Oftentimes when we set out to write a story or a screenplay, dialogue proves difficult to handle. Sometimes it’s unrealistic; sometimes it’s unnecessary. And sometimes it’s too much, usually in the way of serving up exposition to your audience or trying to make issues as crystal clear as possible. But this often bogs down your scene with too much fluff.
One tactic to use in the case of too much dialogue is to exercise compression, or the “five-word” rule. The goal of this exercise is to challenge yourself to have your characters speak in no more than five-word sentences at a time. That way, you’re forced to get to the bare essentials, thus eliminating any unneeded exposition and making the characters talk to each other—not to the audience.
I once used this tactic while trying to write an argument between a mother and daughter. I have only ever fought with my mother about two times in my whole life, so it was difficult to grasp a realistic exchange between a mother and daughter who constantly fight tooth-and-nail. One of the main issues for the dialogue was that I was making them say too much at once. But by applying compression, I was able to have my characters quickly get to the point, while also unearthing a whole new argument—one that dug into deeper issues between mother and daughter.
The beauty of this exercise is that any characters relating to one another already know what’s going on between the lines. Forcing yourself to reduce their dialogue helps bring hidden needs, worries, angers, and other emotions to the surface. And in using this tactic, an author might find that their characters start speaking for themselves.