Tuesday, 7/17: Dialogue

"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Elements of Craft: Dialogue
• tight, economical
• reveals character, advances plot
• "natural"
• Dialogue Tags/Adverbs

1. Write a brief exchange using colorful adverbs as dialogue tags. Now re-write to use simple tags such as said and asked, and relying on shows and context for the emotional charge of the speech. Compare the effects of the two.
2. Write a dialogue with two very different voices (at least one should be very different from your own).

Prompts:
1. Write a short story or piece of flash fiction that contains only one line of dialogue. The rest should be narrative.

2. Write a short story or piece of flash fiction in which only one character can speak. The other character should communicate nonverbally.

3. Write a short story or piece of flash fiction taking swears into consideration. Your characters can swear all the time or very little. Think about what this indicates about their personalities and states of mind. Swears can be powerful words through judicious use, or they can be a feature of a character's speech. Think of the effect they have in terms of expositon of plot/character.

4. Write a personal essay that starts like this: "I will never say..."

Said and Unsaid
 Read "The Waltz" by Dorothy Parker. Discussion and prompt.