Dialogue: Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Changing Your Story
Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is for students to develop their skills in writing dialogue that both reveals character and moves plot forward. Emphasis will be placed on audience and diction.
Description: First, have students eavesdrop on a conversation they are not part of. By listening in, encourage them to pay particularly attention not just to the conversation overall, but how the participants interact. Then, students will write the conversation, revising and formatting as needed, and then revise it, retelling the same story to new characters. Attention will be placed on how we change our language based on our audience.
Suggested Time: class period
Procedure:
For homework, have students listen in on a conversation on a bus, in a restaurant, before class. They don’t need to listen for long, just enough time to gain an idea of the speech patterns. Have them transcribe what they heard to the best of their abilities. What was the reason for the conversation, from what you can tell? Was their a conflict? How would you characterize each of the speakers? Consider word choice, word order, tone, and rate of speaking. How does dialogue contribute to our impressions of people? Students may wish to read aloud, and then open the floor to discussion.
Tell students to rewrite the same dialogue but place it between themselves and their best friend at another university. They can change the word choice, delivery, and style but the topic/content must remain the same. How has the conversation changed? Who are these characters and how do their personalities manifest in the dialogue? Have students make adjustments to the original text. Encourage the students to appeal to all five senses in the dialogue with the friend. When students have completed the exercise, ask them to rewrite the same dialogue as if they were talking to their grandmother. How was it revised? How did the tone, diction and syntax change? What does this suggest about dialogue? How does character change in the two dialogues?