Lecture 8: Integrating Dialogue into a Narrative
- Without invading the participants’ privacy, take a fragment of real-life
conversation—one you may have been party to or a brief exchange you
may have overheard—and try to construct a more lengthy and detailed
dialogue out of it. The conversation could be something as banal as one
person asking, “Is this seat taken?” and the other replying, “No, it isn’t,”
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to another, “So what did you tell him?” and the other woman saying,
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the next line would be, then try to spin as much out of it as you can,
incorporating a variety of the uses to which dialogue can be put. In other
words, starting with just two overheard lines, use dialogue to create a
couple of characters and tell a story.
Writing Exercise