Creative Writing Lesson Plans - Lesson 10: Dialogue
This is Lesson 10 of the CWN creative writing lesson plans for fiction. Click here to go to Lesson One of the course.
You can use the entire course syllabus in order or just choose specific creative writing assignments and activities for your own classes. If your students are sufficiently mature and confident in their writing to handle group critiques, you might decide to integrate a workshop element with these lesson ideas.
Charles Baxter's short story collection, A Relative Stranger is used for all of the reading assignments in this writing syllabus.
Creative Writing Syllabus, Lesson - 10: Dialogue.
Lecture material: How to Write Dialogue That Works
In-class activity: Students share some examples of the conversations they have written down but should not initially give any background information. The class makes guesses about the context and speakers and discusses the reasons for their guesses. In pairs, students take a piece of the conversations they have transcribed and develop it into a narrative dialogue. If time permits, they can do a dramatic for the class (avoid critique at this point -- students should feel uninhibited during in-class activities).
Homework: Read "Sheherazade" by Charles Baxter.
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Continue to the next lesson in this fiction writing syllabus (topic: writing dialogue, continued).
See a list of all lessons.
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