Dialogue Polishing
Screenwriters are brilliant with their story visions, characters, and storytelling skills. Sometimes, though, their scripts run overly long. I have been hired twice to do Dialogue Polishing, with wonderful results.
I honor the late great Carrie Fisher, who was the Ace at that.
As a lyricist, I’ve spent many years studying and chronicling the human condition: motivations, vulnerabilities, dreams and disappointments; and the many kinds of love – love longed for, love lost, love found, love coveted, love denied, consuming love, and so on. In some ways, I’m more like a psychiatrist! Except that my lyrics take an emotional approach rather than a clinical one. As a lyricist, I’m used to writing complete, powerful, developed story arcs in 2 verses, a chorus and a bridge! And that proficiency in creating conversations and character studies in the short form, provides the perfect mindset for writing tight, engaging dialogue: conversations that go to the essence of what needs to be said. And I bring that mindset – not to mention those zingy one-liners! – to the dialogue polishing process.