Course Content
Welcome to the Course!
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Plotting Out Your Dialogue Beats
Characterisation and Dialogue
Revealing Information
Pointing Out the Unusual
Understanding Pragmatics in Dialogue
What are Grice's Maxims? Why are they so useful to understand? How can they help you to write better dialogue? This topic will introduce you to an idea from an area of English language called "pragmatics". It will help you to understand how and why people might adapt their dialogue to say subtle things. That way, you can make sure your own dialogue uses these subtle cues to make it sound more sophisticated and realistic!
Social and Cultural Differences Between Characters
Writing Excellent Dialogue
About Lesson
  1. Dialogue flows from one topic to the other, connected by related ideas and words.
  2. Every character should talk differently depending on their characterisation and current situation.
  3. Give each character different goals in the scene.
  4. It is better to under-explain than to over-explain.
  5. If something is unusual in the world or for a particular character, have your other characters acknowledge it.
  6. Have characters repeat each other’s short words and phrases from time to time.
  7. Use Grice’s Cooperative Principle to work out how people might alter their language for subtle meanings.

As we go through the course, I will be explaining each of these rules. There is a topic dedicated to each one of them where we will talk about it in detail and consider how you can factor it into your own dialogue.

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