Dialogue Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg

When we talk about a film, we quote scenes and their lines. Dialogue sticks in the mind, it seems to be where everything is revealed, it gives the impression that the story is moving forward. That's not wrong. But it's not entirely true. Because what is said is not the most important thing in a dialogue scene.

A character speaks. They choose their words, what they say is real, but partial. What is actually happening is something else. It's the hesitation before answering. It's the question they answer with another question. It's what we know about them, because we've seen them act differently from what they claim to have done, and which makes their words opaque, or dishonest, or desperately insufficient. Because dialogue is the verbalisation of what characters believe – consciously or unconsciously – they should say, whether it's the truth or not, at that particular moment. And if dialogue is the tip of the iceberg, it's beneath the surface that the truth, and the depth, of the character plays out.

Hesitation, outbursts, a lowered gaze or one that's openly defiant, or directed at a third person, restlessness, and so on. These are the indications that give the audience a sense of what is really at stake. This holds just as true in an action scene with "standard" dialogue. If a character, armed with a machine gun, has decided to step out of the hideout where they're sheltering with other unarmed people, to take on their adversaries before they're found, and just before going through the door turns to them and says: "Stay put, I'll handle it" — that tells us nothing. Because we don't know how they say it. Are they confident, sweating, anxious, hesitant, are they gritting their teeth? It isn't written, and that's the whole problem.

If the screenplay doesn't convey this interiority, if we don't know what "Stay put, I'll handle it" costs, conceals, or means, then the dialogue floats. Because the reader will inevitably interpret. And that's the whole problem. It's only an interpretation, and if it isn't absolutely right, it throws the narrative off balance, strips it of tension and intention. Hence the importance of stage directions, which carry the truth of the character. Overlooking them, thinking they're superfluous because they seem obvious or implied, is a fundamental mistake. And that's precisely where many screenplays go soft. Nobody wants a soft screenplay.

There are two ways to describe what happens in a scene.

The first is functional: "He sits down. He looks at her. He answers." It describes the gestures, it doesn't say what they conceal. The reader knows what is done, they don't know what is felt. They are forced to interpret.

The second is embodied: it conveys intention, feeling, inner contradiction. It doesn't tell the director how to shoot, or the actor how to play it — it says what is happening beneath the surface, so that the dialogue that follows carries its full weight. That's not direction. That's writing. And it's fundamental.

Paradoxically, it's precisely because dialogue is only the tip of the iceberg that it demands absolute precision. If the rest of the screenplay is doing its job, if the inner life is written, if the inner battles are laid out, if we know what the characters are truly going through, then the dialogue can be simple, elliptical, even "ordinary" — and for that very reason it must ring true. But if the rest is empty, if the description is cold, if there's no interiority anywhere, then the dialogue has to carry everything. And that's impossible.

So who reads a screenplay? Producers, Broadcasters, Funding bodies, DoPs, Actors, Editors, and so on. And interpretation after interpretation, the story is no longer quite there — it slackens, drifts in the wrong directions. It isn't always obvious, but it's felt when the film is finished and there are no longer readers, only viewers. And a film that could have been so much better isn't, because of these "details." Because when it's clear on the page, it gives the actor, for instance, the freedom to express it differently but with the same intention. And a stage direction is exactly that: an intention, not an instruction. And without intention, a story has very little to offer.

Clarity of what one wants to convey is a fundamental of screenplay writing, and it has nothing to do with direction or working with actors. It has to do with the story, and how it is carried, how it is transmitted to the reader.

Screenplay writing is not descriptive, nor literary. It is visual, literally.

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Déborah Braun

Script doctor

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