Developing Strong Dialogue in Your Screenplay

Glenn Benest warns screenwriters the dangers of writing on-the-nose dialogue and offers tips in his webinar, Developing Strong Dialogue in Your Screenplay.

Glenn M. Benest is an award winning screenwriter/producer with three feature films and four television movies to his credit.

I used to think you couldn’t teach screenwriters how to write better dialogue, but I was wrong. Developing your talent for great repartee is not necessarily a god-given talent but can be nurtured and improved like anything else.

In my upcoming webinar, Developing Strong Dialogue in Your Screenplay, on Tuesday March 24th at 1:00 pm I will provide many techniques for strengthening the art of the spoken word. These techniques can literally be absorbed and used immediately in your writing.

I will demonstrate how great movie dialogue from screenwriters like Woody Allen and Judd Apatow is not really how people talk – it is much more clever. But these writers ape the rhythm and patterns of speech that we all use that make it seem realistic. I will give you techniques on how this is accomplished.

We will discuss how to stamp out on-the-nose dialogue (that is dialogue that spells out exactly what characters are feeling). This is a screenwriter’s greatest sin and something we avoid at all costs. We learn to do this, because people generally tend to hide their emotions. When a writer tells you exactly what someone is feeling, then we, as the audience, don’t get to participate in the scene. And as a result, we immediately lose interest.

Very few writers have the ability to not only write great characters and dialogue but to also have a natural talent for story structure as well. The first comes from the left brain, the latter from the right. As a screenwriter myself, I didn’t naturally have a talent for wonderful banter between characters, but after studying these techniques, my own dialogue got better and better.

Yours will, too. You don’t have to be present for the live event as the webinar is archived for a year so you can watch it at anytime. Join me!

Developing Strong Dialogue in Your Screenplay

At a Glance:

  • During this live webinar you will learn the difference between dialogue that is merely serviceable and dialogue that literally jumps off the page
  • Gain an understanding of dialogue techniques used by professionals to instantly wow the reader with its cleverness and rhythms
  • Study great examples from the masters and de-construct what they are doing to create characters that are truly original

Top screenwriting and film publication, founded in 1989, published by Active Interest Media. Twitter: @scriptmag