The Curse Of Expositional Dialogue

Dialogue is a very important part of film. It is used to give us important information about the characters and elements of the story. The average viewer's expectation of dialogue is for it to be properly delivered as to say it should feel "natural," like a conversation that would be had in real life given (x) situation as opposed to it being "forced," where something is said only for the sake of plot or exposition.

Expositional dialogue is no fan favorite. It is always criticized as boring, lifeless/devoid of character, and worst of all, abnormal. Every once in a while, cinematic explanations are 100% necessary and therefore do nothing to harm to overall experience but most of the time it's out of place and famously irritating so why does it never fail to appear in today's media?

I used to think that it was just difficult to convey incredibly detailed information. For instance communicating the rules and duties of a secret agency when all the characters have been there for years and don't intend to narrate anytime soon. I also thought that it was just a form a lazy writing. When you're on top and people will see your movie regardless of the quality, you start going through the motions. No need to be clever with exposition when some guy in a trench coat can just stand around and explain what's happening for 2 hours. But at the same time, this trend is even found in good movies so where exactly is this coming from?

Well, now that I'm working on a script of my own, I believe I have an answer to this question. First, I want to be clear that I'm not speaking for every writer. It's really just a theory based on my experience today.

I think writing dialogue is just a tough thing to do. You know where the lines are going to be placed: on screen in front of a countless amount of people. It's basically public speaking, except it's your work of art on display. And even though you know that through a proper performance the dialogue is likely to sound natural, you don't know who exactly is going to be representing your characters so for the time being the dialogue, in your head, sounds like complete nonsense. Every word you write that is meant to be a part of a normal conversation sounds like a poorly delivered line in a sitcom so you second guess everything.
My husband and I came across this theory thinking of how dialogue sounds to us when reading books. We agreed that the dialogue bits of the book are the worse parts even when nothing embarrassing is being said. In a way, it comes off as an incredibly corny joke, like the writer thought they were constructing witty comments when it's really a scenario sealed in plastic. Because of this, reading and writing regular interactions feels equivalent to humiliating yourself on stage or watching it happen.

So what does any of this have to do with expositional dialogue? The exposition is still dialogue. Yes it is, however, it is the best kind of dialogue to read. Books are almost entirely made up of explanations so when a character starts to explain something in a book, it feels "natural" because it's in a book! Of course he's explaining things. So I believe what happens to people when they're writing screenplays is that because they're reading, the overly explanatory parts do feel natural. And when it comes down to the actual shooting, the staleness appears to be an acting problem as opposed to a line problem. I plan to still try and put some natural conversation into my script but I figured that I would share this train of thought on MoFo to give some insight on what may or may not be happening in Hollywood.

Thoughts?

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Ami-Scythe

Not the same thing I think as your examples, however. Along those lines....I call this “character is overwritten”. Meaning a character has dialogue written in that shouldn’t be that comes out forced, as you already pointed out.
Examples off the top of my head:
“Don’t you laugh! This ain’t reality TV!”
Jack Nicholson in The Departed
“You could get killed walking your doggy!”
Al Pacino in Heat.
Both examples are fine films, especially Heat, but both had scenes where the stars had lines that felt exaggerated when spoken.
Also, Baldwin in The Departed is another good example.
Many characters in Tarantino films are over stuffed with too much dialogue, and as such the scene tends to linger too long as they go through it. Sometimes it almost ruins the tension in said scene. Almost.
I see this as possibly wanting to give the actors good lines to smooth over their ego, as it wasn’t uncommon for actors to complain about their lines and wanting more added.

I wrote a screenplay, and found a way to write ideas, or whatever was in the mind of a character. You gotta think outside the box.

There are two kinds of screenplays I like. Natural is one. Another would be a condensed version, where you are saying a lot with a few words. Too much of one thing can hurt. If it was 100% natural, it would be boring, and look like a home video.

I can deal with simple themes, but bad writing is the #1 reason I avoid movies made in my lifetime. Acting would be #2.


I'm too intoxicated to read your entire post, but from what I skimmed, I liked.

Thank you. That is actually really good advice.

You're welcome, and thanks for that comment.



I don't see myself making a movie anymore, so maybe I'll expose some little secrets of mine. The problem I think with giving a bunch of actors your script, memorizing it repeatedly, is that it gets stale. How can someone be surprised when they already know what is going to happen?


What I would do is whisper or write a note of a small scene. That way its fresh to the actor, and a surprise to the one on the receiving end. If you want confusion, tell one actor one thing and make it seem like they're going to be told a good story, when in fact, the other actor will tell them a bad story/situation.



Film everything. Edit later. You never know when you're going to catch a moment in the conscience of man as Emile Zola put it.

I've heard of stuff like that happening in Hollywood. Like when the alien pops out of that guy's stomach in...Alien. Those were genuine reactions. And I heard that the actors in the MCU don't know their lines until they're on set.
However I think it's a little different for an animated movie since everyone is just sitting around reading their lines and cartoons act as good as you draw them. I will keep this in mind if I ever get the chance to do a live action one.

Yeah, it's tough. It's tough even for the best writers, I think, in part because it's inversely correlated with the depth of the world itself: the more you want to throw the audience into a fully realized world, the more backstory it'll have. The situations where you need little or no expository dialogue are the simplest. That makes this a particularly modern problem, since people's appetites seem to be trending towards more depth, and more world-building.

It can be something that shifts into lazy film making but I wouldn't say theres anything automatically bad about it, done well it can do a lot more than just reveal information.

I mean the classic example is probably Alec Guinness in Starwars, the exposition in his hovel to Luke reveals so much about his character and the world of the film in general beyond the information imparted. Of my favourites Stalker is full of masses of exposition yet its strongly revealing of the characters and themes of the film.

I'd say the most common problem isn't in the writing but in the directing, if your depending on the script to do everything for you then exposition can come out dry.

What sounds natural in your head and with great flow, might be awkward for someone else. It's a tough balancing act that few people get right and others try way to hard to incorporate into their story.

There is a lot of exposition in Inception, but even when watching it a third or fourth time, I'm never bored by it. Some people had issues with it from their first viewing. It's hard to write a scene where a character has to explain something to someone and not having a viewer complain about exposition. We explain things to people all the time in the real world, so why not in film? When done right, it works, when done wrong it's out of the blue and obvious. Donal Logue's character in The Cloverfield Paradox comes to mind as a character only there for awkward expository dialogue.

I recently wrote a horror script about an obese man who enters a drug trial for a weight loss pill. It works better than expected and he loses a ton of weight fast, but he also has an increased appetite and eats astronomically more. When he runs out of food, he turns to a "different" food source. I entered it into some competitions and the feedback I got was really great. The dialogue felt natural and the characters were believable....except for one scene that felt like complete exposition. It was a scene involving a guy informing the trial group about the drug, what to expect and how to record their progress. Something that to me, felt necessary and in tune with what one would do in the real world, but most of the feedback for that was nothing but "this is overwritten, just exposition, etc, etc" So it happens no matter what in my opinion.

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That's actually kinda weird. (That story sounds great btw) I was speaking more along the lines of forced exposition that could've been established in a better way or exposition that just didn't need to be there. "This computer is a computer" or "Hello, my sister, Kathrine Stein!" As well as exposition that replaces character development as opposed to help it like @MoreOrLess stated. Explaining things like medicine and how the world works is completely fine but I guess that's just people.