Oh, Spellcheck, why must you hate "Dialogue?"

But for whatever reason, it has no problem with "dialog." That u and e have caused me an insignificant, yet still existent, amount of angst. I mean, who the hell writes "dialog" in a script? The word looks like it describes a record of your outgoing phone calls. Now, "dialogue," that's something a screenplay should have.

Oh!... speaking of "dialogue," I had a point to make.

You can read anywhere that dialogue is supposed to serve 2 purposes - create character and move the plot forward. If it doesn't do one or the other, it's wasted.

Sure, we all read that rule, but we don't really pay attention to it. Think of all the superfluous dialogue in most movies. Line after line that only sets up a mediocre joke. Also, how many raunchy things does Stifler have to say before we understand that his character is... raunchy? Ummm, 1?

So we discount this rule all the time.

Well, I recently made a discovery (look at me, way to go Colombus, but the Indians were already on the fucking continent). My opening pages were floundering and I couldn't figure out why. I had a hard time reading through my dialogue and the whole script seemed to be pulling itself through mud. It was witty dialogue, it had character personality in it, and it explained the world of my script. What was wrong?

It comes down to "Forward Momentum Dialogue" and "Backward Momentum Dialogue."

My characters were trying to establish themselves to the reader and the other characters on the page. They were revealing their backstory. They were throwing quips around about how they felt about certain things. In essence, everything they said was dealing or reacting to something that happened in the past. It was backward momentum. They were laying the bricks for the road they had already trod upon. Well, what's the f-ing point of that?

It messed up the entire momentum of the script. Things were slogging. It felt talky. And worst of all, I didn't give a shit. The dialogue was throwing its weight to everything that the characters had no control over.

This was especially tough to figure out because it all occurred in my setup. After all, "get in late, get out early." I had started my script as late as possible, but I needed to lay the foundation for the reader. Well, shit, you can't build a foundation for something you're already standing on. But unless you go back to the true beginning (which means a script that shows a time-lapse growth through your character's first 20-something years, ugh) then you have some backstory explaining to do.

And this forms the real bitch of writing the setup. How do you get all this information in there but not get bogged down with characters explaining themselves? Personally, I'm a fan of just opening with voice over. Accomplish all your backstory in a half page of intense regressive writing.

But the real solution is forward momentum dialogue and forward momentum characters.

This hearkens back to the old mantra, "Every character should enter every scene with a goal." They need to want something now. Not something from their childhood. Something now. They need to smack into their conflict now. They need to move forward, forward, forward. Pushing ahead so strong that they don't have any energy left to send behind them.

It's easier said than done, and it's not a real solution to the problem. If I think of the solution, I'll be sure to write it. Right now, I'm just concerned with scrapping my current draft and starting again.

Yay, Page 1!!