Wednesday writing prompt 3/15/23
Wednesday writing prompt 3/15/23
Conversations
Late Fragment
by Raymond CarverAnd did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Hello writers!
For our prompt today, I thought we’d touch on a part of writing that makes me nervous, even though I’m fascinated by it: Dialogue. I’ve been thinking about all the different ways that conversations can be portrayed in writing. The one we’re taught in school is the standard “said” or “asked” followed by the dialogue in quotation marks:
The horse had lifted its head. Shasta stroked its smooth-as-satin nose and said, "I wish you could talk, old fellow."
And then for a second he thought he was dreaming, for quite distinctly, though in a low voice, the Horse said, "But I can."
Shasta stared into its great eyes and his own grew almost as big, with astonishment.
"How ever did you learn to talk?" he asked.
"Hush! Not so loud," replied the Horse. "Where I come from, nearly all the animals talk."
"Where ever is that?" asked Shasta.
~from The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.
I remember being given exercises in a writing class in elementary school to replace the words “said” and “asked” with more exciting words like “exclaimed” or “pontificated.” But when I went home and was reading, I noticed that many authors seemed to stick with the basic “said” and “asked” and let the variety and excitement come from the conversation itself.
Once the conversation has gotten going, if it is between only two people, you can sometimes drop the “he said, she replied” completely and trust the reader to remember who is speaking. Or, as in the Raymond Carver poem above, you can leave out the “said” completely and use line breaks to delineate between speakers.
Other variation on that basic form of dialogue are using single quotation marks or no quotation marks (as in the Raymond Carver poem above) or italics. Italics are also often used to convey a character’s inner thoughts, so if you use them for external dialogue it creates a sense of distance or dreaminess in the conversation. Single quotation marks, to me, feel somewhere in between the directness of quotation marks and the dreaminess of italics.
As in all aspects of writing, we can play with it, see what feels natural or generative to us, create our own unique way of expressing our own unique experience and perspective.
The actual prompt
Okay, enough of me pontificating about dialogue. Today’s prompt is to write a conversation. It could be one that actually happened, that you write from memory, or a conversation you wish would happen, or an imaginary conversation between imaginary people. You can write it as a poem, or prose, or something in between. If you need ideas for where to start, here are a few suggestions:
A conversation between animals meeting in the woods.
A conversation between lovers who are breaking up.
A conversation between friends who are about to become lovers.
A conversation between you and your child self.
A conversation between friends trying to decide what movie to watch.
A conversation between the earth and the sky.
Okay, writers: Let’s write! And come back on Friday for the chance to share what you’ve written.
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