has anyone any advice on dialogue, when i write my scripts the dialogue seems flat and forced, any advice or sites that have advice on writing dialogue.

One exercise I learned in some class was to take a portable tape recorder to a place somewhere public and secretly record two people having a conversation for a few minutes. Then, transpose it in standard feature film script format. It really helps to examine real dialog to see how often people talk in incomplete sentences and interupt each other and all the other stuff that makes the oral english language different that the written one.

Yeah, dialogue used to be a huge problem with me (and sometimes I still run into problems). I used to write my scripts in proper English (complete sentences, no sentences ended in prepositions, etc.). Then I realized no one talks like this ALL the time. Speech is broken with uhhhhs and interruptions and incomplete sentences (like Joren said). So, with some practice, I was able to get it down a little bit better.

If you want, I can send you a sample of some of the dialogue I have written for a script. Just shoot me an email at john.gibson @ gmail. com.

yea, my teacher does that tape recorder thing. she also knows shorthand, and so when she's sitting on the bus, or is walking somewhere and here's a very distinct style of talking, she'll write it down real quick so she can maybe work it in as a character quirk later.

but it also has to do with styles. David Mamet is a great writer, so is the guy that writes Sports Night. But they're dialogue is very unnatural. but it's supposed to be that way. everyone is too witty, too sharp, and they just fire their lines one after the other without really pausing to think about what the other said.

a lot of old b/w comedy shows are like that as well.

then there's the more naturalistic dialogue where people interrupt one another, start talking about other things, say things that seem inappropiate. you see it more in american 70's films, and in movies where the actors are allowed to improvise a lot.

ad lib. just write down the situation and character motivation and ad lib the whole thing.

I have always thought a neat trick to use with dialogue was to make transcripts of all my AIM conversations and just use those as the basis for dialogue, obviously eliminating any Internet idoms.

I wrote a great short script (IMHO) using this method called "Sweet and Sour." I took two AIM conversations between me and a girlfriend (two differnet girls, but the audience doesn't need to know that), one from the early fuzzy period the next from right before the kiss off, set them in a Chinese resturaunt and threw in a "one year later" title card in the middle. Best, most natural dialogue I've ever written!

The way Quentin writes his dialouge is just to let his characters loose, and just transcribes what they say. I've never had much luck doing this though, so it's pretty tough. The messenger conversations sounds like a fantastic idea. I'll have to try that one sometime.

Whenever I finish something it always seems too damn short.