RWBY's dialogue - why it's poorly written and why the writers need a change of mindset. The Adam character short just came out and the thing I fear the most has come true - the terrible dialogue that plagues Volume 5 is still there.
That is not to say all the dialogue in the short was terrible, most of it was actually just mediocre, but there was one piece of dialogue that is so incredibly bland and poor that it single handedly speaks to a larger problem on how the writers approach dialogue and giving the audience information.
I'm talking about the initial piece of dialogue Adam gave to the four Faunus at the beginning of the short.
Explaining how this piece of dialogue is terrible is actually quite difficult, so in order to do that, I will compare it to a similar piece of dialogue in Volume 5 Chapter 7, a piece of dialogue that I consider to be the single worst piece of dialogue in RWBY.
"OZPIN: You see, centuries ago, I sacrificed a great deal of magic to four young women, who I hoped would use my gift for good. They were the first Maidens."
There are multiple reasons why I hate this line of dialogue (one of those reasons is the fact that I hate how it made Oz the center of everything). But right now I'd like to focus more on how it was written.
The biggest problem with this isn't even the fact that Ozpin was just spewing out exposition and information like he was reading from a book (although that's already pretty terrible by itself). No, the biggest problem with this is that there is no personal flair attached to the character Ozpin.
See, I always like to say that if your dialogue can be spoken by any character out there and it wouldn't have made a difference then you have failed at crafting compelling dialogue.
There is absolutely no soul, no feelings behind this line of dialogue. This was simply Ozpin saying this for the sake of delivering exposition, delivering information. In other words, he is saying this line for the sake of the show, not for his own sake. And this is problematic because it makes it feel unnatural and insincere. A character should never be forced a piece of dialogue just for the sake of advancing the plotline. Ozpin is a man who "supposedly" made more mistakes than anybody on the planet and yet he just willingly reveals everything about his past, everything close to his heart, just right when the plot demands it?
This is why it is important to set up scenes or scenarios where it would actually feel natural for a character to talk about the things in their past. But that's only the first step, the second step involves making it personal to the character, making it something only that character and that character alone would say.
So instead of regurgitating how he "sacrificed a great deal of magic to four young women" like a book, what he instead could say is something along the lines of: "I met these four young girls once. They were... an odd bunch. My memory is a bit blurry, but there was something about them that made my heart skip a beat. It made me feel something... something I hadn't felt in a long time."
Don't force your characters to spew out information for the sake of the show. Because we, the audience already know that shit (we don't need the show to repeat information we already know, we will be able to understand it through implications). What we DON'T know however is how Ozpin felt, what was his thought process, what was his opinions on the four of them, what his relationship with them was, etc. All of these things are internal things that are unique to Oz and Oz alone. By utilizing all of this, you will be able to craft compelling dialogue, compelling character moments, and compelling world building moments too. A lot of people don't realize this, but crafting good dialogue is a part of world building as well, world building isn't just about the places, the setting, it's also about the cultures, and what kind of characters are born from those cultures, because every single character has a story to tell. The way the characters speak, their story, their opinions, their experiences, their feelings is ultimately what makes them who they are.
I haven't even talked about the extra stuff like speech pattern, accents or dialects, these are also great tools for crafting dialogue and world building.
That is why writing dialogue is actually hard.
It's not just about how you deliver a piece of information to the audience.
So that's why there is nothing spectacular about Ozpin revealing himself as the wizard.
That's why there's nothing spectacular about Adam spewing out generic revolutionary speech in the short. Replace him with any of the high ranking White Fang members, Sienna, Ilia, etc. and it wouldn't have made a difference. There is a time and place for speeches, this was not one of them. And even then, there are far better ways to make a speech more personalized to Adam's character.
Bottom line: Don't force your characters to talk for the sake of the show. Have them talk for their own sake.
I thought exactly the same after hearing that piece of speech adam gave to the faunus. A simple question the writers should ask themselves after writing a line for X character should be: Would a normal person with this traits speak like this?
One thing I've discovered after watching some good movies is that great and interesting dialogue comes from 2 things intersecting: Things that real people would actually say in a certain situation vs Things that are totally unexpected. In the center of that venn diagram is the perfect dialogue. People love to see organic reactions with twists.
Yep. It's great hearing Adam bitch about how hard Faunus have it to a couple of pristine dressed friends. Here’s an idea, bloody and dirty them up. Show that there was just a scuffle where they had been attacked unprovoked and Adam saved them.
Uuuuuuuugh. It's the same problem with the "No Faunus" sign in V5. It was on a shop with only two customers in it, placed in what is clearly the poor side of town. If this was supposed to show Mistral having institutional racism, which according to Volume 5 Director commentary it was, then not only does this not show that but it also contradicts that idea. If the sign was placed in a fancy restaurant that had a lot of customers going into it then that would be better, but by showing a rundown shop that's barely holding on in the bad side of the neighborhood leans more towards the idea of these "racist" people being Mistral's undesirables and that the general consensus is actually accepting of faunus, especially if they have a faunus Headmaster no matter how he got into office.
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