My dictionary makes no bones about it: “A dialogue is a literary work in the form of a conversation.”  And I wonder how many of you playwrights know you are--amongst so much else--“dialogists.” No matter.

I question this “conversation” thing a little.  “Lay on, MacDuff!” (Shakespeare).  “Go fuck yourself!” (Mamet?)  I suppose that sort of outburst is “conversation,” but it’s surely not Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Conversations at Midnight”--a sad and quite lovely little play where not a word is spoken in wrath.  Nor, certainly, is one of my favorite 20th century utterances, Ring Lardner’s ‘“Shut up,” he explained’, exactly dialogue, but yes, it is, because “dialogue” must expand the boundaries of its definition to become useful to us.  Is monologue dialogue?  Of course.  Is a “chorus” dialogue?  Certainly.  Is “silence” dialogue?  Yes, wonderfully so.  (See Beckett.)

What is dialogue, then?  To a playwright, dialogue is the sound and silence of characters interacting or abstaining from doing so.  It and physical environment and action are all we have.  And all we need.  The novelists’ pages of description of place and motivation are unnecessary for us--thank heavens!  (Consider the pages we don’t have to write!)

There are two essential aspects of dialogue for a playwright to consider (and obey, if possible).

First: No two characters speak the same way.  (There is no such thing as “dialogue” per se.)  No two characters (even twins, I wager) have the same vocabulary, the same phrasing, the same education, the same intelligence, the same accent, the same disguises and revelation of intent.  Characters are individuals, and unless a playwright can hear these differences, and can put these on the page, neither a reader nor a performer can “hear” who is speaking.

Second: Since a playwright must be able to “hear” his or her characters, what the character says and how the character says it must be precisely “notated.”  I use the composers’ term intentionally, for a playwright must be able to hear as a composer hears, as precisely, and indicate it all, as a composer puts it down on paper.  There are durational differences between a quarter note and a dotted quarter note, for example.  (For the musically illiterate--no offence intended--a dotted quarter note is half-again as long as a quarter note.)  We playwrights should hear these distinctions as precisely as a composer does, and use them as precisely.  We should hear the durational differences between periods, semicolons, commas, three dots, and dashes, for example, as well as emphasis markings such as underlining, capitalization, italicization and whatever else we can think up to render our dialogue as precise and “spoken” as our ears will let us.

Composers also do “stage directions” in their own way, though usually in Italian: forte; piano; pianissimo; allegro; presto; andante; adagio; dolce; etc. (loud; soft; very soft; fast; very fast; slow; very slow; gentle; etc.)  We playwrights do these fairly well if sometimes too specifically.  What we don’t do as often as we should is precisely indicate durations.

Now, no director will pay the attention they should to our specifics.  Somehow our knowing what we want can inhibit their “interpretation” (read “distortion,” if you like) of our work.  And some actors feel that our preciseness can inhibit their creativity, too.  (The answer here may be puppets.)

While we cannot necessarily expect directors and actors to “read” our texts as precisely as a conductor reads a score, we should do what we can to discourage misunderstanding.

In short, know who your characters are and make them as three-dimensional as you can.  What you do beyond that is your own business.