The Dialogue Blitz: Quick Writer’s Block Cure #1

By Geo Holmes

It’s the beginning of a dismal school year. You’re bored beyond reason, at home between homework assignments, looking at a blank notebook page, wondering what your next masterpiece of writing will be.

You may be experiencing the depressing hold of ‘writer’s block’. I am, at least—why else would I write this article?

To defeat this creature of the average writer’s nightmares, to create a piece of writing despite a total lack of ideas, to develop your skills in the process, is a challenge. It can be done simply, though. “How?” you may ask. That’s the point of this short article.

First come the simple steps: find yourself a comfortable location to write, set up a blank piece of paper, and prepare your weapon of choice, pencil or pen. Ready? Good. This is how many writer’s block cures begin.

Now to jump to the specific parts of this method.

Think up any random piece of dialogue, whether it be from a movie, or TV, or a conversation to a friend—any line will do—and write the line, labeling it ‘1’. And you’ve just completed the toughest step. The challenge laid before you now is to compose a dialogue series from that one line, labeling each different character by a number. You have to try and portray actions, translate the natures of the characters, and generally make a semi-understandable story, with no description to support it at all; just dialogue and that’s it. That’s why it’s called a dialogue blitz. You can groan now.

This probably sounds strange to you, and by now you think I’m crazy (which isn’t far from the truth). But I wouldn’t recommend this if it didn’t work. It made the idea for two major stories come to light in my imagination, and helped to expand further to defeat the dreaded writer’s block (now, if I’ve written those tales… that’s another story). Plus, this method helps in maturing your use of dialogue and making it more believable. The ‘question and answer’ sequence of dialogue can choke some writers; it’s usually a causal conversation, not an interrogation. The best way to defeat this is to practice, practice, practice. The dialogue blitz is great way to figure out if you’re stuck doing this ‘Q & A’ series of comments and to keep away from it. Real life does do this, but that doesn’t work in making story dialogue interesting.

That is all I can say on this topic. If this sounds like I brought you halfway up a mountain and left you there, I just did. I’m crossing my fingers, hoping that I instructed you enough to get your imagination to do the rest and get to the peak. Best of luck.