learned to trust that the right three words in the right setting in the hands of a good actor and director can convey far more than a loose, floppy, multi sentence, speech in the hands of lesser talent.

After all, there is one universal: Avoid "on the nose" dialogue.

What this means is never, ever say what the character is really thinking. If you do, the dialogue will feel as clumsy and heavy handed as a punch on the nose.

You know the sorts of shows I mean? We have a surfeit of them in the UK at the moment. Shows where scenes are composed entirely of characters telling each other at great length precisely what they think. Dramatic death.

Look. Remember I started talking about a character who wants something being the root of dialogue? In good writing, you are always looking to create a gap between the words you write on the page, (the surface text, the words that are actually spoken), and the subtext - the buried meaning - what the character actually wants to happen by making the speech. They should never be the same.

That gap is what gives room for the spark to leap - the electric moment of pure drama we all crave in our storytelling.