Finding the Right Flow: Editing Dialogue for Impact

Pacing dialogue in the edit is a delicate balance, and I recently tried something new that really paid off for a tense negotiation scene. Instead of cutting every time a character finished speaking, I leaned into overlapping lines and using reaction shots during the speaker's dialogue. What worked was letting the subtext land, showing the other character's non-verbal response while the line was still being delivered, rather than waiting for it to finish. This created a much more natural, less 'ping-pong' feel to the conversation. What didn't quite work initially was overdoing it; too much overlap made it feel cacophonous and hard to track who was saying what, so I had to pull back on some of the more aggressive overlaps. The trick was finding specific moments where the overlap enhanced the tension or emphasized a point, rather than just doing it purely for speed. It felt more like sculpting the conversation's rhythm in 3D. How do you all decide when to sacrifice a clean dialogue track for a more natural-sounding, overlapping conversation?