Dialogue: Tell Me How You Really Feel
Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is for students to develop their skills of mixing dialogue with action.
Description: Communication is verbal and non-verbal. In this exercise, students will learn not only the value of dialogue, but of actions to characterize. They will take the passage below, and revise it, adding dialogue and sensory details.
Suggested Time: class period
Procedure: Give students the following passage.
I was happy. My girlfriend was sad. I was curious. She became annoyed. I was confused. She became angry. I became angry. She became terrifying. I was scared. I am content now.
Tell them to replace each of the emotions with actions and dialogue to show what is told. None of the adjectives—happy, sad, curious, annoyed, confused, angry, terrifying, scared, content—can be used in the final version. However, each of those emotions should be detectable through actions, body language, facial expressions, and dialogue. Have the students share, explaining how they adapted the paragraph to a more visually appealing, resonant narrative.
Students might get in groups and share afterward so they can see how the same text came to life in very different ways. I might also consider collaborating as a class to draw some general conclusions about dialogue and balance and writing those on the board.