“so I studied dialog for the show by transcribing half a dozen episodes and comparing that with the purchased scripts so that I knew how the actors preferred to say the lines.”
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That’s really an excellent idea to get a handle on what’s needed. Writing for performance can be quite tough - there are so many variables, so it’s great to able to have some examples to serve as a reference-guideline.
Carl Reiner wrote a book & made a film about his getting into entertainment. He titled it “Enter Laughing”. In his inexperience when he first tried out for a part, he read the stage direction out loud (”enter laughing”) as his first line.
I would usually catch Forever Knight, Dark Justice and the other “Crimetime After Primetime” late eve offerings. Good watchin’.
>>”Crimetime After Primetime”
Forgot all about that! Loved it!
I really didn’t believe the screenwriting teacher about dialog being mostly partial sentences, so I started typing up conversations I was having with people. Luckily I’m a speed typist. That turned out to be another great learning device.
One trick the teacher taught was finding an image of your character in a magazine, cutting it out and putting it over your keyboard. Then when you wrote, you kept glancing at the image to keep consistency with that particular character.
Another thing I do when I’m writing and I need to hold a mood is put a piece of music on infinite repeat and use that to smooth out my mood.