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.