ABSTRACT
Dialogue is the playwright’s fundamental tool. It is the major way they connect with their audiences. In plays, characters have some kinds of dialogue always at work. The actual words that come out of their mouths, what they choose to say, comprise the exterior dialogue. The interior dialogue is what the character is actually thinking and feeling—the subtext. David Mamet, that master of dialogue, in a speech before the Dramatists Guild Projects Committee and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation, said that characters on stage do not speak to reveal themselves, but rather to conceal themselves. A good exercise in dialogue writing is to go through an ordinary day in playwright's own life, marking in their journal, hour by hour, what they are doing and what they want.
