Fiction with Clif Travers - “You Talking to Me?”

“You Talking to Me?”

It’s All About Dialogue

 

Nothing teaches you as much about writing dialogue as listening to it.' – Judy Blume

That said, a lot of the dialogue we hear every day would not be interesting enough for the page. What you discover from listening is the rhythm of talk, the personalities it will reveal of the speakers, and the dynamics of the relationship between them. Once a writer understands those fundamentals and is able to bring them to the page, they can give the reader more information in a good conversation than in pages of descriptive narrative. Dialogue can be the soul of the story.

In this workshop we will discuss how to provide insight into characters, create mood and tension, and propel the story forward through realistic dialogue.

There will be an assignment for day one, and we will create scenes and stories based on that. We’ll read examples of dialogue and discuss why some work well while some fail. And, of course, there will be daily exercises and prompts—the fun stuff of workshops.

Clif Travers is a visual artist and writer, recently relocated to the woods of Maine from the

jungles of Brooklyn. His writing has been featured in Underwood Press, freeze frame fiction,

Crack the Spine Anthology, and Coffin Bell Journal, among others. He received his MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. He is working on a collection of short stories and novellas titled The Stones of Riverton. They are tales inspired by the gravestones in a small town in Western Maine and  based on the rumors of the suspicious deaths of those that lie beneath them. Clif grew up in the town of his stories and has returned there to discover more. He lives in a tiny cabin in the woods with his dog Ollie. It’s a long way from Brooklyn.