"What I learned: When reading a two person scene, it’s usually easy to tell who’s who, even if you’re not looking at the character names. But in a scene with multiple characters, it’s harder, because a lot of people are talking. These scenes are the true test for screenwriters, then, to see if they’re good with dialogue. If the reader is able to tell who’s who in these scenes without looking at the character names, you have done an amazing job differentiating your characters and dialogue. If not, it means all your characters sound the same, and you must put more effort into making them sound different (i.e. one always swears, one stutters, one barely speaks, one can’t stop talking, one’s a wise-ass, one’s a know-it-all, one’s a tough guy, one always sees the worst in everything, one’s religious and always bringing up God). So go into one of your scripts and pick a scene where all of your characters are talking. Without looking at the names, are you easily able to pick out who said what? If so, good job! If not, fix it!"

- Carson Reeves - Scriptshadow