In the creation of any play, the playwright obviously has to take into consideration much more than just the text. He or she has to concentrate on the set, the lighting, the timing, the physical appearance of the characters, and especially the character interaction. Character interaction is arguably the most important of all of these aspects of drama onstage, and at the core of character interaction lies the language of the interaction. One very important part of the study of language interaction in drama is the study of floors and turns.

Vimala Herman best sums up the reason why careful and skillful rendering of turns and floors onstage are so important to the successfulness of a play when she states, "the management of the floor and turns is a very significant aspect of dramatic art. Turn and floor management contribute aspects of meaning to the episode or scene being enacted that can very easily be overlooked when dialogic art in drama is assessed only on the basis of the content of that is ‘said’ by characters." In other words, when a playwright writes a play, he or she has to be able to convey the meaning of the action in more than just the text or words. Delicate manipulation of the floor and turn-taking, including interruptions, silences, and simultaneous speech, can sometimes convey an author’s meaning much more effectively than even the most well-turned phrase.

Turn-taking in drama happens because the playwright usually attempts to imitate natural speech effectively through the medium of the spoken word. For this reason, the successful playwright will often imitate the natural pattern of turn-taking in "real" speech, using phrases, clauses, and structures that mimic what a real-life character might actually say, and how another real-life character might interrupt, be silent, speak simultaneously, or even ignore the speaker. The difference between an effective play and an ineffective play can sometimes lie in the subtle differences between "real" and "contrived" turns and floors.

The ways constructed turns and floors manifest themselves in plays are numerous, especially in the works of capable playwrights. As Herman states:

Therefore, a skilled writer will often take advantage of these options in turns and floor in order to produce "real" speech interactions in his or her plays. Of course, close attention to everyday conversations in real life can aid such a project, but an absolutely true reproduction of any "real" speech interaction might not be as effective as something slightly more contrived. Real speech is often stilted and incomplete and includes features of "thinking out loud" as well as online editing of ideas and words. For this reason, playwrights must be choosy about the features of turns and floors that they choose to employ and under what circumstances those features are used or not used.

One example of true-to-life turns, floors and speech interaction, if not true-to-life conversation, comes from Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, when the Fire Chief is prevailed upon by some members of his company to tell a story. In his very realistic story-telling exchange, Ionesco uses features of true-to-life "conventional restraints on turn-taking [that] transform the speech exchange of ordinary conversation to provide . . . for the organization of activity requisite for the kind of act addressed . . .":

In this excerpt, one sees the framework, if not the subject matter, of a "true" story-telling event. The Fire Chief begins with a "header" for his story, announcing that he will be telling a story and taking the floor. As he speaks, his listeners ask questions and signify that they are listening, but there is a sense of appropriate and inappropriate behavior for the listeners. For example, when Mr. Martin tries to take the floor, Mrs. Smith shushes him for his improper manners. At the end of the story, they all return to discussion, while evaluating the story they were just told by the Fire Chief. Although the content of the story and the conversation are nonsensical, Ionesco has reconstructed a realistic feel for his created conversation and story-telling event. In this way, even the nonsense of absurdist theater works as a remarkably effective conversation.

Similarly, Henrik Ibsen imitates features of true speech interaction very well in A Doll House, where Nora interacts with her children, but his motive is different from that of Ionesco. Whereas Ionesco’s script is set and must be performed as he has written it in order to create a sense of real conversation, Ibsen’s script is much more flexible:

In this excerpt, Nora plays the role of listener to her children’s stories while simultaneously acting in the capacity of the "lady of the house" in her directions to the maid. Her responses to the children are precisely what one would expect for someone in real life who is indulging children to tell about their amusements. Because the reader does not see the actual words that the children and the nurse speak, one assumes that this script for conversation is not rigid instruction to the actors, but rather a general script for this particular type of conversation with children. Because the words themselves are less important than the portrayal of Nora’s own playful, girlish interaction with the children (which becomes an extremely important issue later in the play), the printed conversation is meant to be a loose guideline.

Herman’s point throughout her article is that these plays work because the features of real speech interactions, turns, and floors are imitated very well—that "[t]he mode of discourse used in drama is dialogue, which projects contexts of spoken speech among participants into the ‘situated’ contexts of the ‘virtual’ speech events it constructs. [original emphasis]" The people in the audience have seen themselves in precisely the same conversations many times, and they can relate to the interactions in the plays as imitations of true human experiences. Herman implies that if a playwright does not make a concerted effort to make the discourse in his or her play completely realistic as a "context of spoken speech," the conversation of the actors will seem either awkward or over-long, unbelievable, and obviously "acted"; and in comparison, a playwright who endeavors to create true-to-life dialogue will probably produce a play that lends itself to a "willing suspension of disbelief" because of its reality.

Nonetheless, clever usage of such "unreality" in language can lend a different sense of meaning to a play without making it implausible or clumsy. After all, it is also essential for a playwright to let the audience get to know the characters through their speech and action, and if the characters in a play always had "true-to-life" conversations, their character development could possibly be vague. For example, the created turns and floors in George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man are completely unrealistic, but their unreality allows the speakers to reveal more about themselves than a "real" conversation would do:

This passage is completely unbelievable from a "true-to-life" conversation standpoint. The turns that each speaker takes are too long, and there are abrupt subject changes from turn to turn. For example, a real-life Raina would probably never let a real-life Bluntschli take the floor for a speech as long as "is it professional . . . saw it." Additionally, after such a turn she would probably never change the subject to something so romantic as dreams of a great battle, especially as Bluntschli has just insulted the intelligence of the cavalry of which her fiancé is the leader. But the conversation, although unrealistic for "real-life" speakers, reveals Raina and Bluntschli’s respective personalities in a very effective manner. After just a few lines of conversation, it is apparent to the audience that Bluntschli is skeptical and somewhat desperate, but kind, whereas Raina is a bit haughty and idealistic. In a short space of time, the audience gets to know the characters onstage without needing to listen to a well-written and subtle—but lengthy—reconstruction of true-to-life conversation.

For an analysis of The Bald Soprano and A Doll House, Herman’s idea of what makes effective dialogue in plays is absolutely correct. The playwrights thoroughly mimic true speech interaction, and in so doing they are able to connect with the audience and make their points effectively. This kind of realistic speech interaction can make any play, especially if it has serious subject matter, more able to create a sense of "willing suspension of disbelief" in the audience. This effect is especially important for plays with solemn themes since those types of plays require that the audience respond emotionally in order for them to have their intended effect. After all, if the members of the audience cannot empathize with a character because the character is unbelievable, they will not react to any serious issues that the playwright might create in the play.

However, especially in farces and comedies, regulating the audience’s emotional involvement is perhaps not as important as creating an adequate character development in a shorter space of time. In this situation, Herman’s thoughts on the necessity of realistic turn-taking and floors are not entirely correct. In Arms and the Man, Shaw would have had to consume a considerable amount of time with realistic dialogue to in order to get across Bluntschli’s point that both Raina and her fiancé, the cavalry officer, have unrealistic ideas about war and the way it should be fought. As it is, the audience sees his point in just a few lines, and the fact that they are unrealistic lines of conversation is completely irrelevant to Shaw, the audience, the characters themselves, and most importantly the larger significance or success of the play.

Of course, comedies and farces can also make effective use of a more realistic approach to conversations, especially when the dialogue of the characters revolves around the specific use of their own language:

This extract is a remarkable example of how talking about the language itself in a realistic way works doubly well with Herman’s theory. Not only are the characters engaging in true-to-life speech, they are also speaking about features of that speech, heightening the reality of their conversation. The audience is invited to consider the words of the characters, whether those words are correct or incorrect, and whether or not they themselves agree with one or the other character. Importantly, Pinter is able to make the assumption that the audience will relate to the characters’ dialogue since conversation about "proper" language use is a familiar script to most people. The characters have therefore already gained the sympathies of the audience members; their usage of "real" utterances combined with the familiar, everyday event of "‘lighting’ or ‘putting on’ the kettle" is an amazingly effective tool that then allows the playwright to manipulate the comedic aspects of such a conversation.

Nevertheless, it is important to consider that if a playwright imitates spoken speech, turns, and floors absolutely perfectly, it might be very difficult for his or her play to be attractive or interesting. It is self-evident that if the playwright wants to make a specific point, he or she has to put words into his or her character’s mouths. Because the words the playwright causes his or her characters to speak have been thought through beforehand, they will be more refined than anything a real-life person would actually say. If the playwright were to let the character actually "say" profound ideas the way they would be said naturally, the character would have to think out loud onstage while doing all the "online editing" that the playwright has already done in order to put the words on paper. A small amount of audible thought on the part of the character can add to the reality or gravity of the scene, but too much can be tedious for the audience. Thus, it is crucial to recall that all speech by characters in plays is created speech, and thus sometimes cannot or even should not mimic natural, real-life speech. Herman asserts that "performed dramatic speech action is ultimately responsible to an audience for its success or failure." She does not, however, point out that failure is also possible when a playwright uses too many features of true-to-life spoken language.

Although the creation of realistic floors and turn-taking can be an excellent way to develop a sense of empathy in the audience for characters onstage, it can also take tremendous amounts of true-to-life conversation to get to the point a playwright wants to make. For this reason, the rendering of turn-taking and floor is a tool that a skillful playwright will exploit differently depending on the type of emotional interaction he or she wants the audience to have with the characters and how quickly he or she wants to convey any specific idea to his or her audience.

The subject matter, theme, and genre of the play are features that an author might consider in his or her choice to use or not to use specific features of "real" conversation, but they do not necessarily dictate the style that an author should use. In either comedy or tragedy, the playwright might decide to adopt an emotionally involved stance with his or her audience, in which case he or she would use very realistic language in order to create a deeper emotional connection with his or her audience. Alternatively, he or she may choose to use more efficient language in order to make a certain point or develop some aspects of a character more quickly. Throughout any play, however, the successful playwright will probably utilize both approaches as one or the other proves more effective for his or her specific purpose at the moment. While Herman is correct in her assumption that close attention to dramatic speech action is very important in the creation of successful plays, using features of true-to-life language, turn-taking, and floors is not always the most effective or efficient way to describe a circumstance, make a point, or develop a character.