Exercises
- Who was your best friend when you were a child? Recall a childhood disagreement or
misunderstanding. It helps to recall your feelings, the sights, the sounds, and the smells of
that day. Write dialogue for the fight. - Write dialogue for after the fight when you wanted to make up. Remember to include
those awkward pauses and those attempts to apologize that weren’t really apologies at
all. - Explore the characters you created and the relationships between characters by placing
two or more of them in an awkward situation. Write their dialogue. - Now write dialogue for the same situation between different characters. How does the
dialogue change? - Improvise scenes from your project using other class members or friends, or play all the
characters yourself. Often acting out the scenes improves the dialogue, develops deeper
characterization, and gives you better scenes overall. - Write dialogue between characters that are from a different country, different section of
the country, or different time period. In other words, write in dialect without the mis-
spellings. Use the natural phrasing and flavor of the dialect only. - Create a scene between two characters, focusing on smart, witty comedy and funny
comebacks. - Script a scene in your project that uses conflict. Who has the power or control? Does the
same person have the power at the end, or has the power switched?
Dialogue 199