How to Teach Writing Dialogue

Many people believe that writing dialogue is simple but, in fact, most students never learn to do it well. The basic conventions of dialog--how to format it--are easy, but teaching young writers to come up with exchanges that are both creative and realistic is a bit more difficult. This article introduces a fairly involved curriculum on writing dialogue. Feel free to shorten it to fit in with your own time frame.

Things You'll Need

• Plays
• Movies
• TV
• DVD Player
• Paper
• Pens
• Pencils
• Tape Player
• Tapes

Instructions

1. Read drama with the students. Include Shakespeare, but also include modern plays written in a more colloquial style.

2. Highlight examples of dialogue that serves various purposes. Include exchanges that serve to define the characters, advance the plot and introduce character change. Discuss the meaning of each bit of dialogue.

3. Instruct your students to write their own version of a scene from one of the plays. You can allow them to choose from various Shakespearean scenes and rewrite them in modern language. If you have time, you can watch a film adaptation using modern language, such as West Side Story, to give them a model.

4. Assign each to transcribe a conversation as an assignment once your students have written and performed their own scenes. Your students should go to a coffee shop or other place and write down everything everyone says. Alternately, you can give them tapes of dialogue and have them write down what is being said.

5. Discuss how real people talk. Draw attention to the fact that people talk over each other, start and stop in mid-sentence and use incorrect grammar.

6. Instruct your students to write another scene, stressing realistic dialogue. Require them to have characters start talking at the same time, use incorrect grammar and sentence fragments.

7. Tell your students to write a third scene, this time using artistic dialogue. Have them write characters who speak in an elegant, fluid style.

Tips & Warnings

• Although the artistic dialogue can be written first, it is better to do it last. Once your students have learned how to write dialog that sounds like actual speech, they can make it more artistic. If they try to write formal speech before they learn naturalistic dialogue, however, it will sound stilted. There are many novels and short stories that contain excellent examples of how to write dialogue. Because drama relies much more heavily on dialogue, however, it is the most essential part of a curriculum on this writing skill.

• Instead of writing plays, you can have your students write screenplays.

Resources

• Punctuating Dialogue
• How to Write Realistic Dialogue