I'll be back with more later for Exercise 7 and 8 (which, along with novel progress, has kept me busy). For now, a quick one from Exercise 9, Part 1: Telling It Slant.
Part One: A & B
(Note that the assignment is quoted from page 119-120 of
Steering the Craft by Ursula K Le Guin)
The goal of this
exercise is to tell a story and present two characters through dialogue alone.
Write a page or two –
word count would be misleading, as dialogue leaves a lot of unfilled lines
- a page or two of pure dialogue.
Write it like a play,
with A and B as the characters’ names. No stage directions. No description of
the characters. Nothing but what A says and B says. Everything the reader knows
about who they are, where they are, and what’s going on, comes through what
they say.
Note: A& B is not
an exercise in writing a short story. It’s an exercise in one of the elements
of storytelling. You may, in fact, come out with a quite satisfactory little
playlet or performance piece, but the technique is not one to use much or often
in narrative prose.
Note on the story: while A is a completely new character, B
is actually based on a character from a work-in-progress. Rather unfair to the
A bloke. Aw well. Comments welcome as always.
I always found writing pure dialogue a lot of fun and it
leaves a lot of loose ends or open space from which to write a fuller story
from. And there was some great explanation of this and the focus of this chapter (telling a story indirectly) in Steering the Craft - recommended.
