Of course it’s different for everybody, but I agree with your advice for Mike. It happens to be the way I work with screenplays and my other writing, a humor column for a newspaper. In both cases, I write to get the guts of what I want to say down on paper (!), then I go back to see where I can punch up what I’ve written. If I happen to get a funny line that works the first time, I move on. I view the first go-round as a skeleton or a bare Christmas tree to which I have to go back and add the flesh or the decorations.

Definitely great points, Tom. I’ve often recommended #7 — where you go through one character’s dialogue at a time to see if it sounds consistent and authentic for that character. Lots of great points there!

The problem with what you’re saying, Mike, is writing it “right” the first time. Since this is a craft, there is no one “right” way…. it’s a process of improving and improving and improving — making it more and more of what you intended it to be. It’s like a sculpture. When Michaelangelo scuplted David, I’m guessing that he did not work on the fine detail of his abs or the curls in his hair before he had gotten a rough outline of the entire torso or body.

That’s the same way with dialogue. It presumably would be a waste of time to slave over dialogue in every scene when you don’t even have your structure down enough to know if that scene will stay in.

On the other hand, in favor of what you’re saying, I could see that if you’re writing comedy and some funny crap comes to you along the way, you might go on and work it out a bit. But I definitely wouldn’t work extensively on everything that first time… otherwise, you’re really gonna waste some time.

Yes, Cindy. I think that is one of the most basic tests for how you’re doing with your dialogue. So many of the scripts I read have much of the dialogue sound the same from character to character. Very good point.