workshop 3: February 2027

How to Write Dramatic Dialogue

A Workshop on the Craft of Writing Realistic Exchanges

Between Your Characters

A story is a completed process of change which has the ability to move readers’ feelings powerfully in whatever pleasurable or painful direction the writer chooses. But although the story arises out of and progresses through causality, and though the plot is driven by the wilful or unconscious desires of the principal characters, it is the dialogue that propels the story. Dialogue can lift the story and give it impetus: proving the premise, revealing character, progressing the plot and carrying exposition.  

Of course, straightforward narrative may move the story forward and supply exposition and backstory, but dialogue is the high-octane fuel that can drive the story forward at pace. Good dialogue, which must be interesting, realistic and authentic to the character speaking it, will supply much of the story’s drama. Good dialogue reveals and expresses rather than shows or tells. At its most basic level, good dialogue makes the story fly; it makes the story interesting and easier to read. But sometimes it is difficult for emerging writers to know when to employ dialogue instead of narrative (and vice versa) and even more difficult for them to make their dialogue appropriate and authentic. 

The workshop, which is meant to be participatory, interactive — and fun, addresses those issues. There will be plenty of time for questions and group interaction in which story ideas are taken from various sources to create narratives employing believable dialogue.