Are dialogues essential?

Should all dialogues in a film be essential? I believe that every dialogue, every word spoken by an actor in a film, just like every shot, must be essential. There is no room for filler. Otherwise, it will immediately bore the audience because they will sense that something is pointless; they feel it right away. They have chosen to invest their time in watching this film, and that is a commitment we must respect. But “essential” does not mean “functional.” Let’s explore the nuances of the functions of dialogue.

What is essential?

Take, for example, a very talkative character who says things that seem meaningless, and that very trait becomes a dramatic point in the film. It’s precisely because they say things that appear pointless that they might reveal too much, disclosing information that should have remained hidden. Or perhaps their incessant talking annoys their spouse, leading her to decide to leave him. In such cases, we can say that hearing these seemingly useless dialogues was necessary for the film.

These dialogues remain essential because, just like the protagonist’s wife, we, the audience, will feel bored. These overly long dialogues serve to make us experience that boredom—but not for too long, or we’d switch to another film. They allow us to share the emotion of boredom with the character. Ultimately, these overly long dialogues are indispensable because they create that sense of boredom, which deepens our empathy for the wife’s character and opens up a new dimension of the story, making it richer.

An essential but non-functional dialogue

So, it’s not about mechanical utility, where every word must advance the plot. It’s more delicate than that. Sometimes, dialogues can simply serve to build an atmosphere. Take the well-known example of a young Quentin Tarantino, who wanted to make films and won a prize at a festival, allowing him to shoot a scene with a professional crew. It was the first time he could do this. He had written a script, and his scene featured two characters talking for a very, very long time, delivering a monologue, much like what we would later see in his films.

In Tarantino’s films, there are moments when characters engage in lengthy dialogues, rambling endlessly about seemingly trivial topics—except that these characters are killers about to commit murder. This creates a powerful dramatic effect, a tension between the long, anecdotal dialogue and the violence of the act. It builds a unique universe, Tarantino’s signature style: a troubling second-degree disconnect between the violence of actions and the banality of the characters’ attitudes—the banality of evil. Thus, these seemingly trivial, rambling dialogues are absolutely essential; they define this universe, which is carefully crafted and nuanced.

Back to the film festival: the young Tarantino felt this was what he wanted to do, though he didn’t yet fully understand why. He sensed that he would enjoy making films with long, seemingly pointless dialogues. It was his aesthetic, his universe. Whether one likes Tarantino’s films or not, it’s undeniable that his universe has had an impact on audiences, leading to both commercial and critical success. Tarantino wanted to shoot the scene as he had imagined it, in his own universe, but he had no legitimacy yet, of course. He was told that this wasn’t how successful films were made, that in a dialogue, you couldn’t have a long monologue lasting four minutes. There needed to be interactions between characters, the dialogue needed to be shorter, more efficient—otherwise, the audience would get bored, and it “wouldn’t be cinema.” He stood his ground, stuck to his idea, and ultimately shot the scene his way, establishing his unique style.

When I talk about “essential dialogue,” it’s not to advocate for a standardized approach but to understand or feel why we do it this way. A dialogue can be very long and still be essential, or it can be very short. That’s not the point. The point isn’t about how films should be made but about

the emotional situation we want to immerse the audience in

, and why the dialogue, whatever its form, is essential to placing the audience in that emotional state. That’s why dialogues are indispensable.

How to write dialogues?

It’s extremely difficult to write dialogue straight from your head. It will feel fake. It won’t work, and the actors will have to change it during filming because it doesn’t “work”—it doesn’t carry the truth of spoken words. Dialogue is oral, not written. There’s a fundamental difference from novels. In a novel, you can write dialogue, but the reader is reading it, imagining voices in their head as they read. In a film, dialogue is spoken by actors; it’s external to us, so it must be absolutely authentic. Writing dialogue for a screenplay comes with far more constraints than writing for literature.

We know very well that the structure of sentences, the logic of thought, the flow between sentences, is very different in speech compared to writing. Generally, we don’t speak like books! How do you capture orality on paper? There are various techniques—let’s explore four:

A shifted orality

You can decide that your film will have a very particular aesthetic, one that isn’t realistic, and choose, because it’s your universe, to have characters speak like books. Your film won’t be realistic at all; it will exist in an imaginary world where verbal exchanges don’t reflect natural speech but rather written language spoken aloud. That’s entirely respectable. The key is to be aware of it and own it, as Quentin Tarantino did. You’ll likely need to clarify this in your script’s intention note. You’ll also need to explain it to the actors, as the delivery will likely be unusual. This kind of approach can be found in the films of Eugène Green, for example, where the orality is very strange and has nothing to do with the natural speech of everyday life—and it’s fascinating, a true universe.

Observation

There are several ways to work on the orality of dialogue. First, observation: listen to people talking, go to cafés, sit down, and jot down what you hear—what strikes you as interesting, the ways people speak, express themselves, or relate to one another. It’s very rich. It might seem anecdotal. You might think, if your story is set in the Middle Ages, for example, that going to a café today is pointless. On the contrary! You have your film, your project in mind, and you’ll spend an hour in a café. That’s actually a lot of time if your sole activity is listening to what’s being said around you. Of course, you need a café nearby, and it needs to be a time when it’s busy. Automatically, during this particular moment, you’ll filter what you hear based on your project. And it will give you ideas for dialogue, no matter what your film is about. There’s no objective listening. Listening is always oriented, even unconsciously. So, even if it seems unrelated, it will open up perspectives and give you ideas. I can assure you!

Improvisation

There’s also improvisation. This works well if you do it with others or ask friends to do it. Give them a dramatic situation and ask them to improvise. You can record it with a simple voice recorder. It’s quite practical because it gives you access to the “vocal source.” You can even transcribe the dialogue using voice recognition software (though it still makes quite a few errors unless the recorder is placed right next to each person’s mouth). I also suggest taking notes during the improvisation, just like in the café. Writing things down might give you ideas for other dialogues, or a particular way of saying something might spark another idea. In this way, improvisation becomes a catalyst for creativity. If you don’t jot down the ideas that come to you, they’ll disappear, and that would be a shame.

Reading

Finally, reading. This is very important once your dialogues are written, to validate how they work, so you don’t end up having to rewrite them at the last minute during filming because they don’t work. I suggest three techniques:

1. Read them yourself and record them.
2. Have friends read them.
3. You can also reverse it: read your script to someone, asking them to focus on the dialogues and give you feedback. This is also very insightful.

Ten pages of a script, or ten minutes of film, is a good length to work on dialogue.