dire logue

I read through the script in printed form for the first time. It's always good to actually see this thing you've been working on for six months in a format that is recognisably a script.

The structure works, it's pacy, there are some good characters and some great 'WTF?' moments. But one thing's for sure: I can't write dialogue. As a close friend pointed out, a lot of the time the characters are merely pointing out something we already know or are needlessly narrating the action.

A classic mistake.

So now I'm going sift through and remove all the 'Come on!' - 'Let's go!' - and the 'Hey it's that kid.' (yes we know it's that kid, we can see).

The old dictum of 'show don't tell' is an important one. A 'Follow me we need to get out of here!' is no substitute for a good 'Sarah yanks the girls arm, dragging her along behind as they FLEE'

Not that there's a lot of dialogue in this script anyway, which it would seem is a good thing as apparently dialogue heavy scripts and indeed the subsequent films are harder to sell to foreign markets. All that translating and subtitling takes a lot of money that most are unwilling to pay. A small independant genre film can recoup it's costs through foreign sales alone (here's looking at you Hush.)
A bit cynical perhaps? Well if my script 'Bad Day On Jerusalem Hill' was meant to be anything but an entertainment I would say so. But I want this to be a lean mean thriller with no time to hang around and chat and I want to make sure this reaches as many people as possible.

There are moments when the characters do have a fair bit to speak and these don't quite work just yet. I'm reluctant to make them sound 'preachy' but they are discussing the actual issues of the story and to sell that element short makes the characters seem stupid. It's a balancing act between making a point and making a character.
It's an iterative process I guess, and the script can only get better with rewrites.

I could just have someone walk in to the room with a gun to spice things up.
Thanks for the tip Joe Eszterhas.