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IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: I
hear voices (v. 2)
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.internetwritingwor
kshop.org/).
Prepared by: Rhéal Nadeau
Posted on: Sun, 5 Aug 2001
Reposted, revised: Sun, 23 Mar 2008
-------------------------
Exercise: In 300 words or less, write a dialogue involving two or three
characters,
each with a separate voice. Use a minimum of dialogue tags. The voices
should tell us
something about each character and help us tell the characters apart.
Use narrative,
but keep it to a minimum.
------------------------
Character voice is one of the tools the writer can use to define
character and set the
mood. Voice consists of many things: diction, pronunciation, rhythm,
sentence
structure, word choice, idioms used, level of grammar, recurrent topics
or speaking
habits, and so on.
Think of the voices in Tom Sawyer--they help us know the characters and
the
setting. The voices change to reflect the characters' moods. In a more
recent
example, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is a great example
of the use of
voice. The narration in this novel alternates between five characters:
the mother,
and her four daughters. Each of those characters has her own voice, so
that if I open
the book at random, I can quickly tell which character is narrating.
-------------------------
Exercise: In 300 words or less, write a dialogue involving two or three
characters,
each with a separate voice. Use a minimum of dialogue tags. The voices
should tell us
something about each character and help us tell the characters apart.
Use narrative,
but keep it to a minimum.
-------------------------
When critiquing a submission, point out your impression of each
character, based on
the dialogue clues.
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Greg Gunther.
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