Writing Dialogue – Advice from a Pro

Give Brad Geagley his props: he has published multiple books and has professional Hollywood credits. So when someone who gets paid for doing what I dream about speaks, I listen.

Brad’s blog has a collection of several articles on writing how-to’s. I will be featuring a few over the coming weeks. The link today ties to his discussion on writing dialog. Below I’ve pasted a snippet of his opinion about the purpose dialog serves.

 

Dialog has three purposes in all the media I’ve mentioned –

1. To reveal (or suggest) the nature of each character
2. Provide the audience with essential information
3. To advance the plot

And in a novel, there is a fourth task:

4.  Get into a character’s head and actually learn what he is thinking.

Read more here:

http://bradgeagley.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/how-to-write-dialogue-the-art-of-being-invisible/