Ideally we'd be writing brilliant stories AND brilliant dialogue but which is most important? I've been given directly conflicting information in the last week - one person saying story is the be all and end all and other people saying dialogue is what matters.
What say you BCGers?
I've had feedback on about 20 various format scripts, where I've focused mainly on the verbal exchanges and central character verbal flourishes and not once has the dialogue been mentioned. Whereas plot, absence of bi plot, and story development often has.
Conclusion, prods or comp readers for TV scripts just don't seem to value dialogue as a selling point. Read winning comp scripts and you'll usually find them packed with the flatest most banal dialogue you've read. So the answer, rather depressingly is story, I'd say.
Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 2nd March 2023, 9:24 AMI've had feedback on about 20 various format scripts, where I've focused mainly on the verbal exchanges and central character verbal flourishes and not once has the dialogue been mentioned. Whereas plot, absence of bi plot, and story development often has.
Conclusion, prods or comp readers for TV scripts just don't seem to value dialogue as a selling point. Read winning comp scripts and you'll usually find them packed with the flatest most banal dialogue you've read. So the answer, rather depressingly is story, I'd say.
Thank you, that's really helpful 👍
From what little I know most broadcasters have preset ideas about what kind of story they want . For years in Scotland Ewan Angus at BBC Scotland would not consider anything that wasn't working class , male and Glasgow or West of Scotland based . So the dialogue could be as witty as Wodehouse or Galton & Simpson but if it was about the heady world of , for example , banking , it wouldn't see the light of day . T he BBC Writers Room also has it's own rules , which they don't share with us , about what's acceptable or not . Look at what they produce and try and emulate that . Which is , of course , easier said than done. What do you think ? Is your experience different? All the Best.
Neither work without the other.
Snappy dialogue that has no direction can get pretty tedious.
Comedy follows the rules of drama in as much as action and dialogue need to push the plot forward - which inherently applies you need a story to hang it on.
I wouldn't get too hung up on competition winning scripts - they are mainly dreadful and rarely get made.
Just read scripts from the great comedies, and I think you'll usually find behind the zingers is a well-honed plot engine, moving things forward.
So the answer, I'm afraid, is very much like when the waiter says "Cheese or dessert, sir?
My response is inevitably "Both!".
I mean, both are obviously important. And while I can't claim to be anything other than an idiot who has been getting nowhere trying to write comedy pilots for the best part of a decade, I'd say that writing comedy is really the same as writing drama, or horror, or romance, or anything. Fundamentally there has to be a story there that's worth telling before anything else.
When I'm brainstorming a new idea, I don't worry about what funny thing Character A might say to Character B, I worry about what Character A and B want to do, how they're going to try and do it, what obstacles will get in the way, and how everything will be resolved. If the story is engaging and amusing enough, the comedy should flow naturally from there.
To put it another way, consider two scripts. One tells a fast-paced story full of interesting characters all actively trying (and failing) to achieve their own goals, but isn't really as funny as it could be. The other is 30-odd pages of witty banter and characters doing bits, but nothing ever actually happens. The flaws of the first one (weak dialogue) is much easier to fix than the flaws of the second one (nothing happens).
As a famous person once awkwardly paraphrased: It's easier to make an interesting script funny than to make a funny script interesting.
I agree that ideally, both. But as a viewer, I will tend to stick with a drama or comedy if the story pulls me in, while great dialogue without a good story won't keep me watching.
Definitely put story higher than dialogue. Even amazing dialogue needs a good plot in general. After all, most writers, even in comedy, will consider the plot first.
Currently re-writing something and have recently chopped dialogue I quite liked to make room for the previously undercooked B-Plot and it has already spawned a new character I like. The dialogue I chopped? A bunch of tipsy characters bantering and it felt like a great back-and-forth but none of it forwarded the plot or narrative and felt almost like a diversion when I really thought about it. The character moments it brought out can turn up elsewhere.
Had a similar experience on a screenplay.
Working with the director and he wanted cuts.
We ran through them and nearly everyone of them was action that built to a funny line.
I initially objected - he responded with "it's just a joke"
He was right - the whole thing was improved.