writing dialogue

This year I’ll be alternating two months of offering classes followed by two months of focusing on other work. In theory this should have been Jan-Feb, but it’s more like Feb edging into March. After that the next round will be May-June, and then September-October. I am also doing some price raising, reasoning that since I haven’t done it since the school started fifteen years ago, it’s a bit overdue. As always, there will be plenty of Plunkett scholarships.

I’m pleased to say we’re moving ahead on the next Wayward Wormhole, and 60% of our faculty is locked in so far. I hope to make an announcement about that soon.

Writing Short Stories Multi-Session Workshop

I will be offering a 6 week session of my writing short stories workshop on Saturdays, 12:30-3:00 PM Eastern time, starting February 3, 2024 and going through March 9.

In these six sessions, we will cover plot and story structure, character, world-building, style and technique, and how to move forward to begin (or continue) selling short stories. Each class will consist of lecture, discussion, and writing exercises for the first half and then turn to a critique of each other’s work. Students are expected to turn in at least one story for workshopping as well as critiquing each other’s stories.

To apply, please mail cat@kittywumpus.net a 1000 word writing sample (does not need to be a complete piece) as well as a brief (1-3 paragraph) statement about why you’d like to take the class. If accepted, the cost is $400 for Patreon supporters and other Rambo Academy community members; otherwise $500. There will be three Plunkett scholarships.

Single Session Workshops

Cost is $89 for Patreon supporters, otherwise $119. To register mail cat@kittywumpus.net with the name of the class and how you’d like to pay (Venmo, Paypal, check, something else.) There are three Plunkett scholarships in each class.

SCHEDULE

February 4, 12:30-2:30 PM Eastern Time

Replying to Other Stories with Cat Rambo

Stories shape writers, who spend part of their writing replying to, refuting, celebrating, and exploring those texts. Some stories have inspired plenty, such as Godwin’s “The Cold Equations,” Tiptree’s “The Women Men Don’t See,” or Le Guin’s “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas.” How do you draw on these stories without plagiarizing or leaning too heavily on a reader’s understanding of them? How do you figure out the stories that have inspired you, and how do you use them to make your own?

Join Cat for a workshop in which we’ll talk, listen, and exercise what we’ve learned in order to come away with useful tools as well as a list of possible story ideas and tips on which markets may find such stories appealing.

February 4, 4-6 PM Eastern Time

Generation Upon Generation: Writing Families with Cat Rambo

Almost every character has a family, one that has shaped their psyche deeply. How do you write characters in a way that demonstrates the complexities of family relationships and power struggles? How do you show the interactions between the generations and how they clash and complement each other?

Join Cat for a workshop in which we’ll talk, listen, and exercise what we’ve learned in order to come away from this class with a greater understanding of how to write family relationships, including practical tips, techniques, and exercises.

February 11, 12:30-2:30 PM Eastern time

Project Management for Creatives with Jennifer Brozek

How do you stay on top of the daily demands of being a writer? How do you plan — and carry out that plan — for a novel? How do you make sure one aspect of writing doesn’t swallow up all the rest? Basically, how can a writer stay in control of the daily chaos of existence even when you have multiple projects going at once?

Join Jennifer Brozek for a workshop about how to create a plan that helps you get where you want to go and how to do it without burning out.

February 11, 4-6 PM Eastern time

Creating and Updating Your Newsletter with Cat Rambo

With social media falling apart, more and more writers are returning to newsletters. How do you get started putting out a newsletter? What should – and shouldn’t – you include? What platforms are available, and are they worth paying for? Where do you find interesting visual images to use in your newsletter? How do you go about getting more subscribers?

You will come away from this class with a plan for starting (or restarting) your newsletter and consistently sending it out with interesting content that helps you sell books.

February 18, 4-6 PM Eastern

Rosemary Claire Smith – The Art of the Book Review

Some avid readers want to become reviewers, talking about the fiction they love — and sometimes hate. How do you go about creating a book review that is fair, interesting, and spoiler free? Should you post reviews on platforms like GoodReads and LibraryThing? Where else might you publish such pieces apart from your own blog? Is it possible to get paid for reviews? How do you obtain advance readers copies before books are published? Who does those anonymous reviews in Publishers Weekly?

Join Rosemary Claire Smith to talk about the time-honored art of the book review, and its promises and pitfalls.

February 25, 12:30-2:30 PM Eastern time

Beats, Chapters and Scenes: Ins and Outs of Story Units with Cat Rambo

What’s the difference between a chapter and scene, and at what point in the process do you need to worry about it? What are story beats and how can you use them to move the story along and keeping it emotionally engaging for the reader? Is there a maximum or minimum length for any of these things? Do you even need to think about them, or will you just hamper the writing flow by doing so?

Join Cat Rambo for a workshop in which they teach you how to use story units to their best effect.

March 3, 12:30-2:30 PM Eastern time

Dial Up Your Dialogue with Cat Rambo

Want to make your dialogue more interesting, intriguing, and indicative of character behavior? How do you know to leave in and leave out? How can you use dialogue to successfully deliver vital information? How do you make characters distinctive through their voices?

Join Cat Rambo for a workshop in which they teach you the ins and outs of dialogue.

March 3, 4-6 PM Eastern time

Rewriting and Editing Short Stories with Cat Rambo

Students have found that learning to trust their editing skills has made them more productive when producing early drafts. This class combines lecture, discussion, and in class exercise to help you develop a rewriting practice tailored to your own particular strengths and weaknesses as well as one that lets you know when a story is ready for submission. Topics include how to edit at both the sentence and story level, working well with writers/editors, considerations when writing for anthologies or for franchises, and how to finally let go of a piece and get it out there.

March 10, 12:30-2:30 PM Eastern time

Money Management for Creatives with Jennifer Brozek

Money makes the world go round, and in today’s society your dollar has to stretch farther than it has before. In Money Management for Creatives, Jennifer teaches core fundamentals of money management, debt reducing techniques, and an understanding of how money awareness can work for you. The class includes hands-on tasks, examples of the techniques used, and a discussion about the emotions of dealing with money.

Join Jennifer for a session in which she teaches you how to make the most of your money while handling the often erratic flow of writing income.

Have you ever read dialogue like this?

     "We'll need the Spear of Glorgon to kill the Pit-Fiend Czhnarboth."

     "Yes, we will. Do you know where the Spear of Glorgon may be found?"

     "Sadly, it was lost centuries ago in the Empire of Cardel."

     "Then finding it will be the ultimate test of our powers."

     "True, and surely the gods of light will favor us."

One of the most common reasons dialogue gets boring is that it turns into a type of conversational ping-pong. Speakers volley lines of speech back and forth at each other. Each serve is neatly and appropriately returned. You’ve probably played a game or two of ping-pong like that yourself.

Think about the first time you ever picked up a paddle (in my mind, you’re in your uncle’s shag-carpeted basement.) You’re immensely proud of yourself for just getting it back and forth over the net. But it is also, effectively, a kind of stalemate””the ball goes back and forth, but nothing changes. And, after a while, it’s boring.

But a professional game of ping-pong, when you watch talented, competitive players? Not boring at all. After talking to ping-pong players and reading about the game, I think I know one reason why.

More than once I’ve come across the phrase “ping-pong is a game of spin.” If volleying the ball back and forth is the beginner level, then spin is at the heart of competitive ping-pong. It alters the movement of the ball so that the predictable becomes unpredictable. It’s what makes play volatile, explosive, unexpected””interesting.

Spin has the same effect in dialogue. It’s basically what it sounds like: a turn, a twist, a deviation.

The problem with ping-pong dialogue is that it’s so predictable: everyone stays on topic, everyone responds to the questions they’re asked, everyone provides accurate information. Dialogue with spin, in contrast, goes in unexpected directions. Since one of the reasons readers read is because they want to know the answer to a question, dialogue with spin draws readers into a story by raising (and partially answering) new questions.

How do you generate spin? A few ways, actually. Let me offer you three.

Give your characters an agenda.

When each character in a conversation has an agenda, it means that they have a goal””and, since you’re a talented writer and you have conflict bred in your bones, you know that these characters have different goals. Those goals help produce spin as each character attempts to steer the conversation toward their desired end. If, for example, you are working on dialogue between an exhausted detective and an amorous witness, you might have a great deal of fun as their competing agendas inflect their conversation in different ways.

Allow for subtext.

While subtext often naturally arises from giving characters an agenda, the two are not interchangeable.

Subtext is the text around and behind and between the words””the text that never makes it into text. When a character says exactly what they want, you’re dealing with on-the-nose dialogue, which is the clinical condition of having zero subtext. Subtext is about hidden meanings, unverbalized desires, buried insults.

To extend the example above, let’s imagine that our amorous witness is married and can’t directly proposition the detective. The spoken conversation might be exclusively about the crime, while the subtext might be the unspoken thrust-and-parry of an attempted seduction.

Employ “No” Dialogue.

I find this technique to be a great deal of fun. It’s exactly what it sounds like””one character wants something, and the other refuses to give it to them. The fun comes in finding ways to make the refusals””and there should be a number of them””indirect and distinct, without the character repeating themself. Often, this becomes part of both the competing agenda and the subtext; the three work together beautifully. In our example, perhaps the amorous witness is also the police chief’s romantic partner, and the detective’s refusals must be firm but indirect enough not to humiliate and enrage the witness.

Bonus technique: Third-ball Attack

To wrap-up our ping-pong analogy, I’d like to offer you one more idea: the third-ball attack. In ping-pong, this refers to a strategy that goes like this: Player A serves the ball (ball #1), Player B returns it (ball #2), and Player A attacks (ball #3).

Think of this as both a heuristic””a rule-of-thumb diagnostic””and as a technique. If you’re writing dialogue, and you can tell it’s starting to drag, look at the first three lines. If the first three lines are ping-pong dialogue, the likelihood is that the rest of the conversation is, too.

You can break it up by turning that third line into an attack: give the dialogue stakes no later than the third line. One character makes a difficult request, issues an ultimatum, attempts a threat, initiates a seduction””whatever it is, it has to commit them to a risky course of action so that, succeed or fail, there are consequences.

Final Considerations

Is the sky the limit with spin? Not exactly. There’s a point of diminishing returns, even a point where it becomes counterproductive. Too much spin produces conversations that are hard to follow (whether because of non sequiturs, or because they break genre conventions, or because they become illogical or incomprehensible). These all threaten to alienate the reader. More spin is not necessarily better.

The important things to remember? Ping-pong bad. Spin good. If nothing’s happening, third-ball attack. And remember, just like real people, fictional characters are rarely as good at communicating as they think they are.

What kind of dialogue bores you to sleep? What are your go-to strategies for pepping it up? Who writes your favorite dialogue? Share some examples and tell us why!

Want to improve your dialogue even more? In January 2023, Gregory will be teaching the Odyssey Online class, Angled Dialogue: Crafting Authentic-Sounding Dialogue to Convey Information, Escalate Conflict, and Advance Character-Driven Stories.

Odyssey Online classes combine deep focus, directed study, intensive practice, and detailed feedback to help students learn how to best use the tools and techniques covered to make major improvements in their fiction.

Apply by November 21 at odysseyworkshop.org!

BIO

Gregory Ashe is a bestselling author and longtime Midwesterner. He has lived in Chicago, Bloomington (IN), and Saint Louis, his current home. He primarily writes contemporary mysteries, with forays into romance, fantasy, and horror. Predominantly, his stories feature LGBTQ protagonists. When not reading and writing, he is an educator. He is a graduate of the Odyssey workshop and has returned to teach there. For more information, visit his website: www.gregoryashe.com.