Pre-Production Unit- Investigating Drama Screenwriters, and the importance of a great quality script.

One major problem I have come across during the scripting process, is that some of my more dramatic moments do not come across as realistic. I have characters delivering monologues which express their emotions, but don't really "tell" the viewer anything new. This creates the impression that my characters are overly dramatic, sometimes to the point that their dialogue becomes quite cheesy and unbelievable.
In response to this grievance, I decided that it would be worth my time investigating some of the more successful drama films of all time, and see how the screenwriters of those films tackled the more delicate scenarios with their characters.
Some questions I wanted to answer through doing this was;

• How dramatic should characters be when conveying emotion?
• What kind of language should characters use during such situations?

I hoped from this I would learn to make my characters less "cheesy" when speaking in a dramatic way, and also make them more believable as characters.

I decided to begin my investigation by performing a Google search for "the most successful drama films of all time", and one of the first results was "The Shawshank Redemption." I felt that this would be a fantastic starting point for me to find some screenwriters that I could take some form of inspiration from.
I found that the screenwriter for Shawshank redemption was Frank Darabont, a Hungarian screenplay writer, and with this knowledge, I decided to scour youtube to try and find out if there were any interviews which would give me a deeper insight into his mindset when writing a screenplay, and more importantly, if I could find any information about how to script realistic character dialogue.

I came across this interview, which although doesn't really contain the kind of information I was looking for, it does contain some very useful information on the importance of having a good quality script in order to entice contributors into wanting to take part in the film project.

In the interview, Morgan Freeman explains that he didn't even know which character he was being considered for in the Shawshank Redemption, but because the script was such great quality, he didn't care, and wanted to just be involved in some way.
This is something I feel I should take on board during my process of acting as a producer. I think one thing I should take away from this small investigation is that I should ensure my script is great quality before I begin to look for contributors to my film.
I have learnt that sometimes it is the quality of the script that is the deal-breaker for cast applicants as to whether or not they will ultimately want to be involved. Therefore it would probably be best for me in the future to make sure that I have completed the final draft of the script before beginning to search for cast members.