Dialogue

The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen

By: Robert McKee

Narrated by: Robert McKee

Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

The long-awaited follow-up to the perennially best-selling 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2016 Robert McKee (P)2016 Hachette Audio

Great follow up to Story!!

I Robert's first book years ago. That book affected me profoundly. With his follow ip book, Dialogue, he goes deeper, and I found myself taking my writing and story analysis abilities to the next level.

Crucial For A Screenwriter

An excellent supplement to 'Story'. It shows how to immerse dialogue into your scenes to give the words more meaning, and in a tension-raising-cycle, turn and give the scene itself more impact. This is a book that will get multiple re-reads for reference and increase in understanding as I look to improve my craft and skill-set.

A walkthrough in one shoe of the writer and the other of the character

Very in depth. From beats to tonality to weight, this book is a must for any actor or screenwriter.
Thank you Mr. McKee 🙏

Superb knowledge of the content

Superb knowledge given with sincerity and simplicity. A must for every aspiring author of the page and screen

Very good companion to Story

McKee's book, Story, has a permanent place of honor on my bookshelf right by my desk. Whenever I write, if I get stuck, I reach for it and turn to any number of bookmarks that have been held for years with Post-It notes. I was eager to hear Dialogue, and I would like to listen to Action and Character as well.

Dialogue is good though not in the same league as Story. I also think it could have been half as long as it is. However, it makes its points very clearly, with extremely detailed breakdowns and analysis of different writings from books, film and TV. Every now and again, McKee drops a priceless gem of insight, and I bookmarked quite a few different places with detailed notes to myself. It's extremely difficult to write a book just about dialogue, and overall, he's done a solid job.

Will I listen to it again? Possibly. I will certainly return to my bookmarks and listen to those sections again. Did I learn anything new? Yes, actually I did. And after nearly three decades of intensive study of writing, I'm always delighted to learn new techniques so that I can improve. Would I recommend it? Definitely. McKee has dedicated his entire career to demystifing the practice of writing and storytelling, and he is without question one of the masters in this field. If you have not yet read Story though, I would recommend starting with that one. It's one of the best books on writing I've ever come across, and I've read more than I can possibly count. There's a lot of great stuff in there about dialogue as well. Looking forward to completing this series.

Not as good as Story

I am a big fan of his book, the story. But somewhat upset about this one. It spends too much time analyzing each of the dialogue. And some of the examples he uses is not very convincing.

Good insight

Very informative on how to write dialogue for stories in general I will recommend it and I will come back to it later at some point.

Great course, unfortunately not so great delivery

I had high hopes for this book and the content did not disappoint me. Excellent, as can be expected. The narrator, who delivered the text, has excellent diction and I had no trouble to follow him through, but he could have been a tad more lively. The book is highly informative and this combined with his authoritative narration, that hammered in my head, gave me a hard time to comprehend the content, let alone enjoy it. After an hour of struggle I returned the audio and bought the Kindle book.
If this narration was a sought after effect, please consider my negative feedback.

review

some is a bit wordy, some is simply beyond me. tons of great core information for screenwriters

Screenwriting Career Here I Come!

I consider myself a novelist but I was referred by my English teacher to check out these works. The principles to writing good screenplays can be applied to novels too (with some tweaking). This will definitely help my novel writing. This book is so good that I have the knowledge to write good screenplays now, even though I never previously considered writing them.

I also never realized the amount of thought and work goes into crafting fine dialogue. Even short scenes contain enough analysis to spend a whole 30min chapter on. This book was very illuminating and expands on McKee's earlier book "Story". I feel really confident and excited about writing now, be it novels or screenwriting, and I really feel that with enough practice I can be a great writer. Thank you Robert McKee!!!