Brilliant dialogue is not a tape recorder held up to real speech. Dialogue is distilled like gin or poetry. In life, dialogue is ideally used to communicate—in fiction, to miscommunicate. Dialogue is a type of action and is the quickest path to conflict, power struggles, and story. In this three-hour, exercise-based workshop, we will model master writers like Jen Beagin and Mary Gaitskill, and learn how to shape original dialogue with subtext. We will cover direct and summarized dialogue, dialect, opposite scripts, echoes, ripcords, common pitfalls, and the “rules” of contemporary fiction and when to break them.
Clemintine Guirado has published short stories in Masters Review, Best New American Voices, Rainbow Curve, Comet Magazine, and 580 Split. Her short story "Above Asmara" won a Robie McCauley Award from StoryQuarterly and was subsequently included as a Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fiction Fellow, a University of Wisconsin Fiction Fellow, and has taught creative writing for over twenty years in universities, haunted beach motels, a trailer with a multi-dimensional portal.
Clemintine is new to The Porch. Welcome!
