How to write dialogue that doesn't sound like movie dialogue

There's a very common mistake in early screenplays: the characters speak too well. They say exactly what they think, at the right moment, with the precise words. Paradoxically, they sound like fiction.

Film dialogue isn't a transcription of how we speak. But it's not the opposite either. It's a distilled version, with its own rules.

What makes a dialogue not work

Before discussing technique, it is worth identifying the most common symptoms:

• The expository dialogue. Characters telling each other things they both already know, just to inform the viewer. "As you know, they haven't spoken to each other for three years since their father's death."
• The on-the-nose dialogue. Each character says exactly what they feel. No filter, no subtext, no layers.
• Symmetrical dialogue. All the characters speak the same way, with the same rhythm and vocabulary. The author's voice drowns out the characters' voices.
• Dialogue that doesn't move anything forward. Every line has to do something: reveal character, create tension in the relationship, or move the situation forward. If it doesn't do any of those three things, it's superfluous.

What does work

People don't say what they mean. That's probably the most useful principle for writing dialogue.

We speak in roundabout ways, with silences, with unexpected changes of subject. We say "I'm fine" when we're not. We answer a question with another question. We interrupt. We contradict ourselves.

The subtext—what's said beneath the surface—is where the real tension of a scene resides. Two characters discussing whether or not to turn on the heat might actually be talking about whether their relationship has a future.

Some helpful principles:

• Listen before you write. Dialogue is practiced by listening to how people speak: the cuts, the repetitions, the unfinished sentences.
• Give each character their own logic. Not an accent or a verbal tic, but a way of relating to the truth. There are characters who always lie, characters who never say what they want, characters who always get straight to the point.
• Be wary of dialogues that "sound good". If a line sounds too polished, too literary, too cinematic, it's probably unnecessary. Dialogue that doesn't draw attention to itself is often the most effective.
• Read in loud voice. What seems well-written on the page may sound impossible to say. The sound test is definitive.

Silence is also a form of dialogue.

One of the most powerful tools of screenwriting is what isn't said. A pause, a reaction, a character leaving the room without responding. Cinema has images: not everything has to be verbalized.

The best film dialogues aren't the ones most memorable for their lines. They're the ones that make you forget you're reading a script.

In Bande à Part, the script is worked on as a living practice. Not just from theory, but by writing, reading aloud, taking notes, and rewriting. Because you don't truly understand dialogue until someone says it out loud in front of you—and then you know, instantly, whether it works or not. If you want to delve deeper into this, in our year-long screenwriting course we work on dialogue writing—and everything surrounding it—through a year of continuous practice.