When it comes to screenwriting, my motto is, “Arrive late. Leave Early.”
(This motto has also proven itself when applied to certain social functions I’ve attended.)
When we arrive late, and leave early, each scene is dramatic. If we arrive too early in a scene, there’s a lot of what I call “cranking” going on. Cranking means the screenwriter is wasting a lot of her precious white space having characters cranking out hello’s, introductions, pleasantries, and backstory. Writing dialogue looks simple. But it ain’t. Remember that a page of your screenplay equals a minute of screen time, and the average movie is 100 minutes long. The screenwriter has only 100 pages to tell a fully realized, complex story with intriguing, deeply developed characters in life-altering situations.
The trick is in the dialogue. Dialogue is truthful deception.
Yes, dialogue must sound like believable human conversation, but without the "fluff". And effective dialogue must also reveal character, create complex tensions, demonstrate dynamic interaction between multiple characters, move the story forward, reveal subtext, and never, ever be boring.
The screenwriter who writes dialogue that does ALL of the above—and not just one or two of the above—will be able to play with the big shots in Hollywood.
Now, back to “Arrive Late. Leave Early.”
Never be the guest who hangs around too long, like the smell of bad fish. A scene should never meander to a stop. I believe the last sentence a character speaks in a scene should be powerful and resonate. When done well, this is what I call “exiting on an upbeat.”
