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(Ben Green) #1

  • Filler dialogue and repetition. Make every word count! Don’t tell the audience what
    they’ve just seen or what they’re going to see.

  • Unnecessary dialogue. Would the action or gag be better with no dialogue?

  • Preaching! Don’t verbalize the story’s moral content (if it has any) in a line of
    dialogue.

  • Feeding information to the audience. Does the dialogue have another reason?

  • Dialogue that’s difficult for the actors to say. Make it colloquial. Write in between
    breath spaces.

  • Bad dialect. Don’t write in dialect, misspelling the words and making them hard to
    read. It’s too difficult for the actors. Let the actors add their own dialect. But do give
    the lines appropriate phrasing with the flavor of the language and the place.

  • Overdone puns, alliteration. Puns don’t translate well internationally.

  • Clichés. Keep away from them unless you can give them a twist.

  • No variation in tone and pace. Dialogue should not be too predictable.

  • Dialogue that writes down to kids.


The Rewrite


Polish up your dialogue last. Go through the script and read only the dialogue. Better yet,
read each character’s dialogue separately. How does it sound? Does it need more conflict?
Is it as clever as it can be? Can it be funnier? You’ll feel great when you overhear some kid
quoting the lines that you wrote!


198 Animation Writing and Development

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