:: THE UTICA WRITERS CLUB
 :: Exercise 2: Dialogue

 

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PART ONE:

From now until next class, be an eavesdropper. Have no shame. If you're eating lunch somewhere, standing in line at the grocery store, sitting in the back seat of the car - open your ears to the things people say to each other and how they say them. If you can do it discreetly, take notes. If you can't, write it down as soon as you can.

Type out a page or two of the little exchanges you hear. Choose the ones that are funny, revealing, that really tell who the people are and what their relationship is. Use no description, no "attribution," no character identification - just dialogue, like the script of a play without even the names of the characters.

PART TWO:

Start with one of the little bits of dialogue you've collected. Keep going with it, extend it into a whole scene (a page or two) with lots more dialogue. Concentrate on using dialogue to establish the characters, their personalities, how they feel about each other.

PART THREE:

Actors sometimes annotate their scripts by filling in under the lines of dialogue the true, basic emotional content of the lines, like this:
Tom: You've eaten all the sardines again, Ethel.
(Why don't you care about what I want?)

Ethel: Do you want me to go to the store?
(You exasperate me, and I wonder if I even love you.)
Go back to the scene you wrote in PART TWO. Annotate it in the same way, showing what "hidden" emotional message the characters are giving each other with each line. If you have trouble doing it, you can change what you've written to make the emotion clearer.

 

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