The Dialogue of Noir
Two weeks ago four members of my writing group and I did the very first table reading of Cleveland City . We read a critical Act 1 scene out loud, in character. I mostly listened. And for the first time I heard the words of my 10-year project come to life. Dialogue is very tricky. I once read somewhere that if you nail your dialog, then you can remove the character names from the script and be able to know who is saying what based on the words themselves. That is how important language is. Each one of us speaks just ever so differently. The language of characters on screen is not the formal written language most of us learned in school. No one really writes how they speak or speaks how they write. And as a screenwriter, my job is to write the dialog that's authentic to each character's personality, backstory and actions. It must also be conversational. It must flow. The first table reading of Cleveland City helped me realize that as is the dialogue is too clinical. The c...