I love dialogue. I love writing it, reading it. I get into the characters by writing their voice. As a novelist it is the most powerful tool you've got.
In a book, the more the characters speak, the better it is, generally. In the works of two of my favourite writers, Jane Austen and Elmore Leonard, you'll find more than fifty percent of the text is dialogue.
But as a screenwriter (I am learning) you need to be wary of it.
It's so easy for it to be wrong, or clunky. It's tempting to use it to tell every story point.
On screen the pictures trump the words. Generally, the less the characters speak, the better the film.
So as an exercise, I now go through my scripts imagining that technology has regressed, and this story has to be made as a silent movie. Suddenly all those plot points have to be told visually, how do you do it?
A small example - I wrote a thief asking his mate to help him steal a car. They used to steal Twixes together as kids. The guy caves in a day later, and agrees. How to do it as a picture? Fella walks up to his mate, gives him half a Twix. I'm not saying that's great, but it's a picture replacing a speech. You can generally find dozens of places where you can do something similar.
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