– c.

“Great dialogue to me?” Keith questioned himself quizzically. “I’d have to say ‘It’s not me’ uttered in all the right moments of Grosse Point Blank. Three little words that summed up both the character and the internal struggle of his personal plot.”

“I noticed some of this post shares an ethos with Steven King’s On Writing, which always garners high marks.” Keith noted, notably.

Yes, I know. I’m fired.

…crap, I don’t know if I used the right effect/affect there. CRAP.

Man, totally. I need to post some examples — unfortunately, that’s a research thing, and if I take time to do research on these posts, I’ll never have time to write the posts, I think. So, that’ll come — gimme a little while, tho.

Someone was tweeting recently about that DeVito line — Ebert, maybe? Yeah. Ebert. I love that line. It’s classic Mamet. It doesn’t have to make sense for it to work. It’s a controversial line, though, as some people seem to really detest it — but, then again, maybe that’s the mark of good dialogue.

– c.

But you know what this thing is really missing, seriously? Seriously? Examples of good dialogue. Write them yourself, take them from favorite sources, or whatever you want. But show us some dialogue you love.

I sometimes cite this example, which my wife hates and I love, from Mamet’s HEIST: “Everybody loves money. That’s why they call it money!”

That says everything we need to know about DeVito’s character in two sentences.

It’s also technically not dialogue, since it’s not two-sided. It’s really a very short monologue, as is so much great dialogue.