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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 2570286" data-attributes="member: 5171">On one hand, I'm lucky -- I have a pretty good ear (my wife, who does semiprofessional singing, gets frustrated that I can pick out weird musical stuff she still misses sometimes, but don't like singing as much as she does), so dialogue comes to me pretty naturally. I have, on the other hand, an utterly lousy eye, so trying to get settings into my stories is... not always pretty.My favorite example, when a friend asked me what I meant by "Bad 'As you Know' Dialogue":Biff: I'm headed out for groceries. Back in a bit.Chet: Be careful out there! Don't forget that we're living in a post-apocalyptic United States that's been torn apart by civil war in the aftermath of recovered alien technology, leading to a world in which the priveleged upper-class has become genetically engineered supermen who send assassin cyborgs to pick apart the last remnants of natural humanity.Biff: Oh, yeah. That. Right. I'll remember that.My suggestion would be to watch a wide range of movies -- specifically, movies praised for their writing. Take scenes that jump out at you not as action scenes but as scenes that set up an interesting problem or situation, and (assuming you're watching on DVD), go back through the scene and take a transcript of what is said (or just copy it from the script, if you've got a good movie script out there).Once you've got each line, make another column next to each line, and in that column, write down what each line accomplishes -- what information it gets across, what character information it conveys, that kind of thing. In a movie you enjoyed a lot (for its dialogue), look at the flow of that information and see if you can replicate it. In a movie whose dialogue you disliked, look at the flow and remind yourself not to do that.For example, from what I dimly recall of Titanic, almost all the dialogue served only one purpose. You could pretty much classify any line of dialogue as "character" or "plot" -- in the character dialogue, Leo is cheeky and independent, Kate is rich but adventurous, and Billy Zane is the dumbest, evilest person on the planet. In the plot dialogue, they say, with almost no character differentiation, whatever the audience needs to know.Character:"I believe that a man can make of himself whatever he wants to be!""I want to go places and do things and be anachornistically liberated!""That painter you like, Picasso, will never amount to anything. I don't know why you waste all that money on art. Bah! Watch as I kick a puppy!"Plot:"But there aren't enough lifeboats!""We've got to get off this ship!""This ship is going down!"Bleh. Titanic got a ton of awards, but best screenplay wasn't one of them.On the other hand, a good script will get across the character while also getting across the plot. Casablanca does a pretty good job of that. Some Kevin Smith movies do, too, but Smith leaves a lot of room for character-joke scenes that don't advance the plot at all, so unless you can do dialogue as well as he can, you'd be better served by sticking to the scenes in which someone is getting a lot of information across -- like the angels describing the reason for and nature of their exile in Dogma, or the voice of god giving the heroine her quest, also in Dogma. While you can probably tell that almost all the dialogue comes from Kevin Smith, you can also tell which lines come from the voice of god, and which ones come from Rufus, even if they're just giving information.On TV, there's the obvious Whedon plug...Then, possibly for exercises, I'd try practicing getting across information in a variety of different tones.Superhero Exposition ExerciseWrite the dialogue that a superhero delivers to a team of superheroes when he arrives after having just barely escaped an attack by some powerful alien artifact that destroyed a whole lot of land. Then write the same dialogue again, but in the voice of a different superhero. And then another one. (If you watch "Justice League", try doing it first as Batman, then as the Flash, then as Hawkgirl, for example. If you read the X-Men or know them pretty well, try doing it as Beast, then as Wolverine, then as Gambit.)Weather EmotionThis is silly, but it's one that I've gotten a lot of mileage out of. Take the most boring topic in the world, the weather. Write a short conversation between two people in which they discuss nothing but the weather, but so that it is totally clear to the reader what emotional state exists between the two characters.Example 1:Biff: It looks pretty stormy out there. I think it might rain later this afternoon.Chet: Whatever.Biff: I'm just saying, you might want to dress warmly.Chet: Right. I get it. I'll dress warmly, okay? God forbid we should get rained on.Example 2:Belle: Look at those clouds, so soft and gray. It looks like they're going to rain down kisses upon us.Chet: Let it rain. I don't think we'll have any trouble staying warm tonight.(Please do it better than I just did, for the love of God.)</blockquote>

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