You Talkin' To Me: Writing Great Dialogue
By (Author) Linda Seger
By (author) John Winston Rainey
Michael Wiese Productions
Michael Wiese Productions
1st July 2020
7th September 2020
Annotated edition
United States
General
Non Fiction
Television
808.396
Paperback
260
Width 133mm, Height 203mm
Unlike the chitchat of everyday life, dialogue in stories must express character, advance the story, suggest a theme, and include a few memorable lines that audiences will be quoting for decades to come. The best stories have dialogue that sparkles, but it's easy for inexperienced writers to fall into common pitfalls like creating dialogue that's wooden or too on the nose. Other writers end up with exposition awkwardly inserted into conversations, actors tripping over unnatural phrases, or characters who all speak exactly the same way.
In You Talkin' to Me, Linda Seger and John Winston Rainey are here to help with all your dialogue problems. In each chapter, they explore dialogue from a different angle and discuss examples of great dialogue from films and novels. To cap it all off, each chapter ends with examples of poor dialogue, which are annotated by Linda and then rewritten by John, so readers don't just learn how to recognise when it's done well they also learn how to make dialogue better. Whether you're writing fiction or nonfiction, for the screen or for the page, this book will get your characters talking.
Dr. Linda Seger created and defined the career of script consultant in 1981. She is the most prolific author in the area of screenwriting. Two of her nine screenwriting books, Making a Good Script Great, and Creating Unforgettable Characters remain staples for writers and many universities use them as textbooks in screenwriting classes. She has consulted on over 2,000 scripts including over 50 produced feature films and over 35 produced television projects. She has given seminars in over 30 countries around the world. Linda has earned 3 MA degrees and a ThD including one in drama and one in Religion and the Arts. She lives in Cascade, CO with her husband Peter and cat Dexter. John Rainey has been involved in the dramatic arts since 1975 and has been a script consultant since 1989. He has a B.A. and an M.F.A. in acting and directing. He acted and directed professionally for a decade before turning his attention to screenwriting in 1987. He has written 10 scripts for production companies located in Japan, Morocco, India, Russia, Colombia, Canada, and the United States, three of which have been produced and three more currently in some phase of production. He has also written 15 spec scripts, many of which have been optioned several times, and innumerable shorts. He has directed one short that is in post-production. Currently, he is developing a dramatic webisode series. John lives in Palos Verdes, California.