The Dialogue Paradox

Less is more.

Playwrights must go through a ruthless distillation process, weeding out anything in the manuscript that does not belong… anything that might drain the life out of a moment or a scene. It may be generally understood that in playwriting, economy builds tension. But it also has an added benefit: it creates options.

When you strip away the noise, magical things begin to happen. It is a paradox: the fewer words you give an actor, the more choices they have.

Strip your dialogue to the bone: free your actor from the exacting sentence while gaining the gift of tension in return.

PREVIOUS ARTICLES BY AUDREY CEFALY

• 52 Vocabulary Words for Playwrights
  A collection of weird and unusual words for the things we do as playwrights.

• 10 Things Playwrights Wish Their Actors Understood
  A love letter

• To Speak or Not to Speak?
  4 Ways to Create Indelible Non-Speaking Roles for the Stage

• 21 Things I Know About Playwriting
  I wrote my first play twenty years ago. I wrote my second play one year later. Here are 21 things I learned in the year between the two.

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Audrey Cefaly's plays (Alabaster, Maytag Virgin, The Gulf, The Last Wide Open, Trouble) have garnered the Lammy Award, the Calicchio Prize, the Edgerton, and a Pulitzer nomination. Her works have been produced at Signature Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Barter Theatre, Merrimack Rep, Florida Studio, Florida Rep, Gulfshore Playhouse, and countless others. Cefaly is a Dramatist Guild Foundation "Traveling Master," an Arena Stage playwright cohort, and a recipient of the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference.  She is published by Concord Theatricals.