Crafting Compelling Characters: A Screenwriter's Guide to Authentic Dialogue

Introduction: The Voice Beneath the Words

In my years of both writing and script consulting, I've found that the single most common note given to screenwriters is: "The dialogue feels flat." It's a frustrating critique because it points to a problem that is felt intuitively by the reader or viewer, but is incredibly difficult to diagnose and fix. Authentic dialogue isn't about recording how people actually talk—filled with ums, ahs, and mundane pleasantries. It's about creating the illusion of real speech while serving the higher purposes of character revelation and story propulsion. It's the curated essence of how a person communicates their inner world. When done masterfully, as in Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire intellectualism or the Coen Brothers' stylized, folksy cadences, dialogue becomes a character's fingerprint. This guide is designed to help you move from writing serviceable lines to crafting dialogue that breathes life into your characters and anchors your audience in their reality.

Understanding the Core Function of Dialogue

Before writing a single line, a screenwriter must understand what dialogue is meant to accomplish. It is a multi-tool, not a hammer. Every exchange should be working on several levels simultaneously.

Revealing Character (The Primary Goal)

Dialogue is the most direct window into a character's psyche. Their vocabulary, syntax, rhythm, and topics of choice tell us who they are before any action description can. A corporate lawyer speaks differently from a surf instructor; a 19th-century aristocrat uses language unlike a 21st-century hacker. But it goes deeper than profession or era. Consider two characters facing the same crisis—one might use sarcasm as a shield ("Well, this is just perfect"), while another might retreat into cold, clinical analysis ("Assessing the variables, our survival probability has decreased significantly"). Their chosen mode of speech reveals their core coping mechanism.

Advancing Plot and Conveying Information

Dialogue must move the story forward. Characters make plans, reveal secrets, issue threats, and declare love—all actions that change the narrative's direction. The key is to make this information feel earned and organic to the conversation. The infamous "As you know, Bob..." exposition is a failure because it serves the writer's need to inform the audience, not the character's need within the scene. A better method is the "uninformed character" technique, where necessary information is revealed naturally because another character genuinely doesn't know it.

Establishing and Shifting Dynamics

Power in a scene is constantly negotiated through dialogue. Who interrupts whom? Who uses questions versus declarations? Who controls the topic of conversation? In The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg's machine-gun, hyper-literate monologues are a weapon he uses to establish intellectual dominance and keep others off-balance. The dialogue itself is the action—it's how he wins battles before they even begin.

The Golden Rule: Subtext Over Text

This is the cornerstone of professional-grade dialogue. What is left unsaid is almost always more powerful than what is spoken aloud. Subtext is the true meaning operating beneath the surface of the words. It's the conflict, desire, fear, or love that characters cannot or will not state directly.

Identifying the Scene's "Real" Conversation

In any compelling scene, there are two conversations happening: the textual one (the literal topic) and the subtextual one (what the characters really want). A classic example is a breakup scene where the couple argues vehemently about who forgot to buy milk. The text is about dairy products; the subtext is about neglect, resentment, and failing love. The writer's job is to craft the surface dialogue about milk in a way that allows the audience to feel the volcanic emotions underneath. Ask yourself before writing: What do these characters really want from each other in this moment? Now, write the scene where they talk about everything but that.

Techniques for Layering Subtext

Several tools can help you weave subtext. Misdirection and Evasion: Characters answer questions with questions, change the subject, or give overly technical answers to emotional queries. Action vs. Words: A character says "I'm fine" while white-knuckling a glass, revealing the lie. Metaphor and Symbolism: Discussing a wilting plant, a stalled car, or a broken lock can become a parallel conversation about the relationship or situation at hand. In Lost in Translation, much of the profound connection between Bob and Charlotte is built on glances, shared silences, and conversations that circle around their loneliness without ever naming it directly.

Crafting Unique Character Voices

Each major character should have a distinct verbal identity. If you can cover the character names in your script and still tell who is speaking, you're on the right track.

The Vocabulary Audit

Create a voice profile for each character. Consider their Lexical Field: A scientist might use Latinate, precise language ("hypothesis," "quantify," "anomaly"), while an artist might use sensory, impressionistic words ("vibrant," "texture," "melancholy"). Consider their Education and Background: This influences grammar, slang, and cultural references. A character who is a non-native English speaker might use simpler sentence structures or occasionally employ idioms incorrectly, which can reveal character and even create poignant or humorous moments.

Rhythm and Cadence as Personality

Voice isn't just word choice; it's musicality. Does the character speak in long, flowing, complex sentences (indicating an analytical or manipulative mind), or in short, blunt, subject-verb-object declarations (indicating practicality, impatience, or trauma)? Do they use contractions liberally ("I'm, don't, can't") or formally avoid them ("I am, do not, cannot")? The rhythmic contrast between characters can generate incredible tension. Think of the deliberate, slow-paced threats of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men against the frantic, pleading rhythms of his victims.

Dialogue in Action: Driving the Scene

Dialogue is not just talk; it is a form of action. Characters use words to achieve objectives, and like any action, those objectives can meet with success, failure, or complication.

Objective, Tactic, and Obstacle

Apply basic acting theory to every exchange. For each character in a scene, define their Scene Objective: What do I want from the other person by the end of this conversation? (e.g., "To get a loan," "To extract a confession," "To get them to leave the party with me."). Then, choose their Tactics: The verbal strategies they employ to get it (flattery, intimidation, logic, seduction, guilt). Finally, identify the Obstacle: What's stopping them? (The other person's objective, their own pride, external circumstances). When two characters with conflicting objectives employ shifting tactics against each other's obstacles, you have a dynamic, compelling scene.

The Power of Silence and Interruption

What a character chooses not to say is as revealing as their speeches. A well-placed silence after a loaded question can be more devastating than any retort. Similarly, interruptions are a key tool for showing power dynamics, urgency, or conflict. The character who constantly interrupts is asserting dominance or revealing anxiety; the character who is constantly interrupted is being dominated or dismissed. Pay attention to the flow of your dialogue on the page—if it's a series of perfect, complete paragraphs following one another, it may lack the visceral push-and-pull of real conflict.

Practical Exercises for Sharpening Dialogue

Writing great dialogue is a muscle that needs constant exercise. Here are drills I use myself and assign to writers I mentor.

The "Voicemail" Exercise

Write a one-minute voicemail from your character to another character at a critical story moment. The constraints are powerful: it's monologue, it's time-limited, and it has a specific recipient. This forces you to concentrate purely on that character's voice, their immediate emotional state, and what they choose to say (and omit) when they have complete, uninterrupted control of the conversation. You'll learn volumes about their priorities and self-presentation.

The Subtext-Only Scene

Write a critical emotional scene (e.g., a confession of love, a firing, an apology) where the characters are forbidden from mentioning the central topic. If it's a love confession, they cannot say "love," "feelings," "romance," etc. If it's a firing, they cannot say "you're fired," "job," "termination." This forces you to communicate entirely through subtext, metaphor, and action. The resulting scene is almost always more interesting, subtle, and powerful than the on-the-nose version.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Even experienced writers can fall into these traps. Awareness is the first step to correction.

Exposition Dumps and "On-the-Nose" Dialogue

Exposition Dump: When dialogue exists solely to give the audience background information. Fix: Distribute necessary information in small pieces across multiple scenes. Embed it in conflict ("You wouldn't know about responsibility, not after you abandoned us in '95!"). Make a character's ignorance or need to know a natural part of the plot. "On-the-Nose" Dialogue: When characters say exactly what they feel and think ("I am now angry and betrayed!"). Fix: Return to the principle of subtext. Let the emotion be inferred from what they aren't saying, what they're talking about instead, and their physical actions.

Overwriting and "Sorkinization"

This is the tendency for every character to speak with the same eloquent, witty, hyper-articulate voice—usually the writer's voice. While stylized dialogue has its place (Sorkin, Tarantino), it must still be tailored to character. The quiet farmer shouldn't suddenly launch into a perfectly structured, three-point rhetorical argument unless that specific incongruity is a character point. Fix: Read your dialogue aloud, or better yet, have actors perform it in a table read. You will instantly hear where it sounds unnatural, pompous, or same-y. Authenticity often lies in simplicity, fragmentation, and the occasional conversational dead-end.

Learning from the Masters: Dialogue Analysis

Active viewing and reading are essential education. Don't just watch a great film; study its script.

Case Study: The Economy of David Mamet

Analyze a scene from Glengarry Glen Ross. Notice the staccato, fragmented, overlapping speech. Characters rarely finish sentences for each other; they volley half-thoughts and urgent, desperate phrases. This dialogue isn't pretty, but it perfectly embodies the cutthroat, anxious, testosterone-fueled world of these salesmen. Every line is a tactic in a brutal game of survival. The subtext is the entire text—it's all about status, money, and fear.

Case Study: The Lyrical Naturalism of Barry Jenkins

Examine the dinner table scene in Moonlight. The dialogue between Juan, Paula, and Little is sparse, simple, and deeply authentic. It's filled with pauses, gentle questioning, and profound emotional weight carried by very few words. When Juan tells Little, "You can be gay, but you don't gotta let nobody call you no faggot," the power comes from the plainspoken delivery and the complex, caring contradiction within the statement. It reveals Juan's love, his limitations, and the harsh reality of the world in one line.

Conclusion: Dialogue as the Soul of Character

Crafting authentic dialogue is a lifelong pursuit, a constant balancing act between artistry and invisibility. The goal is not to make the audience say, "What great dialogue!" but to make them forget they are watching a constructed story altogether, to be so fully immersed in the character's reality that every word feels inevitable. It begins with deep knowledge of who your characters are—their histories, desires, fears, and wounds. It is executed through a commitment to subtext, a keen ear for unique voice, and the understanding that in drama, words are deeds. As you revise, become a ruthless editor. Ask of every line: Is this revealing character? Is it advancing the plot? Is it the only thing this person could say in this moment? If the answer is no, have the courage to cut it. The silence you leave behind will often speak volumes.