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IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: Dialogue (Version 4)
These exercises were written
by IWW members
and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its
members.
You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that
you found
them at the Internet Writers Workshop
(http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/).
Prepared by: Alex Quisenberry
Posted on: Sun, 9 Sep 2001
Posted on: Sun, 12 Sep 2004
Posted, revised, on: Sun, 2 Sep 2007
Posted, revised, on: Sun,19 Oct 2008
Posted on: Sun, 12 Jan 2014
Posted on: Sun, 20 Nov 2022
_____________________
Exercise: In less than 400 words, write a scene including two
characters in conflict.
Use dialogue to make the reader see the conflict and learn
something of the
characters' personalities.
_____________________
Dialogue is one of the more difficult skills writers must master.
But we must
be aware that dialogue is not the presentation of speech in the way we
would speak
it. Few of us always use complete sentences in our daily speech.
If we did, our
written dialogue would tend to sound unrealistic and stilted.
On the
other hand, dialogue written exactly the way people talk would be full
of
"uh" and
"ah," starts and stops, "I mean," and all the rest of the oddments we
throw
in to
keep our conversations going. Writers have to learn how to make
dialogue
sound
realistic, even though it is far from what we'd hear in a recorded
conversation.
Dialogue can show us a lot about both the character and the
circumstances of
the speakers. In this exercise, tell us you story mainly through
the use of dialog.
_____________________
Exercise: In less than 400 words, write a scene including two
characters in conflict.
Use dialogue to make the reader see the conflict and learn
something of the
characters' personalities.
_____________________
In your critiques, consider how much you learned about the characters
and their
conflict, and how well the writer used dialogue to convey that
information.
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.
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