A Quote by David Hare

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

David Hare

Quote Topics

Actual Business Craft Dialogue Thought Writing Writing Dialogue

Quote Author

David Hare
English - Playwright
Born: June 5, 1947

Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft.

Stephen King

I still haven't quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with dialogue in movies.

Kenneth Lonergan

There's a point I can get to where I start writing character and then through the dialogue, after all of this preparation, the thing starts to feel like it's a character developing through the dialogue. A lot of character traits do come from writing dialogue, but I have to be ready to do it.

Charlie Kaufman

At its best, writing is a dialogue. It's one of the things I love about children's: the fact that this dialogue is really there from the get-go, from the start of writing.

Rebecca Serle

Writing screenplays is not my business. I've written half a dozen, and maybe half of those were made. But it was never a satisfying experience. It was just work. You're an employee. You would be told what to do. Studio execs would cross out my dialogue and put in their dialogue.

Elmore Leonard

...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

Joseph Brodsky

I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.

Elmore Leonard

Readers take in dialogue one thought at a time. A frequent mistake of beginners is to combine thoughts, which may be suitable for other forms of writing but not for dialogue. Another mistake is speechifying. Three sentences at a time is tops, yet many beginners write speeches that go on and on.

Sol Stein

In America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile.

Etgar Keret

I like writing dialogue - I can hear my characters so clearly that writing dialogue often feels as much like transcribing something as it does like creating it.

Lauren Grodstein

Writing a novel is an intense and lonely business, but you have the reward at the end of a very direct dialogue between you and the reader.

Neil Cross

The balance when you're catching people up, and the craft of what we do as actors, is to try to make sure that the exposition sounds like thought and dialogue, and a plan or a problem or something that is motivationally induced, rather than just telling the audience information.

Jack Coleman

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

Henry Petroski

I'm always writing. A friend of mine once said, 'You avoid re-writing by writing.' Which is kind of a good point, because re-writing seems to be mostly about craft, and writing is just, like, getting out your passion on a piece of paper.

Cameron Crowe

When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.