Dialogue: "Are We Still Talking about Doing Dishes?"
Purpose: Students will practice writing dialogue that builds tension through subtext and disagreement while avoiding dialogue as exposition.
Description: Beginning writers often have difficulty writing dialogue that is tense but not overt about that tension or the factors contributing to it.
Suggested Time: 30 minutes
Procedure: Have students write a scene in which two characters almost have an argument but don’t quite. The ostensible argument should be about something unimportant—cleaning, television, dishes—while the larger, unstated tension is much more significant.
Have students stage the scene by giving descriptive context and balance their dialogue with description. To complicate this, you could give them character types (Viking, child, WWE wrestler, Spongebob) so that they have the additional task of using dialogue to characterize.
Additional Information: This activity may be used in class or as a homework assignment but should be introduced with a discussion of strategies for indicating subtext. It is easy to find examples of dialogue in television shows in which people speak what should be revealed indirectly—either because they are announcing their feelings and intentions or because they are explaining context.
Practicing for this exercise might start with watching one of these scenes and rewriting it so that the tension/emotions are unstated. Any episode of Grey’s Anatomy provides countless examples of characters elaborately explaining their feelings and motivations. You might also consider reviewing the punctuation for dialogue -- especially if you are teaching an 1101 course.