Please talk to us if you are seeking a writer or dialogue editor to either polish or work on your script, or if you are a dialogue/script writer offering your services. Over the years we've had the pleasure of working with some fabulous writers and we are always on the lookout for more writes to work with. 

For us, with our narrow focus on dialogue production, a key element that enables engaging performances is the quality of the dialogue writing. We love good writers. The script is the foundation on which all our work and reputation is built. Great dialogue energises and inspires. A great script is a joy to work with and the results always speak for themselves.

Anyone who's been around production for more than five minutes may have heard the delightful aphorism:  'You can't polish a turd.'  Be around production a little longer and the maxim may unfortunately become a caption to your experience but the flip side in production is the moment when the hair rises on the back of your neck when it all comes together.  The grin is unstoppable. We like the grin.  The fact is dialogue writing will either kill your character or will breathe life.

At Outsource Media we work as a collaborative creative team and so any writing we are commissioned to do will have a main writer as creative lead supported by a 'round table' collaboration from other writers and dialogue experts. Too many cooks is nonsense.

The fundamentals of well written game dialogue are pretty simple.

• The spoken word is written as spoken word and it embraces the communication of performance. Simply, when we speak, how we speak communicates as much as the words themselves.

• Context needs to be explicit. Avoid ambiguity. Game designers have intimacy with every element of a production as they will have spent months even years working on it. Context is known and understood but frequently unwritten. A good game dialogue script adds the pertinent context to what is being said.  There is no such thing as too little information.

• Where there are direction notes, the notes are actable. Action verbs are good, adverbs and adjectives aren't. ('Convince', is actable, 'with conviction' or 'persuasively' are hammable)

• Over using punctuation, underlining, caps and bold in dialogue are lazy writing and you will get ham. Remember actors may remove all punctuation from their lines. There is good reason for this. Good practice: if you want emphasis, put it in the  notes.

Costs:  When we engage an external writer we simply charge 15% on top of the writer's standard fee. This covers the leg work sourcing, supporting, managing and guaranteeing the service.

Results speak for themselves

© Outsource Media 2010