ABSTRACT
Well-written dialog evokes a sense of reality, even though it is, in essence, unreal. Where people in everyday
life may speak on and on, in movies their dialog usually confines itself to one or two sentences at a time. In
a sense, dialog is more about the listener than the speaker, since most of us, most of the time, don’t listen
well to anything that doesn’t immediately impact us. Tell someone about how your day went, a dream you
had, or what you did on vacation, and his attention drifts in and out. Tell that same person that the tests
came back positive and they only have three weeks to live, and you have got his full attention.
