Replacement Dialogue For Movie Cliches
Is your screenwriting riddled with cliches? Try these on for size.
Published in
2 min readSep 20, 2019
“You missed.” // “Did I?”
- Replace with: “You missed.” // “DAMNIT!”
- Your characters should be PISSED when they miss. Missing sucks!
“He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
- Replace with: “SHE’S right behind me, isn’t SHE?”
- Come on guys, it’s 2019. Women can sneak up behind your characters at inopportune times just as easily as guys can.
“We’ve got company!”
- Replace with: “We’ve registered as an LLC!”
- Stories are all about surprises! How would it change your plot if one of your characters suddenly incorporated before the climax??
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
- Replace with: “I could tell you, but then you’d know something I don’t want you to know and that would be upsetting for me.”
- Why be hyperbolic about it? The real stakes are just as interesting! No death, just emotional turmoil! Late nights spent awake wrestling with the fact that people know your secrets! Possibly even stomach pain! Ouch!
“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”
- Replace with: “We can do this the easy way, or we can bring in a 3rd party to mediate. That 3rd party would be my buddy, ‘Large Peter.’ Mind you, Large Peter doesn’t normally pick up his phone right away, so he’s going to be hard to contact. Then we’re going to have to Uber across town, because he lives in Santa Monica. We can split the cost though — do you have cash-app or Venmo? I’m also afraid that this option is going to get awkward, because Large Peter and I are like really close friends and I don’t want you to feel like a 3rd wheel.
- Don’t be vague with your writing! Let everyone know how inconvenient the ‘hard way’ is going to be! No one would want to go through all that!
“It’s not what it looks like.”
- Replace with: “What do you think this looks like?”
- It’s so important to just LISTEN and not talk all the time.
“I was born ready.”
- Replace with a flashback of a small child being born that is clearly unprepared for the challenges that lie ahead. The baby is small, weak, and absolutely not ready for active combat in a warzone.
- The contrast from then to now will show how much your character has grown!! He wasn’t born ready — he took that lil baby body and turned it into the grizzled cigar-chomping man-body you see today! What else is he capable of!?
