I recently went to a Screenplay seminar (local writers group)...one of the Speakers mentioned one fault she found with reading screenplays by new writers was 'made for TV dialogue'...unfortunately I never got to ask her afterwards what this meant....any ideas?
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What is meant by this term
- Thread starter derek smith
- Start date
I would assume that she meant the dialogue seemed like it was written for the screen. I've heard that a common flaw in new writers is that they have a problem making dialogue seem pseudo-real.
Instead of writing the way people actually speak, everything is said as if they were written dialogue. People don't naturally speak with amazing grammar, hell people sometimes don't even make complete sentences when they talk.
Early writers seem to always make grammatically correct sentences that you'd never say in person. Also the flow of conversations always seem staged as if they are forcing to some already pre-defined conclusion.
These would be my thoughts as to what she meant by "made for TV dialogue".
Instead of writing the way people actually speak, everything is said as if they were written dialogue. People don't naturally speak with amazing grammar, hell people sometimes don't even make complete sentences when they talk.
Early writers seem to always make grammatically correct sentences that you'd never say in person. Also the flow of conversations always seem staged as if they are forcing to some already pre-defined conclusion.
These would be my thoughts as to what she meant by "made for TV dialogue".
The sort of stilted, unnatural dialogue that often occurs in a bad made-for-TV movie. Lots of on-the-nose stuff and exposition that you need when you're trying to get people interested in a one-off piece of drama on the small screen, and don't have enough runtime to set up, reveal and develop things gradually or gracefully.
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My guess would be dialogue that 'recaps' things just for the viewer that might not remember the week before.
Hell not even a week.. sometimes you see that after a commercial break they come back and pretty much say the same thing but in a different way.
Hell not even a week.. sometimes you see that after a commercial break they come back and pretty much say the same thing but in a different way.
gotcha...kind of like the start of Prison Break etc, when they would recap the previous episodes of the series
Exactly. BTW I loved the score in prison break.
It was like the music never stopped. Every episode all episode there was music going.
For example... if there's an event in a character's past that has some bearing on his/her current actions... a theatrical movie might have the budget to show the event in a period setting or a different location. A TV series would be able to tease at the possibilities of what the event might be from episode to episode before actually explaining it. A TV movie generally lacks budget and the runtime is fixed, as it's often a cheap daytime schedule filler, so it might just have the characters cover the past event in a few clunky lines of dialogue before getting on with the next scene. Made-for-TV movies also have a reputation for being melodramatic.
Note that made-for-TV as a derogatory term is more a US thing, so I haven't actually seen many (if any) such movies over here in the UK. Our one-off feature length TV dramas tend to be very high quality
so it's strange to hear that term over here.For example... if there's an event in a character's past that has some bearing on his/her current actions... a theatrical movie might have the budget to show the event in a period setting or a different location. A TV series would be able to tease at the possibilities of what the event might be from episode to episode before actually explaining it. A TV movie generally lacks budget and the runtime is fixed, as it's often a cheap daytime schedule filler, so it might just have the characters cover the past event in a few clunky lines of dialogue before getting on with the next scene. Made-for-TV movies also have a reputation for being melodramatic.
Note that made-for-TV as a derogatory term is more a US thing, so I haven't actually seen many (if any) such movies over here in the UK. Our one-off feature length TV dramas tend to be very high quality
great response, thank you
