1 / 9

Dialogue in Creative Writing: Emotions, Motivations, and Events

Explore the power of storytelling through dialogue in creative writing, showcasing character emotions, motivations, and important events. Discover why dialogue is essential and how it brings authenticity to narratives.

indra
Télécharger la présentation

Dialogue in Creative Writing: Emotions, Motivations, and Events

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Storytelling Through Dialogue Creative Writing Benjamin Way 3-7-14

  2. Overview • Why tell a story through dialogue? • Showing character emotions • Showing character motivations • Describing important events

  3. Why tell a story through dialogue? • It’s more authentic; your actual life is mostly a series of dialogues. • The natural way for us humans to understand our world is by hearing words and seeing actions, not listening to a narrator. • In a play, you don’t really have the option of a narrator explaining everything.

  4. Showing Character Emotions • Word choices and punctuation demonstrate a character’s emotional state. Compare the following greetings: • “Hello.” • “And how are you today this fine morning?” • “Oh. It’s you.” • “Ayyyy, how you doin’ mahboiii?” • [awkward silence] • “God! Can’t you find somewhere else to be?”

  5. Showing Character Emotions 2 • Another way to show a character’s emotion is for somebody else to comment on it. “What are you smiling about?” “Hey, are you okay? … Are you sure you’re alright?” “What’chuyellin’ for?” “Whoa, calm down.”

  6. Character Motivations • This is easy. Just find a way for the character to talk about their motivation somehow. • The hard part is making it fit naturally into a conversation.

  7. Character Motivation Example • Protagonist is excited and nervous about a job interview. Scene: Protagonist ordering his regular breakfast at a diner.Diner cashier: You lookin’ fly today. Protagonist: Thanks! Gotta look my best; I finally have an interview at Simon Tech. If I don’t get this job, it’s gonna be cereal every morning for me. Diner cashier: Well, good luck, then! Hey, you shakin’, boy. Best try to calm down before you get over there. Don’t wanna seem too eager.

  8. Important Actions & Events • Fill in important events that happen between scenes by having protagonist talk about what happened with somebody else. Scene: back at the diner Diner cashier: So? How’d it go? Protagonist: I don’t want to talk about it. Diner cashier: That bad, eh? Protagonist: They actually told me “we won’t be in touch.” [sighs] What am I gonna do?

  9. Conclusion • It is actually pretty easy to tell a story through dialogue alone. Just pretend like it’s real life.

More Related