Screenwriting : CUT Your Dialogue by Kelly E. Keough

Parentheses are always a massive hurdle for young and amateur writers. I see them a lot being used as a crutch to squeeze information in somewhere instead of finding a creative solution to relay that information in a more natural way. You always want to utilize parentheses sparingly. They should really only be used when there’s no other way to communicate what you’re trying to say or it wouldn’t be immediately clear by the words of dialogue and their explicit meaning. Parentheses are also not for action lines. That's what actions lines are for.

I agree, Kelly E. Keough. Great tips. I go through my scripts during rewrites, cutting out parentheticals. I only keep parentheticals if they're important. Example: To make sure the reader won't be confused who a character is talking to. Sometimes I use an action line to make this clear instead of using a parenthetical.

Hi Pat Alexander and Maurice Vaughan, so true, and thank you so much for the clarification on using parentheticals. Use parentheticals only to distinguish who's talking to who. And not for action. That's it. That's a great summary!!

We use ““ in this forum to direct statements, I will use parentheses to do this if confusion would happen without them.

For me dialogue is a window into the characters soul and life. I believe in as little dialogue as possible. I like to give actors space to act, not recite lines.

CRAIG: I don’t …. well… I’d…. um. Sorry.

CRAIG: I am incredibly sorry.

There is a huge differences in the Craigs.

So helpful!

Awesome illustration of using silence in dialogue, Craig D Griffiths. Thank you!

Michael, absolutely, I agree. I was talking about not using parentheticals in the opening pages so you don’t slow down the read.

You're welcome, Kelly E. Keough. Thanks for sharing the video.

great advice!