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Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen Hardcover – July 12, 2016

by Robert McKee (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 578 ratings
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The long-awaited follow-up to the perennially bestselling writers' guide Story, from the most sought-after expert in the art of storytelling.

 Robert McKee's popular writing workshops have earned him an international reputation. The list of alumni with Oscars runs off the page. The cornerstone of his program is his singular book, Story, which has defined how we talk about the art of story creation.

Now, in Dialogue, McKee offers the same in-depth analysis for how characters speak on the screen, on the stage, and on the page in believable and engaging ways. From Macbeth to Breaking Bad, McKee deconstructs key scenes to illustrate the strategies and techniques of dialogue. Dialogue applies a framework of incisive thinking to instruct the prospective writer on how to craft artful, impactful speech. Famous McKee alumni include Peter Jackson, Jane Campion, Geoffrey Rush, Paul Haggis, the writing team for Pixar, and many others.
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  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Twelve
  4. Publication date
    July 12, 2016
  5. Dimensions
    9.4 x 1.35 x 6.4 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    9781455591916
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1455591916
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Writing dialogue is a challenging art. McKee's book DIALOGUE is a great tool for writers."―John Lasseter, chief creative officer, Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios

"McKee's DIALOGUE is a mother lode of insight and inspiration for any writer. His teachings have changed my career and changed my life. Robert McKee is in a category of one."―Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of The Legend of Baggar Vance, The War of Art, and Gates of Fire

"McKee teaches what is not yet taught. He shines his unwavering analytical light on the structure and invisible substructure of dialogue. He takes a craft that is often considered instinctual or magical and reveals its chemical secrets."―Terry Johnson, writer/director, winner of the Olivier Award, Critics' Circle Theater Award, WGA, and BAFTA

"DIALOGUE is a masterwork. There's nothing harder to teach. Now this book exists. McKee has written an essential book akin to The Elements of Style for all writers."―Margaret Nagle, winner of the Writer's Guild Award, Emmy, NAACP, Golden Globe, and Pen

"I used to think great dialogue couldn't be taught. You either had an ear for it or you didn't. That was before I read McKee's DIALOGUE. He's a wizard at explaining the unexplainable."―Sarah Treem, writer/producer, co-creator and showrunner of Golden Globe-winning TV Series The Affair, winner of the Writers Guild of America Award and Emmy Award nominee

"Bob McKee's approach to writing dialogue, as with every other aspect of storytelling he has taught, reflects his great breadth of experience and mastery of his craft. Clear, precise, ad rich in insight, it will prove indispensable to both the aspiring writer and the seasoned professional."―Patrick McGrath, author of Asylum and Spider

"An essential purchase destined to be replaced over the years as generations of aspiring writers wear out the copies with extensive study."―Library Journal (Starred Review)

About the Author


Robert McKee, a Fulbright Scholar, is the world's most sought-after lecturer in the art of story. Over the last 30 years, he has mentored screenwriters, novelists, playwrights, poets, documentary makers, producers, and directors. McKee alumni include over 60 Academy Award winners, 200 Academy Award nominees, 200 Emmy Award winners, 1000 Emmy Award nominees, 100 Writers Guild of America Award winners, and 50 Directors Guild of America Award winners.
 

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1455591912
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Twelve; Later Printing edition (July 12, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781455591916
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1455591916
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.4 x 1.35 x 6.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 578 ratings

About the author

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Robert McKee

Robert McKee

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Robert McKee, a Fulbright Scholar, is the most sought-after story authority in the world. The best-selling author of STORY, DIALOGUE: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage and Screen, and soon to be published STORYNOMICS, McKee occupies a unique place in modern media storytelling. His teachings have spread beyond the screen, stage and page and his influence in corporate storytelling has become a global phenomenon. Writers of fiction and non fiction, producers, directors, media professionals, and business leaders from the world over read McKee's books and attend his sold-out international seminars (http://mckeestory.com) for an exclusive deep dive into the mastery of the story arts.

McKee’s former students include over 65 Academy Award Winners, 250 Emmy Award Winners, 2,000 Emmy Award Nominees, 150 WGA (Writers Guild of America) Award Winners, 250 WGA Award Nominees, 50 DGA (Directors Guild of America) Award Winners, and 100 DGA Award Nominees.

McKee continues to be a project consultant to major film and television production companies such as 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, & MTV. In addition, Pixar, ABC, BBC, Disney, Miramax, PBS, Nickelodeon, Paramount, GLOBOSAT, MNET and other international TV and film companies regularly send their entire creative and writing team to his lectures.

In the corporate world, McKee consulted his STORYNOMICS to companies such as Microsoft, Intel, BOLDT, Marriott International, Arm and Hammer, and Deutsche Telecom/T-Systems to name a few.

Since 1984, more than 100,000 students have taken McKee’s courses in various cities around the world.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
578 global ratings
McKee's insights on Dialogue
5 Stars
McKee's insights on Dialogue
This book has helped me to understand how to write stronger dialogue that works on many levels. As a writer, I struggle with writing dialogue and McKee's book has given me insight as to what I can do to bring my dialogue to life, make it resonate and believable. I would highly recommend it to writers of any genre, or to anyone who aspires to writing for film or theatre.
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Top reviews from the United States

Steve Moeller
5.0 out of 5 stars Deep dive into writing powerful dialogue.
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2023
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Best book that I have read on the complexity of writing dialogue that sounds authentic and moves your story forward.
2 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars So to speak
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2017
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Previews did not show the Table of Contents, but it is worth searching the web for. The coverage includes practical techniques as well as case studies. Notes cover titles on topics over several decades. This book has four parts about what dialogue is, how it can mended, and how it can be created and designed. Trialogue, the third thing through which a pair of characters channel conflict in conversation, is an interesting concept because it overlaps social networks or media and comms devices; it is also looked at historically. Dialogue is reportedly the quickest way to fix a narrative text since it appeals to intuition. Those levels of depth are what the book is about. They can be found in first person voice. The approach could easily fill a site on the order of tropes for favorite titles, but for deconstruction and revision, which are also relevant to works in progress. It talks about finding characters in the dark, though not necessarily from the milieu, unless it were compressed and made to transfer meaning like in poetry, but reflexive so that it is symmetrical to the characters or human nature. If there is a boundary to be found, then this method is going to hit the lines to find out what happens then. The impact on the rest of the narrative elements is discussed. This extends back through the early philosophers, through tragedy, the merging of European roots into English, and the study of personalities to contemporary customs. Voice is plot.
One person found this helpful
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Seeley James
5.0 out of 5 stars McKee’s best
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2023
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More relevant than STORY, more useful on a daily basis. This is the book I recommend to all beginning writers. I’ve now read it three times and will read it at least three more. I learn, relearn, and remember bits and pieces each time. It is one of three books that has made me the greatest writer of all time.*

*my opinion, anyway.
2 people found this helpful
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Lori T. Sly
4.0 out of 5 stars Helpful, but not as good as "Story" by same author, and it disses certain genres
Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2019
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This book contains a lot of helpful information on how to write dialogue. It's dense with dialogue analysis and insights, tough to take in by just reading it through once. But it is helpful.

McKee covers the three dialogue tiers (said, unsaid, unsayable) as well as how dialogue ties into story turning points and scene conflict type. I still have lots of practice ahead of me to figure out how best to do this in my story. I will definitely use his advice as a guide. He understands dialogue at a much deeper level than I do.

However, many of McKee's dialogue examples did not speak to me. While I liked reading the dialogue examples for Breaking Bad, 30 Rock, The Sopranos, Frasier, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Great Gatsby, and agreed they were good, I disliked the dialogue from Shakespeare, Elmore Leonard, Sideways, Fraulein Else, and Lost in Translation. McKee says fine dialogue turns the reader/audience into a mind reader; I guess I'm not interested in movies which expect me to be as much of a mind reader as those latter examples did. I totally missed the subtext of the dialogue in those until he explained it to me as an aside. And that's after I already saw most of those movies!

If I have to guess what every character means with every line, that's too much work and too little entertainment for me. Maybe mystery lovers liked the dialogue in "Lost in Translation"; I'm not a mystery lover. McKee quoted one novelist as saying that the crux of good writing is to, "Make em laugh, make em cry, make em wait." Lost In Translation and its dialogue did none of that for me. The subtext was so confusing and subtle that I lost interest in the movie. I can't even remember what it was about anymore, only that it won some award and I had no clue why.

McKee says that with rare exceptions, a scene should never be outwardly and entirely about what it seems to be about. Dialogue should imply, not explain, its subtext. An ever-present subtext is the guiding principle of realism.
Nonrealism, on the other hand, employs on-the-nose dialogue in all its genres and subgenres: myth and fairytale, science fiction and time travel, animation, the musical, the supernatural, Theatre of the Absurd, action/adventure, farce, horror, allegory, magical realism, postmodernism, dieselpunk retrofuturism, and the like. It's a bit unclear how, if at all, anyone writing in any of these "nonreal" genres should take his dialogue advice. It seems to me that even sci fi scenes need some good dialogue with subtext to be engaging.

With McKee, all the accolades go to what is implied and unsaid over what is said. I agree that subtext matters, but for me, he's out of proportion with how much it matters to most people and how hard audiences are willing to work to discover the intended subtext. Also, memorable spoken character lines can elevate movie themes and characterization like nothing else.

In the end, I think this book is geared more toward writers who want other advanced writers as their audience rather than the average reader or movie watcher. And McKee admits it is definitely not geared toward sci fi, fairytales/myths, action/adventure, horror or allegory. It's almost as if he's saying those genres can't have excellent dialogue. I disagree.

But it was still a helpful book to read, and one I will be thinking about and trying to more fully understand for a long time. McKee understands how character's subconscious drives can deepen what they say or avoid saying, and how dialogue interacts with many other aspects of a story to make it all work together.
24 people found this helpful
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Rob
5.0 out of 5 stars Writing is thinking and revision
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2023
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This is the best book about the craft of writing I’ve ever read.

Most books seem to focus on structure: plot, the three act narrative, etc.

This deals with the multiple levels going on with good dialogue, and without it—even if one follows the structural rules—the story is stillborn.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Amélie Gravelle
5.0 out of 5 stars It looks very interesting!
Reviewed in Canada on September 16, 2020
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I haven't read the book yet, but it looks very interesting. It's from the same author as "Story", which is a popular screenwriting book, so I assume that this one will be as helpful! It doesn't only teach you how to write dialogue for the screen, but also for novel and the stage. A must-have for writers!
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Praveen Albert
3.0 out of 5 stars 10 pages gone and not a single point made(to be updated)
Reviewed in India on August 9, 2020
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I have the book STORY by Robert Mckee, its a bible for story writing but this book I started to read but even after 10 pages nothing absolutely nothing makes any sense .. its only verbal jargons to fill pages with no meaning so far. A final verdict can be given only after reading full book but the way it is going, its seems a complete waste of time and money. Author is not making any point but just talking something something ... I am a fan of Robert Mckee though not this book 😕... So far.. will post update on completion..
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Praveen Albert
3.0 out of 5 stars 10 pages gone and not a single point made(to be updated)
Reviewed in India on August 9, 2020
I have the book STORY by Robert Mckee, its a bible for story writing but this book I started to read but even after 10 pages nothing absolutely nothing makes any sense .. its only verbal jargons to fill pages with no meaning so far. A final verdict can be given only after reading full book but the way it is going, its seems a complete waste of time and money. Author is not making any point but just talking something something ... I am a fan of Robert Mckee though not this book 😕... So far.. will post update on completion..
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Paulo Neto
5.0 out of 5 stars Fundamental
Reviewed in Brazil on February 22, 2018
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Mais um excelente livro de Robert McKee. De forma didática, o autor apresenta a forma mais competente de criar diálogos que soam reais e que realmente contribuem para a evolução da história que se quer apresentar.
O complemento perfeito para Story.
3 people found this helpful
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Kyle Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Like his previous book Story this book is superb
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2018
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I've been to McKee's TV Day seminar, and I've read his previous book Story. Both were excellent and this book is no different. This book isn't for people who want what they call 'practical' advice i.e., a mechanical system to follow, paint by numbers. I'd say if you found Story illuminating, you'll like Dialogue equally so. I read the book when it first came out and am now listening to the audiobook.

What I found most fascinating is McKee's analysis of different types kinds of conflict expressed through dialogue, especially his analysis of A scene from The Sopranos, and another from Lost in Translation.

A last thought about the negative reviews: go over to amazon.com to see the reviews there which average 4.5 stars, with 3/4 of reviewers giving it 5 stars and 9/10 reviewers giving it 4 or above.
10 people found this helpful
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H J K
3.0 out of 5 stars Yeah...
Reviewed in Australia on December 25, 2020
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Annoying man, good book.
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