Writing dialogue: Stance, space, and emotion is a practice-led research project
completed in 2017 at the Victorian College of the Arts. The thesis comprises of the
screen play Dance Drama and a dissertation.
This dissertation will explore how energy can be valuably conceptualized as residing
within a writer’s body before becoming dialogue; how dialogue can be imagined
within the framework of John W. Du Bois’ ‘stance triangle’, so that its power and
subtlety can be developed; and how employing concepts proposed in the paper
‘How Emotion Shapes Behavior’ can inform characters. The accumulation and
interpretation of these concepts aims to inform an imaginative process that places
dialogue at the centre of writing a screenplay. The process is modelled to convey
the power and utility that dialogue can possess in life, art, and film.