Dialogue

And now for something completely different:

 Spark: What makes good dialogue anyway? We can’t make it sound like people actually do, because if you were to listen to me and my friends talking about coffee maker prices, that would be boring. Well, maybe not me. I’m always very interesting, but my friends, man are they boring. At the same time, lazy writers always try to amp up the silliness in their dialogue, trying to draw climaxes out of places where no drama is needed.

Assignment: You are to write a dialogue between a man and a woman having an argument. Then you are to rewrite the argument using your two parents as the arguing parties. If you’re like me and don’t have two parents, then you should use your grandparents. Or your auntie and uncle. Or your next-door neighbours. And if all of them are single too, you have so much dysfunction in your life, you should have no trouble writing anything. Finally, step three: blend the two into a well-crafted piece of writing. Figure out the subtlety that happens when you write real-people, and mix it with the creative energy of the fake piece.

But wait, there’s more! When you’re finished with the script (it should be maybe a minute long), find two actors and have them perform the scene.

Details: In the past, students have used different methods to record the scene. My favorite is when you embed the flash player on the page, and we can just click play. Some have used Garage Band, and uploaded it onto Muliply for us to have access. Others recorded it as video, but made the screen dark, and uploaded it onto YouTube. For this assignment, your page (It’s a page, not a post of course) should be labelled Dialogue and include the link to where we can listen to the dialogue, as well as the script they used in recording it. Questions? Horrible technical glitches? Email me: irs2@np.edu.sg