A workshop on writing dialogue for fiction writers, Maryland Writers Association Charles County Chapter.

1. Maryland Writers Association--Charles County Chapter
Richard J. Siciliano, Professor of English
College of Southern Maryland
June 19, 2013
richs@csmd.edu

3. Dialogue needs to accomplish at least one of
the following:
 furthering the plot
 revealing character
 creating conflict
 eliciting emotion
 deepening a reader’s experience of what is
known of the characters

4. JERRY (played by Jack Lemmon):
―Who are we kidding? Look at that--look how she moves—-it's
like Jell-O on springs. They must have some sort of a built-in
motor. I tell you it's a whole different sex.‖
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbQqnJw7xL0

5. ―What should we drink?― the girl asked. She had taken off
her hat and put it on the table.
―It’s pretty hot,‖ the man said.
―Let’s drink beer.‖
―Dos cervezas,‖ the man said into the curtain.
―Big ones?‖ a woman asked from the doorway.
―Yes. Two big ones.‖
―Hills Like White Elephants.‖ Ernest Hemingway

6. 2. Punctuation goes with the quote and inside
the quote marks (note the question marks in
Hemingway’s story).
3. Avoid using words like exclaimed (an
exclamation mark by itself will tell us if the
speaker exclaimed).
4. In a two-person dialogue, after identifying
the speakers, don't repeat "he said" or "she
said" every time a character speaks. The new
paragraphs will serve to identify the speaker.

7. 5. Give each character a distinctive voice (not
simply an accent or dialect, or a voice that’s,
squeaky, or raspy). It’s the personality that
counts – his or her outlook on life, attitude. The
characters’ voices should not sound the same;
each should be idiosyncratic, identifiable.
6. Use speech tags, but not to the extreme, such
as here: ―My goodness,‖ she expostulated
urgently, with excessive trembling of the lower
lip.
7. Better yet, link actions with dialogue to
eliminate the need for speech tags.
8. Limit stage directions. Let the actions speak for
themselves.

8. 9. Let dialogue grow out of conflict and
tension.
10. Use adverbs sparingly (he advised
admonishingly).
11. Read your story aloud. If the dialogue rings
true, it will sound true.
12. Above all, make dialogue serve the story, not
the other way around.

9.  Look over the seven fiction ―prompts‖ (story
starters) and decide on one to focus on.
 Break into groups of 2 or 3 by story title.
 Discuss the story starter and develop the
dialogue for at least two characters. (for 10
minutes)
 Note: The concluding paragraphs (the last
page of each hand-out) are endings written by
the authors. However, you may decide the
story should end differently. Develop your
characters and their dialogues accordingly.

10.  Since we ran out of time and couldn’t go over
our groups’ dialogues, at the next Writers
Association meeting on July 17, 2013, it was
suggested that each of us work on writing a
few lines of dialogue for all seven story
starters, if possible. Send your dialogues to
my email address: richs@csmd.edu. Or, bring
in your dialogues to the meeting and we’ll
read and discuss them at that time.