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How to Write Riveting Dialogue
Preconference: Thursday, November 2, 2006
Sea Crest Oceanfront Resort
Falmouth, Cape Cod, MA


Executive Summary

All good novelists write good dialogue; there is no good fiction without it. It is one of the writer’s most potent and versatile tools, and it is perhaps surprising that so many writers use it to such mediocre effect. How to Write Riveting Dialogue will teach you how to write dialogue that moves your story, reveals character, and delights the reader. Attendees are encouraged to bring excerpts of their work for reading aloud, comment and critique. Questions will be welcomed throughout.

SCHEDULE (Thursday, Nov. 2, 2006)

7:00 - 8:00 Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:00 - 9:00 The Watergate Tapes: How Art Does Not Imitate Life, and Vice Versa.
The difference between real life dialogue and the dialogue in good fiction, and how real life dialogue can lead the writer astray.

9:00 - 10:00 Lean, Tight, Shapely: The Beauty of Good Dialogue.
When we say "the art of writing dialogue," we mean just that. Attendees will learn how to write dialogue with your eye as well as your ear, and to uncover its edgy music, how to avoid repetition and redundancy, and to maintain the essential brisk pace.

10:00 - 10:15 Break and Networking Opportunity

10:15 - 11:00 Action is Character, Dialogue is Action.
Attendees will learn the fine art of using dialogue to define and reveal character.

11:00 - 12:00 Dissonance: The Sine Qua Non of Good Dialogue.
No tension, no drama. Attendees will learn how to sustain tension in your dialogue in all scenes, at all times. Yes, all scenes: even the most cordial and affectionate.

12:00 - 1:00 Lunch (Provided With Faculty)

1:00 - 2:00 Staying Focused: Surprise in Every Line.
It is easy, in writing dialogue, to become careless. People speak carelessly, after all, and that same natural carelessness tends to creep into the dialogue we write. The antidote is to focus on every line, to test it to yourself to make sure it works for you. Attendees will learn the different ways in which it does so.

2:00 - 3:00 "I despise you," she said, glaring at me, and what is wrong with this sentence.
How dialogue is used to evoke gesture and facial expression, and why writing fiction is harder than writing for the movies.

3:00 - 3:15 Break and Networking Opportunity

3:15 - 4:15 The Biggest Decision of All: When to Write a Character From the Inside and When Not To.
There’s no easy answer to this question and, often, no categorical one. The decision is yours. Attendees will learn how to make it, and what to consider as you do.

4:15 - 4:30 Conclusion and Takeaways

 

Faculty

John Hough, Jr. is the author of the novels A Two Car Funeral, The Guardian, The Conduct of the Game, and The Last Summer. He is also the author the non-fiction works A Peck of Salt, A Dream Season, and A Player For a Moment. He is a former speech writer for United States Senator Charles Mathias and a former writer for the New York Times while serving as the assistant to James Reston. John is an experienced writing teacher. He resides on Martha’s Vineyard.